Ghost

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Introduction

Clinging to the memory of what was, and unmet wants or desires, a Ghost exists to guard everything that it still holds dear. You receive a Free Racial Merit for both the Apparation and the Syphon of a Ghost when playing one.

Fast Facts

• Population: 400,000,000+
• Lifespan: Indefinite
• Height: Varies
• Weight: Nothing
• Racial Merit: Ghosts have a Free Racial Merit in Apparation and Syphon.

Racial Abilities:

Denizens of Avernus

Ghosts may wield the Poetics of Syphon and Apparation without expending a Minor Merit. Their bodies are also comprised of Psychoplasm, a material comprised of memory and Soul Ash.

Appearance

Ash Wraiths

Ghosts are beings of emotion and memory. Their bodies are comprised of Miasmata congealed into fine grains of Ash, each spec charged with emotion and identity. These beings take on the shape and color of how they remember themselves in life, influenced to a lesser extent by the beings that remember them.

A tyrannical king that felled many in his dark reign would have their appearance twisted by the ghosts around them to be dour and nigh-demonic by lashing imagination. A saint would glower with color and life should their flock joining them in death adore them, until the death of a bitter rival might avail an overlarge mole upon their nose. Those who were unremembered merely have a sense for themselves, murky with fleeting detail.

With bodies made of this Psychoplasm, Ghosts are vulnerable somewhat to Luxium, and they still feel its burn. Mundane methods of striking will merely displace the Ash, harrying but not injuring an apparition unless it has solidified with Apparation. Ghosts will also feel harm when damaging what they hold dear, physically recoiling with psychic pain and shedding Miasmata as they feel their memories slipping away.

Memories forged following death have no impact upon Avernus or its denizens.

History

Since Souls have fallen to Avernus, there have always been Ghosts. Ever since, they have haunted the minds, bodies, and daily lives of the living, only kept at bay by Mystics and Paladins.

Becoming a Ghost

Souls of the dead are Reincarnated at the Sunfont of Aarda, dissolving into Luxium so that their soul might be recycled anew into another being yet to be born. Ghosts have rebuked this process to become an Echo, their feelings and mortal attachments holding them back from flying towards the molten sun in the sky.

Instead, their soul falls between the Planes to Avernus where they begin to wander a dangerous desert of strange beings, Spirits, and their fellow undead. Within the Ashen Cities, a newborn Echo is scarcely prepared for what awaits. Their memories are limited to a few obsessive ideals, and they might not even understand that they have died, still chasing what they sought in life. This leads to them being preyed upon, or sucked dry for crossing some unknowable boundary set in place by a territorial Phantom.

Should they survive, an Echo will go on to discover how to Syphon, and Apparate through their attachments - and eventually those of others - to the world of the living. Over time they will begin to form a new identity around guarding their own memories, becoming a Phantom with more of a capacity for desire independent from attachments.

Society

The Ashen Cities of Avernus

Ghosts live within Avernus, a dreary desert of silky Ash-sand which overlays Antarok and Ælphyne both. Memories of cities inhabited by the living rise out of the grey sands, congealing and twisting with one-another. Anything a Ghost was attached to in life remains in Avernus for as long as they exist, any such locale linked as an area between worlds where the dead might slip into either Plane. This goes for trinkets, landmarks, structures, and so on. Anything a Ghost possesses fond memories of will stay within Avernus as an undying record until that memory fades.

Those with Remnant bend the appearance of Avernus to their will, able to create, maneuver, and manipulate these thin-spots by using the barest scraps of memory.

The Pits

Vast chasms of black exist within Avernus, usually where memory is densely packed with pain and trauma from countless souls. These memories twist in upon each other, then collapse downward into the hells of Gehenna. Many of these pits have stairwells built into them by the Ghosts and Daemons that live near to there.

Ghost Skills

As they cannot wield forms of Arcana except for specific forms fueled by Miasmata, Ghosts are limited in the variety of their Arcane potential. Even so, they should not be underestimated.

Poetics Ghosts possess specialized abilities for engaging with the world of the living, referred to as Poetics.

• Syphon is the ability Ghosts use to feed upon, manage, and deal in Metaphor. A Minor Merit is not required to be spent for Syphon while the character is a Ghost.

• Apparation is how ghosts move around. A Minor Merit is not required to be spent for Apparation while the character is a Ghost.

• Possession is how a Ghost to possesses other beings and objects.

• Remnant is the power of capturing and wielding Memoria for the purpose of illusions and psychic harm. Not every Ghost engages in Remnant; this requires a Minor Merit to pursue.

Miasmata

Ghosts may acquire any form of Arcana that is fueled entirely by Miasmata.

• Nekros is available to a Ghost, as their being is comprised of Miasmata.

• Geist is available to a Ghost while Possessing a body with Grist, as their being is comprised of Miasmata, but they are limited to how powerful the original Grist organ is.

Ghost Archetypes

Ghosts come in a litany of variants, detailed below:

Whisper

When a Ghost is fed upon, it falls to Avernus and becomes a Whisper, drawing from the ambient Miasmata present within the Plane to recover themselves into an Echo. As a Whisper, a Ghost cannot take any form larger than a breeze of Soul Ash; they are incapable of wielding any Arcana or Poetics. Ghosts will generally avoid bothering with a Whisper as they pose no threat and yield no sustenance worth Syphoning from them. If they are, however, they will lose all sense of what they once were and fall to Gehenna and become a Trace - the barest sliver of existence - which may either pass on to the Void or become a Daemon.

Echo

Lower-ranked Ghosts make up the vast majority of spectral beings. These Echoes possess little of what they were in life, struggling with remembering or keeping their identity intact. They are capable of Poetics but not any other form of Arcana. If they are able to Syphon enough Miasmata, they can grow into a Phantom once their Soul has had time to adjust to the rising wealth of Metaphor within; this can take as little as a few days to as long as a year of being overfull.

Phantom

Equivalent to the living in potential, a Phantom is coherent, if obsessive over specific things they held dear in life. They will haunt the places in which Avernus converges with the Planes above, helping to maintain a status quo by pushing out those who would change it into something else. Becoming a Phantom requires the expenditure of a Minor Merit.

Wisp

Wisps are Ælven souls Tethered to Ældrassil. They function as a Ghost, but wield Saol instead of Miasmata for their Poetics, often residing within Avernus where they maintain memories of the Grove and historic monuments of the Æld'Norai, tree roots covered up by the breezy Ash-desert. They are capable of wielding any Arcana fueled by Saol; this includes Animism, Nimhea, Vitæ, and any Glamour or Wild Glamour implanted within the body they are Possessing. As a tradeoff for this, they cannot move beyond the borders of Ælheim. A Wisp is comparable to a Phantom, and can still be reduced to a Whisper. Becoming a Wisp requires the expenditure of a Minor Merit.

Revenant

The height of what a Ghost can be, Revenants are beings consumed entirely by Miasmatic impulse, powerful and sometimes ancient spirits which have consumed the Soul Ash of countless other dead. Possessive over what they held dear in life, or consumed by revenge, they embark upon a crusade of torment and death until they achieve some goal that may or may not be attainable. They might congeal into the solid form of any being they have Syphoned to death, else commonly Apparating as a fog of Miasmata around twenty feet in diameter.

Having expunged all Saol from their being, Revenants are incapable of storing within themselves other forms of Metaphor. They are especially weak to all forms of Saol-charged Arcana, and can even be bound by the commanded Flora of a Draoidh when solidified. Nimhea will burn instead of calm, and they expel the Saol they Syphon out of life. Revenants have half again as much capacity for Miasmata as any other.

Becoming a Revenant requires expending a Major Merit, and may be self-moderated without permission so long as you expend the Minor Merit for having been a Phantom.

Related Articles

• Avernus
• Miasmata
• Syphon
• Apparation
• Possession
• Remnant
• Nekros

Antarok Handbook

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