It Belongs to a Museum

Voting is open
We definitely don't want to raid the coast of Ulthuan under any circumstances. That would ruin relations with our latest patron, torpedo Aelsabrim our contact, and just unnecessarily broadside ourselves in the foot.
They are Norscan pirates doing Norscan pirate things, no link to us much less to her.
But i give you that it might provoke a inquiry into the pirate so close to Ulthuan issue.
So better just dredge the Ulthuani coast for cool artefacts.
 
They are Norscan pirates doing Norscan pirate things, no link to us much less to her.
But i give you that it might provoke a inquiry into the pirate so close to Ulthuan issue.
So better just dredge the Ulthuani coast for cool artefacts.

They are undead Norscan Pirates made out of sea monster pieces; the Tide are a lot of things, but "deniable asset" isn't one of them. We also don't have permission for dredging, so that's off the table. Price of playing nice with Ulthuan without making Aelsabrim a player in Ulthuan proper is that we must continue playing nice with Ulthuan.
 
[ ] Plan The Story of Skjold
-[ ] Investigate (Kraken Sea and the Tide of Skjold)
-[ ] Acquire Relic (Replica of the Tide of Skjold (the ship.))
-[ ] Excursion - Tide of Skjold (Kraken Sea, Sea Beasts, priority being one of a species that the Norscans of the Kraken Sea offer their dead to, preferably with the body in good enough condition to be stuffed and preserved rather than just the skeleton.)

Alright, so as I've mentioned before, my plan for an exhibit revolves around the Kraken Sea. In specific, the funerary practices of the Norscans who live upon the shores bordering it (which I believe are the Bjornlings) and how, both in terms of culturally (the feeding of the dead to the sea beasts, and how some are rejected and float down to the bottom) and magically (whatever phenomena brings them back as zombies) that led to the creation of the Tide of Skjold.

This should lead to an exhibit which our Skald is excellently suited to dressing up with his Detailed understanding of Norsca and Authority Knowledge of the History of the Vampire Coast (which might be good for the Tide of Skjold.) We can likely set up a significant History Theme, alongside the presence of Magic and Sea Beasts. If we're really lucky, the phenomena that means that the dead Bjornlings who don't get eaten come back as Zombies might be something that we can connect to the Necromantic Diaspora for some Harkon appeal.

This first action we'd Investigate for links between the Kraken Sea and the Tide of Skjold, particularly when it comes to their creation. This should give us leads we can follow up next turn. 2nd is getting a replica of the Tide of Skjold (the ship), assuming this is something we can acquire with an "Acquire Relic" action and don't need to go do something special for it. If it is though, I have some ideas for alternate relics we could go for.

As for the third, I have an idea for a part of the exhibit where we have a Draugr dressed up like a Bjornling warrior with all his grave goods being sent into the maw of one of the Kraken Sea's beasts, with a second Draugr dressed up similar being ignored and sinking to the bottom. For that, we'd need an appropriate Sea Beast. Fortunately that's doubly the Tide of Skjold's specialty (both Norsca and Sea Beast), so that's on them. Meanwhile, we have Paht acquire the necessary grave goods either this turn or next turn.

Next turn we can pursue whatever leads come up. Think maybe we could pursue one Lead with the Tide of Skjold, one with the Skald. Maybe bring our new student along for one of them as well. Third Action I'd want to put on procurement of an additional Relic (Norscan Grave Goods.)
 
Okay, so - [ ] New Audience - Arabyan Academics should probably be a part of the plan, for the reasons given on the previous page. Goodwill good.

Unless we want to bring them with us to investigate New Huatl, Talon has a fair point - sending the Tide out on an expedition now rather than later means we get them and their acquisitions back sooner, hopefully in time for putting together a new exhibit. Honestly, either of the suggested options works - going to the Kraken Sea would support an exhibit based either on piracy or on the Tide specifically, whereas raiding Mousillon would add a nice touch of breadth to our future exhibit on the history of necromancy and vampirism. For whatever reason, it also feels really funny to me, so let's go for that!

Other than that... Hmm. I think I still like [ ] Plants. Gives us something to slot into the Dangers of Lustria exhibit when we take other things out. Nice, long-awaited and fits more or less any future objective we might have.

That leaves us with:

[ ] Plan: Preparations through Peers, Piracy and Plants
- [ ] Broaden Horizons
-- [ ] New Audience - Arabyan Academics
- [ ] Acquire Relics - via the Tide of Skjold
-- [ ] Excursion - Tide of Skjold (Mousillon, Artefacts of Undeath)
- [ ] Acquire Relics - via Princess Aelsabrim Fallenstar
-- [ ] Plants
 
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Maybe we can focus on History and Magic and get something like 'Lutr's henchmen across the ages'.
I actually love the idea of having a Rogue's Gallery exhibit of Harkon's Henchman. It just goes great with the stated purpose of the Museum and makes for a great contrast if we put it across a hypothetical Harkon's Enemies/Rivals exhibit.

Of course every so often we'll have to shift artifacts between to the two but so it goes when your working for a crazy supervillain that can raise the dead.
 
I wonder how good the Tide would be at just generically hunting Magic in Lustria. They don't have a specialty for it, but they've got lots of Theology, so they can tell apart the weird stuff that's divine from the weird stuff that isn't (and thus probably arcane). Between the sea, coast, seafloor and rivers they can also hunt far and wide and being immortal makes it easy to just go poke everything that looks promising.
 
If my maths is right, the Runestone by itself is worth at least 15 interest, 24 if it triggers the Citadels "Lustrian Magic" affinity, plus an additional 3 if we bring in the Arabyans.

Relevent tags: History, Magic, Necromancy, Lustrian Magic?
Base: 3 (centrepiece)
Awakening: History (3), magic (3)
Arabyan Academics: magic (3)
Harkon: necromancy (9)
Citadel: Lustrian magic (9)

The sea beasts we already have would add five points, for a round 20, but we'd loose the same number of points from the Dangers exhibit, so that washes out.

If the Runestone does count as "Lustrian magic"—I'm being a bit cautious here because I'm unsure whether the Pieces of Eight are Lustrian enough to qualify—then that would earn us two goodwill by itself (we need 22 points).

If it doesn't, then pulling in the Arabyans will net us the difference, as we'd get 3 from the Runestone and 8 from our current exhibits (age 3 and magic 5) for an extra 11 points.

In short:
Runestone, no elves, no Arabyans: 15 points
Runestone, elves, no Arabyans: 24 points
Runestone, no elves, Arabyans: 18 + 8 points
Runestone, elves, Arabyans: 27 + 8 points

As such, I think we should create the Runestone exhibit and send out marketing emails to some of our old students—that will net us enough points with or without the elves to grab two goodwill, which we can spend next turn on new contacts and crew, or just hit people with the magic "you like Lustria now" beam.

The third action should be acquiring magical relics of some kind—either through New Huatl or through Aelsabrim—to set us up the following turn to build a proper magic exhibit.

I'm leaning towards Aelsabrim, to clear out her warehouse of stolen Lizardman stuff and build something around the palaquin we have.

[] Plan: Magical Miscellany
- [] Create Exhibit (the Tide of Skjold, bearer of one of the Pieces of Eight: Runestone, all sea beasts)
- [] Acquire relics (via Aelsabrim): Magical Relics
- [] New Audience - Arabyan Academics

This will earn us either 26 or 35 points, enough to clear the next two goodwill thresholds.
 
I'm pretty confident a replica is just a prop and set dressing, and doesn't require an action. It's just also not worth points.
Yeah, I was wondering if we'd need a Lead about the ship itself and then we can acquire a variant that has points.

If that is the case, I can just swap that action for grabbing Norscan Grave Goods, which should be simple enough for Paht to acquire.
 
This one isn't actually that weird, because we know that elves have a tendency to attribute a lot of human gods to being guises of the Elven gods - and some of them are. Manann and Mathlann are very blatant in this regard, being not only similarly named but also being gods of the same sea.

So the elves (being a maritime superpower) would have had a vested interest in trying to reshape Manann/Mathlann to something less awful. The worship of Manann before Stromfels broke off included things like wrecking and piracy. That's not good for business.

And it half-succeeded: Manann is now less actively awful, and more capricious and temperament. But Stromfels is now loose and in a perpetual battle with the cult of Manann.
nah I don't think it's weird (from the meta perspective) but imagine you're a human and it turns out the funny shark you worship and fight Manann about is actually the product of elvish meddling trying to not get rekt (wrecked) and drowned by their own capricious Mathlann (Manann) god.

It's the elves intentionally leaning into human bastardization of Mathlann to try and make Mathlann less of a shark faced asshole. That's . . .

it'd be really extra funny if the humans leaned on the scales to get Stromfels to be a face of AnathRaema and thus cut part of Mathlann's portfolio towards AnathRaema's. I think we'd see interesting things happen from the Wood Elves if that were to occur. A Kelp Forest is a kind of forest, right? :V
 
[ ] Plan The Story of Skjold
-[ ] Investigate (Kraken Sea and the Tide of Skjold)
-[ ] Acquire Relic (Norscan Grave Goods)
-[ ] Excursion - Tide of Skjold (Kraken Sea, Sea Beasts, priority being one of a species that the Norscans of the Kraken Sea offer their dead to, preferably with the body in good enough condition to be stuffed and preserved rather than just the skeleton.)

Alright, so as I've mentioned before, my plan for an exhibit revolves around the Kraken Sea. In specific, the funerary practices of the Norscans who live upon the shores bordering it (which I believe are the Bjornlings) and how, both in terms of culturally (the feeding of the dead to the sea beasts, and how some are rejected and float down to the bottom) and magically (whatever phenomena brings them back as zombies) that led to the creation of the Tide of Skjold.

This should lead to an exhibit which our Skald is excellently suited to dressing up with his Detailed understanding of Norsca and Authority Knowledge of the History of the Vampire Coast (which might be good for the Tide of Skjold.) We can likely set up a significant History Theme, alongside the presence of Magic and Sea Beasts. If we're really lucky, the phenomena that means that the dead Bjornlings who don't get eaten come back as Zombies might be something that we can connect to the Necromantic Diaspora for some Harkon appeal.

This first action we'd Investigate for links between the Kraken Sea and the Tide of Skjold, particularly when it comes to their creation. This should give us leads we can follow up next turn. 2nd is getting a replica of the Tide of Skjold (the ship), assuming this is something we can acquire with an "Acquire Relic" action and don't need to go do something special for it. If it is though, I have some ideas for alternate relics we could go for.

As for the third, I have an idea for a part of the exhibit where we have a Draugr dressed up like a Bjornling warrior with all his grave goods being sent into the maw of one of the Kraken Sea's beasts, with a second Draugr dressed up similar being ignored and sinking to the bottom. For that, we'd need an appropriate Sea Beast. Fortunately that's doubly the Tide of Skjold's specialty (both Norsca and Sea Beast), so that's on them. Meanwhile, we have Paht acquire the necessary grave goods either this turn or next turn.

Next turn we can pursue whatever leads come up. Think maybe we could pursue one Lead with the Tide of Skjold, one with the Skald. Maybe bring our new student along for one of them as well. Third Action I'd want to put on procurement of an additional Relic (Norscan Grave Goods.)
So, swapping out the Tide of Skjold ship replica with getting Norscan Grave Goods, so we can see if we get a Lead that lets us get something like Harkon's flagship as a Relic.

But I have a vision for this exhibit where it's like, divided in half. Where one half shows the buriel at sea on the Kraken Sea of one Draugr sailing into a sea beast's mouth, while the other sinks, abandoned.

And then the second half we have Draugr rising from the dead, surrounding the Runestone of the Tide of Skjold, this half detailing the rise of the Tide of Skjold themselves.

As I've said every time I tried to push this idea, I think we are extremely perfectly suited for this kind of Exhibit (Norscan acquisitionists, Norscan Skald), and in terms of appeal, this appeals to the History and likely Magic (once we learn more about how the Tide of Skjold came to be) part of Awakening, the Sea Beast part of the Sea Elves, and possibly the Necromantic Diaspora for Harkon.

We just got a runestone that is about the birth of the Tide of Skjold and is a centerpiece, and this whole exhibit I'm working on is specifically about that.
 
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The runestone is definitely a bigger deal than I'd expected it to be. I'd figured it would be something like a three-tag Chaos/Norsca/Piracy relic, not a six-tag centrepiece.
 
Yeah, I really want to use it for my exhibit idea. I've been obsessed with this idea for a story about the Kraken Sea and how its practices gave ride to the Tide of Skjold and the Runestone is like, perfectly made to be the centerpiece of that exhibit.
 
[] Plan: Magical Miscellany
- [] Create Exhibit (the Tide of Skjold, bearer of one of the Pieces of Eight: Runestone, all sea beasts)
- [] Acquire relics (via Aelsabrim): Magical Relics
- [] New Audience - Arabyan Academics
I'd say that if we're going for this exhibit now (and I do like the idea), folding in Chimeraguard's Excursion action in place of Acquire Relics makes a great deal of sense, so that the Tide can come back as soon as possible and allow us to add the acquired Kraken Sea monster whenever we next do an adjustment (which will hopefully also involve adding plants to the Dangers exhibit in the sea beasts' place). The narrative it creates is very appealing.
 
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To try and describe my idea for an exhibit:
-It starts with a depiction of the Norscan funerary processes in the Kraken Sea. We have a Draugr dressed up as a Norscan champion, being sent out to sea. We have our Kraken Sea Beasties stuffed and set up so it looms with its mouth open, ready to swallow the champion whole.
-However, we also have other Draugrs dressed up similarly who are being ignored, and they are shown sinking, forsaken and abandoned.
-Then, we have at the 'bottom' the other half of our story, with Draugr representing the crew of the Tide of Skjold rising from the dead, with the Runestone of Skjold acting as a centerpiece that they surround (possibly also including this Pearl of Skjold as well.) This part of the exhibit would be the big boast about the Tide of Skjold and its rejection of Chaos in favor of Haakon.

Essentially we show the process of how the Tide of Skjold came to be, culminating in its formation and its pledge of allegiance to Harkon.

I think this exhibit would go far with our audience and staff. The Tide of Skjold are perfect acquisitionists for the beast, the Skald is excellently suited to elaborate on our exhibits, we have the Runestone as the perfect centerpiece, and our audiences should love the History, Magic, Sea Beast, and Necromantic Diaspora themes this exhibit is likely to have.

I also consider this exhibit to be fairly flexible, since we already have the centerpiece we need, and other aspects can be emphasized or sidelined depending on how Relic acquisition goes up without damaging the overall theme.
 
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The translation of the runic sequences on the stone are, by the way:

ᚨᚢᛊᛗᚢᚾᛞᚱ ᚺᛃᚢ ᚱᚢᚾᚨᚱ ᚦᛁᛊᚨᚱ ᚦᚨᛁᚱ ᛁᛊᚲᛁᚱ ᚨᚢᚲ ᚦᚢᚱᛚᛁᚠᚱ
AUSMUNDR HJU RUNAR THISAR THAIR ISKIR AUK THURLIFR
Which is a direct copy of half the source-material graffiti that means

"Asmund cut these Runes with Asjeir and Thorleif",

and

ᚺᛖᛁᛚᛚ ᛗᚨᚾᚨᚾᚾ ᛊᛏᚱᛟᛗᚠᛖᛚᛊ
HEILL MANAAN STROMFELS
which is fairly self-explanatory.
 
I was going to say that navigational maps and aids would be the sort of state secrets that nations would kill to prevent others from having, but then I realised Paht is exactly the sort of person to make those publicly available to all and sundry.

Honestly I'm still surprised he's as cool as he is with Phat revealing the secrets of the Siren Wail to all and sundry. Sure it's being depreciated but man.
 
If my maths is right, the Runestone by itself is worth at least 15 interest, 24 if it triggers the Citadels "Lustrian Magic" affinity, plus an additional 3 if we bring in the Arabyans.

Relevent tags: History, Magic, Necromancy, Lustrian Magic?
Base: 3 (centrepiece)
Awakening: History (3), magic (3)
Arabyan Academics: magic (3)
Harkon: necromancy (9)
Citadel: Lustrian magic (9)

The sea beasts we already have would add five points, for a round 20, but we'd loose the same number of points from the Dangers exhibit, so that washes out.

If the Runestone does count as "Lustrian magic"—I'm being a bit cautious here because I'm unsure whether the Pieces of Eight are Lustrian enough to qualify—then that would earn us two goodwill by itself (we need 22 points).

If it doesn't, then pulling in the Arabyans will net us the difference, as we'd get 3 from the Runestone and 8 from our current exhibits (age 3 and magic 5) for an extra 11 points.

In short:
Runestone, no elves, no Arabyans: 15 points
Runestone, elves, no Arabyans: 24 points
Runestone, no elves, Arabyans: 18 + 8 points
Runestone, elves, Arabyans: 27 + 8 points

As such, I think we should create the Runestone exhibit and send out marketing emails to some of our old students—that will net us enough points with or without the elves to grab two goodwill, which we can spend next turn on new contacts and crew, or just hit people with the magic "you like Lustria now" beam.

The third action should be acquiring magical relics of some kind—either through New Huatl or through Aelsabrim—to set us up the following turn to build a proper magic exhibit.

I'm leaning towards Aelsabrim, to clear out her warehouse of stolen Lizardman stuff and build something around the palaquin we have.

[] Plan: Magical Miscellany
- [] Create Exhibit (the Tide of Skjold, bearer of one of the Pieces of Eight: Runestone, all sea beasts)
- [] Acquire relics (via Aelsabrim): Magical Relics
- [] New Audience - Arabyan Academics

This will earn us either 26 or 35 points, enough to clear the next two goodwill thresholds.
I'm not sure the Runestone triggers for Harkon's Vampire/Necromancy thing? It's got the Magic tag, but it isn't specified as being Necromantic magic specifically. More to the point, beast skeletons don't combo well with the rest of the stuff the Runestone has going on. It's a tricky problem, and I'm not sure we've got good things to go with it that aren't just putting it on display as a singleton. Or sending the Tide to Norsca or Skeggi, I suppose. That said...

Museum Interest: 78
Awakening Interest: 24
Sea Elves Interest: 6
Luthor Harkon Interest: 15
Citadel of Dusk Interest: 15
I'll point out to the thread that the interest pool updated with the Patronage of the Citadel of Dusk, so we're only two Interest away from the next point of Goodwill. Given that we already have a bunch of Magic tags, I think this'd be a good time to bring in the Arabyan Academics, since the extra Interest we get there will definitely be enough to get us to the next point of Goodwill.

Aside from that, I think we ought to do things that'll fetch more Lustrian Magic, since that hits neatly into the confluence of the various interests that our visitors have. Perhaps something like this:

[ ] Plan: Magical Acquisitions
-[ ] Pursue Lead (Nakai the Wanderer, with Prince Aenureir)
-[ ] Magical Relics
-[ ] New Audience - Arabyan Academics

I'm intrigued by how the Princess' Relics action has changed. It was the best single haul we've gotten from any action in the quest when we did it before, so I'm eager to give it another go. Aside from that, as a YA protagonist, the prince is ideally qualified for all sorts of interesting missions, and he deserves more screentime anyways.
 
I'm not sure the Runestone triggers for Harkon's Vampire/Necromancy thing? It's got the Magic tag, but it isn't specified as being Necromantic magic specifically. More to the point, beast skeletons don't combo well with the rest of the stuff the Runestone has going on. It's a tricky problem, and I'm not sure we've got good things to go with it that aren't just putting it on display as a singleton. Or sending the Tide to Norsca or Skeggi, I suppose. That said...

A significant part of the tale is how Harkon used necromancy and the Pearl to raise them both from the dead and from the sea floor. The Tide are fully within the sphere of "necromantic disapora", and the fact that they are a rather unique type of undead just emphasises that point.

And I don't see how the trophies of sea beasts is irrelevant to the sea beast hunters, especially since they hunted two of them, and it's a key part of their religious practice as well.
 
A significant part of the tale is how Harkon used necromancy and the Pearl to raise them both from the dead and from the sea floor. The Tide are fully within the sphere of "necromantic disapora", and the fact that they are a rather unique type of undead just emphasises that point.

And I don't see how the trophies of sea beasts is irrelevant to the sea beast hunters, especially since they hunted two of them, and it's a key part of their religious practice as well.
Mostly, I'm referring to the fact that we haven't scored Luthor Harkon interest for anything that didn't have the Vampire tag so far. I will note that Patron tags are clearly more complex than ordinary tags (as evidenced by the "Lustrian Magic" requirement for the Citadel of Dusk), so it's possible that the Runestone counts. Still, we don't know that it does, so there's a substantial question mark hovering over the thing until Boney clarifies the matter (either directly or when we score the exhibit).

As for the Sea Beasts, I'm talking about lack of tag overlap. The Runestone has History, Norsca, Asur, Khuresh, Magic, and Religion. The skeletons have Trophy, Lustria, Sea Beast, Lizardmen, and Mutant. There's not a single tag in common between them, so I'm completely opposed to peeling off skeletons that are scoring Trophy, Lustria, Sea Beast, and Lizardmen for us into an exhibit that has none of those things. We'd be better off just putting the Runestone up as a one item exhibit, since we'd probably lose Interest doing it your way.

Note that it'd be a different story if the skeletons were just sitting around in crates collecting dust; if we weren't using them for anything else, it'd totally make sense to throw them in anywhere where it sort of made sense. It'd also be a different story if we had a Priest of Stromfels or something of the sort around who could give context on the religious practices in question (ie: give more relic understanding, adding appropriate bridging tags to the relics). Or even if we did Learn (Sea Gods) or some such to figure out some of that missing context ourselves.
 
Isn't Skeggi actually pretty old? I would've expected their close contact with Lizardmen to have led to some fun heresies by now.

Some sort of heresy regarding an Old World or Chaos God that happened to have part of its evolution take place in Skeggi is not a form of Lustrian magic.

@Boney I have two questions:
Would the Pieces of Eight count as Lustrian magic for the same reason as the Siren-Wail?

No. The Siren-Wail is magic performed on the landscape of the eastern coast of Lustria. The Pieces of Eight is magic performed on eight Old World doodads.

Would Paht have better results searching for Lahmian Artifacts than an Acquisitionist without an affinity for it, given his history?

Absolutely not. a) this is not an adventurer quest b) he's less squishy than the old man he appears to be, but in the grand scheme of things he is still very squishy, c) an Acquisitionist without a relevant affinity is still an Acquistionist, someone with a skillset in acquiring goods.

Honestly I'm still surprised he's as cool as he is with Phat revealing the secrets of the Siren Wail to all and sundry. Sure it's being depreciated but man.

It is being depreciated (and deprecated), which means that the secrets they're learning and the countermeasures they'd develop would be about the Siren-Wail at its weakest. If that leads his enemies to think they can safely plan an invasion through the waters that it dominates, they probably won't enjoy what will happen if he cranks the power all the way back up.

A significant part of the tale is how Harkon used necromancy and the Pearl to raise them both from the dead and from the sea floor. The Tide are fully within the sphere of "necromantic disapora", and the fact that they are a rather unique type of undead just emphasises that point.

If it was that easy to qualify, then literally any act of necromancy would. It is specifically about the spread of the practice of necromancy to new places or people, and the Tide aren't actually necromancers.
 
If it was that easy to qualify, then literally any act of necromancy would. It is specifically about the spread of the practice of necromancy to new places or people, and the Tide aren't actually necromancers.

Okay, I had significantly misunderstood the theme then. So something like Vlad teaching Vanhel necromancy would count, but Vanhel raising an army to fight the Skaven wouldn't?

I think that makes it clear that the runestone wouldn't actually hit either of our patrons' affinities.
 
Okay, I had significantly misunderstood the theme then. So something like Vlad teaching Vanhel necromancy would count, but Vanhel raising an army to fight the Skaven wouldn't?

I think that makes it clear that the runestone wouldn't actually hit either of our patrons' affinities.

Correct. I've added clarifying lines to the Patron affinities:

Affinity: Vampire and Necromantic Diaspora
Exhibits about the spread of the bloodlines of Vampirism and the practices of Necromancy to new peoples and places.

Affinity: Lustrian Magic
Exhibits about magics unique to Lustria; primarily those of the Lizardmen, but also varieties of magic unique to Lustria-based factions like the Vampire Coast, Clan Pestilens, and the Amazons.

If the Tide of Skjold had been taught necromancy or were from Skeggi, then it would probably qualify, but necromancy being performed on Norscans in the Kraken Sea would not be considered Lustrian Magic. The Ebony Skulls would, they're built to secure allies in Lustria and distributed to captains based in and around it. The Syreens would, they're a manifestation of Bansheeism that seems unique to Luthor Harkon and whatever bond he has with Empire Witches. 'Ghost ships' like the Shadewraith or the Lamprey would, as this is a manifestation of necromancy that originated in the Vampire Coast.
 
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