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Aaron Peori Ghost Homebrew: Putrid Legion
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    • Putrid Legion
    Lesser Dead
    Dead By Contagion

    There is no place in the underworld that does not have dark corners or abandoned buildings where the dead fear to walk. The first warning one has that he has wandered too far from the halls of the civilized dead is the smell, both putrid and stagnant like a salt swamp that has begun to dry up. The next is the damp patches, slick like bile, that cover seemingly random surfaces. The final warning is the sensation of bone claws tearing at your flesh, and if you survive the burning agony of the sickness in your veins will be your undoing.

    When the Great Contagion swept across Creation nine out of every ten died. Their souls were flushed into the Underworld, coming in numbers so great they clogged the courses of the great rivers and forever altering the landscape of the forsaken land. Worse, the jams would break and burst, drowning entire realms in fetid waters that erased memory and corrupted the corpus. Not since the first Neverborn sunk have so many souls been lost to the Void.

    Most of those who were caught in this flood were sent to Oblivion, of the majority who survived their memory and self were worn away like a river carves a canyon, only a rare few survived with some remnant of self. The Putrid Legion are the victims of the Great Contagion and they truly are legion, a persistent and growing problem. Their corpus is rotting and bloated, flesh sloughs from their bones and they exhibit an astonishing array of visible symptoms of disease; hives and coughs and unhealthy pallors and humours of all kinds. Perhaps the memory washing water of the rivers has twisted their ideas of their final moments such that they represent all disease and sickness in their forms?

    The Contagion Dead are a growing threat because like the disease that spawned them they have the capacity to spread. While thankfully not as fecund as the blight which created them the wounds they inflict with their gore covered claws rapidly putrefy and can infect even spiritual flesh. The difficulty to resist infection from these wounds is increased by the ghost's Essence, which is typically one to three. These wounds even infect spirits and other supernatural beings, though Exalted will find they suffer the illness they still maintain their inability to be killed by the infection. They also share an instinctive desire to work with each other to spread and multiply, and will retreat from confrontations where they are outmatched or are more than willing to inflict damage and retreat back to their damp lairs and allow the disease in their flesh to finish their victims. All mortals that die to this infection become members of the Putrid Legion barring magical intervention, as do any ghosts who fail their rolls to reincorporate. Demons, gods and elementals must resist the siren call of Oblivion upon death from this disease with a Willpower roll at a difficulty equal to the ghost's Essence, though spirits whose Essence exceeds the ghost's are immune to this.

    For all their danger the Putrid Legion is not considered a critical threat because of their incapacity for long term planning. The Contagion Dead prefer to retreat to dark and abandoned areas when left to their own devices and can remain quiescent for decades or even centuries until they are stirred up by some fool. In the case of a large enough nest they might end up chasing the interloper back to whatever shelter or settlement they retreat to. Occasionally some exceptional individuals among the legion recall some fragments of themself and feed upon their fellows and victims for dregs of power and can grow powerful and intelligent enough to serve as captains or petty warlords that can stir up their lessers. Rumors of such rarities are sure to draw the attention of heroes of the Underworld who will often be promised good rewards for eliminating such monsters and cleansing their nests before they grow too dangerous to surrounding realms.

    Necromancers summon the Putrid Legion to serve as shock troops and guardians, particularly in tombs and waste sites or cursed locations that no sane being would wish to inhabit. Their ability to grow their numbers over time is a pleasant side effect but may go out of control if not monitored carefully. While the single blighted ghost you place in the depths of a tomb complex may gain the assistance of a dozen fellows from the foolish scavenger lords who sought to plunder its territory the ghosts that rise are not actually bound unless one does it for each individual.

    The Contagion Dead exist to spread their wretched lot. If forced to fight without using their diseased claws or otherwise to retreat without inflicting infected wounds they gain one Resonance. At ten Resonance they enter a state of torpor, retreating to the darkest and dampest location they can find and can not be coaxed out until their Resonance drops below ten. They lose one Resonance for every being that dies to their infection.

    I like the way @EarthScorpion deals with ghosts and wanted to try my hand at it. The Putrid Legion are meant to fill the same niche in the Necromancers arsenal that Blood Apes do in the Infernalists, powerful but dangerous shock troops and the kind of thing you can plop down in an area you need guarding. Like Blood Apes, they also need a bit of baby-sitting to not commit atrocities. They also serve as functional low level antagonists for an Abyssal or otherwise Underworld focused campaign, particularly the rare few who achieve the status of Greater Dead and become active rather than passive threats to nearby realms.

    The bit at the end about Resonance plays into the Abyssal rewrite I'm working on, where Resonance works like Limit for the dead. All ghost species have a Resonance track that fills up when they act contrary to their nature and lowers when they indulge it. Basically like demonic Limit it means you can't bind a ghost to act against its nature because eventually they will reach a point where the denial of their compelling drive will cause them to become impossible to control.
     
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    • I've been thinking about Infernals. Specifically, their Past Lives. Having a First Age Solar in your head might be bad if its Bright-Shattered Ice or one of the Deathlords, but there are those who aren't quite so... Extreme. But if you have a lot of dots in it, like say 3+, your ST would probably make you get one that would hinder you if it takes over. Having said that are there Homebrew Charms that mess around with Past Lives like Revlid's Unwoven Coadjutor fix, and should there be charms like that.
     
    Old Longbeards
    Lesser Dead
    Dead by Natural Causes

    There's a family living up on a prosperous estate on the edge of town. There's rumours of some black deeds in their past, but few care. Perhaps they'd pay more attention if they knew that the the family offers blood to a long dead man at the new moon, and that a spectre claims the flesh of his flesh, borrowing their bodies for his voyeuristic thrills.

    Old longbeards are found in patriarchal areas of Creation. When an old and successful man with a disreputable past and many descendents dies in bed, sometimes his soul refuses to rest. Instead, his shade walks the earth, watching over and guiding his family. His hidden sins transmute his blood to tar. Such ghosts have long ephemeral wispy beards that resemble fog that sprout from their skeletal wizened faces. They wind these beards around them, to conceal the ooze from their black hearts.

    Such ghosts can be a boon or a curse for their descendents. Old longbeards are often potent ancestors, and their madness drives them to aid their children in the pursuit of wealth and prosperity. As long as their family shows them reverence they will try to aid them with all their prowess. They are often grasping and rapacious, demanding regular prayer and more than willing to inflict suffering on faithless family members. Moreover, they can possess any blood relatives, using their bodies to pass messages or further their goals in Creation. These spectres treat their families as something they own, and resent little more than a family member trying to escape their dominion.

    Necromancers bind old longbeards to gain control over their families, or to learn wisdom from them. Exorcists may be called in to placate an enraged old longbeard or to defend someone from their malign intentions. An old longbeard who listens to the Whispers of the Neverborn can spread madness to a family that knows nothing of the sins of their forefather.
     
    Are they po or hun ghosts? If theyre hun ghosts they seem a bit too simplistic in motivations and methods.
     
    Carrnage said:
    Are they po or hun ghosts? If theyre hun ghosts they seem a bit too simplistic in motivations and methods.
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    I dunno. This is a pretty general writeup - obviously there's room for nuance among individual ones. Consider demons like blood apes, for instance. They're not all exactly the same, even though there are similarities.
     
    Dragon Chasers
    Lesser Dead
    Dead by Opiates

    On the streets of Nexus, Chiaroscuro, or any of the great cities of Creation, an opiate addict spends the last of her money on her fix. The rail-thin, filthy woman lights up her pipe, losing her pains in the poppy. Her wasted body is found in a forgotten place, but her cravings prevent her from passing on. Her skeletal vaporous figure is seen in the smoky streets and poppy dens, desperately seeking her next hit.

    Opiates consume the lives of many of the most wretched in Creation. Dragon chasers are gaunt ghosts with elongated limbs whose stinking forms are wreathed in narcotic smoke. Their matted hair is long, their poorly clad bodies show signs of abuse and suffering, and their ribs poke through their paper-thin skin. Dragon chasers haunt opium dens, and cannot roam too far from the scent of burning poppies. They stumble through death, minds fogged by the all consuming need that still afflicts them. When merchants dump cheap poppies on a city for the sake of profit with no care for morality or a batch of drugs is cut with the stuff of the Underworld, then these ghosts are seen in large numbers.

    Their mere presence instills a narcotic feeling and relieves pain. When these ghosts are malevolent - and many are, for they hate the world that left them to die in filth and squalor - then they use this confusion to cause accidents and ruin lives. When they kiss a man, they pass their cravings onto him, driving him to do anything for poppy-juice. Some may take form, but only for the already drugged - and kindly ones will sometimes take up a role as a guardian of the lost and those no one else cares for.

    Necromancers know well that a pouch of poppy will buy the service of a dragon chaser without need for binding, and they can be used to numb the pain of men if they can be stopped from taking revenge on the living. They are poor sentries, but often know the area they died in and its darker side well. Some Immaculate exorcists will trick these ghosts into hunting down illicit opium dens for them before sending them onto their next lives.
     
    Oh! Thought.

    Considering the topic that was broached earlier about stillbirths, you know what would be common? Dying while giving birth to a child. Possibly with different flavors, admittedly. Perhaps women who were desperately hoping for a child, or placed a lot of hope for a better life in the child they would have (which people do do) find that they don't pass on/cling to existence.

    Not sure what sort of evil-ish (well, I'm imagining they'd be the sort of ghost that can both harm and help, though obviously harm's what people would focus on when not wanting to meet them) powers they'd have, but generation, childbirth, women's problems/issues/bodies...it's half the human race and the way everyone in the human race comes into being (well, in real life, at least) so I'm sure there's some area for signifigance/power/interesting things.

    Are ghostblooded a thing?
     
    ManusDomine said:
    They are, in fact a thing, though the quality of their writing is questionable.
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    We can always fix that. I think, the less-powerful of whatever I'm in the first stage of homebrewing mostly just curse, or occasionally out of whim (that can just as easily be turned around) bless pregnant or expecting women, though also sometimes murder/steal babies. Obviously in a way this makes them a threat since women killed by their powers--not sure what they'd involve, but I'm imagining some sort of 'anything that can go wrong, will' pregnancy--might well become more of them, and in theory (though not in practice because that's when you start calling exorcists) it could create a chain reaction that leads to a wave of dead women, etc, etc.

    The stronger ones, though, who grasp their old memories, and here's where I'm mostly stepping past Exalted because I like the idea even if it doesn't fit the lore (and I'm just shooting shit with ideas), can sometimes make pacts with desperate women who want children. They can provide the necessary aid, and if they're desperate enough they can resist their malovolent desire to drag others down with them.

    The child, once born, is ghostblooded, sensitive to ghosts, or sometimes (and usually tragically) completely normal. The Ghost Mother thinks of herself as the real mother, and the child as HERS and telling her otherwise is a bad idea. She protects the child, in what meager ways she can, keeps them company (whether they know it or not) etc, etc.

    But the real danger--though it can be averted/controlled, especially if the child is ghostblooded or aware of the dangers--is when they get married. If a woman, when the child becomes pregnant the Mother Ghost will begin to fear for their safety. It's not even pure malovolence, it's also just memories of their own death by childbirth, and if not stopped, or at least mitigated, they'll likely end in the death of "their" own child, who will rise and become a ghost just like them, inevitably, almost without fail in these very specific circumstances. Or maybe not, again, I'm stepping past Exalted because it's an idea I like.

    If a man, obviously, the worry transfers to jealousy of the new wife and the feeling that she's not good enough for him/he's still a baby, and a similar process would happen wherein their wife might have a *very* hard pregnancy. There are stories of people haunted by one of them that don't know it, who send their wives one after another into an early grave, without meaning anything by it.

    Obviously, even if one doesn't get married, these Mothers are jealous and view the babies born only because of them as babies, not adults, and so they're likely to lash out in general at the worst possible times, though they can also serve as protectors of sorts (ideally, which is to say it rarely works out well.)

    ******

    Something like that. I just like the idea of bitter, angry, this-is-a-bad-idea Ghost Moms making deals with living women that want children and basically becoming Familiars to ghost-blooded/etc children, only to wind up ruining their lives or killing them in turn...if one isn't careful, obviously.

    It's the circle of death. It moves us all.
     
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    The Laurent said:
    We can always fix that. I think, the less-powerful of whatever I'm in the first stage of homebrewing mostly just curse, or occasionally out of whim (that can just as easily be turned around) bless pregnant or expecting women, though also sometimes murder/steal babies. Obviously in a way this makes them a threat since women killed by their powers--not sure what they'd involve, but I'm imagining some sort of 'anything that can go wrong, will' pregnancy--might well become more of them, and in theory (though not in practice because that's when you start calling exorcists) it could create a chain reaction that leads to a wave of dead women, etc, etc.

    The stronger ones, though, who grasp their old memories, and here's where I'm mostly stepping past Exalted because I like the idea even if it doesn't fit the lore (and I'm just shooting shit with ideas), can sometimes make pacts with desperate women who want children. They can provide the necessary aid, and if they're desperate enough they can resist their malovolent desire to drag others down with them.

    The child, once born, is ghostblooded, sensitive to ghosts, or sometimes (and usually tragically) completely normal. The Ghost Mother thinks of herself as the real mother, and the child as HERS and telling her otherwise is a bad idea. She protects the child, in what meager ways she can, keeps them company (whether they know it or not) etc, etc.

    But the real danger--though it can be averted/controlled, especially if the child is ghostblooded or aware of the dangers--is when they get married. If a woman, when the child becomes pregnant the Mother Ghost will begin to fear for their safety. It's not even pure malovolence, it's also just memories of their own death by childbirth, and if not stopped, or at least mitigated, they'll likely end in the death of "their" own child, who will rise and become a ghost just like them, inevitably, almost without fail in these very specific circumstances. Or maybe not, again, I'm stepping past Exalted because it's an idea I like.

    If a man, obviously, the worry transfers to jealousy of the new wife and the feeling that she's not good enough for him/he's still a baby, and a similar process would happen wherein their wife might have a *very* hard pregnancy. There are stories of people haunted by one of them that don't know it, who send their wives one after another into an early grave, without meaning anything by it.

    Obviously, even if one doesn't get married, these Mothers are jealous and view the babies born only because of them as babies, not adults, and so they're likely to lash out in general at the worst possible times, though they can also serve as protectors of sorts (ideally, which is to say it rarely works out well.)

    ******

    Something like that. I just like the idea of bitter, angry, this-is-a-bad-idea Ghost Moms making deals with living women that want children and basically becoming Familiars to ghost-blooded/etc children, only to wind up ruining their lives or killing them in turn...if one isn't careful, obviously.

    It's the circle of death. It moves us all.
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    Reminds me of Kimbery.
     
    Cosar said:
    See, that's one of the difficult combinations. You can do it, but the books really don't help you: Alchemicals are designed entirely with being played with minimal interaction with the rest of Creation. Mechanically you can introduce them, but the setting isn't written with them in mind. And Infernals, well, Infernals are fun but the book for them has extremely problematic setting chapters. Not to mention their charms don't work the best under 2.5.

    It'd be significantly easier on you to do a single splat, especially if you aren't familiar with the setting at the start.
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    I'll talk to them, but I'm not too, worried about it. I trust my players to learn the game well enough that they can tell me what their characters can do

    Why don't infernal charms work?
     
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    rogthnor said:
    I'll talk to them, but I'm not too, worried about it. I trust my players to learn the game well enough that they can tell me what their characters can do

    Why don't infernal charms work?
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    Infernals Charms were made by people who understood how 2e's system worked and were tuned specifically for it. When 2.5 came along, they were significantly weakened because the system didn't work the same.
     
    Hmm.

    You know, thinking about ghostblooded, I think they very much should be the most "normal" of the spiritblooded. To put things in nWoD terms, they should be the wolfblooded or the Sleepwalkers of minor splats, not ghouls or proximi. And in "compensation", they're not exactly ghost-blooded; they're more "prenatally influenced by necrotic essence". So, for example, children born in shadowlands are also "ghostblooded", despite having mortal parents.

    What do they need as core features? I'm thinking they should basically be "optimised" for being exorcists/low-powered-monster-hunters. So... something like "can always see and touch ghosts" (aka I See Dead People), something that gives them a gut instinct when Dead things are in the area, and maybe something to do with the boundaries of shadowlands.

    I don't think they should "naturally" learn ghost Charms. They should have some natural advantage to thaumaturgy involving ghosts, though. As I see it, rather than permanently learning ghost Charms, a ghost-blood should be using their savantism for things of Death to instead get access to them by getting ghostly familiars and binding ghosts into knotted ropes and generally acting like the protagonist of a Japanese horror exorcist manga.

    (of course, it might be possible to learn ghost Charms - but that means you might well be half Dead already, using the Charms hurts you, and from some perspectives you're more like a loosely bound hun and po occupying a meat suit than a normal human by that point)
     
    Solars can learn Yozi charms through Primordial Principle Emulation, but there is no charm like it for Infernals to learn solar charms.
    Why is that? Abyssals have a mirror of the charm that lets solars learn abyssal charms.
     
    Graypairofsocks said:
    Solars can learn Yozi charms through Primordial Principle Emulation, but there is no charm like it for Infernals to learn solar charms.
    Why is that?
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    Because some really stupid Charms got written.

    Burn PPE as written to the ground. Honestly, burn my rewrite down too. If you want to learn Yozi Charms, go play an Infernal. Solars who want to learn Yozi Charms can go fuck right off and cry more about merely having the most flexible, versatile, effective, least-side-effects-having Charmset in the game.
     
    EarthScorpion said:
    Hmm.

    You know, thinking about ghostblooded, I think they very much should be the most "normal" of the spiritblooded. To put things in nWoD terms, they should be the wolfblooded or the Sleepwalkers of minor splats, not ghouls or proximi. And in "compensation", they're not exactly ghost-blooded; they're more "prenatally influenced by necrotic essence". So, for example, children born in shadowlands are also "ghostblooded", despite having mortal parents.

    What do they need as core features? I'm thinking they should basically be "optimised" for being exorcists/low-powered-monster-hunters. So... something like "can always see and touch ghosts" (aka I See Dead People), something that gives them a gut instinct when Dead things are in the area, and maybe something to do with the boundaries of shadowlands.

    I don't think they should "naturally" learn ghost Charms. They should have some natural advantage to thaumaturgy involving ghosts, though. As I see it, rather than permanently learning ghost Charms, a ghost-blood should be using their savantism for things of Death to instead get access to them by getting ghostly familiars and binding ghosts into knotted ropes and generally acting like the protagonist of a Japanese horror exorcist manga.

    (of course, it might be possible to learn ghost Charms - but that means you might well be half Dead already, using the Charms hurts you, and from some perspectives you're more like a loosely bound hun and po occupying a meat suit than a normal human by that point)
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    I prefer ghost-bloods to be more obviously bizarre. Sickliness, palor (up to albinism), chronic lung diseases, insomnia and fatigue, cataract, a ghost-blood should always feel first and foremost like someone who is damaged by their condition. The weaker ghost-bloods derive very little power from their condition yet still feel "branded" by death in such a way that they are thought of as touched by death even if they never perform an otherworldly miracle. The more powerful types of ghost-blood should feel like they have one foot in the grave and could slip at any moment, and their powers can often be things that do not directly relate to undeath, like the boneless dhampir.

    A believer of the Immaculate Faith should see a ghost-blood and legitimately believe that they are cursed because their condition ties them to the Underworld; their illness, compulsion to strange behaviors, fascination with the ghostly and other such signs all point to them laboring under a curse that will deny them reincarnation if they are not freed before their death.
     
    Of all things this makes me think Yu Yu Hakusho would be some pretty good inspiration.
     
    For the record I played Adara Idesu, a "death-touched" Dragon-Blood, for two years (the term often used is Dragon of a Different Color but that's just awkward to use in-character), an Air Aspect necromancer. The signs of his condition were obvious before his Exaltation (and would have persisted had he remained mortal). He was scrawny, pale and often sick. This came not from being ghost-blooded (his parents had been Exalted both), but from growing up in a shadowland in a family that had been steeped in necromancy for generations.

    In particular, one of his relatives called him "Possum" as a nickname. This was because, as a young child, Idesu would play hide-and-seek with his siblings, but was very good at hiding and would often fall asleep before he was found. When someone finally spotted him, his breathing was so slow and his face so pale that he actually looked dead. After a few real scares, this became the subject of a joke, as he would be said to be "playing possum," thus the nickname.

    As a Dragon-Blood his condition improved greatly, but he was still extremely pale even by Air Aspect standards, and emaciated to the point of looking unhealthy despite above-average Strength and Stamina - although these aspects got better later into the game, as he sought to both increase his resilience and, hm, be more attractive/satisfy his vanity with regards to his romantic relationships.

    He also had a really nice picture.

     
    So, on the topic of Alchemical Charms as Artifacts:

    Some important things to keep in mind is that, above all else, they are Alchemical Charms and they require specialized sockets to use. As a result, unless you add a socket type that can be used by non-Alchemicals, unlikely as all kinds of hell and probably justified by saying the Charms rely on the nature of Alchemical Exalt Essence to work, making Alchemical Charms act as artifacts will just mean that you have a way to describe how to make them without adding new rules for that one thing.

    So, ultimately, having Alchemical Charms be Artifacts would mostly be a case of the rules for making the things. This wouldn't be setting breaking because Autochthonia has both resource scarcity and a lack of Exalts making stuff, so the process is a hell of a lot more difficult than it would be in Creation.
     
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