Wraith

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TimelineThe Houston NecropolisThe Guild Wraiths of HoustonCharacter CreationPlotsHauntingsHouse Rules and Important Concepts

A Dead Houstonian's Guide to History

"The first thing you need to know about the History of Stygia, is that here in the Underworld, events unfold over the course of many mortal life times. What people speak of in terms of a single event, or a solitary battle, usually was actually a dozen or a hundred such events taking place over decades or centuries." - Professor Albert Strauss, Suspected Member of the Alchemists Guild

The Mythic Age

"I'm almost as old as they come, apart from Charon and the Deathlords, I figure. But when I was freshly reaped and green, there were dead men in the Shadowlands who were older than even I am now. Some of them would speak of the Time Before... a tale passed onto them by those who had reaped them. Do you understand what I'm saying? These stories come before Caine and Abel, Zeus and Hera, perhaps before man had discovered fire... or maybe before he forgot it, heh. They talked about a time when there was no Shroud. When the barrier between the living and the dead was no harder to pass through than a thin sheet of light summer rain. A time when the Living would step into the Shadows, and speak with us. To hear our wisdom. And a time when we could just as easily walk into the living world to speak with them. I don't know if any such time ever existed... but if it did it exists no more, and never can again. You see what waits for the living on this side of the Shroud. We can't allow it to fall, or there will be no living world left." - Lucius Titus, Iron Legion Centurian

The Sundering

"Where does the Shroud come from? From the Sundering. No one remembers what exactly caused it, or if they do they aren't telling the rest of us. The long and short of it is that something BIG happened, and when it was over the land of the living was cut off from the land of the dead. We now refer to the first as the Skinlands and the other as the Shadowlands. And that's when everything in the afterlife started going to shit." - Dana von Graff, Proctors Guild

Oblivion Rising

"In the time before the Shroud, Oblivion was simply a natural force. Ecclesiastes tells us, "All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." And all cultures in recorded history have known this truth, and even modern man with all his reliance on the scientific process has come to the same conclusion: the entropy in a system only grows over time, and never shall it naturally become reduced.

But after the Sundering, something changed. Perhaps it became harder for the Dead, separated as they were from their living loved ones, to make peace and Transcend. Maybe the separation from the vital forces of the Skinlands cut Oblivion off from some moderating factor. It is doubtful any of us will ever know the truth, for the agents of Oblivion traffic only in poisoned secrets and deceptions. Any truth they offer is an illusion hiding a viper. What we do know for sure is that Oblivion decided it was no longer content to wait for "the breath to return to God"... it was going to come for us itself.

Few survive now from that time, so we do not know if the Shadow was always a part of the Dead, or if it was something that Oblivion inflicted upon us. But what we know from the stories was that the Labyrinth opened like the gates of Hell, and belched forth a plague of Spectres upon the young and benighted Underworld. Caught between the voices inside their own heads and the monstrous assault of Oblivion's forces, many fell. These were dark times, and it seemed as though soon all the souls of the Dead would fall to Oblivion." - Father Daniels, Pardoners Guild

The Lady of Fate, Charon, and Nhudri

"In these times where all wailed and cried for help, one voice rose up with confidence and certainty. This was the voice of Our Lady, who those outside our Guild know as the Lady of Fate. She told the frightened souls of the dead that a great leader would come soon. A Wraith who would guide the rest of them down the River of Death, and to a place where they would be far from the reach of Oblivion. Though true prophecy, Our Lady's words held another, far more substantive, purpose. Hope is a tangible weapon against the forces of Oblivion, and it cuts through their ranks sharper than any Stygian Steel sword. Armed and armored in the promise of Our Lady's words, the tide of Oblivion that claimed so many souls finally reached its high water mark." - Chiara Sandrone, Clairvoyant of the Oracles Guild

"Though the Lady of Fate can mislead with the truth more easily than you do with a lie, she never speaks falsely. She foretold the coming of a great leader, and when he arrived she named him Charon, gave him a boat woven from the reeds that lined the River of Death. He spent untold years learning every bend and turn in the River, until it and he were as one being. Finally, upon the Island of Sorrow, Charon arrived. There he found souls beyond counting. There he reunited with the Lady of Fate, who gave to him a gift of prophecy. That he would teach the souls upon that Island his ways, that they might deliver themselves to the Far Shores. And that a part of their number would pledge themselves to him, and help him in carrying out his mission to Ferry the souls of the Dead to the Far Shores, where they might find Transcendence far from the reach of Oblivion. Those tasked with finding the fastest route to the Far Shores were called the Shining Ones, for they would light the way." - Anonymous Ferryman

"Right around the same time The Shining Ones take off for the other side of the Sunless Sea, The Lady of Fate also tells Charon it'd be a good idea for him to descend into the Labyrinth and take the fight to Oblivion's front door. Crazy, right? Well, turns out not so crazy. There's no accurate accounts of what actually went on down there, but what we do know is that Charon descended, a lot of Spectres started screaming, and shortly after they stopped screaming Charon emerges. Though he's not alone now. Nhudri, the founder of our Guild and the first Wraith to know the secrets of Soulforging, is with him." - Z3ND34D, Artificers Guild

The Rise and Fall of the Stygian Republic

"After Charon rose from the Labyrinth, him and Nhudri got to work. The Roman Empire was just getting underway in the Skinlands, and the newly deceased were bringing word of how great it was to the Underworld. Charon decided to model his Empire after Rome, and appointed his most trusted Ferrymen to be Senators in his new government. They took the hammer to any Wraith that Charon and his lieutenants thought was at risk of falling prey of their Shadows, with the logic: Well, if we leave them how they are, they will become servants of Oblivion. But if we turn them into swords, armor, bricks for building roads out from Stygia to the Shadowlands... well then they serve the Republic. Yeah, with logic like that, hard to imagine this so called "republic" didn't last, right?" - Joey "The Mouth" Lieberwitz

"The mistake that Charon made when dealing with Oblivion is that he saw Spectres acting with bestial ferocity, and he assume that they must possess only an animal's understanding. He saw them acting with low cunning, and assumed that tricks and petty deceptions were their only tactics. And he made the mistake of assuming that because he defeated Oblivion once, that he would always do so. It is a common mistake amongst the Dead." - Dr. Sandra Hawthorne, Pardoners Guild

"Oblivion's tactics in the sacking of Stygia were, to be honest, quite brilliant. Charon's defenses of the city were four dimensionally sound: he had guards positioned in all the right places, walls high enough to fend off any attack that had yet come out of the Labyrinth, and plenty of forewarning to recall the Ferrymen to the city's defense if need be. But Oblivion was thinking five dimensionally. The Spectres timed their attack for when the Germanic hordes swept through the Roman Empire, and they were there to Reap the fallen from these battles. The Romans they dragged off to the Labyrinth, while the Visigoths were freed from their Caul and pointed at Charon's city... with its architecture and its banners so similar to those of the Roman Empire, these freshly reaped warriors rushed the city, with the hordes of Oblivion right behind them. So much violence and destruction in the Shadowlands, perfectly coordinated with the Fall of Rome in the Skinlands, created what would be the First, but not the last, Great Maelstrom. It swept through Stygia, acting as artillery for the forces of Oblivion. In the end, the defenders of Stygia were victorious, but Charon's great city lay in waste all around them." - Dane Peters, Grim Legion Marshall

Of Reconstruction, Revolts, Rebelions, and Reason

"We could have forgiven Charon the hubris of naming himself Emperor. We could not forgive his command for us to ferry the souls of the dead not onto the Far Shores to find Transcendence, but instead to the former members of his Senate... now named Deathlords. And so, we left." - Anonymous Ferryman

"In the Age of the Stygian Republic, a few curious things were going on quietly, far from the action. The souls of Dead Christians began showing up, and rejecting Charon and the Ferrymen's offers for help. These early Christians called themselves the Fishers... and they got it into their heads that they would find Paradise on their own. They constructed their own rafts, the same way the Lady of Fate had constructed the one she gave to Charon hundreds of years earlier. Then they set off into the Sunless Sea, the mad bastards. Now imagine everyone's surprise when they show back up, claiming to have found Paradise. They set up a Temple just outside Stygia's gates, and struck a deal with Charon: They'd bring him all the cultural relics that they collected on his journeys, and he'd render onto them any souls that wished to travel to Paradise.

Over the centuries, the Fishers grew in power and strength, until their military might became a rival for The Hierarchy itself, which was still in its infancy. Eventually it reached a boiling point, and the Fishers made their move. Proved to be a big mistake. Charon burned all the Fishers he could capture, until there was nothing left of their souls even for Oblivion to touch. Made a big show of it too. Well, the rest of them got in their boats and fucked off as fast as they could." - Renaud Price, Hierarchy Historian

"Around the same time as the Fisher rebellion, reports began filtering back to Charon about the Far Shores. The Shining Ones he had entrusted to make the Far Shores safe for Wraiths to reach Transcendence in peace, had instead abused that trust. Many had fallen to Oblivion, and now tortured the souls in their care instead of helping them find peace. Others, merely succumbing to the lure of power, created petty dictatorships. Some Shining Ones still honored their word, but how long until they too fell to their Shadows? The Far Shores were no longer as safe refuge for the Dead.

And so, after much deliberation, Charon issued the Proclamation of Reason. Which basically stated that all of the Fishers and the Shining Ones, and anyone peddling a path to Transcendence or Salvation that conflicted with the tried and true method endorsed by Charon himself, would forever and always be Heretics. And then he created us to do something about it." - Duke Green, Inquisitor of the Unlidded Eye

The Dictum Mortuum and The Guilds

"While Charon was busy building Empires and suppressing revolts, the common everyday Wraiths weren't just sitting on their hands. Many of them started studying their new existence, and figuring out new uses for the Arts that Charon and his Ferrymen had shown them the basics of. Those who showed talent or curiosity about a specific Arcanoi drew together to share their knowledge and spur on new discoveries. Eventually, those who were talented began selling their services to other Wraiths, just like mortal tradesmen. Around the same time as the Proclamation of Reason, they formed into official Guilds, and they took a prominent place in Stygian society." - Mary Wallace, Monitors Guild

"The Golden Age had come to an end; The Senate had been replaced with "Deathlords"; and "oh yeah, you know all those "heavens" we told you we could get you into? Turns out we were wrong and they are all more like Hell. Oopsie!" Is it any wonder Wraiths started looking back across the Shroud with increasing longing for the lives they left behind? Or even just as a way of making a quick Oboli? This would have been around the mortal Dark Ages, and it was a pretty easy racket to haunt the Quick into doing what you wanted: kill your mortal enemy, destroy another Wraiths fetters, burn some valuable commodities in offering... all could prove lucrative. But the Shroud is an important part of Charon's whole deal, right? The entire premise that you need Stygia to help keep you safe while you wait around to find Zen or serenity or whatever is based on the one simple fact: You can't go back. But here were all these early day Spooks, Proctors, Puppeteers, and Haunters... and they were popping across the Shroud as easy as stepping off the curb.

Well, power did what power always does: it protected itself. Charon issued the Dictum Mortuum, and declared it illegal to cross the Shroud for any reason. And now a days, the Legions that are supposed to be protecting you from Spectres are spending half their time trying to bust some poor bastard just wants to tell his girl he loves her one last time." - Benny Martin, Proctors Guild

The Second and Third Great Maelstroms, the Striking of the Guilds, and The Flaying of Obsidian

"By all accounts, Stygia's response to the Second Great Maelstrom was as great a success as the First had been a disaster. The year was 1347, the Black Plague had claimed half of Europe, and all those souls had come pouring into the Underworld. This time around though, Charon and his Legions were there to reap them, shepherd them to Stygia, and set them about helping prepare the city for the coming storm. This would become the text book response to Maelstroms triggered by mass casualty events. One that unfortunately few Anarcheons seem to follow." - Patricia Klein, Silent Legion

"The Tempest is a tricky bastard. Just when you think you've got ahold of it, that's the very moment it twists in your hand and bites you. Its a mistake Charon made more than once. Rome falls... First Great Maelstrom hits the Isle of Sorrows. Black Plague takes root in Europe, and the Second slams into Stygia. Must be that the Quick dying by the bushel full is what causes these big storms, right? Makes sense... and that's the problem with the theory. Just when you think you know the Tempest, that's when it gets you." - Sten Ulrich, Harbingers Guild

"It started with Renegades laying siege to Stygia, breaking into its treasure vaults, and fleeing with untold numbers of cultural Relics. Artifacts that were meant to enrich and enflame the passions of not a single individual, but an entire city... and now they were lost to Stygia. For some Guilds, this confirmed a truth they had long known: Charon was no longer fit to rule Stygia. Each had their own reasons for rebelling. For some, it was an attempt to slip out from under the Dictum Mortuum. For others, it was about consolidating political power. In the end, the motives hardly mattered. Just as he had beaten back the forces of Oblivion, the Fishers, and all others who had challenged his rule, so too did Charon strike down the Guilds. Wraiths were soulforged in unprecedented number as punishment." - Evelyn Ngueyn, Emerald Legion

"The Fishers rode to the New World not on the ships of gold they has sailed to Sorrow, but on ships of borrowed flesh. Maybe their conquered suits of conquistadors infected their minds with the sickness of Manifest Destiny, or maybe it was the other way around? Thought for food. When they finished their lil road trip, they discovered three nations that rivaled ol Lord Charon's own works. Gold, Obsidian, and Flint. Greedy children, all stuffed with their own pies, looking at the one in the window and thinking it should be theirs too. Only Mama Ix Chel comes out and calls them naughty, so they pick up their forks and knives and stab her until she stops moving, stops telling them no more pies... Problem is, less you're a cannibal, one corpse is all it takes to ruin the picnic. Turns out, this is really true if it is the right corpse, and Ix Chel was the right corpse, baby. Down come the stars from the sky. Thud. Turns out they were great big Spectres all along, who knew? And roaring out of the Tempest, the Third Great Maelstrom rises up like the Big Bad Wolf, and it blows everyone's house right the fuck down." - Black Samantha, Haunters Guild

Journey to the West

"The Third Great Maelstrom destroyed the roads that connected Stygia to the Shadowlands, destroyed the Shadowlands of the Americas, and left the Shroud more difficult for the Restless to pass through than ever before. Ever Resilient, never wavering in his task to gather the souls of the Dead, Charon sent his Legions out into the Shadowlands to establish outposts. Just as he and Nhudri had built up Stygia, Charon commanded his Legions to go forth and build up a Necropolis in the Shadowlands. A place where the Restless could find refuge from Oblivion's forces, until they could safely make the journey to Stygia. London was the first, but many European cities soon after had Necropoli of their own. Charon had always declared himself the one true ruler of the Afterlife, but now he was claiming the territory he always thought belonged to him." - Marcus Chevaux, Hierarchy Clerk

"Sure, the Fishers fucked things up in Obsidian, but the Hierarchy goons would have you believe that everyone who disagreed with Charon was at fault for that. As if Charon wouldn't have tried the same shit himself, had he gotten there first, right? Up further North, the so called Renegades and Heretics... mostly just people who wanted to either sort through the implications of their afterlife through the lens of their own faith, or just didn't want to bow to someone calling himself a "Deathlord"... Where was I at? Oh yeah... in the North, we weren't trying to conquer the native Dead. I don't want to say it was all peace, love, and happiness. But the European dead arriving in the New World weren't a monolith. Sure, there were some assholes trying to take whatever they could claim. But a lot of us were just trying to find a place free from the Hierarchy. We made alliances with the local dead. We had friends among them. And sure, the Fishers ruined all that when they killed Ix Chel... but what was worse was when the Legions showed up in New Amsterdam." - Billy Carter, Renegade Organizer

"From New York, the Legions spread out to Boston and Philadelphia. And from there they filtered north, west, and south. But they hit a roadblock right around Texas. People forget that Texas started off as part of Mexico, and while it wasn't exactly a part of the Dark Kingdom of Obsidian, it also wasn't exactly not a part of it either. Point being, it was close e-damn-nuff for the Spectres and the little Maelstroms that were still getting kicked up in the wake of the Third Big One. Them regular Legion boys took one look at the Flayed Lands, and decided they had spread far enough South for awhile." - Eliot Baker, Doomslayer

The Midnight Express and the Houston Necropolis

"In the end, it wasn't the military might of the Legions that opened up the Flayed Lands; but the ingenuity of the Ferrymen. You see, though they had given up on Charon, they hadn't given up on the original cause: guide souls safely through the Underworld, protect them from Oblivion, and help them find Transcendence. In 1887, they managed to get their hands on a fully functioning relic locomotive engine, and several relic train cars to pull along behind it. Named the Midnight Express, no one is really sure how the train manages to pull into every major train station in the world at 12:00 AM exactly. Best not to think about it too hard either, unless you want to sign up with the Haunters Guild. While the Midnight Express operates outside the authority of the Hierarchy, it also doesn't discriminate. If a few hundred Legionaires want to hop on and get off in Houston... all aboard." - Dr. Jacoby Burgess, Haunters Guild

"Its 1888, and the Ferrymen got this crazy magic train that just exists in all places at once, come midnight. And the Marshalls are yelling at us to get our gear and get aboard, we're going to go kick some Shadow Eaten ass. And let me tell you, if we all could have still shit ourselves we would have done it on that train. We knew what we were riding into. So we get off the train, and immediately we form up and are fighting for our lives. They say these things were Spectres, but I swear to the Lord in Heaven, they weren't no Spectres I've ever seen before or since that campaign. And I've killed plenty. They were big as houses, and were just so wrong and twisted up that it made you sick to look at them. I'm telling you, you'd rather look at just about anything rather than these things. Tzitzimemeh they call em. A lot of my friends got dragged to Oblivion's gates because they couldn't bring themselves to look at those things.

And just when my Shadow is telling me there's no chance, its over, five of the Ferrymen guarding the Midnight Express leap off. Then those Soulsteel Scythes of theirs are cutting Spectres down like grass. Five hundred of us hardly stood a chance. Five of them saved the day. With the time they bought us, we were able to push out and establish a base in the train station. After that, we were on our own, but we had a defensible position and we had enough relic muskets and crossbows spread out amongst us that we made those Shadow Eaten bastards think twice. It took a little over a full year to push out our perimeter to include all of Downtown Houston. We fought block by block. But every block we took meant a few more souls were safe, and could be recruited into a Legion or Soulforged into a brick for the Necropolis' wall." - Alexander Horne, Skeletal Legion

"The Houston Necropolis was officially completed in 1896, and it would be almost five decades before the Hierarchy would contemplate expanding its borders. In 1941, mortal authorities announced plans to build a "defense loop" to help move troops and weapons around the city in case of an invasion. Only one problem: the war effort required all the raw materials that would be needed to construct this highway. This meant that construction didn't get underway until the '50s. A couple hundred homes were bulldozed to make way for the new highway... often as the home owners looked on in horror. Between the relic material created by this mass demolition, and using the highway's various guard rails, overpasses, bridges, etc. as a framework for building a massive outer wall/quick patrol path. It was dangerous work. Though the Legions had been patrolling the areas of the city outside the Necropolis for decades, those Engineers and Smiths working on the wall were stationary targets for Spectres wandering in from the Flayed Lands. Ultimately though, the wall was completed, giving the Hierarchy unchallenged control of the area of Houston that would become known as the Inner Loop." - Tasha Landsdale, Hierarchy Clerk

"These days, the Inner Loop is about as secure as any Necropolis can be... but there are always going to be those who chafe under the Hierarchy's rule. The first to set up encampments outside of the Necropolis were the heretics and the renegades. Some of these are nomadic encampments, moving from patch to patch through the Tempest, always staying one step ahead of Spectres, Legion Patrols, and each other. Others are more permanent bases of operations, with Heretical cults creating defensible compounds in the charred and bleeding landscape of the Flayed Lands. Of course it is an open secret that many of the Guilds began operating out of the Galleria Mall after its creation in 1970. The Legions send a patrol through the Mall every once in awhile to give them a bit of grief and make sure that there aren't any Wraiths violating the Dictum Mortuum, but the mall is a big place and they manage to keep the less reputable guilds tucked away in parts of the Mall that are difficult to find. It helps that most Legionaires don't want to roust the place where they go to spend their week's pay. Every decade in America sees more and more immigrants pouring in, looking for a slice of the American dream. Their dead come with them. Wraiths from the Dark Kingdom of Iron, the Mirror Sea, and other Dark Kingdoms, all have their own small communities outside the Necropolis. Most have their own means of dealing with the Spectres that stalk the Flayed Lands, but it helps that the Legions regularly patrol the outer loop, and thus thin out the Spectre population." - Mort Ewery, Monitor Guild Historian

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The Necropolis

Originally a cluster of densely packed buildings in Downtown Houston, it took Stygia's Legions until the 1920s to establish its first foothold in Houston, so badly overrun was it by the Spectres that roam the Flayed Lands. When they finally managed to create a beach head, the original Necropolis consisted only of the downtown area of Houston. However, when the living officials of the city announced plans for the Highway 610 "loop", the Legions began pursuing an aggressive expansion outward. By 1970 when the highway was finished, the Hierarchy had already incorporated every overpass, guard rail, and embankment into their fortifications. The highway provides a steady stream of relic steel as well as vehicles for patrolling the highway that forms the basis of the Necropolis' border walls; and many twisted husks of relic cars too damaged to drive have been added to the infrastructure of the wall... giving the necropolis a distinctly post-apocalyptic scrap yard appearance from the outside.

Inside though, the Necropolis is a strange, twisting kaleidoscope of architectural periods. Houston has never been a city to hesitate to knock down the old in favor of the new, even when the "old" had great historical and emotional significance. As a result, it is not uncommon to see entire relic buildings nested inside of their modern replacements, or for two separate buildings in the Skinlands to be linked by a Relic building that cuts through both in the Shadowlands. Demolitions don't always result in an entire Relic building, but a beloved mural or iconic sign might result in enough relic materials to build new structures intermingled with Skinland structures.

The seat of the Hierarchy's power is in the Houston Cotton Exchange, as this is where the Anacreon Council of the city meets... though most of the bureaucrats and Legionnaires that make up its ranks Haunt various business centers that are connected by Houston's Downtown Underground walking tunnels. These tunnels are kept free of any not on official Necropolis business, and thus many of those further towards the fringe of Stygian society in Houston will rarely even see the government officials whose decisions affect their day to day existence.

Legionnaires patrol the Necropolis looking for signs of Dictum Mortuus violations, Spectral incursion, as well as freshly dead ghosts to be reaped. Officially, reaping souls within the Necropolis is the sole purview of the Legions. Unofficially, many people die in isolation... apartments, hotel rooms, back alleys. While it is easy for the Legions to patrol hospital cancer wards, shooting galleries, and other places where the quick die almost daily; they still can't be everywhere at once. This means there is a lucrative black market trade in freshly reaped souls.

While the Innerloop forms the walls of the Necropolis proper, countless Wraiths maintain Haunts all across the Greater Houston area; and only travel into the Necropolis when Maelstroms or large Spectre incursions threaten the area. For this reason, the Legions will frequently send patrols further afield to help keep the rest of Houston free of Spectres.

The Guildhall

The Galleria Mall just outside of the Necropolis proper might seem like a strange place for the Guilds to make their headquarters... and yet this is where you can find more Hierarchy friendly Guilds like the Pardoners, Artificers, Monitors, Harbingers, etc. all plying their trades and selling their wares, right next to the likes of Eddie Bauer and Ralph Lauren. These Guilds provide a facade that keeps the hierarchy from looking any deeper into the Guilds business. Whenever a legion patrol blows through the mall, they find exactly what they expect to find: smiths soulforging weapons for their fellow Legionnaires, Pardoners helping them keep their Shadows in check, etc. etc.

What the Hierarchy doesn't know is that deeper in the bowels of the mall, in the parking garages, maintenance rooms, and the strange little shops tucked away behind escalators and down blind corners... these are the places where the criminal guilds provide their services to Houston's dead population. In these places, the Shroud is as thin as in any isolated cemetery; and all but the most dedicated customers instinctively know to avoid these parts of the mall.

Politics

The Necropolis, like most in the Dark Kingdom of Iron, is under the control of an Anacreon Council. Each of the major legions has a presence in the Necropolis, but practically speaking the Emerald Legion, the Grim Legion, and the Penitent Legion have the greatest presence and thus the most sway on the Council, with the rest of the legions each allying to one of those three. This means that in most major matters, the council acts as a triumvirate, with each of the three main council members holding proxy votes of another Legion... with the exception of the Legion of Fate, who in typical style rarely makes their voice heard in political matters. Once every few decades, Anacreon of Fate will issue a quiet suggestion or warning, and the rest of the council has learned to listen when she does.

To the average Wraith on the streets of Houston though, the business and decisions of this council is as distant and secretive as a closed door Senate committee hearing. The clerks, legionnaires, and other low ranking Hierarchy officials are the closest that most of the Dead get to the people at the top whose decisions dictate their existence.

The Guild Wraiths of Houston

While many Guild Wraiths essentially hide in plain sight amongst Houston's Dead (Pardoners, Artificers, and Harbingers are particularly in the open about their activities and allegiances), most others are forced to either practice their Arts in secret, or live on the margins of Stygian society. The Guilds of the city are surprisingly unified, having set aside old animosities in the early days of the Houston Necropolis in order to survive both the constant assault of wild Spectres coming from the Flayed Lands, and also the scrutiny of a hyper vigilant Hierarchy and its Legions. Despite this, there is some political division within the Guild Council. This is mostly owed to the fact that the Guild Council is a nearly even mix of extremely young Wraiths and extremely old Wraiths. The older Wraiths amongst the Council advocate for slowly improving their position within the Necropolis, while the younger Wraiths advocate for radical solutions to problems that have long troubled Stygian society (even if not all of those solutions are entirely practical.)

The following Wraiths are the city level leadership for each Guild:

• Pardoners' Guild: The Mongrel - No one is really certain of The Mongrel's origins, and no one other than the Wraiths who come to him for his services have ever seen his true face. He stands almost seven feet tall, and every inch of his form is covered by a massive black robe, and a near featureless black mask. The Mongrel only castigates those Wraiths whose Shadows are the most dire threat to the Necropolis, and it is rumored that more than one ghost has been driven insane by the sheer agony he inflicts.

• Harbingers' Guild: Carlos "Roadrunner" Brekhov - The only child of a brief and ultimately fatal love affair between an exiled Bolshevik and a Tijuana barmaid, Carlos was virtually born in the grey liminal space between law abiding citizens and career criminals. Eventually, he branched out into smuggling guns and drugs across the border

• Artificers' Guild: Billy Coen - One of a cohort of younger Wraiths to rise to positions of power within Houston's Guilds, Billy is quite progressive by Artificer standards, having vocally advocated on several occasions for reductions or even outright elimination in the number of Souls being forged. A computer hacker and arcade game junky in life, Billy adamantly believes that the Guilds future lies not in rendering souls into items, but rather in finding a new afterlife online... one where the everyday objects Wraiths need can be willed into existence with a few lines of code. All that being said, he is also still a skilled Soulforger, and recognizes that the Hierarchies tithe must continue to flow out from the Soulforges, at least until he can find what he refers to as "The Shadowlands 2.0"

• Usurers' Guild: The Numismatist - Rumored to possess more Oboli than even the Necropolis' treasury, the Numistmatist is rarely seen outside of the relic pawn shop he has set up in the burnt out husk of a tobacco store within the Galleria. Here, anything can be purchased or exchanged. Whether pathos, angst, corpus, or stranger currencies, the Numismatist can weigh and measure the value of anything, and all things have their price.

• Monitors' Guild: Detective Marquis Aboulliet - Another New Orleans transplant, Marquis Aboulliet's history is completely unknown, even to himself. Waking up in the afterlife with amnesia, his single Passion is to figure out who he was and how he died. In between trying to solve that mystery, he helps other Wraiths track down lost fetters as the head of the Monitors Guild.

• Oracles' Guild: Luisa Abarca - In life Luisa was a powerful medium who spent much of her time trying, often in vain, to help the dead which she saw all around her. Unfortunately, she drew the attention of the Legion of Fate, who decided her activities were a risk to Dictum Mortuum and that she was a ripe target for recruitment, and "arranged" an accident for her. Now she Haunts the old Zoltan machine in front of the Arcade, trying to dispense warnings to the Quick who's death is approaching. Officially, though, the rest of the Oracles hang out in the occult/esoteric book section of the Waldens.

• Chaunters' Guild: Blind Danny Hayes - In life, Danny Hayes was a blues harmonica player, well regarded around New Orleans. One night after a show in Houston, he got caught in a sundown town trying to make it back home. After the sheriff's deputies poured lye in his eyes, they told him he was lucky he wasn't getting handed over to the Klan. He continued his career as a musician afterwards, but drank himself to death on cheap rum within a few years of the incident. Now, he acts as the head of the Chaunters' Guild in Houston.

• Sandmen's Guild: The Projectionist - The Sandmen operate a Dream Theater out of the wreckage of the Movie Plex on the few hours between 1 AM and 8 AM that it is closed down, and during the daytime they charge Wraiths an entry fee to hang out in the theater and suck up pathos from the second hand emotions evoked by movies. Their leader is the Projectionist, a Wraith who seems to have been kicking around the Necropolis since the era of silent film.

• Masquers' Guild: Samhain Rose - Take your stereotypical Mall Goth and give them the power to change their shape at a whim: that is Samhain Rose. A prodigy in both Moliate and hand to hand combat, Samhain is rarely found wearing the same form two days in a row, and is rumored to have risen to her current rank through a series of ruthless assassinations. She and the Quaintrelle are said to be bitter rivals.

• Proctors' Guild: Chain Smoker - Chain Smoker is one of the few guild Wraiths who actually died in the mall, or at least adjacent to it. In the late 80s, she fell asleep with a lit cigarette in her hand, in the room of one of the two hotels attached to the mall. The deathmarks are brutal and extensive. Now she and the rest of the Proctors haunt the roof tops, elevators, back entrances, and anywhere else where mall employees duck their head out to grab a quick smoke, sip, or make out session. Chain Smoker doesn't tell people her real name, and those who know her well even just refer to her as Smoke for short.

• Puppeteers' Guild: The Quaintrelle - Houston Puppeteers will often tell younger guild members the following joke: "The Quaintrelle could be anyone you meet in the Skinlands, including your own mother and father." And then no one laughs.... The Quaintrelle wears The Quick like fashion models wear Couture, and she changes bodies as quickly as they change their outfits. It is rare that she is seen in the Corpus, but when she is, witnesses describe her as a patchwork person: a quilt of every race, ethnicity, gender, and age imaginable... yet somehow both beautiful and elegant. Her motives seem to change as often as her bodies.

• Haunters' Guild: Trevor William Stanton - The fact that Trevor Vincent Stanton isn't a Spectre will always remain a complete mystery to most people. Trevor had murdered sixteen men that authorities know about before he was sent to death row by a judge's gavel. It is said all of his killings were of an occult nature, with newspapers reporting that in any state other than Texas, he would have been sent to an insane asylum instead of being executed. After his death, he quickly rose through the ranks of the Haunters Guild, in part thanks to the spectacularly effective nature of his haunts. When a Wraith needs someone scared or driven out of their Haunt, they hire any Haunter other than Trevor Vincent. When they need a mortal to be scared to death, then he is the ghost for the job. It is rumored that he visits The Mongrel on a weekly basis.

• Spooks' Guild: Chris Red Hands - Christopher Hatch was strangled to death by his abusive father on his 18th birthday, while trying to leave home. As he died, the teenager beat his fists bloody against the larger man's head. He woke up in the afterlife, ripped off his own Caul, and killed five approaching reapers before they knew what had even happened. His Deathmark are the two bloody fists that are useless for anything other than destruction, and his mastery of Outrage is so great that if he spends too much time in the Skinlands, the ground beneath him begins to break.

Character Creation

Character Creation Rules

• Open: All Non-Restricted Guilds, Orpheus Projectors (ask Inky first), Risen
• Restricted: Mnemosynis, Solicitors, Wraiths from other Dark Kingdoms
• Closed: Heretics, Hierarchy, Renegades, Legionnaires, Helldivers, Ferrymen, Spectres

• Age/App Age: Must both be 18+ years old AND appear 18+ years old

Wraiths

Attributes

• 7/5/3 points distributed in Primary/Secondary/Tertiary

Abilities

• 13/9/5 points distributed in Primary/Secondary/Tertiary

Backgrounds

• 7 points
• Notes Required: Allies, Artifact, Contacts, Haunt, Legacy, Mentor, Memoriam, Notoriety, Resources (by default represents Shadowlands income. When combined with certain other backgrounds, can represent resources at the character's disposal in the Skinlands), Relic
• Status HR: Represents how trusted your character is with Guild secrets, rather than how high ranked they are in the Guild.
• Resources HR: Resources, by default, indicates wealthy your character is in the Shadowlands. This will usually represent a mix of Oboli , debt owed to your character, and other favors that can be called in for material goods. If your character has means of accessing money in the Skinlands, Resources can also represent that wealth. This requires prior approval from Staff.

Arcanoi

• 5 points
• Restricted: Mnemosynis, Intimation

Passions

• 10 points (Set in a +note)
• ST Advice: Keep in mind that your Passions are the engine which will refill your Pathos during a scene. Arcanoi in Wraith 20th are pricey.
  • Example:
  • Observe Halley's Comet (Curiosity) 7 will never trigger in a scene.
  • Study Astronomy (Curiosity) 7 will come up rarely.
  • Pursue Scientific Inquiry (Curiosity) 7 will come up anytime you do science stuff in a scene.

Fetters

• 10 points (Set in a +note)

Merits/Flaws

• May take 10 points of Merits and 7 points of Flaws
• Merits from pre-20th edition books will be reviewed one at a time. If you find a Merit from an online source, please provide a book reference so staff can research it.
• Restricted: Iron Will
• Banned: Self-Confidence, any merits or flaws that would make you appear underage.

Freebies

• 15 Freebie points

Base XP

• Base starting XP is 75
• An additional 20 XP is available to spend specifically on: Puppetry, Embody, or Inhabit

Shadows

• Work with Staff on creating your Shadows.

Mediums

Attributes

• 6/4/3 points distributed in Primary/Secondary/Tertiary

Abilities

• 13/9/5 points distributed in Primary/Secondary/Tertiary

Backgrounds

• 5 points
• Notes Required: Allies, Caretaker, Contacts, Fame, Mentor, Psychic Tools

Virtues

• 7 points
• Self-Control + Conscience = Starting Humanity
• Courage = Starting Willpower

Merits and Flaws

• Up to 10 points of Merits
• Up to 7 points of Flaws
• Language Merit exempted from total

Freebies

• 21 Points
• May buy Numina with Freebies
• See Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Investigators books for Merits, Flaws, Equipment, and Numina

Risen

• Inquire with Staff

Orpheus

• Inquire with Staff

Plots

Coming Soon

Hauntings

Coming Soon

= House Rules and Important Concepts

Important Concepts

 The Geography of the Dead 

• The Underworld Where the Dead go when they can't move on. The Underworld includes The Tempest, Shadowlands, all Dark Kingdoms, the Far Shores, and the Labyrinth
• Skinlands This is the world of the living, where the Quick are found. Ghosts are expressly forbidden from interacting with it by the Dictuum Mortus
• Shadowlands A part of the Underworld that borders the Skinlands like a dark mirror. For ever location in the world of the living, there is its counterpart in the Shadowlands. The two worlds are separated by the Shroud , which Wraiths may peer across with ease. In this realm, buildings and objects are either burnt, broken, decayed, crumbling, or otherwise found in an advanced state of ruin.
• The Tempest A transitional space found in the Shadowlands, in the form of an impossibly high storm wall which contains every thunderstorm, poison gas cloud, hail of shrapnel, falling blade of glass, or magma geyser that has ever claimed human life. It is incredibly difficult to navigate, yet Wraiths must do so regularly for the Tempest sits between every point A and point B in the Underworld. Travel within a Necropolis proper usually won't require a trip through the Tempest, but it is commonplace that one will need to enter it to get from one suburb of Houston to another, even in the case where the two border each other in the Skinlands. Similarly, to travel from any location in the Underworld to another, one must cross first through The Tempest. Spectres are quite at home in the Tempest, which makes travel through the storm even more hazardous.
• Dark Kingdom of Iron The Underworld of the Western World, including the entirety of North America's Shadowlands. Founded by Charon in ancient times. The Dark Kingdom of Iron is governed by the Death Lords , whose rule is carried out by the faceless bureaucrats of The Hierarchy and the military might of The Legions . There are other Dark Kingdoms throughout the world, with the most prevalent rival to Iron being the Dark Kingdom of Jade .
• Stygia The capital city of The Dark Kingdom of Iron is Stygia , and sits on an island in the Tempest, rather than in the Shadowlands.
• The Far Shores A string of Islands in the distant corners of the Underworld, The Far Shores were established by Charon as a means to help Wraiths reach Enlightenment and move on. That purpose, in his absence, has been perverted and the Far Shores are little more than a mockery of afterlives from various mortal religions. Many have been coopted by either Spectres or cults of personality. What was meant to be Paradises designed to help Wraiths achieve Transcendence have instead become microcosmic Hellscapes.
  • The Flayed Lands and the Islands of Flint When Europeans came to the New World, they brought their Dead with them. Those ghosts, mostly Heretics looking for lands in the Underworld that Stygia's reach didn't extend to, found instead to their surprise other Empires, equally formidable. The area that would become Texas was bisected by The Kingdom of Obsidian and the Islands of Flint. Anyone who has read a history book can guess the outcome of these encounters. The death of Ix Chel, known to Western Wraiths as the Obsidian Queen, triggered the Third Great Maelstrom. The stars of the Shadowlands fell from the sky, landing as monstrous Spectres that devoured Indigenous and Western wraiths alike. The Tempest scoured the land, and the Kingdom of Obsidian was transformed into the Flayed Lands. The native Dead retreated to the Fifth Sun, a metropolis built deeper in the Underworld.

In modern nights, the forces of Oblivion still rule over large swathes of territory in the Flayed Lands, with Texas marking the northern most edge of that blighted place. Stygia has since rolled in and established Necropoli across the Flayed Lands, including the Houston Necropolis. Compared to cities further south, Houston is relatively peaceful, but strange, alien Spectres are known to occasionally wander close to the edge of the Necropolis.

The Islands of Flint, the scattered many afterlives of North America's indigenous tribal people, fared a little bit better early on in their history of interaction with the Western Dead. But the Third Great Maelstrom hit them just as hard as their allies to the South. And shortly afterwards, Stygia's Legions landed in New Amsterdam. The indigenous Wraiths of that era have retreated to well fortified islands in the Tempest... Wraith's of European descent who try to make contact have never returned from those Islands. Modern First Nation people have little in common with their the ghosts of their ancestors, and often choose to remain in the Shadowlands, rather than making the difficult journey to an uncertain and unfamiliar afterlife.

• Soul Forging
• The Dead are notoriously hard to kill, as destroying a Wraith's corpus only sends him into a destructive Harrowing. Best case scenario, he falls to Oblivion and becomes a Spectre... worst case, he returns a few hours or a few days later with little physical evidence of his trauma. Similarly, the Shadowlands are devoid of most of the creature comforts Wraiths grew accustomed to in life: money, food, wine, furniture, weapons, armor, etc. are all in short supply. But a sufficiently skilled Artificer can kill both of these problems with one stone. Soulforging is the act of rendering a Wraith's very soul into a physical object, often times (but not always) destroying the conscious mind in the process. Thousands of souls are fed into the Soulforges every year, and while many are, in fact, criminals who have earned the closest thing to a Death Sentence as the Afterlife can afford... many more are simply Lemures and Thralls who are too weak to fight back against the roaming gangs of Reapers that removed their Caul .

• Stygian Society
  • The Hierarchy The many faceless bureaucrats who are necessary to keep the day to day operations of the Kingdom going. High ranking members of the Hierarchy frequently wear masks that signify their station, and help protect their identity when they are 'off the clock'. The original model for the Hierarchy was based on Greco-Roman political structures, and has evolved over time. The Hierarchy is monolithic, in that it is the sole government structure, and it operates without any formal checks and balances (other than the Deathlords' scheming against each other). The only formalized separation is that between the government and its military (the Legions ), and even that line can be blurry at times. Ranks in the hierarchy consist of: Clerks, Adjustors, Inspectors, Ministers, and Chancillors . Anacreons are the highest ranking member of the Hierarchy in a given Necropolis, and the title gives one authority over both the military and administrative wings of their Legion; and thus Anacreons may arise from either branch. The Anacreons of the Necropolis will rule jointly in a Council, with most of the Legions having an Anacreon in Major Necropoli. Smaller Necropoli may have fewer Legions stationed at them, and thus a smaller Council of Anacreons. Anacreons answer directly to their Deathlord. Because Stygia is so far removed from its Necropoli in the Shadowlands, so long as the Council of Anacreons keeps taxes in the form of forged souls flowing to Stygia, they have a fairly free hand in how they administer the city... and how strictly they enforce the law.
  • The Legions Following Charon's Breaking of the Guilds (see Timeline), all newly deceased souls were funneled into a different Legion based on the way they died. In this way, the vast majority of newly deceased souls (who are fortunate enough not to be Soulforged ) are technically members of a Legion. Likewise, the Legions themselves are a part of the Hierarchy, acting as its military, law enforcement, and often Intelligence apparatus. However, those with in demand clerical talents, or who show skill in an Arcanoi that is valuable, often are kept off the front line and funneled into less martial roles. Ranks within the Legions consist of: Legionnaire, Centurion, Marshal, Regent, and Overlord. Just like with the administrative wing, the Anacreon is considered the highest ranked Legion official in a Necropolis. The Legions have two primary purposes: to protect the citizens of the Dark Kingdom of Iron from Spectres and other forces of Oblivion ; and to oppress those same citizens to keep the Hierarchy and the Deathlords in power. The Legionnaire that saves a Wraith from a marauding Spectre one day may be the one that drags the same Wraith to the Soul Forges the next. It is all in a day's work.
  • Heretics Members of a dizzying array of Heretic Cults , whose belief systems all have one thing in common: they disagree with Charon and the Hierarchy's opinion on how best to shepherd the souls of the dead towards Transcendence . All Heretics are fervent in their beliefs, which are often at odds with the Dictuum Mortus . Some are merely spiritual dissidents, but many Heretics are, just like mortal fanatics, quite dangerous to both the Quick and the Dead.
  • Renegades For the more recently deceased, the virtual Feudalism of The Hierarchy has a tendency to strike a certain rebellious nerve. While most of the Dead are too focused on surviving the horrors of the Afterlife or taking care of their unfinished business in the Skinlands; Renegades look at the inherent injustice and medieval attitudes of The Hierarchy and decide to do something about it. Some are freedom fighters trying to end Thralldom, shut down the Soulforges, or bring democracy to the Afterlife. Others are just trying to replace one corrupt system with another, one where they sit at the top. Still more are simply eternal anarchists and troublemakers, unwilling to live in the stifling confines of Stygia's rigid society.
  • The Guilds Originally, The Guilds began their existence as just collections of Wraiths with the same knack for certain Arts. Over time, these loose groups began to formalize their associations: first into Colleges, with each promoting and offering instuction in their individual Arcanos. But over time their skills grew to be in demand, and with that demand came prosperity. What started as a purely academic venture became more like trade unions: training fresh Wraiths in the use of Arcanoi, regulating that usage, and profiting from all of it. With their services being so essential to making the Underworld more hospitable to the Dead, the Guilds soon grew in both material wealth and political power. Soon, they came to rival Charon himself. In 1598, the Guilds revolted against Charon. A variety of petty jealousies, rivalries, and outright betrayals meant that the Guilds' revolution was doomed from the start. After the failed coup, Charon outlawed the Guilds and set the Legions to round up all Guildwraiths, sending them to the Soulforges. The very existence of most Guilds was made illegal in The Dark Kingdom of Iron.

In the intervening centuries, the Guilds have slowly been rebuilding, both in the heart of and at the edges of Stygian society. Some Guilds like the Artificers and the Pardoners , owing to their necessity for the continued prosperity of the Kingdom, have been allowed to operate more or less openly in most Necropoli. Most others, Chaunteurs, Sandmen, Masquers, Harbingers, Usurers, and Monitors all exist as a kind of open secret. Everyone knows their local Masquer, but she'd never refer to herself as one. Those whose very trade violates the Dictuum Mortus , such as the Haunters, Proctors, Spooks, and Puppeteers are all highly illegal. In most Necropoli, these Guilds are constantly dodging Legion patrols. Despite this, their ability to interact with the Skinlands is still greatly in demand; and it is not unheard of that high ranking Hierarchy officials might seek out a Spook or a Puppeteer to help them take care of some unfinished business.

The Forbidden Guilds, consisting of the Mnemoi and Solicitors , practice Arcanoi that are a threat to the very things that make a Wraith who they are: their Passions and their memories. For this reason, even most other Guildwraiths will gladly throw members of these Guilds into a Nihil. The Alchemists are similarly persecuted for their Arts, but this has more to do with the Artificers considering them a threat to their (near) monopoly on creating everyday objects in the Shadowlands.

The Oracles are another special case. When Charon broke the Guilds, he went to the Grand High Oracle to meet with her. No one knows what was discussed, but when Charon left the meeting he declared the Oracles exempt from his order to see all Guildwraiths Soulforged. As such, they continue to practice their Arts entirely out in the open.

The Dictuum Mortus

• The Dictuum Mortus or Law of the Dead is the primary law of Stygian society. It strictly forbids the Dead from entering the Skinlands or interacting with the Living in anyway. As one might suspect, the law is violated as frequently as it is followed. Wraiths are driven and sustained by their passions, and if that means going into the Skinlands, even the threat of Soul Forging will not stop a determined Wraith. In fact, even in the act of attempting to enforce the Dictuum Mortus, Hierarchy agents are frequently forced to violate the law themselves, in order to pursue law breakers.

• The Underworld, Wraith Anatomy, and Metaphysics
  • The Afterlife is an inherently metaphysical place, and Wraiths are inherently metaphysical creatures. Memory, intention, and emotion dictate what is 'real' in the lands of the Dead. A ruined church might ring out at midnight, despite no longer having a bell hung in its crumbling belltower. Ghosts cry tears, wail, feel their hearts beat thunderously, break out in cold sweats, and sometimes even bleed... all this despite no longer having the anatomy to support it. This is subconscious, and has more to do with how a Wraith expects their Corpus to respond. It is important to remember that a Wraith's Corpus is made entirely and uniformly of Plasm ; and a Wraith's sweat, blood, and tears will eventually reabsorb into their Corpus.

• • Items with a certain threshold of emotional resonance, when destroyed in the Skinlands, become Relics . Relics sometimes are items of immense cultural value, like famous paintings or an item belonging to a celebrity. Other times they are simply very important to their individual owner, and soak up that emotional energy. Thus, there is a significant over abundance of wedding bands, teddy bears, and other precious personal items in the Shadowlands, while also a significant scarcity of guns and ammunition.

• • Related to Relics are Artifacts , these are items of tremendous power in the Shadowlands... often either Soulforged by the Artifacters Guild, Moliated from the corpus of strange plasmic beasts that stalk the Shadowlands, or created through even stranger means. The difference between a Relic and an Artifact is that Relics tend to be everyday objects that sometimes perform a second function (a relic pen that allows the user to literally pour their pathos into the written word), while Artifacts tend to be objects whose mystical functions are its primary ones.

• • Artifacts and Relics can be either fueled by, or power sources which produce, Pathos , the pure emotional energy which Wraiths use to power their Arcanoi. Relic guns often require Pathos to be imbued in them in order to fire, while an Artifact firearm might have built in pathos generation (such is the skill of the Artificers guild, if you don't mind their questionable methods.)

• • What would a good ghost story be without a Haunt ? These places where the Shroud wears thin are often created because of an existing association with one of the Restless Dead. This could be the location of their death, their workplace, a childhood home, or any other location that was important or significant to them in either their life or their final moments. Haunts provide Wraiths with a place to Slumber, can more easily make use of their Arcanoi, and is a sanctuary from the dangers of the Shadowlands. Wraiths can and do occasionally share Haunts; but this requires a large amount of trust as they are equally capable of jumping another Wraith's claim on a Haunt. Haunts tend to be perpetually run down because of the slow leaking of Oblivion through their thin Shrouds.

• • The Shroud is the barrier which keeps the Shadowlands and the Skinlands separated. Far from a impenetrable wall, Wraiths can both see through the gauzy film of the Shroud with little effort or training as well as (with more effort and the right Arcanoi) reach through the Shroud and effect the Quick. The Shroud in a given area does not have a fixed rating. Rather, it fluctuates based on a variety of factors... but what all those boil down to is this: The more likely an area is to be the setting for a scene in a horror movie, the lower the Shroud. Thus the same location might have a Shroud of 10 during a sunny afternoon, and a Shroud of 7 at night. Histories of supernatural activity and murder (or even just tales of them) can also lower an area's Shroud.

**Shroud Ratings**

Number	Example
10	A busy shopping center on a sunny afternoon.
9	A well-lit subway station in the morning.
8	A tidy, well-kept home with no sinister history.
7	An empty shopping center parking lot late at night.
6	A remote country crossroads lit only by the full moon.
5	That old mansion where all those murders took place.
4	Abandoned cemetery at midnight of a new moon.

• • The Fog is the terror inducing effect that exposure to The Dead, the Shadowlands, and other aspects of the Afterlife, has on the living. Reactions are based on the witnesses Willpower rating. The Fog does not affect most Supernatural creatures such as vampires and werewolves, as they are already hardened against terror equal to the presence of a ghost. Mediums are also immune (somewhat by necessity), though not Sorcerers and Psychics unless they have been exposed to repeated Hauntings.

**Fog Ratings**

Willpower	Reaction	Description
10	No Reaction	Rarest of the rare, these mortals have no particular reaction whatsoever.
9	Righteous Anger	These mortals absolutely refuse to give ground, no matter how terrifying the wraith might appear. While retreat is still an option, they show no fear.
8	Curiosity	Though not without fear, mortals at this level are more fascinated than anything else. Their interest can border on obsessive and intrusive.
7	Controlled Fear	Scared but able to completely control its influence on her actions. Will make good judgements and execute complex actions normally.
6	Concillatory	The terrified mortal attempts to bargain with the wraith, offering whatever he thinks the Wraith might want.
5	Terror	Deeply scared but still in control of herself, the mortal makes a reasoning retreat from the Wraith's presence as best they can without endangering themselves.
4	Berserk	The mortal lashes out with whatever's at hand to destroy the source of their fear. If such attacks seem to have no effect, the mortal will smash objects.
3	Disbelief	The mortal is in utter denial. Attempting to convince them otherwise just increases the fervor of their denials, potentially to the point of violence.
2	Panic	The mortal shrieks and flees by the most direct route possible that is not immediate suicide.
1	Catatonic Fear	Terrified into near paralysis. Capable of little more than whimpering softly and crawling to a hiding place.

• Oblivion
  • Oblivion was once merely the passive destructive force in the universe. What some Mages would call Entropy. However, the Dead know that Oblivion has grown hungry, and long ago stopped waiting for time to deliver its meals to it. Rather, Oblivion is an intelligent force that has, in the Shadowlands, marshalled an unfathomably large army of Spectres to do its bidding. Additionally, each Wraith carries a seed of Oblivion inside themselves in the form of their Shadow
  • Death splits a Wraith's mind into distinct pieces. The Psyche is more or less the same personality and identity as the Wraith had when they were alive. The Shadow though is something very different. A dark seed of Oblivion, upon death the Shadow blooms into a distinct personality. A version of the Wraith where the worst of her impulses and cruelty come to the forefront. Twisted by Angst and Dark Passions the Shadow becomes something separate from the Wraith, but still residing within her head. And its only goal is to make the Wraith suffer as much as possible. To torment it into submission. Whether out of sheer sadism, or because it believes this is for the Wraith's own good... it hardly matters when your Shadow is rubbing your nose in everything you hate about yourself, killing your best friends, or turning your allies against you.
  • Some Ghosts never stand a chance when they enter the Shadowlands... their fight with Oblivion is over before it started. For others, it might take years, decades, or centuries... but they lose the fight to their Shadow all the same. No matter their genesis, these Spectres are hate filled soldiers for Oblivion. Some are little more than mindless beasts, attacking anything and everything on sight. Others are cunning hunters and tormenters. They infiltrate Stygian society, form Heretic Oblivion cults, and so much more... all in an attempt to drag as many Wraiths into Oblivion as they can.