Army of the Dead

Level VI Rituals

Description: This ritual of reanimation is based on an ancient Cappadocian rite of resurrection. It is a Ghiberti variant which its creator Sizwe Ghiberti has re-engineered to allow him to take his army of corpses with him into combat or just to protect the place he is sleeping during the day. As it is based upon a previously conceived ritual, its more-or-less dependent upon the essential rules of that ritual, but as it is a higher level of power, there are a few differences.

In a manner similar to "Sanctuary of Living Death", the caster must find a number of corpses formerly belonging to condemned murders and must gather them together in a place of death (tomb, crypt, cemetery, battlefield or the site of a large atrocity). The corpses are laid out in rows, four across (symbolic of the four parts of the African soul) and as deep as desired. The corpses must be laid out facing the caster in the center of the room and their heads should be 'pointed' in the cardinal directions. Bowls of the four necromantic elements (grave soil = earth, blood = water, human ash = fire, and bone dust = air) sit in the inter-cardinal or ordinal spaces separating the different ranks of corpses to be animated.

The ritual actually begins when the Houngan (yes its voudun style) calls out to the lords of the loa to commit the souls of the murderers into the caster's service to expiate their numerous sins. Statues of all the primary loa as Christian saints are arrayed around the room, sometimes multiples of them will exist to define the ritual area and bind the dead on all four cardinal directions by the spirits of power. A special place is set aside for the Baron Samedi who is the lord of the dead in the voudun style, in the center of the casting area next to the Houngan. Then, if there are no in-auspicious omens, the necromancer steps out among the corpses carrying a bundle of burning weeds as a kind of incense. Each time the Houngan stops at a body, he must recite the deceased's crimes, he then knocks at least one of the corpses' teeth out, placing it in a pouch of human skin and bites his own wrist to dribble some of his vitae into the corpse's mouth to bond corpse and master together. The ritual will probably require some sort of assistant to beat upon drums and to bring the Houngan blood periodically, human blood isn't necessary, and animal blood works to feed the necromancer's thirst as he goes about his work.

The ritual usually begins as soon as the necromancer awakens and will likely go on most of the night. Regardless of how many corpses the necromancer tries to animate, the animation process ends at dawn when the cock crows thrice. At each subsequent dawn, the necromancer must expend a bit of his immortal essence to keep his army in this world. This restriction can be quite difficult and can cause the necromancer to feed like a madman. The creator of the ritual, Sizwe Ghiberti has wiped out entire African villages to create his army of the dead and depopulated additional settlements to keep his army mobile.

System: The player rolls Intelligence + Rituals = at a difficulty 9. Each success animates ten corpses multiplied by the necromancer's rating in necromancy. As suggested the "Army of the Dead" can be a truly inspiring force of slavishly loyal corpse warriors (or killers, anyway) who fight until destroyed and know no pain or fear. As their master, the necromancer can choose to expend his blood to heal the corpses in battle or afterwards, should they survive. This healing works only for bashing and lethal damage, though the corpse killers do not take aggravated damage from fire or sunlight. When a corpse-killer is destroyed it turns to dust, leaving only clothing and weapons behind. As with most supernatural beings, the corpse-killers can be destroyed via beheading, but they soak damage with their master's soak-pool and are thus fairly difficult to destroy. Such mindless minions cannot take more than one action per combat round, nor can they split their actions as a vampire or mortal might.

The "Army of the Dead" ritual has but one obvious weakness, the caster must maintain possession of the leather pouch containing the teeth of the animated murderers in order to continue to command them. Should the caster lose possession of the tooth filled pouch, then he can no longer control his army. If the pouch falls into the hands of another, be they human or supernatural, they are the new master of the army. However, while the army can be controlled by anyone holding the pouch, the army cannot be ordered to attack their creator. And should the necromancer who created the army fail to regain the pouch, he can will the army to return to the dust at dawn as he is the only one capable of feeding for his army of killers.

Reference: Sanctuary of Living Death -- PGHC 203-204