Nocturnal Path

Necromancy -x- Naga Raja

Introduction: Night is the time of haunting, when the worlds of the living and the dead are at their closest. People are afraid of the dark, and that natural trepidation thins the barrier between life and death. It is only natural, then, that ghosts are at their strongest when the sun goes down and the shadows grow deep.

The Nocturnal Path of Necromancy taps into the primordial fear of death and darkness that separates the living world from the dead lands. The path functions on the premise that, having crossed the threshold of death in the moments prior to their embrace, and being creatures who exist in the sunless night, vampires are capable of invoking the death inside their corpse-like bodies to become more like wraiths.

Like the Void Path, the Nocturnal path represents a specific line of thanatological study undertaken by the Nagaraja bloodline. The Giovanni only recently uncovered the Nocturnal Path.

Death Shroud

Mortal minds are not equipped to deal with some aspects of the supernatural. While a human who recognizes a vampire will often be frightened, the Kindred are close enough to humanity, at least in appearance, that their presence alone is not usual sufficient to strike absolute terror in normal mortals. A vampire must make an awesome display of his unnatural curse (through the Dread Gaze) to instill such fright in those nearby. Ghosts, however, seem to offend the rationality of the human mind to such an extent that the mere sight of a manifesting wraith has been known to send weak willed mortals screaming in fear.

A necromancer who begins his studies of the Nocturnal Path learns to enshroud himself in the aura of dread that clings to the souls of the deceased. While under the effects of Death Shroud, the necromancer becomes gaunt and corpselike; his skin takes on a pale, bluish tint, his eyes sink faintly and become rimmed by dark circles, and his flesh becomes cold to the touch, regardless of how recently he has fed. His fangs extend, and his skin pulls tighter on his bones. These physical changes are only a byproduct of the vampire’s acceptance of the death-energies within his animate corpse: in and of itself, the change in the vampire’s appearance is only startling. The real power of the Death Shroud comes from the almost palpable aura of death and decay that surrounds the necromancer.

A mortal who gazes upon a necromancer under the Death Shroud’s effects will react as if he had just seen a ghost. Stronger willed individuals will only be subtly frightened, while weaker willed mortals will run shrieking in terror. Supernatural creatures are unaffected by the Death Shroud, although the necromancer may still become more menacing toward such beings. System: The necromancer must spend a blood point and allow a turn for the death- energies to coalesce in his aura. Any mortals who view the necromancer automatically fall into a state of panic, the extent of which depends on their Willpower score. Those with scores of only 1 or 2 will either enter a stupefied state of disbelief or flee from the necromancer, screaming in panic. Those with 3 or 4 Willpower either rationalize what they see and forget the event afterwards, or, failing that, enter into a blind, panicked frenzy, possibly attacking the necromancer, but more likely simply howling and smashing whatever is nearby. Individuals with Willpower scores of 5 or 6 are reserved enough to maintain their sanity when confronted with a necromancer exhibiting the Death Shroud, although they will still be extremely frightened. A mortal with Willpower 7 would be able to retain his composure enough to stay in the vampire’s presence if there is a pressing need to do so. A character with a Willpower score of 8, 9 or 10 is able to overcome the fear to an extent. She might be intrigued by the vampire, offended by him, or simply unimpressed, but the target isn’t forced to take any action in particular. In all cases, however, the vampire gains 1 die to his Intimidation die pools.

Storytellers implementing Wraith: the Oblivion in their Vampire chronicles may wish to use the Fog Chart on page 241 of Wraith to determine the reaction of a mortal to a necromancer assuming the Death Shroud.

If any mortals are frightened by the Death Shroud, then the barrier between the living lands and the world of the dead is lowered, temporarily, in the nearby locale. So long as at least one mortal has been influenced by the Death Shroud, all ghosts enjoy a –1 difficulty to utilizing their supernatural abilities when in the vicinity of both the necromancer and the target.

Against supernatural creatures, the necromancer adds 1 die to his intimidation rolls for the rest of the scene—vampires, werewolves, and the like are not as easily frightened as mundane mortals. Ghouls are counted among these supernatural creatures, as are any mortals immune to the Fog (merit-based mediums, or a mortal with any Numina rated at 3 or higher). Note that the Kinfolk of werewolves are considered mundane mortals for the purposes of this power.

Shadow’s Strength

A wraith’s shadow is more than the instinctual, savage beast that dwells in a vampire’s soul—it is something much more intricate and refined. Whereas a vampire’s beast drives the Cainite through base urges and physical needs such as anger, frustration, and the lust for blood, a wraith’s Shadow subtly manipulates the ghost’s thoughts by insinuating, casting doubts, or outright deceit. Most Shadows have a few minor tricks that they can play on their better half to sow the seeds of Oblivion, but perhaps the most insidious is a sort of Devil’s deal that the shadow can offer to the wraith’s psyche. At a mere whim, the Shadow may grant the ghost power directly from its dark emotions, making it stronger or more capable at the cost of its moral conviction.

A necromancer with this level of the Nocturnal path may converse for a moment with his own, latent Shadow, and convince it to offer him some of its spectral power. System: The necromancer must expend a Willpower point and roll Charisma + Occult, difficulty of his own Self Control +3. If successful, then the vampire gains a number of bonus dice equal to his own Humanity/Path subtracted from 10. Thus, a vampire with a Humanity of 4 would receive 6 bonus dice. These dice can be allotted to a single roll (up to a maximum of 5 dice to any one roll), or split up among a number of rolls during the scene. The dice may be allocated to any roll that the necromancer attempts during the scene, save for Virtue or Humanity/Path rolls. If the dice are unused at the end of the scene, they are lost. The necromancer may only utilize Shadow Strength once per scene.

Vampires following Paths of Enlightenment use the rules above unless their Path focuses on the Instinct virtue over Self Control. In that case, the roll is made against a difficulty of (9 - Instinct), and the vampire gains a number of dice equal to his Path Rating. -1. Thus a vampire on the Path of Cathari with a rating of 7 would receive 6 dice from a successful roll.

Calling upon one's dark side is a risky business, though. If any roll involving the bonus dice afforded by the vampire's dark emotions is botched, the vampire immediately flies into Frenzy (he cannot resist this Frenzy). If the necromancer's Charisma + Occult roll is botched, the vampire loses a point of Humanity (or of whatever Path he follows) and his dark side takes over for the duration of the scene: in this state, the vampire's Nature and Demeanor shift to a dark parody of the character's actual Nature archetype. For a list of common Shadow Natures, see "When Shadows Come Out to Play."

Tether the Soul

Ghosts are connected to the living world via the objects that held significance to them in their living days. These tethers, or Fetters, remind a ghost of who and what she once was, and offer her an anchor against the constant assaults of her Shadow and Oblivion. Many ghosts learn to use their Fetters as lifelines or beacons, returning to them if they become lost in the underworld, or if they suffer tremendous damage and dissipate from the Shadowlands.

Through Tether the Soul, the necromancer learns to tie his soul to an object of great personal importance. This can be something that reminds him of his former mortality (such as a pocket watch gifted to him by his grandfather) or something that commemorates a great deed (such as the Bone of Lies stolen from a diablerized enemy’s haven); all that matters is that the object be important to the necromancer, to the point where it would be irreplaceable if lost. The necromancer might even designate his own corpse as a Fetter.

Tether the Soul creates a temporary bond with the object in question that resembles the connection between a wraith and one of its Fetters. System: The necromancer must allow the object in question to be in her constant possession for a full week before she can create the tether (very easy for an object such as a bed, or the necromancer’s own body, rather difficult for an item such as a motorcycle or a pet ghoul). After this time, she must expend a blood point, which is mystically drawn into the item, and a point of Willpower, which solidifies her connection to the object, and roll Stamina + Empathy, difficulty 7. If she gains even one success, then she is considered to possess a weak Fetter (1 point, in Wraith terms). The object remains bound to the necromancer for one month, after which time she may repay the casting cost and remake the roll, provided she spends at least 24 hours in constant contact with the item the night prior to the end of the duration. If the necromancer expends a Permanent Willpower point in the casting, then the object is semi-permanently bound to her: neglect or disinterest in the item can void the tether, but should the item remain of value and importance to the necromancer, it will always be a Fetter.

The necromancer can sense what is happening around the Fetter by closing her eyes and rolling Perception + Empathy, difficulty 7. The more successes she gains, the stronger the impression of what is transpiring around the object. She can also attempt to use certain disciplines around the Fetter, depending on her successes

1 success Cannot use Disciplines

2 successes Can use Auspex

3 successes Can also use Presence

4 successes Can also use Dementation, Dominate (if eye-contact is possible)

5 successes Can also use Chimerstry, Necromancy, Thaumaturgy

She may also sense the location of her Fetter, relative to her current location. The more successes on the Perception + Empathy roll, the more exact the information. If the necromancer is traveling the underworld through Ex Nihilo, and becomes lost, she may use her Fetter as a beacon to guide her back to the Skinlands. A Tether also makes using Crossing Styx (Nocturnal Path 5) much safer, allowing the necromancer to return to her Fetter if he should be severely injured in the underworld.

A necromancer may only have 1 temporary Tether at any time. She may expend as many Permanent Willpower points as she desires to create permanent Fetters, however.

Feast of the Dead

Through Feast of the Dead, the necromancer may transmute the half-living fluid in his veins into emotion-rich plasm. This transubstantiated vitae loses its physicality (and hence potency) in the living lands, but becomes a viable source of nourishment in the underworld.

While the most obvious use of Feast of the Dead is to convert vitae into ghostly form, which is then stored for replenishing the necromancer’s Blood Pool when traversing the underworld through Ex Nihilo, the necromancer can also feed his spectral blood to ghosts… and doing so carries all of the usual side effects of consuming vampire blood: ghosts who partake of the plasm/blood actually become ghouls, and are subject to blood bonds as usual. System: The necromancer must expend a Willpower point and roll Stamina + Occult, difficulty 8. For each success rolled, one of the necromancer’s blood points may be converted into ectoplasm. The spectral blood points remain in the vampire’s system, however. The blood is useless in the land of the living, and can only be expended in the underworld or fed to an embodied wraith unless the necromancer also activates the level 3 Ash Path power, Dead Hand (in which case he may utilize his spectral blood as usual while still half-way in the physical world).

If the vampire drinks in the Corpus of a ghost through Soul Feasting (Vitreous Path 5), he may convert the energy gained through that power into ectoplasmic blood at a rate of one energy point per success. This vastly increases the vampire’s ability to use that energy, and in fact allows her to subsist completely on the Corpus of dead souls. It is rumored that that power, in conjunction with Soul Feasting, allowed the Nagaraja vampires to exist for long periods of time in the underworld.

The vampire may store such blood in specially prepared containers in the underworld (which usually must be "soul forged" by the necromancer’s ghostly servants, or which may be crafted after distilling a wraith’s corpus through the level 5 power of the Pyre Path, Forge the Soul). In this way, a necromancer traveling through the underworld can bring along additional blood reserves that will function exactly like blood points do in the physical world.

As an optional rule, the vampire may feed his blood to ghosts, thereby creating wraithly ghouls. Such ghouled ghosts gain the usual free dot in Potence, may learn Disciplines as per the rules for mortal ghouls, and are subject to blood bonds. Unlike mortals, a ghost can ingest up to 10 points of plasmic vitae in a single sitting (taking the place of normal Pathos, up to the wraith’s maximum Pathos pool). The entropy rich blood empowers the spirit’s darker half, however, and possessing any Vitae in their Corpus causes the wraith to suffer a +1 difficulty to any rolls made to resist its Shadow’s influence. Ghoul-wraiths lose one blood point every 2 weeks, rather than every month: the spectral blood infused in them through Feast of the Dead is ephemeral and rapidly dissipates. If the storyteller is running a Wraith crossover, then each blood point fed to a ghost also gives its Shadow one temporary point of Angst, which remains even after the spectral blood is expended. Also, the Wraith’s Eidolon Background lowers temporarily by 1 point for each blood point it has ingested, wearing away at the spirit’s higher conscience while simultaneously strengthening its self-destructive urges.

While the wraith is also a ghoul, it is incapable of willfully resolving its Passions and Fetters: it is bound to the Underworld as a mortal ghoul is bound to the Skinlands, and until all of the cursed Pathos is purged from the wraith’s system, it will be unable to Transcend (although Oblivion, patient as always, awaits). For further information on the subject of wraith ghouls, see the "Ghouling the Dead" Appendix at the end of this manual.

Crossing Styx

While Ex Nihilo (Ash Path 4) allows the necromancer to travel bodily into the underworld, there are many dangers in traveling the spirit realm with one’s physical body in tow, not the least of which being the utter annihilation that awaits any necromancer careless enough to allow himself to be slain while in the deadlands. Crossing Styx resembles the level 5 Auspex power Psychic Projection in that the vampire is capable of leaving her body for a time and traveling as pure spirit.

A vampire who uses Crossing Styx separates her soul from her undead flesh and projects her ghostly aspect into the underworld. There is no silver cord connecting her soul to her body, so unless the necromancer is careful, she may well find herself lost in the underworld with no way to return. System: The necromancer must roll Willpower, difficulty 8. She must also spend a number of turns in concentration equal to the local Shroud rating (assume this require 7 turns in most places, or roughly 20 to 25 seconds). If successful, and if undisturbed for the requisite amount of time, the necromancer’s spirit slips free of her body.

Like a vampire walking the Astral plane through Auspex, the necromancer in the ghost-form uses Willpower points to track her spiritual "health"—every time the necromancer would suffer a Health level of damage, she instead loses a point of Willpower, becoming more and more insubstantial. There is no silver cord binding her to her body, however, and unless the vampire utilizes the third level of the Nocturnal Path (Tether the Soul) to anchor her spirit to her body (or an object near her body), the she will have to travel back to her corpse at normal speed in order to reawaken in the living lands. A vampire who is reduced to 0 willpower while in the underworld dies the final death unless she has tethered her soul to an object (or her corpse) in the living world. In the event that she has tethered herself to something, she will reappear in her ghostly form in the Shadowlands near her "Fetter" the scene after being "slain" in the underworld.

Also unlike Psychic Projection, the necromancer retains her physical attributes while in the underworld—the ghostly form is an idealized version of her actual, physical body as her soul remembers it. The only blood points that the necromancer may retain while in her ghostly form are those that have been converted to ectoplasm via Feast of the Dead. If she does not have any spectral blood in her system when she invokes this power, then she will be unable to access many of her disciplines while in the underworld (although those who possess the level five power of the Vitreous Path may convert wraithly ectoplasm into "blood" through Feast of the Dead, and thus may sustain themselves, heal, and power disciplines as usual).

While employing this power, the vampire’s body enters into a state resembling torpor, and unless the necromancer has tethered himself to the corpse through the third level of this path, he will be unable to sense what is occurring around his physical body. Without the necromancer’s soul, the vampire’s body decays, appearing as it would if the vampire were truly dead. The vampire’s body never disintegrates, however, so the worst that will happen (in the case of a particularly ancient Methuselah) is that her body becomes a mummified skeleton while her soul is out to play. The body is not harmed by sunlight, faith, or other traditional banes of vampirism (save fire, which will burn the corpse readily). If the vampire’s body meets final death while her soul is in the underworld, then the vampire becomes a full-fledged wraith, losing her disciplines but gaining ghostly Arcanoi.

A necromancer who travels the underworld during the daylight need not roll to remain awake, but each evening at dusk on any day that the necromancer remains in the underworld, she must expend an ectoplasmic blood point (gained through Feast of the Dead) or, should she have no spectral blood in her system, a point of Willpower. Running out of blood and willpower has the usual effect: final death or banishment to a Fetter.