Necromancy Necromancy is a discipline, broken down into paths, practiced primarily by the Giovanni and the Nagaraja. It is an extropalation of the original discipline of the now extinct Cappadochian House called Mortis. It is divided into paths and rituals, and, like Thaumaturgy and Dark Thaumaturgy, is quite versatile. Rarely do those outside the Houses of Giovanni and Nagaraja who possess knowledge of this discipline use it in public, for it is considered to be somewhat gruesome, even among vampires.

The Sepulchre Path (Control Over Ghosts)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Insight
Gazing into the eyes of a corpse, you can see the image burned into its death. A moment’s concentration allows you to call up the memories of death itself. You immediately see the last minute of the individual’s existence, generally as flashes of vision and startling sensations.

LEVEL 2 Summon Soul
By calling out the names of the dead, you can pull them to attendance. Combined with the power over their artifacts from their life, you can force them to answer your summons, appearing and obeying your will.

To call a ghost, you must know its name, or at least have a clear image of its persona from The Spirit’s Touch. You must also have an object with which the ghost has some contact with while it was alive, achieving better results if the object has particular importance to the ghost (also known as a Fetter). Some wraiths cannot be summoned regardless of your efforts; many ghosts are lost in the eternal storm of the Underworld. Vampires who were diablerized or who achieved Golconda before Final Death likewise cannot be summoned in this fashion.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Compel Soul
By binding a ghost with its name and your strength of will, you can force it to obey your commands. Once you have summoned a wraith (Summon Soul), you may use Compel Soul to make it answer your questions and serve your bidding. The wraith must answer your questions truthfully and act as you direct. During this time, the ghost remains visible and audible to you as well. This effect lasts only for about one hour.

LEVEL 4 Haunting
Your powers of necromantic compulsion allow you to force a ghost to remain in a particular location, or near a specific object. With a cryptic phrase and a powerful command, you bind the wraith so it may not leave.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Torment
There is a reason that ghosts fear the most powerful necromancers of the Giovanni. Through the use of Torment, the necromancer can inflict actual damage on the dead, punishing them for their indiscretions.

Though you remain in the physical world, you can lash out with supernatural energies upon the ghost, although many Vampires choose to direct the blow by striking physically. If your attacks inflict lethal damage on the wraith, it is banished to the deeper levels of the Underworld for a full month, unable to return.

The Ash Path (Communication with the Underworld)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Shroudsight
With minimal effort, you can see the Shroud that separates the world of the living from the lands of the dead. The Underworld appears as a decaying and ghastly reflection of the mortal world, sometimes with structures lost to the past or unusual spirits flying about. You can see (though not hear or feel) anything that transpires in the Underworld within your normal visual range, with a sort of "double sight" that does not hinder your normal vision.

LEVEL 2 Lifeless Tongues
The babble of restless spirits is clear to you. By concentrating for a moment, you attune your senses to the Underworld, making yourself capable of both seeing and hearing all that transpires there around you. Furthermore, you can understand the language of the dead, so unless a ghost goes out of the way to use a language that you do not know, you can comprehend the words of any wraith.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Dead Hand
The structures and entities of the Underworld are very real to you. In a bizarre sort of half-life, you can stretch your physical form across the Shroud, interacting with beings and scenery there even as your physical body remains partially in the living world. During this time, you do not actually pierce the Shroud, but your actions affect both worlds. Thus, you can climb a ghostly rope, then turn and step onto a real-world roof. You can also lash out physically and strike or grapple with ghosts, though they can return the attacks. However, you cannot push or pull objects from one world to the next. Effectively, you exist in both realms simultaneously, which can be very disturbing to those watching you climb invisible ropes or grapple unseen opponents.

LEVEL 4 Ex Nihilo
Tearing through the Shroud between worlds, you can cross into the land of the dead. This journey is a harrowing one, for many spirits wait to take vengeance on necromancers, and the Underworld is full of hazards unknown to most Vampires. Furthermore, there is no way to gather blood or sustenance in the Underworld and you can become lost in the storms and seas of the deadlands. Still, this discipline allows for direct contact with shades of the restless and it serves as an unusual means of travel. While you are in the Underworld, you still see everything that transpires in the mortal world, but your physical form exists in the realm of the dead.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Shroud Mastery
Your control over the barrier between the living and dead worlds is nearly absolute. Instead of stepping across or watching the events of the Underworld, you can actually manipulate the fabric of the Shroud. By changing the strength of the web between worlds, you can make it easier to cross, or bar wraiths from exerting their influence on the material world.

The Bone Path (Control Over Zombies)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Tremens
You can instill a corpse with a brief jolt of life. Though this discipline is insufficient to actually animate or control bodies, you can make them start or twitch spasmodically. Naturally, this sight frightens those unaccustomed to the mobile dead.

The body then twitches or moves briefly in a fashion that you dictate, from sitting up to blinking to flailing an arm momentarily. With a little extra concentration, you can implant a command into the corpse instead, causing it to move (once only) as you direct when a certain event comes to pass. Corpses twitching in this fashion cannot actually attack or inflict damage, but they can certainly startle the unwary.

LEVEL 2 Apprentice’s Brooms
Your skills in the Bone Path allow you to animate the dead, bringing ambulatory motion and a
semblance of understanding to a cold corpse. Though they cannot fight, these zombies follow simple instruction, performing tasks that you set to them. Corpses animated with this discipline cannot fight…but perform the single task as you direct until they complete the job or until time or damage destroys them. Cadavers continue to rot, slowly, even after beings imbued with this energy.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Shambling Hordes
When you raise the dead to do your bidding, they come in skeletal hordes and withered masses that obey your every command, working and fighting until destroyed. Any body, no matter how decomposed, can be raised to serve your will. As long as the skeleton is reasonably intact, the corpse rises to do your bidding. Such guardians can perform tasks or fight for you with no regard to their own welfare. They can be given orders to attack people or to guard an area, and they wait tirelessly until destroyed. Decomposition will continue for corpses in varying states of decay, although completely skeletal guardians will be unaffected.

LEVEL 4 Soul Stealing
Your mastery of animated flesh and spirit allows you to pull the soul from a living or undead body. With Soul Stealing, you draw out the victim’s soul, turning it temporarily into a wraith while leaving the body as an empty husk.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Zombie
The vampire may create a zombie from a body that has been dead for less than eight hours. This zombie has one more point in each of Strength and Stamina, and a Dexterity of one. Zombies can only move at ten feet per minute, and must be fed one blood point daily.

LEVEL 6 Soul Exchange
The vampire may switch souls between two bodies. Both victims must be within eyesight of the subject, and within ten feet of each other.

LEVEL 7 Daemonic Possession
Though you are not dealing with actual infernal spirits, you can cast a willing soul into a fresh corpse or inanimate body. Thus embedded, the soul takes control of the body, turning it into a new physical home. Dead bodies continue to decay, and thus, they last no more than a week, but this trick provides a perfect temporary repose for a free-floating soul or summoned ghost.

LEVEL 8 Death Pact
By having a mortal victim sign an appropriate contract in her own blood, the vampire may bind the mortal, effective after death... but she must serve the mortal until then. Once the mortal has died, the vampire may demand service from them once for each success in the initial roll.

LEVEL 9 No Powers of this level currently known or have been discovered.

LEVEL 10 No Powers of this level currently known or have been discovered.

The Mortuus Path (Primary Path for Harbingers of Skulls)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Reaper’s Shroud
This power allows the Cainite or the subject of her choice to take on the semblance of death. Skin stretches tight over bones, flesh grows pale and sallow and joints seize as the body grows rigid. This power may be used to "play dead" and look the part, or to curse another with the appearance of the walking dead.

System: The vampire must touch her target for this power to take effect. If the Necromancer assumes this form, she merely spends a blood point. If attempting to use this power on another, the character's player spends a blood point and makes a Stamina + Occult roll (difficulty equal to the victim's Stamina +3). The effects of this power last until the next dawn or dusk, when the shriveled individual slowly regains her normal state over the course of an hour. While under the effects of the Reaper's Shroud, characters lose two points from their Dexterity and Appearance Traits (to a minimum of 1). Vampires may spend two blood points to reverse the effects of Reaper's Shroud.

LEVEL 2 Blight
This power allows the vampire to accelerate the aging and decrepitude processes in his intended victim. The subject suffers the effects of old age: brittle bones, dry and thin skin and various rheumatic pains among others. Some victimshave even acquired certain ailments normally experienced by the elderly, including bone diseases and arthritis..

System: The vampire must touch his intended victim. The player then rolls Manipulation + Medicine (difficulty equal to the victim's Willpower) and spends one point of Willpower. If this roll is successful, the target suffers the debilitating effects of advanced age. For the duration of this power (until the next dusk or dawn), the target, Cainite or otherwise, must subtract three points from all Physical At-tributes (to a minimum of 1). Vampires and ghouls affected in this manner may still spend blood points to increase their Physical Attributes.

Mortals who undertake stressful activity while affected by Blight run the risk of heart failure. For each round the mortal continues strenuous activity, the player must make a Stamina roll (difficulty 6). if the roll fails, the mortal suffers a heart attack.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Resume The Coil
This power allows vampires to wrench themselves free from death's long slumber. A character who possesses this level of mastery may throw off the darkness of torpor or aid another in doing so.

System: The player spends two Willpower points. She then makes a Willpower roll, for which the difficulty is ten minus the target's Humanity or path rating. Obviously, the vampire uses her own rating if attempting to rouse herself from torpor. For example, if a vampire seeks to rise from torpor and has a Path of Death and the Soul score of 5, his difficulty for the Willpower roll is 5. If the vampire wishes to awaken another Cainite in torpor, she must touch that vampire. If the vampire so raised entered torpor because of a lack of blood, she awakens with one blood point in her veins.

LEVEL 4 True Death
The Necromancer may temporarily cheat the Curse of Caine, albeit briefly, by becoming truly dead. While invoking this power, the character suffers none of the traditional banes against vampires. He is not burned by sunlight, holy water does not harm him, and he does not rise from the dead each night. He has literally become a corpse.

System: There is no cost to assume the corpse-body, but awakening from the slumber requires two blood points. While the character is in corpse form, he may obviously take no actions, nor may he use any Disciplines, even "automatic" ones like Fortitude. The corpse-vampire does not consume blood nightly-he retains the same amount of blood as he did when he entered the state of True Death (remember that it costs two blood points to leave the corpse state), which may prove damning should anyone cut him open in the interim. A character who has been staked through the heart is still paralyzed when he returns to vampiric consciousness. This power has no maximum duration, other than the time the vampire chooses to remain dead.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Mercy for Seth
Named after nortals--the Children of Seth--this power casues a victim to contract a virulent plague, similar to the epidemics of the 11th through 15th centuries (the Black Plage, the Red Death, etc). This illness casues death within 24 hours for mortals and send vampires to torpor within the same period of time. Mortal victims of plague exhibit terrible plague symtopms -- sunken eyes, blackened limbs, bloody sweat and excretions, swollen nodes and weeping lesions.

System: The vampire touches her victim, and the player must spend one blood point (which must come in contact with the victim to communicate the plague) and one Willpower point. The player also rolls Stamina + Occult (difficulty equal to the target's Willpower). Success indicates that the vampire has afflicted his victim with plague, who dies or succumbs to torpor within 24 hours.


The Vitreous Path (Control Over Wraiths and Oblivion)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Eyes of the Dead
The necromancer employing Eyes of the Dead can literally see through the eyes of any wraiths around her, allowing her to use the wraith's Deathsight. Of course, if there are no wraiths present, the power is useless. On the upside, at least for the necromancers, a few of the Restless may almost always be found wandering around. To an experienced manipulatorof ghostly energies, the auras of surrounding beings give off tell tale hints as to their health and may indicate their emotions or desires; the necromancer can see the energies of death and passion flowing through everyone, just as wraiths can.

Use of this power is often disorienting to the necromancer and they do nto always understand what they are seeing. Their perception of things not in the Underworld while this power is in use is hindered badly. Used properly, this power can let the caster determine whether someone is injured, diseased or dying, and also whether the inidvidual labors under any sort of curses or baleful magic. The effect lasts for one scene, though can be terminated prematurely at will.

LEVEL 2 Hour of Death
Much like Eyes of the Dead, this power allows the necromancer to see with the perceptions of the Restless Dead. The difference is that this power grants the necromancer himself Deathsight instead of borrowing the perceptions of a wraith, and this vision gives much greater details. By looking at the entropic markings on a person's body, the necromancer can gain rough knowledge of how fat that person is from death, how soon that person is likely to die and even what the cause of her death is likely to be. Conversely, the aptterns of auras also tell when a person is agitated or excited and allow the death magician to gauge someone's feelings towards another individual when the two first meet. This is not an exact science by any means, but the power is extremely useful to give the necromancer an edge over those she scrutinizes.

Many necromancers actually use this talent to be at the right place and time to capture a newly departing soul. It can gauge from within a few weeks to time of death up to revealing where when and how the person will die, according to how well used the power is. The effects last for one scene.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Soul Judgement
Wraiths seem to possess a Beast, much like vampires, though their "Shadows" are often less brutish. By using Soul Judgement, the necromancer determines whether the wraith is currently influenced by his darker passions. That knowledge can be very useful, as many necromancers prefer to barter with apparitions rather than merely trying to force the wraiths into subservience. Knowing the aspect of a wraith with which the death magician is dealing means knowing whether or not to discuss matters of importance with the wraith at that time. Many necromancers take this affair one level further, dealing with the Shadow and the normal wraith in separate matters and never letting on to either just what the other half is doing.

LEVEL 4 Breath of Thanatos
The Breath of Thanatos allows the necromancer to draw out entropic energy and focus it upon an area or person. Often, the death magician literally takes a deep breath and then forcefully exhales a fog of mephitic energy. This cloud of virulence is completely invisible to anyone without the ability to see the passing of entropy (as with lower levels of this path). The energy of this cloud is like a beacon for Spectres, and they are drawn to the entropic force like moths to a flame. There is no obligation on the part of Spectres to behave themselves, and the necromancer had best have a plan for what to do with them once they've arrived -- which is why most Vitreous Path necromancers also learn other paths.

Once the energy is pulled from the necromancer's body, she can either disperse it over a large area as a lure for Spectres or use the mist for somewhat more sinister purposes. Channeled into an object or person, the death mist inflicts the subject with an unwholesome, negative aspect, and may actually cause injury. Furthermore, the focused energies are tainted and eerie, and though generally invisible, they tend to cause people and animals to feel discomfort around the victim.

This power requires the spending of one blood point, or trait. If dispersed, the area covered is roughly a quarter mile in radius, centered around the necromancer. It lasts for one scene.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Soul Feasting
Just as the necromancer can draw Oblivion from within, she may also pull external entropic energies into herself as a source of power. Soul Feasting allows the caster to either draw on the ambient death energies around her or to actively feed on a wraith, stealing the wraith's substance and mystically transforming that energy into a rude sustenance.

Drawing on energies around her, death must have occurred within one hour or be in a place where death is common, such as a cemetary, a morgue, or the scene of a recent murder. This energy may onkly be draiend once, until the area's energy replenishes. When feeding from a wraith, the vampire must actually attack the wraith as if feeding normally. While feeding, she is vulenrable from attacks both in the physical world and from the Underworld, and exists in sort of a half state, both in the land of the living and in the Underworld. The wraith so attacked is immoblilized and cannot run or escape, unless it can defeat the vampire via high willpower.


Necromancy Rituals

The rituals connected with Necromancy are a hodgepodge lot. Some have direct relations to the Paths, others seem to have been taught by wraiths themselves, for whatever twisted reason. All beginning necromancers begin with one Level One ritual, but any others learned must be gained through in-game play. Necromantic rituals are otherwise identical to Thamaturgy rituals (pp. 182~185) and are lurned in similar fashion, though the two are by no means compatible.

System: Casting times for necromantic rituals vary widely; see the description for particulars. The player rolls Intelligence + Occult (Difficulty 3 + the level of the ritual, maximum 9); success indicates the ritual preceeds smoothly, failure preceeds with no effect, and a botch often indicates that certian "powers" notice the caster, usually to her detriment

LEVEL 1
Call of the Hungry Dead
Call of the Hungry Dead takes only 10 minutes to cast and requires a hair from the target's head. The ritual climaxes with the burning of that hair in the flame of a black candle, after which the victim becomes able to hear snatches of conversation from across the Shroud.If the target is not prepared, the voices come as a confusing welter of howls and unearthly demands; he is unable to make out any thing intelligible, and might well go briefly mad.

Eldritch Beacon
Eldritch Beacon takes 15 minutes to cast. The material component will be a green candle, the melted wax from which must be collected and molded into a half-inch sphere. Whoever carries this sphere, whether in his hand or in a pocket, is highlighted in the Shadowlands with a sickly-glowing green-white aura. All wraithy powers affect this individual with greater ease and severity(Storytellers using Wraith the Oblivion should apply -1 dificulty to all Arconoi affecting the bearer of the beacon). The sphere retains its power for one hour per success on the casting roll.

LEVEL 2
Eyes of the Grave
This ritual, which takes 2 hours to cast, causes the target to experiance intermittent visions of her death over the period of a week.the visions come without warning and can last up to a minute. The caster has not idea what the visions contain -- only the victim sees them after all. Each time the visions manifest, the target must roll Courage (difficulty 7) or be redused to a quivering panic. The visions, which come randomly, can also interfere with activities such as driving, shooting, and so on.

Eyes of the Grave requires a pinch of soil from a fresh grave

Puppet
Used primarilly to facilitate conversation with the recently departed, though also applied as a method of psychological torture. Puppet prepares a subject (willing or unwilling) as a suitable receptical for ghostly possession. Over the course of an hour the necromancer smears grave soil over the subjects eyes, lips, and forehead. For the remainder of the night, any wraith attempting to take control of the subject gains two automatic successes. The ritual's effects remain even if the soil is washed off.

LEVEL 3
Ritual of the Unearthed Fetters
This ritual requires that a necromancer have a fingerbone from the skeleton of the particular wraith he's interested in. When the ritual is cast, the fingerbone becomes attuned to something vitally important to the wraith, the possession of which by the necromancer makes the casting of Sepulchre Path powers much easier. Most necromancers take the attuned fingerbone and suspend it from a thread, allowing it to act as sort of a supernatural compass and following it to the special item in question.

Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter takes three hours to cast properly. It requires both the name of the wraith targeted and the fingerbone already mentioned, as well as a chip knocked off a gravestone or other marker (not necessarily the marker of the bone's formal owner). During the course of the ritual the stone crumbles to dust, which is then sprinkled over the fingerbone.

Din of the Damned
This ritual is similar to the Level One Ritual Call of the Hungry Dead (See Vampire the Masqureade p 165) in that it makes the sounds of the Underworld audible in the physical realm. However Din of the Damned is an area-effect ritual used to ward a room against evesdropping. Over the course of a half-hour, the necromancer draws an unbroken line of ash from a crematorium along the walls (this line may pass over doorframes to allow enterance and egree). For the rest of the night, any attempting to listen in on events inside the room, be it simple (a glass to the Wall), electronic (a lazer microphone), or mystic (Heightened Senses), requires the evesdropper to score more successes in a Preception + Occult roll (difficulty 7) than the caster of the ritual scored. Failure to beat this mark gives the listener and earful of ghostly wailing and moaning and the sound of howling winds; a botch deafens him for the rest of the night.

LEVEL 4
Cadavar's Touch
By chanting for three hours and melting a wax doll in the shape of the target, the necromancer turns a mortal target into a corpselike mockery of himself. As the doll loses the last of its form, the target becomes cold and clammy. His pulse becomes weak and thready, his flesh pale and chalky. For all intents and purposes, he becomes a reasonable facsimile of the walking dead. Needless to say, this can have some adverse effects in social situations (+2 difficulty on all Social rolls). The effects of the ritual wear off only when the wax of the doll is permitted to resolidify. If the wax is allowed to boil off, the spell is broken.

Peek Past the Shroud
This hour long ritual enchants a handful of ergot (a mold that grows on grain prior to harvest in cold, damp weather)to act as a catalyst for second sight. By eating a pinch of the magical mold, a subject gains the benefits of Shroudsight (Ash Path Necromancy Level One, p. 164 Vampire the Masqurade) for a number of hours equal to the necromancers Stamina score. Three doses of the enchanted ergots are created for every success on the roll. Ergot is normally poisonous to some degree; this ritual removes its toxic properties. However a botch renders the ergot highly and instantaniously toxic, inflicting eight dice of lethal damage on any subject who ingests it -- including vampires

LEVEL 5
Grasp of the Ghostly
Requiring a full six hours of chanting, this ritual allows a necromancer to bring an object from the Underworld into the real world. It's not as simple as that, however -- a wraith might well object to having his possessions stolen and fight back. Furthermore, the object taken must be replaced by a material item of roughly equal mass, otherwise the target of the ritual snaps back to its previous, ghostly existence.

Objects taken from the Underworld tend to fade away after about a year. Only items recently destroyed in the real world (called "relics" by wraiths) may be recaptured in this manner. Artifacts created by wraiths themselves were never meant to exist outside the Underworld, and vanish on contact with the living world.

Chill of Oblivion
Preformed over the course of 12 hours (Reduced by one hour per success on the casting roll), this ritual infuses the Necromancer, or willing subject, with the very cold of the grave. The ritual's material component is a one-foot cube of ice, which is slowly melted on the subject's chest (inflicting three health levels of bashing damage on mortal subjects). The subject must lie naked on the bare earth for the entire duration of the ritual. Once the ritual is completed, its effects remain for a number of nights equal to the caster's Ocullt rating.

An individual affected by Chill of Oblivion, treats aggravated damage from fire and high tempertures as if they were lethal damage. Furthermore, he may attempt to extinguish any fire by rolling Willpower (difficulty 9); each success reduces the fire soak difficulty (see Vampire the Masqurade, p227) by 1 and a fire and a fire with a soak difficulty of 2 dwindles to glowing embers. However, this ritual has several drawbacks. First and foremost, the subjects arua is laced with writhing black veins the resemble those that are left by diablorie and may well be mistaken for such by any observer who is not familiar with this ritual. The subject also radiates a palpable aura of cold that extends to about arm's length from him; this can be extremely disconcerting to mortals, though it causes no damage, its game effects mirror those of the Flaws: Touch of Frost and Eerie Presence. Finally The mystical nimbus of the ritual draws hostile ghosts to the subject (for Storytellers using Wraith the Oblivion, the difficulties of all Dark Arcanoi used against the character are reduced by 3 while the ritual is in effect), who may plague him with unwholesome acts..