The Ghost

I based Angela's ghost on the Unraveled presented in the Vodacce book. Her fully-manifested spectral appearance, the attacks with the black strands, and her stat generation came from those guidelines. "The easiest way to make an Unraveled," the book advises the GM, "is to make a Fate Witch and then kill her." Her stats get certain penalities and bonuses, she keeps her Sorte, and gains the lash attack and parry Knacks. Like most classic walking dead, they have an irrational hatred for the living.

The prohibition against entering churches didn't work at all for me, since I needed Angela to be in Santa Sophia. So that went out the window. Whether or not she could attack priests would hopefully be irrelevant; I decided early on that she couldn't perceive Angelo at all. I waffled on that for a while, trying to decide if a post-mortem brother-sister heart-to-heart would be more or less emotionally interesting than having her so apparently close, yet still utterly gone to him. I went with the second and think it was the better choice; I have no idea how I might've role-played any kind of coherent conversation with the demented spirit.

Her gradual phasing in and resumption of her physical form was just a special effect. I liked the idea of Gianina first seeing her as this twisted, malevolent knot of Sorte strands, but wanted her to be more like Angela by the time of the final confrontation.

I had to do a lot of hand-waving to myself to explain why she had never started haunting earlier. Teodora's Fate Knot on Pietra "explains" why the spirit had never previously perceived her daughter. The ghost could only see the world through its strands, and she was prevented from directly feeling Pietra's. Plenty of people knew Pietra was alive, but didn't know she was related to Angela. A few people knew Angela had a daughter, but none of them knew Pietra was alive. Ellen knew both, but never had any strands to Angela. When Tomasso met her, it was like a fly hitting a spiderweb. Now that he knew, his old strands to his sister connected the ghost to Pietra. I suppose she still couldn't directly sense Pietra, but now she could feel out her position in the weave of Fate. Once there, she realized that there was someone else who knew about her and her daughter: Ellen's contact with Pietra led the ghost to her as well. Ilara, the benandanta, was still safe after Angelo told her about Pietra - like Ellen, she had no strands to Angela, so the ghost didn't sense her. But then she asked to meet the girl, and the ghost was again alerted when she observed the blank spot that she now knew was really her daughter.

I don't think Angela was ashamed of her seduction of Antonio. That all went according to her plan. The main goal, the one that guided her Sorte, was to get the Caligari suitor out of the picture. She thought, as that unfolded, that she could also use events to her further advantage - getting Antonio disowned so that one of her brothers could take the Donati title. There really wasn't supposed to be a baby. Really, really wasn't. I don't think Angela was prepared for a living, continuing reminder of her sins, and certainly not for the failure of her subplots. She found herself removed from the Donati home, away from the strands she needed to manipulate - out of the loop and unable to control things just when she thought they needed guidance most.

The baby, a symbol of her failure, was a stain on her pride and her honor; Angela was unwilling to permit either. When her mother prevented her from destroying the baby girl, she tried to erase both by taking her secrets to the grave with her, after sorcerously binding her mother to kill Pietra instead.

Since shame and failure were the things that drove the ghost, I tried to incorporate those into its attacks and other behaviors. When her second spider-assault on Tomasso failed, she was mightily frustrated. The sudden wave of Sorte at the funeral was a "special effects" ghostly scream - Angela projecting her own sense of shame out, like a scream, and everyone who "heard" it was suddenly feeling their own deepest shame. That's also why her Fate Lashes manifested as wounds that had been taken as a result of failures: plans gone awry, typically.

Not knowing how the game was going to go at all when Angela first appeared, I made her up so that the party could take her. The ability to do automatic Dramatic Wounds is pretty significant, especially when the PCs have low Resolve and Angela's was pretty high. I figured her Brawn ought to be low, since her twin was only Brawn 1 until just recently. Then I gave her that tiny Panache, so that she'd at least only be doing 1 DW per round. I made her relatively easy to hit, since you guys are beginning PCs, not skill-monsters like our Sunday game characters. I thought someone might be Crippled by the end of the fight, but nobody should have been dead.

And then you sicced a high Panache, high Finesse, high Fencing skill NPC on her. Poor ghost never really had a chance.