Spiritualist / Medium (human only)

Where others see only shadows and silence, you perceive whispers from beyond. Spiritualists walk the fragile boundary between the living world and the unseen realm of spirits, ghosts, and echoes of forgotten places. In parlors heavy with incense or on mist-shrouded streets, you serve as a medium, a negotiator, or a hunter of lingering souls.

The Spiritualist is not merely a mystic, they are part scholar, part performer, and part wanderer of the spirit world. Some are solemn and priest-like, tending to the departed with reverence; others are theatrical showmen, playing to gaslit crowds while secretly aware that their visions are very real. The best of them learn to listen for the truth beneath the veil of death: to ask the right questions, to bind restless shades, and to draw strength from the world beyond.

Acceptance

Its widely known spiritualists exist, its also known that more than half of them are charlatans. They can do the miraculous and if the queen herself has one in her employ they must be a good thing.

System

All abilities are accessible you choose a selection from the list twice a day.
On contemplation every sunrise or sunset pick Quintessence number of cost points of abilities, (can take multiples) that can be used through out that day or night. The quintessence is not spent until the ability is used so is accessible for other purposes.

Cost: is number of actions it takes to produce the effect as well as quintessence cost.

Requirements
Skill :Spiritualist at least +1
Merit Spiritualist

Visions of the Dead

• Cost: 1
• Range: Vicinity (10 yards)
• Difficulty: 0 (ghost must be willing; +2 if hostile or reluctant)
• Duration: minutes of fragmented impressions
• Description: With a meditative focus (incense, a charm, or simple stillness), you open yourself to visions offered by spirits nearby. The visions are hazy, symbolic, and never wholly reliable — a ghost’s memory or temperament can colour the truth. The ghost decides what to show you.

Words of the Dead

• Cost: 1
• Range: Vicinity (10 yards)
• Difficulty: 0 (ghost must be willing; +2 if reluctant)
• Duration: minutes of conversation
• Description: A refinement of Visions. You can hear the words of spirits directly in your mind or whispered aloud. The communication may be cryptic, fragmented, or influenced by the ghost’s emotional state. Again the ghost decides what you may experience.

Show the Dead

• Cost: 1
• Range: 30 yards radius
• Difficulty: 0
• Duration: Rounds
• Description: This operation enables the Spiritualist to make invisible ghosts appear inside of the radius. The ghost appears as a blueish outline of its original appearance, as if done by a sketch artist. These apparitions cannot be seen if gazed on directly but can be seen from the corner of your eye or in reflections.

Compel the Dead

• Cost: 2
• Range: Site-specific or with personal relic of the ghost
• Difficulty: 2 (modified by strength of connection: 0 with strong relic, +4 if tenuous)
• Duration: 10 minutes per success
• Description: Using a relic of the ghost or a haunted location, you force a ghost to present itself and interact with you. The ghost must at least manifest a sign — cold wind, rattling objects, a whispered word. Ghosts compelled in this way rarely appreciate the intrusion. This is best used with visions or Words of the dead but if neither is present the ghost in question must at least make their presence known through use of whatever means they have.

Summon the Dead

• Cost: 3
• Range: 5 yards
• Difficulty: 0 -3 dependant on willingness of ghost
• Duration: Concentration
• Preparation time: 30 minutes
• Description: With a item of import to the ghost or at a place associated with their death you can call a ghost to you and away from their haunt. Some ghosts might be thank full for a change in scene others might resent the interruption.

Séance

• Cost: 3
• Range: self
• Difficulty: 0
• Duration: Concentration
• Preparation time: 1 hour
• Description: You allow a specific ghost to inhabit your body. The ghost must be in the vicinity and must be spoken to by the spiritualist before this can be attempted. Once possessed you can override it at any time but it can speak and move using your body. Maintaining with link is hard work and can be done for a period of up to Resolve times three minutes. Most spirits are very keen for this and may consider it a boon.

Drain the Dead

• Cost: 2
• Range: Vicinity (5 yards)
• Difficulty: 3
• Duration: Instant
• Description: You can drain what little life remains from a ghost in your vicinity, passing that life on to yourself or others you are touching. Depending on the nature of the ghost this will at least close wounds and may provide a full cure for any aliment or injury. This will very likely destroy or disrupt the ghost. This act is very likely to make enemies within the spiritual peoples, some Ghosts though will give of them selves willingly to help those they cared for in life.

Strike the dead

• Cost: 1
• Difficulty: 0
• Range: Touch
• Duration: Rounds
• Description: This operation enables the Spiritualist to coat a hand-held object with his or her essence. During the duration the coated object can affect ghosts and other incorporeal dead as if they were solid. Coating a firearm has no effect unless used as a bludgeon; Missiles may be coated but they must be held in the hand to have any effect.

Raise the dead

• Cost: 3
• Range: Touch
• Difficulty: 3 (5 if ghost resistant)
• Duration: minutes to permanent casters choice.
• Description: The spiritualist can call a ghost back to its body, the spiritualist needs both to be in the vicinity. The raised dead can choose to resist or not. Once raised they are limited by what ever state their physical body is in.

Banishment

• Cost: 2
• Range: 30 yards
• Difficulty: 3
• Duration: 1d6 hours banishment; +1 cost per extra die longer (max 24 hours)
• Description: By invoking a spirit’s true name, you banish it from the world. The ghost is not destroyed, merely scattered. Some return angrier than before those who have experienced it are keen to avoid a second taste.

Eat the dead

• Cost: 2
• Difficulty: 0 - 5 see below
• Range: Touch
• Duration: Days unless failed Fort check then initiatives
• Description: Ghosts are not always willing to meet the demands of a Spiritualist this can be problematic at times. There is a work around to force a ghost to submit, distasteful as it may be. If you consume part of their physical body while that morsel remains in your system they cannot act against you or resist you. You need their corpse, cremated ashes are not sufficient you need to eat one quarter pound of their remains and you need to keep it down. A fresh corpse requires a fortitude check to keep down, a rotten corpse fortitude check is rolled with three black dice. The older the remains the milder the ghosts connection to its corpse. The spiritualist roll is difficulty 0 for a corpse a day old, 1 for a corpse a week old, 2 for a corpse a month old, 3 of a corpse a year old, 4 for a corpse a century old and 5 for a corpse a up to a millennia old.

Create Ghost

• Cost: 5
• Range: Touch
• Difficulty: 6 (opposed)
• Duration: Permanent
• Description: You convert the person from a physical being to that of a Ghost, if resisted a complete failure occurs (resisted with Resolve + Fortitude). It takes 30 seconds for the target to fade from the physical world leaving nothing behind. A good way to make ghostly enemies but leaves no corpse behind.

Final Glimpse

• Cost: 2
• Range: touch
• Difficulty: Variable
• Duration: Instant
• Description: Some say that the last image that a sapient sees remains on his retinas after death. While this is false, a spiritualist can tap into the last traces within a corpse to ‘see’ what the sapient saw while becoming a spirit or dying. As this is not a literal image the spiritualist may see anything from a moment to a few seconds. Difficulty 0 for first hour after the sapient dies increasing by +1 for every 12 hours after.

Binding

• Cost: 3 (ritual cost, blood/ink)
• Range: Self
• Difficulty: 3 (5 for resistant ghost)
• Duration: Permanent until writing made unreadable.
• Description: Bind a ghost to your person. A bound ghost changes its place of residence to your physical presence. Enabling them to always be in your vicinity. A bound ghost has a tendency to protect its home and think better of it than it did before. It does not mean any ghost appreciated being up rooted though. A ghost is bound by writing its name on you, some wanting a ghost to stay longer will get the name representing them tattooed.

Cross the Veil

• Cost: 5 (ritual, poisons, or controlled death state)
• Range: Self
• Difficulty: 4 (roll each minute spent; failure means cord weakens)
• Duration: 1 minute per Resolve safely; beyond this risks permanent death
• Description: You can die and leave your body going into the realm of the dead and seeing what they see. This is very dangerous in two ways.
• Your body has to die, there are poisons and doctors that can help with this, drowning is popular. You will need someone to bring you back at the right time though. To early you loose time in the realm or the dead, to late and you go beyond the point of saving.
• The realm of the dead is not a safe place to be. You are linked to your dead body with a silver cord. If this is broken you are lost and loose the capacity to return to your body.
• While in the ghost realm you can travel at speeds of around 200 miles per hour in flight. You can of course see all ghosts and impressions with in your line of sight.
• A minute is a reasonable time and most revived suffer no lasting damage. The wise though can often detect something of a person that saw beyond the Veil, it leaves a spiritual mark on a person.