It’s the most spookiest time of the year! (I guess. To be honest, the only reason this month feels any different from last month for me is now my garden is dead. Spooky!)
It turns out, ghosts are a pretty major feature of this game. That was not one of my original design intentions, but as development has gone on, ghosts have featured quite prominently in my writing (and in the playtest campaign).
So, let’s go over what we even mean by “ghost” in this game. Ghosts are a kind of “shade”. Shades are spiritual creatures intimately linked to death. This includes reanimated corpses and skeletons, as well as dangerous spirits like the lilin. Ghosts are spirits of the dead, having left their bodies behind. They are immaterial shades, touching the physical world in limited ways. There are a few types of ghosts:
Phantoms: These are not true ghosts. They’re not even actual souls; rather, they are shadows of the memories of the dead. They are translucent spirits that seem to swim through the air and have incomplete physical forms (usually no legs). They’re basically “sheet ghosts”. Many phantoms obsessively repeat a certain action, playing out a memory of a past event.
Phantoms were partially (significantly) inspired by the ghost enemies in the old arcade game Gauntlet. I like the idea of them as ghostly counterparts to your basic undead walking corpses and skeletons. They are not complex or powerful, though they can be very difficult to hurt if the group is not prepared, because of their immaterial nature.
Haunts: These are the souls of the dead who remain in this world out of a need to accomplish a personal goal. Their soul fuses to a certain place (often their home), and that place becomes the ghost’s whole world. They can be anywhere in the place they haunt, and they can manipulate things in that area (poltergeist-style), but they cannot even perceive the world outside of that place. They will pass on when their goal is accomplished, or when they are exorcised.
Haunts are what I originally just called “ghosts” when I started writing. They have a great deal of narrative possibility, being intelligent creatures with a clear need and an inability to travel (meaning they often need help). They can also create hectic battles, given their invisibility, control over the environment and immaterial form. While the base stats below are somewhat weak (7 hit points isn’t much), the intention is that you would add class levels to the haunt to reflect knowledge and training from their life. The ghost of a tailor will likely not be a skilled combatant, compared to the ghost of a knight or a sorcerer.
Specters: These are wandering souls. They detached from their body at death, driven by an obsession. They cannot find rest until they find peace with this obsession. Specters are still in early development. These are the kinds of ghosts that might stalk the roads or the forest — urban legend stuff.
Dybbuks: Dybbuks are ghosts that possess the bodies of the living by invisibly clinging to them. They cannot directly affect the world except through possession. These souls remain in this world usually because they feel betrayed. Dybbuks are not always vengeful; many dybbuks are just depressed. They seek to force others to correct the betrayal in some way. They will pass on when they either accomplish this, forgive their betrayers or are exorcised. Dybbuks are ghosts from Jewish folklore. The concepts and themes are pretty well defined, but I don’t have complete rules for dybbuks yet.
Ibburs: Ibburs are ghosts that enter the bodies of the living and share knowledge and power with them. Ibburs remain in this world because they need to help someone. Unlike dybbuks, ibburs don’t control their hosts — they merely empower them to accomplish the ibbur’s goal. Like the dybbuk, ibburs are broadly based on Jewish folklore; ibbur is the soul of a holy person entering someone’s body to get them to accomplish some good thing. I broadened the idea somewhat (the ibbur is not necessarily holy, for example), to allow for greater possibilities.
I will likely have the ibbur grant their host bonuses similar to those associated with high ability scores (but not actually directly modifying your scores), so a strong ibbur gives you +2 to all damage rolls, while a wise ibbur gives you +2 to all saving rolls. They’ll probably also be able to grant bonuses based on the character class, but similarly, not actually granting you class levels.
An ibbur could be a helpful ghost, granting a player character a bonus to help it out, or it could be a dangerous foe, empowering one enemy after another to defeat the characters.
Ghosts in Action
In our playtest campaign, the heroes have had several encounters with ghosts, specifically haunts and phantoms. One episode really highlights the versatility of ghosts as the basis for an adventure (or at least a single encounter).
As the heroes were exploring the Merchant District of the abandoned town of Harzgard (see the last post), they came upon a small neighborhood called Banker’s Row. If was a street lined with big houses with small fenced-in yards out front. This contrasted with most of the rest of the town, which was made up of tiny houses built with little or no space between them.
Most of the houses in this neighborhood were fully evacuated and cleaned out, like most houses in Harzgard. Three houses in the middle of Banker’s Row stood out, as their doors were closed and they were clearly not cleaned out. Curtains still hung in the windows. They decided to check out the three houses.
In the first house, they opened the door and immediately heard shouting. “Boy! Is that you? Get in here!” They cautiously entered (since they had met no other people in this town up to this point), and they announced their presence. The house was mostly empty, with a few packed wooden crates. They entered the main hall and found the source of the yelling: The ghostly form of a well-dressed man, sitting by the fireplace.
They talked to the ghost (a haunt), and found out that he was an Imperial knight who still believed he was alive and evacuating the town. He had no sense of what was going on outside, nor did he realize how long he had been there. Ghostly Sir Everett was just disappointed that they were not “the boy”, who was supposed to be loading his cart. The ghost demanded a favor of them: his neighbor, Friar Ammon, had scammed him out of some money, and he wanted Ammon to be held responsible.
They agreed. They didn’t want to antagonize the ghost, who kept a prized warhammer above his fireplace. In the neighbor’s house, they saw a number of paintings and Imperial holy objects hanging on the walls. This house was sparse, but definitely the home of a religious person. They were greeted by a pleasant voice, and saw the ghostly form of Friar Ammon.
Friar Ammon was affable and, unlike Everett, fully aware that he was dead. He talked to the characters and they learned about the business relationship between Ammon and Everett: Friar Ammon convinced Sir Everett to invest in a merchant, and they did their business through their neighbor, a banker named Lady Martine.
The deal fell apart, and Ammon and Everett lost all their money, and owed even more to Martine. Martine stole a valuable statue of a saint from Ammon to squeeze him for money, and Everett blamed Ammon for the whole thing. Then, the three died, but Ammon couldn’t remember how.
Ammon needed them to get his statue back, so they went to investigate the third house, and as they explored, they were accosted by various household objects (including all of the jars in the pantry). They were set upon by floating phantoms, and had to fight their way through the house, driving the invisible haunt of Lady Martine back while fighting wave after wave of phantoms. One of the adventurers, Agorak, is a holy man, an orc pilgrim with the Sanctifier skill. This makes him holy and allows him to bless others so that they are holy. This was important to the battle, as these shades are weak against holy things, and their immaterial trait doesn’t protect against holy things.
The haunt’s invisibility meant they were frequently hiding and looking for chances to strike, and the phantoms just kept coming. Eventually, then made it up to the master bedroom on the second floor, and found that the phantoms were crawling out of a foot locker. The group set to destroy the locker, and Tony, blessed by Agorak, delivered a killing blow to Lady Martine, exorcising her.
Martine was not a normal haunt. She had no intention of passing on, and she had developed life-draining powers. She was also just extra powerful: she had several “Predator” levels. (Predator is a character class that can be given to animals and monsters to make them more dangerous. Normally, a ghost would get normal class levels (if any), but Martine’s cruelty and predatory nature made Predator feel right.) The phantoms were reflections of other people she killed and drained.
The heroes found Martine’s money and ledger, Ammon’s statue, and some other valuables. They took the statue back to Ammon, after chugging several healing potions. The statue was of the patron saint of healers. When they returned it to Ammon, he thanked them, glowed brightly and disappeared. This light healed everyone completely. I couldn’t help but laugh that they had insisted on stopping to handle most of their healing first.
They returned Everett’s investment to him as well, and he also passed on, leaving his powerful warhammer behind.
While these encounters were all quite basic, they were a great opportunity to incorporate more roleplay and storytelling into a dungeon crawl, without missing out on the dungeon crawling.
I actually planned to have Everett attack them originally, but they handled the situation just right to work with him instead.
Next week: The playtest campaign’s hunt for the Beast Ogre!