Spirits come from the ephemeral realm, the mostly intangible plane that overlaps our own. They embody concepts and ideas; are representations of objects, memories, and emotions. They only know the world from a single perspective, but within that perspective they are the experts. Spirits freely travel between the material and physical realms.
A spiritualist communicates and interacts with the spirits in both realms, our own and the ephemeral. They cut deals with spirits for a variety of work; recon, consulting, and for temporary power. Similar to how magi specialize in spell crafting knowledge, spiritualists also specialize on particular spiritual concepts. Although they can deal and communicate with any spirit that they can see, a spiritualist can only see and actively summon spirits related to their personal specializations, known as spirit knacks.
The LARP variation of this legacy can be found HERE
Playstyle
A spiritualist literally sees the world differently than others. They see parts of the ephemeral plane overlapping with our world, and much of the “life” that exists within it. A spiritualist is rarely alone. They deal with a hierarchy that can seem entirely separate from our world, with creatures yielding the intelligence of an insect and entities that many consider godlike. They deal with an ecosystem largely dependent on the events and emotions within out world.
Consider playing a spiritualist if you want the history and emotional tone of a location to affect your options just as much as the physical scenery. Play a spiritualist if you want to socialize and deal with beings of limited awareness and a wide scope of intelligence and powers. Consider a spiritualist if you want to not just be an expert on a subject because your own skillset, but because you have resources to consult that others simply cannot reach out to.
References: TBD
Visual Identity
A spiritualist’s distinctive features are notably in their seeming aloofness, as they watch interactions most cannot see, and speak with beings most cannot hear. Consider how well your character covers their aloofness. Consider what spirits have had a positive, negative, or more questionable impact in the character’s life.
Signature Ability: Third Eye
A spiritualist sees two worlds. They see any parts of the ephemeral realm and its inhabitants related to the spiritualist’s own spirit knacks. They may not have the full picture of how spirits are interacting with each other, but for a select few, the spiritualist can monitor and communicate with freely.
Beyond simply interacting with the local spiritual wildlife, they can also summon spirits to their location; taking an action to summon a spirit either by name or a random one with resonance connected to a spiritualist’s knacks. Summoned spirits always appear in the ethereal realm nearby the caller, and only if a spirit chooses to answer the summon.
As spirits come in ranks, a spiritualist can always summon the lowest rank of spirits with something as simple as a physical bribe which resonates with it. To summon an unnamed greater spirit, up to rank 4, the spiritualist must spend some of their own essence (mark to summon rank 2, 3, or 4). Summoning does not grant immediate power though, and higher ranked spirits are more likely to request a greater deed than lower ranked spirits.
The Limitations of a Spiritualist’s Senses
Unless using an ability that gives them full visibility of the local spiritual wildlife, a spiritualist often has to use context clues to understand the movements of spirits. For example, a spiritualist with a knack for internet spirits may see many tiny spirits hover around the phones, computers, and powerlines of society. Some greater internet spirits may reside at datahubs or areas where many people traffic and browse the internet.
The spirits themselves see an inverse of what the spiritualist sees. While the spiritualist see everything in our material realm and only a specific segment of the ephemeral realm, spirits see everything in the ephemeral world and only a segment of our material world – the parts connected to their resonance. Only by fully manifesting in the other realm can one see and fully interact with it.
For example: a tree spirit can see, but not understand internet spirits. It can’t see the computers they inhabit though. It can see ephemeral and material trees. It might see the confusing spiritual imprint a computer could leave in the ephemeral world, but it doesn’t really understand it and is unable to see the real computer in the material world.
However, a tree spirit does understand the threat of fire, and will likewise react to avoid an electrical fire caused by a computer. A spiritualist with a knack for plants might not see spiritual fire but would likely notice the avoidance of plant spirits running away from something.
The Ephemeral Realm and Spirits
The realm most people interact and discuss is known by spiritualists as our Material Realm. Put simply, the material realm is the default perspective for spiritualists and player characters – it is where most things exist and happen. When discussing spirits, there is a second realm that overlaps with out own. The Ephemeral Realm is a murky, delayed reflection of the material realm. Everything in the ephemeral realm exists as the conceptional imprint of how they have resonated with living creatures in the material realm.
Spirits, buildings, rivers; everything exists as the imprint of an object, idea, event, memory, or emotion from the material world. This imprint, known as Resonance, defines a spirits understanding of the world and what they can see of the material world. Resonance not only defines a spirit’s view of reality, it also defines the type of environment in which the spirit can survive and what they need to consume to grow. As with everything in the ephemeral realm, spirits are made of Essence, the spiritual energy produced from creatures and events from the material realm. They must feed on essence with a similar resonance to their own. This is why nature-themed spirits are more likely to be found in a forest than a city.
Because the impact of how events and concepts have resonated with individuals constantly changes and is not strictly tied to location, the ephemeral realm is often a labyrinth of overlapping structures of varying tangibility. The bigger the impact something has on the material realm, the stronger its resonance, and thus its existence, in the ephemeral realm.
Even the perception of space can be different in the ephemeral realm. A boring subway may span miles further than its material counterpart, while twin landmarks may appear much closer than in reality. For spiritualist able to become ephemeral, knowing the spiritual landscape can help them travel vast distances in short amounts of time.
It’s wrong to think that ethereal spirits are entirely dependent on the happenings within the material world. A spirit can Influence objects and concepts within the material world that match the spirit’s resonance; manipulating them in ways to create more resonance to match their desires. Furthermore, some powerful spirits can manifests themselves into the material realm, putting them in similar shoes to a spiritualist – seeing and interacting with the material world with only a selective view of the ephemeral.
There is a world beyond the ephemeral realm, another realm that is not tied to the material realm; one where spirits exists unbound to resonance from just our familiar world. Some think it the realm of dreams, though others say that dreams only touch a small fragment of it. When a starved and unbound spirit vanishes, its believed they go to this other realm.
The Spirit Hierarchy
Spirits are loosely categorized within a pyramid of 5 ranks, with higher ranks more powerful and intelligent, but less and less common. Higher ranks have greater influence, with new abilities and the influences of all lesser ranks.
- Rank 1
Lesser spirits similar to insects and rodents. They generally only embody a single concept and barely understand communication not directly related to that concept. Their influence allows them to only faintly enhance or diminish a touched, existing manifestation of the spirit’s resonance. - Rank 2
Animalistic spirits with primal intelligence which can be trained to understand simple commands and behaviors. Dogs, cats, and similar animals. Their influence allows them to touch and manipulate the physical movement of resonant material objects, such as to open a door or roll a wheel. - Rank 3
Spirits of near-human intellect, including most human ghosts. Their influence allows them to bind themselves to a specific location once a day. Furthermore, they can now use their influences on anything far away. - Rank 4
Advanced spirits with great intelligence and power, acting as leaders of their domains and resonance. They can manifest themselves in the material realm at their leisure.
Their influence allows them to create a large manifestation of the resonance within the material realm. - Rank 5
Practical god-like entities with full knowledge of everything using and creating their resonance. These are creatures beyond legend and mortal comprehension. The rank itself simply exists as an acknowledgment to knowing more is always out there.
Essence: Spirit Food
Spirits survive and use powers in our world by burning their essence, their very existence. As the ephemeral realm interacts with the metaphysical aspects of the material realm, free essence is created in amounts proportional to the strength of the resonance connecting the two planes. Higher resonance means more essence.
- While in the ephemeral or material realm, spirits burn one essence per rank per day.
- While outside of the influence of their binding, spirits burn one essence per hour.
- A spirit gains essence equal to their rank per day that they spend near their binding.
- A spirit may also search the ephemeral realm for additional essence, hunting for resonant locations or lesser spirits.
- All spirits leave behind essence equal to their rank -1 after dying. When absorbing the remnant essence of a spirit of equal or greater rank, a spirit can become more powerful, gaining an influence and increasing its maximum essence up to an amount equal to the gained essence.
Most spirits appear in the ethereal realm bound to something; a person, location, or object. A Binding allows a spirit to stake out a claim of essence to regularly consume and survive off of. While a binding doesn’t physically restrain a spirit, it defines their home territory where hunting for food is less required. When bound to a creature’s who resonance doesn’t match the spirit’s, both the spirit and the creature slowly go mad, taking 1 burned mark of stress harm daily.
Essence resembles whatever created it, and similar spirits will slowly alter in behavior and appearance to take on traits from the essence that they eat. When a spirit eats essence created at the scene of a murder, they will likely take on traits of the emotions from that event. When a spirit eats another spirit, it will take on aspects of that spirit. As such, people can gain insight into a spirit’s behavior if they understand more about where the spirit has been getting essence. Whenever possible, spirits want to stay consistent and avoid complexities and conflicting resonances. Most will choose to starve and return to the realm beyond rather than drastically alter their own nature.
When a spirit absorbs a spirit of a different resonance it gains a new nature, one that may not be perfectly compatible with its old ones. Absorbing too many different resonances can create a Malignant, a spirit gone insane by their conflicting natures. Malignants can not bind themselves to anything and thus can only gather essence from the wild and by hunting other spirits. Malignants themselves aren’t entirely uncommon, as lesser Malignants form from unintelligent spirits and are hunted down by larger spirits who aren’t at risk of having their nature changed by a lesser influence. Malignants of higher ranks, 3 and up, are much rarer, but pose a much larger threat to the spiritual and material words.
Spiritual Powers
Spirits are just as diverse as any other creature, if not more so. However, there are a few abilities unique to spirits. To use a power a spirit must mark one of their tracks, spending some of their essence for the ability.
- Use Influence
Influence abilities can be used in any combination without additional marks.- Rank 1: Enhance/Diminish
Strengthen or weaken an existing manifestation of the spirit’s resonance. This can remove or create 1 cut on rolls related to that resonance. - Rank 2: Touch
The spirit can physically touch and move a material object, such as to open a door or roll a wheel. - Rank 3: Reach
The spirit can use their influences from a far away range. - Rank 4: Create
Create an actual manifestation of a spirit’s resonance within the material realm. The manifestation lasts until the end of the scene, and for physical materials can be up to medium amount.
- Rank 1: Enhance/Diminish
- Manifestation
The spirit creates a body made of ectoplasm for itself to inhabit and use in the material realm. While in this body, the spirit can see and physically interact with anything in the material realm regardless of its resonance. At the same time, they can only see parts of the ephemeral realm related to their resonance. Lastly, any damage the body takes is taken by the spirit. The spirit can leave the body at anytime, turning it into a puddle of goo upon departure. - Illusion
Similar to the create influence ability, except it creates only the visual or auditory appearance of an object underneath the spirit’s resonance. - Possess
The spirit may inhabit a material object or creature to control its physical functions, even if the target does not share resonance. The target is considered a binding for the spirit until the possession ends. If the object or creature chooses to resist, then they must make a resolve action check with a cut of 1. Success completely resists that specific action, but not future unrelated actions.
Spirit Knacks
A spiritualist’s expertise is known as a Spirit Knack. Spirit knacks act both as normal skills, providing expert knowledge on a specific subject, and as focused knowledge on a particular group of spirit life. A spiritualist’s third eye ability lets them see a sliver of the ephemeral realm; monitoring spirits and ethereal objects with resonance related to the knack. Furthermore, the spirit summoning ability lets a spiritualist summon a random spirit of resonance matching the spiritualist’s knacks into the nearby ethereal realm. Just as a spirit can exist as the manifestation of any concept or event, so too can a spiritualist’s knack cover any subject.
A spiritualists can have up to 3 different knacks. Similar to specialties, knacks should be discussed with the GM to confirm everyone is comfortable with the scope of what it covers.
“Tracking” and Bartering with a Spirit
Rank 1 spirits have a single 1 box track. While they follow only the simplest of commands, they are also easily bribed with physical manifestations of their resonance. The player who summons and commands them is welcome to roleplay them as well.
However, higher ranked spirits start to act more independently from their summoner, and the player behind the character. For these spirits, any other player can serve as the temporary personality of the new spirit. For these players, follow the following guidelines:
- Rank 2 Spirits
- Represented with a single 3 box track.
- Animalistic in nature
- Does not plan more than 1 step ahead.
- Prefers immediate reward for answering a summoning, regardless of acceptance of a task.
- Easily bribed to do things they’d prefer to not do if promised a good reward.
- Preferred rewards:
- Medium Value: Perishable/diminishing objects/events of resonance
- Example: food, incense, a performance
- High Value: A large source of resonance or regenerating source of resonance
- Example: A large crowded event, an object of regular and routine use
- Medium Value: Perishable/diminishing objects/events of resonance
- Example: A summoned “Dog Spirit” may arrive when a bone is offered as part of the summoning and could be easily persuaded to terrorize local cats. It might also be willing to help track a creature if offered more bones or a trip to the park.
- Rank 3 Spirits
- Represented with a two 4 box tracks, for different yet similar resonances.
- Humanoid in intelligence
- Answers spirit summons based on personal interests
- Generally seeks the expansion of their resonance within the material realm.
- Preferred rewards:
- Medium Value: large sources of resonance, or regenerating sources of resonance
- High Value: Favors, actions that will explicitly expand resonance within the material realm for a decent duration (weeks or longer).
- Rank 4 Spirits
- Represented with three or more 5 box tracks, each representing different but similar resonances.
- Intelligent but somewhat aloof, with constant plans of varying complexities. Generally only answers a summon if something has already peaked its interest.
- Expects immediate offering for answering a summoning, regardless of acceptance of a task.
- Preferred rewards:
- Medium Value: Favors
- High Value: An explicit long-lasting deal
Disadvantage: Fading Body
Whenever a spiritualist summons a spirit, part of the spiritualist’s body fades into the ethereal realm, losing tangibility until they rest (requires a lengthy task). Although the process is quick and painless, it is often inconvenient and uncomfortable.
Roll 1d6 to determine which body part fades.
- 1: Leg
- 2: Arm
- 3: Hand
- 4: Ear
- 5: Finger
- 6: Toe
Merits
Merits represent the core characteristics, traits, gear, and companions that a character has at their disposal. Merits Tracks represent a form of character health, merits help make actions easier to perform, and many merits provide unique powers and abilities for a character to take advantage of.
Each legacy has 1 signature merit (underlined below), a powerful and complex merit that provides the core ability characters within that legacy are known for. Signature merits can be further enhanced with the meta merits of the same legacy, up to the number of Meta Slots the signature merit has (see the following list after regular Merits).
| Signature Merit | Effect | Track | Meta Slots |
| Third Eye | Spirit Vision: You can see any spirits or ephemeral landscape related to one of your spirit knacks. Spirit Communication: You can vocally talk to and be understood by spirits which you can see, should their concept allow them to understand your words. Spirit Summoning: You can take an action to summon a spirit by name or a rank 1, 2, 3, or 4 spirit related to one of your knacks. Rank 1 spirits do not cause the Fading Body disadvantage. |
2 | 1 |
| The invisible aura of a spiritualist’s third eye hovers over their forehead. | |||
| Spiritualist Merits | Effect | Track |
| Ephemeral Cloak | Spend an esoteric to merge a willing spirit into your body for the remainder of the scene, giving you direct control of the spirit’s influence. | 3 |
| A teal and transparent cloak that lightly drapes over your body, fluttering to an intangible wind. | ||
| Ectoplasmic Stabilizer | Mark to force a spirit or ephemeral object in the ephemeral realm to materialize in the physical realm for the remainder of the scene. | 4 |
| Iron rods with salted chains and glacial crystals | ||
| Awakening Salts | Create a rank 1 spirit within an object. The spirit gains resonance related to that object and becomes bound to it. Mark to increase the spirit’s rank by 1. | 3 |
| A jar of blackened, burned, once opalescent crystals. | ||
| Dampening Talismans | Your resonance and aura is hidden from spiritual senses. Under scrutiny, it may appear suspiciously absent. | 3 |
| A collection of metallic and paper talismans from multiple cultures which do nothing when separated, | ||
| Stepping Sideways | Turn ephemeral for up to a few seconds, existing within the ephemeral realm instead of the material one. While ephemeral, you can see everything within the ephemeral realm, regardless of your knacks. Spend an esoteric to make the duration indefinite until you release the effect. | 3 |
| A shabby pair of old, once ornately adorned boots. The tongue of the shoe contains a small compartment to siphon power from esoteric. | ||
| Spirit Bindings | Spend an esoteric to bind a spirit to a new location, item, or creature. The spirit may now feed off of the essence created from what they are bound to. Higher rank spirits may be able to change their own bindings. | 4 |
| A collection of cloth ribbons carefully crafted and haphazardly bundled together. | ||
| Ghost Gloves | You can touch spirits and ephemeral objects which you can see. Mark to manifest an ephemeral object for as long as you stay touching it. | 3 |
| A pair of hard leather gloves | ||
| Spectral Spectacles | You can see all spirits in the ephemeral plane, regardless of their resonance and your knacks. | 3 |
| A pair of copper glasses millimeters from being called goggles. | ||
META Merits
Meta Merits alter or enhance a legacy’s signature merit and automatically extend that merit’s track with their own. Meta merits are unique to their legacy and cannot enhance any merit other than the signature merit of the same legacy.
| Meta Spiritualist Merits | Effect | Track |
| Spiritual Connection | Spirits that you summoned and made a deal with can directly communicate with you, and vice versa, regardless of distance and for as long as the deal is not complete. | – |
| Fading Manifestation | You can help a willing spirit to manifest into the material realm by purposefully invoking your Fading Body disadvantage – fading a random part of your body. | – |
| – | ||
| – | ||
| – | ||
| – | ||
| – |
Alternative Concepts
TBD