Book of Bone and Ebony

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emains of the hun is no more than a shell, a cloak of plasm, which the spell hides Elsewhere. Most necromancers take a petty pleasure in the knowledge that nearly all victims of this treatment rise as hungry ghosts afterward. When he casts the spell in the future, he spends 10 minutes in meditation before spending another 10 gently pulling the fragile cloak out of Elsewhere and carefully donning it. Once complete, only the most perceptive ghost will see anything other than a fellow spirit in the necromancer’s place. Each time the necromancer dons the mask, his player rolls Essence + Craft (Moliation). The result is the difficulty a ghost’s player’s Perception + Awareness roll must overcome to see through the caster’s deception and recognize that he is an impostor ghost. Mortals and living creatures cannot see the Death Mask at all. The use of Essence-viewing magic can reveal its presence but will not provide a clear view of the disguise. If the necromancer is attacked while wearing the ghostly shroud, count any lethal or aggravated damage done to him as damage done also to the spirit. If the cloak suffers more than four health levels of damage, it has been reduced to such tatters that it falls off of the necromancer then and there. Up to that point, his disguise is intact, and his identity is safe from ghostly eyes. If the damage to the cloak is any less, it will regenerate one lethal health level per week Elsewhere, once removed. If a necromancer’s cloak is destroyed, he will have to acquire another before he can cast the spell again. When worn in Creation, the ghostly cloak only takes damage from attacks that can harm spirits. DRAWING BLIND EDGE Cost: 20 motes Target: One ghost Breathing a frigid mist upon her hand, the necromancer’s palm and fingers grow pale with rime. With a white glow in her eyes, she plunges her frosted hand into the pale corpus of a nearby ghost and slowly draws from his body a translucent blade, dancing lightly with blue flame. The ghost’s corpus dwindles as the blade is drawn until it disappears with the unsheathing of the point, entirely transformed into a deadly edge. If the spell isn’t discharged upon the corpus of a ghost, the rime inflicts one unsoakable level of bashing damage upon the necromancer every 10 minutes as it slowly spreads over her body and freezes her to death. The necromancer must, after casting the spell, successfully strike her target with her bare hand. Once done, nothing can prevent the unsheathing of Blind Edge. The weapon’s statistics are chosen by the necromancer at the blade’s inception. She may distribute one point among the blade’s speed, accuracy, damage and defense for each dot of her victim’s permanent Essence; until so bolstered, the weapon’s stats are identical to those of a reaver daiklave. None of the weapon’s stats may be raised above the 123 CHAPTER FIVE • NECROMANCY necromancer’s Essence + Occult. (If playing with Exalted Power Combat, the weapon’s rate is equal to the necromancer’s Essence.) The blade inflicts only half damage, calculated before soak, against living creatures. Against ghosts and other dead spirits, Blind Edge deals aggravated damage and can strike even immaterial ghosts. Should it deal a fatal blow, the slain ghost is drawn into the blade with a shriek and a burst of blue flame. No dead spirit destroyed in this manner will ever see the Underworld again. Its Essence is consumed by the blade. Each ghost absorbed into Blind Edge allows the necromancer to distribute additional points across the blade’s attributes, one for each point of permanent Essence it devours. While there is no limit to the number of ghosts that may be drawn into the weapon, the necromancer can add to the weapon no more points than (her Essence x 5). Blind Edge remains until dismissed, until struck by countermagic or until the sun of the Underworld next dawns. Whatever the cause, the bluish-white blade then flashes stark black, and it howls with the voices of the captured ghosts as they are hurled into the Abyss. DUSK EYES Cost: 10 motes Target: Caster Blood is one of the borders between life and death. A surfeit of blood plagues the living and keeps them alive, while the dead suffer from an endless thirst for it. A wise necromancer can use this very fluid boundary to peer across the curtain between the living and the dead. Lightly pricking a finger, he touches it once to each eye and closes both, letting the blood settle. When he opens his eyes, they are a dark crimson and he can see from the Underworld to the bright world of Creation, or his vision can reach from the living worlds into the realm of the dead. A necromancer using this spell can only see one world at a time. If gazing into the other world while engaging in a complex activity, such as combat, he suffers the two-success penalty of acting blindly in the world he inhabits. This spell can be defeated by wards and spells against scrying. The effects of Dusk Eyes last for an hour as marked by the Calendar of Setesh and confer no benefit in a shadowland. EASING THE FORSAKEN MEMORY Cost: 12+ motes Target: One haunt A traveler through the Underworld is constantly confronted by the lost memories of the dead, images and emotions frozen at a moment of abject terror or pitiful loss as the victim ended his mortal life. These foul tableaux can be cleansed from the bright world of Creation with rituals of exorcism and, if given time, will fade. Their counterparts in
EXALTED • BOOK OF BONE AND EBONY Creation’s smoked mirror are hardier, bolstered by the negative Essence of the Underworld, and resist efforts to remove them. The Deathlords are particular beings and have specific tastes. When one desires to raise her fortress here, no pitiful spirit’s echoing cries against death are going to disrupt her choice of locale and decor. Easing the Forsaken Memory can completely erase a single haunt of the caster’s choice. For an additional cost of 1 mote per mile, the necromancer can relocate the haunt to a location of her choosing. There is a similar spell, Congealing the Last Thought, that can create haunts for those necromancers who appreciate them as a motif. The haunts created by this spell can be taken from the mind of a cooperating ghost or can be constructed out of whole cloth from the necromancer’s imagination. Haunts created by this spell in Creation last a month per permanent Essence of the caster, while those created in the Underworld are near-permanent. Congealing the Last Thought costs 12 motes. EMPEROR’S CHAINS Cost: 16 motes Target: Varies The necromancer claps her hands, and the world resounds with that sharp sound. As it reaches ghosts’ ears, their corpora become sluggish and unresponsive. All ghosts within 50 yards of the necromancer find their movement rates halved, and the costs of all movement-related Arcanoi are doubled. The necromancer may choose, instead, to focus the spell’s effect on a single ghost, who must be within 20 yards when the spell is cast. That ghost is rendered unable to move at all, and any movement-enhancing Arcanoi cost triple the Essence to use. FACES OF THE DEAD Cost: 16 motes Target: Caster Casting the spell with two fingers together, the necromancer brings them apart and draws out a wire of shimmering silver. The wire appears to fold outward, growing additional dimensions and facets until it becomes a thin-shafted silver mace with a perfectly forged, 12-faced head. The silver mace is of excellent quality and balance, and beneath the stars of the Underworld, it winks with reflected light. Against a ghost, the weapon inflicts additional damage equal to the caster’s Essence. If a blow with the mace deals a number of health levels of damage equal to or greater than a ghost’s permanent Essence, the mace and ghost flash with a bright blue light as the ghost is captured in one of the faces of the weapon’s head. The faces of all ghosts captured peer out from the surface that holds each. Once an hour has passed, the necromancer forfeits use of the weapon as the shaft dissolves into dust and blows away on a phantom wind. The mace’s head becomes a jar 124 of transparent rock crystal, holding all the spirits that were captured within. The jar has 12L/12B soak and can suffer up to 20 health levels of damage before it shatters, freeing any trapped ghosts. Effective countermagic violently shatters the jar automatically. Only the necromancer can open the jar without forcing it. A ghost freed from the jar by whatever method is bereft of Essence. Faces of the Dead was a tool used in first days of the First Age, as the inquisitive Solars and Chosen of Secrets began exploring the mysteries of the Underworld. Its use was eventually viewed as distasteful and discontinued. Abyssals use it today to collect souls for the forging of soulsteel, as the ghosts are quite pliable once removed from the crystal jar. Weapon Speed Acc. Dmg. Def. Silver Mace -1 +2 +5L +0 FIELD OF FELL DREAMS Cost: 16 motes Target: Area of effect The caster drops to one knee and channels the heat of thousands of decaying dead into the earth or stone at her feet. As the spell ends, the necromancer removes her palm to reveal a brand in the shape of her hand. At that instant, skeletal hands burst forth from the dirt, the cobblestones or the marble floor and begin to latch with the strength of the dead onto any who come within their grasp. Any person other than the caster is forced to dance and dodge about to avoid being grabbed by the grasping claws — he has his Dexterity reduced by one dot while within 50 yards of the brand and his Dexterity reduced by two dots with respect to calculating movement. Additionally, anyone moving through the Field of Fell Dreams suffers one attack for every five yards he moves. Each attack is a clinch attempt made at an accuracy of (the caster’s Essence + 5). The hands have a pool of seven dice when attempting to maintain clinches, and they never attempt to inflict damage, only to contain their victims. The bony hands may be destroyed easily — they cannot dodge or parry and are relatively fragile — but a new one takes the place of any hand smashed or severed. The hands can grasp immaterial ghosts as easily as mortals, and ghosts caught by the hands are forced to spend a mote to manifest. The hands’ animation flees them at the stroke of midnight, as measured by the Calendar of Setesh. FIVE GIFTS Cost: 12 motes Target: One ghost Every ghost is afflicted with the mind-numbing blandness of unlife. When foods taste as dust and the rainbow is different shades of gray, when a ghost cannot even dream
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AND A Compendium of Necromantic Lor
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Book of Bone and Ebony

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