Ex-Humans..
..I mean, Ghosts

Myths, Legends, and Folklore
Ghosts were added as a suggestion from our players.  Thanks to murke for the ideas and outline!

Ghosts. The Dead. Phantoms. Poltergeists. Spooks. Apparitions.  Specters. Spirits. Wraiths. Chain Rattlers.  Possessed. Lots of different ways to think about what happens after you die but for one reason or another don't move on.  There is lore and mythos for dozens of different types of creatures that a soul can become once the meat suit expires.  We've lumped them all here into a single spot for you to put together the perfect Haunt.

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SUPER IMPORTANT PLEASE READ INFORMATION: Being an incorporeal ghost does not give you OOC permission carte blanche to just walk into people's scenes and watch them RP.  We are always a consent sim and require you to ask before you join a scene.   If you have a perfectly good reason to want to be "eavesdropping" on a scene, but the players do not want to be watched, please negotiate for a summary of the scene to be shared.  If you cannot come to an agreement, please cut a ticket in Discord for assistance.   We want to be fair to all parties.

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We do ask that you balance out your character.  Don't take all the talents but have none of the weaknesses.  NO ONE likes a Mary Sue. Even if her name is Betsy the Brutal.

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Becoming a Ghost: Not to put too fine a point on it, but you died. It is pretty straight forward. It could have been traumatic like being murdered, accidental, sudden, or even just from natural causes.  Perhaps a Necromancer wanted a plaything or maybe you drank the wrong potion while standing at the cauldron? The possibilities are as endless as there are ways to find yourself suddenly un-alive. There is only one hard requirement: you were human once.  HARD REQUIREMENT: When you died, there was something unfinished that gave you the willpower to remain as a ghost.  You must define this for yourself.  It can be anything, but whatever it is, as soon as that business is resolved- you move on. Poof. Do not pass Go.... 

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HUMAN? Are you Serious?!: Yes.  At one point in time, you must have been human in order to become a ghost here at Thirteen Pines.  It could have been several hundred years ago if you were turned into a vampire, or it could have been a millennia since you embodied the spirit of a Norse god and elevated to Mythic- but you started as a human once, and therefor can become a ghost on the Earthly Plane and possess a body to be corporeal again.  Yes, animals can be ghosts here too. But for purposes of Player Characters- human only.

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Wait, possession? REALLY?!: Yes, Really! No, you may not body hop to avoid consequences nor can you change meat-suits like condoms at a sex party.  Possession takes a LOT out of the ghost and only the most seasoned, practiced, ghosts can just jump into a body and keep control for very long.  There are more details below, but in short- you're either incorporeal or possessing a body.

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Age, Ability, and Talents: The longer you've been dead, the better at it you'll become.  Just like every other thing in the world.  Here, though, there is no guide book for the deceased, recent or otherwise.  You may find another ghost who might be willing to help you- but they are just as likely to lie to you for their own amusement.

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Local Collectives:  Outside of traditional hauntings where the deceased have either chosen to remain incorporeal and reduced to window rattling and the occasional spooky sound or they haven't figured out possession yet, there isn't a local coffee clutch for ghosts.  Most of the time, ghosts- either incorporeal or not- don't want anyone to know they're a ghost.  Necromancers, Magic Wielders, and Mythics have long hunted ghosts for their own needs.  True ectoplasm, or as the locals refer to it- Ghost Goop, has long been a highly sought after reagent for many artificers. It was rumored a vial recently sold on the black market for close to half a million.  It was apparently part of a famous serial killer. Don't ask what they're doing with it.

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Leadership: Here at Thirteen Pines, there is no official leadership or a more seasoned ghost that the newly dead look to for guidance.  Now and then a Human Medium will be friendly enough to help the dead and become a beacon of assistance to those new to their predicament, but Mediums don't tend to last with their sanity intact very long once it gets out that they can talk to Ghosts.  If you don't believe me, head over to the asylum- ole Batty Betty shoved ice-picks in her ears and then gouged out her own eyes after a few years.  They say she can still sense them, though, and won't let her die.

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General Abilities

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All ghosts have two states of being: Corporeal and Incorporeal. That is to say, you are either possessing a body or not.  It takes a great deal of effort, practice, willpower, and determination not only to possess a body- but to maintain control over it.  Most ghosts don't get it right the first time unless you have help, a willing meat suit, a Necromancer, a talisman, or all of the above.

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All of the items below are considered the Basics of being a ghost. You may be able to do all of these things simply by being a ghost.   You do not HAVE to be able to do them. If you want your character to be very recently dead and still learning, or just be completely inept, or not be aware you can do some things, you are not required to know how to do them. Have a question about something not listed? Ask!

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Special Note: Ignorance of your abilities does not give you license to create complete havoc and ruin other people's RP.  Behaving ICly in a destructive manner will likely get you hunted and killed.  You cannot nope out of consequences.

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• Speed:  Your corporeal body is no faster than a normal human. While incorporeal, you still move at the same speed as your human body, however, you can focus for short bursts of speed.

• Strength: Your corporeal body is no stronger than the average human. While incorporeal, there's no such thing.  Strength is a physical construct.

• Self-Healing: Your corporeal body heals like a normal human unless you expend some ghost willpower to speed it up as much as 10x human speed- but that will weaken your grip on the host body so it is a balance.  Since you're dead, your willpower fuels your incorporeal form, not a need to heal from a technical perspective.  Spiritually, your batteries drain when you use your skills or are damaged and all you can do is rest. There is no healing your incorporeal self. It just takes time. If you get too beat up as an incorporeal ghost, you  may lose control of your host body.

• Flight: While incorporeal, you can fly- go through walls- hover- spin around in a circle if you want, even.  Corporeal, however, you walk just like a normal human.

• Boo!:  All ghosts, while incorporeal, may expend a little energy and make spooky noises, make things move (like a curtain in a breeze, or knock something off of a table), or give that feeling that someone is watching. You can also allow yourself to be seen but it takes a lot of practice before you can be seen as something other than your mental image of yourself when you died.

• Straight Up Haunting:  You're a ghost without a body and you like it that way. You are a professional haunting ghost or poltergeist, stuck in the place (..or inside the object) you died. If you take this ability, please contact staff via Discord Ticket so we can partner together on your story.

• Incorporeal Form: When not possessing a body, you can walk through walls and not be seen unless you want to be seen.  The exception here is that children, Fae touched, mediums, Necromancers, animals (including shifters in their animal form) or those that may have some sort of talisman that allows them to see the dead- they may still see you and there is NOTHING* you can do to stop them.

• Invisibility:  While incorporeal, you are completely invisible to anyone who does not have the ability to see ghosts.  *With extreme effort, you may also be invisible even to those who CAN see ghosts. You  must contact staff if you wish to do that.  NOTE: this does not give you OOC permission to walk into anyone's scene and just watch their RP.  Please work with other players when you wish to come into a scene as a ghost.

• Possession: Only a body without a soul of its own can be possessed with any ease. Most commonly, ghosts jump into the bodies of those who are in the process of dying and that split second when the soul leaves the body and the heart beats its last beat, the ghost will jump in and take over.  It is art more than science.  Every time you hear a story about a brain-dead, comatose patient waking up? Yea, that's not the original inhabitant that opened their eyes. NOTE: if you wish to possess anything other than an "almost dead" human, please see the Talents section below.

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General Weaknesses

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Below are some general ghost specific weaknesses that you can chose from in our story world. You can also pick other more general human-like weaknesses like phobias, personality traits, or mental and physical conditions or ailments.  This is not an exhaustive list, but just some to give you a head start as you flesh out your character. It is a good idea to take a weakness for every talent you will pick from the talent list (or from your own list).  Again, we're not going to be policing and requiring an application- we're all adults- so please be reasonable.  Some of these impact just the corporeal body- some only incorporeal- some both.

Want some kind of weakness that isn't here? Go for it!

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• Body Problem:  You must possess a body or you cannot move from a 50 Meter radius from where you were when you either died or lost control of the body you were inside.  This is what leads to most hauntings. Ghosts get stuck in their death loop or location and slowly go crazy.  This often happens to hikers.

• Salt and Iron:  Even when corporeal, salt and iron will hurt.  It may give you a rash, or it could produce sudden cuts and whip marks leaving open wounds.  It will manifest in some way that is impossible to hide from people.   You can still feed the host body food with a little bit of salt in it, but the heartburn is instant and epic.

• Mirror Mirror on the--- OH CRAP!:  When you are possessing a body, you can only glance sidelong at mirrors and not for any length of time or you will be sucked right out of the body.  While incorporeal- either because you are not in your host body at the time or because you stupidly looked into a mirror for too long while you were in your body, if you look a mirror for even a split second, you are trapped there. You cannot escape unless someone shatters the mirror.

• Gotta Keep It Separated: You are unable to touch, see, hear, feel, or in any way interact with any objects from your human life that held any meaning for you.  All you can see is a thick mist that is cold and fills you with existential dread- but you don't know why.  Should you actually "enter" the mist or try to interact with it at all, your willpower is completely drained and you will lose control of the host body. And since the host body has no soul- it will probably die before you can regain any willpower to get back into it.  Should you actually touch your own corpse, you WILL die and be blinked out of existence.

• Family Connection: Just like objects above, all people who were important to you (Family, Friends, Loved Ones, Enemies- basically anyone with significant emotional attachment) while alive are now, cold, faceless, random people.  For reasons you can't explain, you don't like them and don't want to be around them. You can't recognize them or any details about them. You can't recall their faces even after "meeting" them. Their names are instantly forgotten. 

• It's Just an Allergy: Silver, Gold, Platinum, jewels... all of these "material" things burn both your host body AND your ghostly body.  A reminder that you "couldn't take it with you."  Ever meet someone that has a deathly allergy to cats? Probably a ghost who died and lost their beloved pet and couldn't take Fluffy with them. It can be anything- but unlike a normal allergy, this will sap your ghostly willpower.

• Yuck. Food.:  Food is often left out for ghosts to appease their spirits.  If it was made with hate, if you stole it, if it wasn't meant for you, or if you didn't pay for it, it is going to poison you.  This can happen to your host body or your incorporeal one.  Think Exorcist and Pea Soup. Yea. It ain't good.

• Religious Symbolism:  You were such a believer in all of the mythos of how to fight against ghosts, that even in your host body you are impacted by them. Like salt and iron above, this extends to all religions and iconography.  

• True Believers:  You are susceptible to the beliefs of ANYONE wielding that belief against you.  Whether you are in your host body or incorporeal, a true believer who thinks that they can destroy you  with a broom and a kippah, is going to most likely succeed.

• Misty Memory: You have a very hard time remembering where you are, what year it is, or even who you are.  

• Death Loop: You are stuck in your own death loop.  This is literal while you are incorporeal. When possessing, it is represented by night terrors and even waking dreams of your death. Your therapist loves you.

• Phylactery Prison:  Someone trapped you in a death jar.  It could be an urn, a coffin, or even just an empty jar of mayonnaise.  The point is, your spirit was captured and held captive.  It may still be held captive if you are under the control of a Necromancer. If you are not possessing a body, you are immediately sucked back into your Phylactery and must once again break out or be let out by your captor.  While captive, you have no sense of passing time.

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Available Talents

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Below are some of the more common talents that ghosts can learn how to do. You may choose a couple of these to have in addition to the abilities all ghosts are able to do.  Again- be reasonable. Don't take them all.   Also, if you think of a really cool talent that I didn't list, ask!

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• Professional Ghost: You have made it your single goal to haunt a location or object. You're GOOD at it, too.  You can do more than just knock things over, leave a cold spot,  or make the curtains move. You can levitate furniture, make blood drip from the walls, shriek and wail for all to hear, and send chills up the spine of the most stoic holy person.  It doesn't even make you tired anymore. Note: if you take this, you cannot possess and have a host body. You are also stuck to the location or object attached to your original death. This can change with RP. Contact Staff.

• Reconstitution:   After taking "fatal" damage, wearing yourself out, using up all of your willpower, or if you are cleansed from a location or object, you will reconstitute at your corpse.  Obviously, this only is available if there is a corpse for you to be able to reconstitute. Many new ghosts find they can do this and are horrified to wake up in a coffin amongst their rotting remains. Ever hear of a corpse appearing to be desiccated long before it should have? Each time you reconstitute, part of the corpse rots away. Once its gone- you can't reconstitute again.

• Animal Possession: You have learned how to possess animals.  This happens often in rural areas where hikers and campers die. Every time you hear animal stories where you SWEAR they were looking right at you and understood you or did something eerily human like, if it wasn't a shifter, it was probably a ghost who didn't have a human to possess.  "The squirrels led me to the body of the hiker!" Yea, it probably did. Most ghosts use animals as a vehicle to get them to a human to possess or get help.  Some Necromancers have been known to trap ghosts in a phylactery and force them into animals to do their bidding.  Note: If you take this, you cannot also take Supernatural Possession. 

• Supernatural Possession: You have learned how to possess non-humans for a maximum of 24 hours.  This only works if the supernatural is a willing participant OR if you happen catch the body just as it is dying- the same as a human.  You have to be careful though- a supernatural body that is in process of death may take you with it if you don't have enough willpower. The body will continue to die after 24 hours.   Note: You do NOT inherit all of the knowledge and abilities of the supernatural. Witches are considered Supernaturals.  If you take this, you cannot also take Animal Possession.

• Forced Human Possession: You have learned how to force yourself into a human body and share it with the host by suppressing- or shoving out- their soul.  This can also happen if you have magical assistance.  This is harder to do and requires heavy concentration to keep the human suppressed. When successful, you can retain their memories but they're often jumbled.

• Natural Healer:  You have learned how to utilize your spirit to heal others. It weakens you- so use it carefully. 

• Imitation Spook:  While in your host body, you can imitate your incorporeal abilities in short bursts such as knocking something over, making a ghostly sound from across the room, or making it suddenly very cold.  These are very brief and usually the result of an emotional response.

• Fresh Start: Somehow, you were able to resolve the issues that kept you here when you died but instead of moving on, you became straight up human and allowed to continue the life of the human you possessed.  You can no longer become incorporeal at all- but you retained some of the corporeal abilities.  Perhaps you can still be an imitation spook or natural healer.  The downside here, if you die- that's it.  This is not a merry go round. You got your one do-over. You will move on if the host body dies.

• Mirror Travel: So you got stuck in a mirror, huh? That sucks.  But hey, there's another mirror over on the other side of the room, and you can see it. With a little practice, you can move your incorporeal self to it.  This has effectively been used to travel great distances. Though you are at the mercy of the mirror if it is moving. One ghost got stuck in a compact and ended up dropped on the floor of a seedy dive bar bathroom facing a urinal for like.. fifty years. That kinda thing sticks with you, man.  Note: When the mirror breaks, you are now bound to the area where it was broken and must get a new body. 0