Spirits | rumblestreet

The Spirits

Spirits have different characteristics than creatures native to the physical world. Each spirit has four Traits: Willpower, Rage, Gnosis, and Essence. Spirits also have abilities defined by their nature, called Charms. A spirit's Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower ranges from 1 to 10, as for werewolves, but spirits have only dots in these Traits, not points that can be spent for extra actions or successes.

Willpower: Willpower covers many "physical" actions -- striking an enemy, flying through the Umbra, or clambering through the webs that hold the Umbra of cities in bondage. Spirits use Willpower for any action that would normally use the Dexterity or Stamina Attributes.

Rage: A spirit's Rage covers actions that need power rather than finesse -- holding an opponent in a clinch, breaking through doors and weak walls, and harming opponents. Spirits use Rage for actions that would otherwise involve the Strength Attribute.

Gnosis: Gnosis allows a spirit to perceive the world around it, communicate with other spirits, and think quickly in strange situations. Spirits use Gnosis for actions that would otherwise involve the Social or Mental Attributes, and for many Charms.

Essence: A spirit's Essence usually equals the sum of its Rage, Gnosis, and Willpower, though the Storyteller should adjust it up or down for particularly hearty or frail spirits. Essence represents the spirit's Health, and its energy reserves for powering Charms.

Spirit Charms

Spirits have a number of powers called Charms at their command. Some are spiritual reflections of werewolf Gifts, while others are powers that a spirit could teach a Garou -- with sufficient cause.

The following Charms are a starting point for Storytellers. Many Charms can reflect a whole host of different phenomena that happen to have the same effects. The Blast Charm, for example, could represent thorns shooting from a nature spirit, shards of glass thrown by a glass elemental, or electrical discharge from a lightning spirit. Be creative when assigning Charms to spirits.

Common Charms

All spirits have the following Charms. They're notable only in their absence -- a spirit that's weakened, bound to a pack or being punished may not be able to use one or more of these Charms.

Airt Sense: The spirit has a natural sense of the "airts" (directions) of the spirit world, and can travel about without much difficulty. The spirit can create or find spirit tracks at will. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis if it has to locate a particular place or individual in the Umbra. Even spirits aren't infallible, and a botch can lead them to an unforgiving Realm.
Materialize: The spirit takes physical form on Earth. The spirit's Gnosis must be equal to or greater than the area's Gauntlet rating. The spirit appears the same in the material world as it does in the Umbra. The spirit uses its Traits in the same way as it would in the Umbra, rather than having Attributes and Abilities. Materialized spirits do possess health levels like other corporeal beings. If a spirit dies in the material world, it returns to the Umbra and enters Slumber, just as if the spirit had lost all of its Essence in the Umbra. Most spirits won't use this Charm except in extraordinary circumstances; the modern world is far from welcoming to their kind.
Realm Sense: The spirit can sense what transpires in its Domain both in the Umbra and on Earth. Sensing a specific area requires a successful Gnosis roll. Though this Charm is usually associated with Naturae (woodland spirits of Gaia), most spirits bound to an area possess this ability. Spirits without direct ties to a location on Earth may have this Charm, but are only able to sense their dens in Near-Umbral Realms or home Domains.
Re-form: The spirit can dissolve its body in order to travel through the Umbra to their home Domains. It takes a spirit a full turn to try to re-form. The Storyteller must roll the spirit's Gnosis successfully for this Charm to succeed. Spirits use this Charm to flee their enemies.

Specialty Charms

These Charms are commonly possessed by a wide variety of spirits.

Armor: By spending two points of Essence, the spirit gains a soak pool equal to its Gnosis for the remainder of the scene.
Blast: The spirit can attack from a distance -- breathing fire, unleashing ear-splitting sound, hurling shards of glass, or spitting razor-blades. The Storyteller spends a point of Essence and rolls the spirit's Rage as a damage dice pool, dealing aggravated damage. The spirit does not need to roll to hit, and the attack cannot be dodged.
Cleanse the Blight: The spirit can purge spiritual corruption in its vicinity. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis; the difficulty depends on the strength of the Blight. Most spirits can only use this Charm in an area that reflects their nature.
Control Electrical Systems: The spirit exerts control over an electronic device. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis (difficulty 3 - 9 depending on the system's complexity). The spirit can shut the system down, control it as though it were standing at the controls, and even overload the system.
Create Fires: The spirit can create fires. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis (difficulty 3 for a torch-sized flame, 6 for a bonfire, or 9 for an inferno). Without a source of fuel, the fire only burns for one turn.
Create Wind: The spirit can create or quell winds. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis (difficulty 3 for a strong breeze, 6 for a storm, or 9 for a tornado).
Illuminate: The spirit can light an area reaching to 20 yards (20 meters) from its body, or change the color of lights in the area. Doing so doesn't normally require a roll.
Flood: The spirit can raise the natural water level in an area. The spirit spends a point of Essence to flood an area. The size depends on the power of the spirit -- a Jaggling using this Charm could flood several blocks or a small town, while a Gaffling could flood a building or a city block. Flooding a larger area could require the spirit to expend more Essence.
Freeze: The spirit drastically lowers the temperature of its immediate area. Reduce the spirit's Rage by one for the remainder of the scene. Everyone in the area suffers the spirit's new Rage in dice of aggravated damage. Using this Charm may have additional effects, at the Storyteller's discretion.
Healing: The spirit can heal physical beings. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis (6 to heal lethal damage, 8 for aggravated). The target heals a number of health levels equal to the spirit's Gnosis. A spirit can only use this Charm once per scene per target.
Open Moon Bridge: The spirit can open a moon bridge to a desired location. This charm can operate anywhere, and does not need a caern present. The moon bridge has a total potential distance of 1000 miles (1600 km).
Peek: The spirit can look into the physical world from the Penumbra.
Shapeshift: The spirit can look like anything it desires. This Charm only changes the spirit's form, not its abilities or powers. The Storyteller must roll the spirit's Willpower if it tries to appear as a specific being.
Shatter Glass: The spirit can break all of the glass in the area. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis (difficulty 6).
Short Out: The spirit can short out electrical systems, damaging the circuits. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis (difficulty 6).
Swift Flight: The spirit can fly at three times the normal speed, up to 60 + (Willpower x3) yards or meters per turn.
Tracking: The spirit can follow its prey unerringly, though it must spend a point of Essence to do so.
Umbraquake: The Umbra shakes with such force that everyone standing is thrown to the ground. Everyone in the area suffers half the spirit's Rage in dice of bashing damage.
Updraft: The spirit can lift a man-sized creature into the air with a gust of wind. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Willpower (difficulty 6).

Bane Charms

The Wyrm grants these Charms to its minions. Creatures allied to Gaia cannot (and would not) learn Gifts related to these Charms.

Awaken the Blight: A Crimson Pestilent may spend two Essence to use this Charm on a person afflicted with some manner of disease. The Bane makes a contested roll of its Rage against the target's Stamina; if the Bane wins, whatever ailment the target suffers from flares up, and their next roll to resist or recover from the effects of the ailment suffers a penalty equal to the Bane's Gnosis. A fever might spike to life-threatening temperatures, while a cancer metastasizes and spreads like wildfire throughout the body.
Blighted Touch: If the spirit deals damage on an attack (including using the Blast Charm), the target must make a reflexive Willpower roll. If she fails, her negative characteristics dominate her personality for the next few hours. If she botches, the change is permanent.
Carrion Walk: This Charm is similar to Possession, but can only be used upon a corpse. Any corpse will do: A dead Pentex employee, a road kill raccoon, a slaughtered steer, and -- on one horribly memorable occasion -- a freshly deceased elephant can all host a Rot Walker. The cadaver must still have some flesh on its frame (so no possessed dinosaur skeletons), and it cannot already be possessed or animated by other means (putting vampires off-limits). A corpse animated by Carrion Walk uses the traits it had when alive, rather than the controlling Bane's spirit traits, but uses the Bane's Essence instead of a health track. Carrion Walk puts a tremendous strain on the corpse being possessed; the necrotic energies of the Bane rapidly accelerate the process of decay, so that most possessed shells become flyblown horrors in short order. Few cadavers manage to last for more than a week before devolving into an immobile stew of bones and pulpy meat.
Clean Scent: The Heart Eater may spend one Gnosis point per scene to hide its Wyrm-taint from detection.
Corruption: The spirit whispers a suggestion to the target, and the target acts upon it. The Storyteller rolls Gnosis (difficulty of the target's Willpower). This Charm can be used across the Gauntlet.
Darkweaving: This Charm more than anything else defines a Rust Spider. Darkweaving's effects are permanent, and stain the spirit's every works with an indelible trace of Wyrm-taint. When a tainted Pattern Spider reinforces the Gauntlet, it weaves in blackly glistening, Wyrmish strands of spiritual effluvia, which Banes find it easier to pierce (-1 to the local Gauntlet for Wyrm spirits only). When they work on the great Pattern Webs that span cities, the strands they weave act as efficient superhighways for Banes. When a Hunter Spider scans for enemies in need of destruction, they heed the distress cries of Banes and treat them as a summons of the Weaver. When a Net-Spider ushers data packets from place to place, it subtly taints them, imparting a negative tone to digital communications, or promoting data loss or corruption in vital transactions. The individual effect of this Charm upon any action is small, but the cumulative result is a spirit that remakes Gaia into the Wyrm's image as efficiently and tirelessly as its brothers and sisters calcify the world into the Weaver's design.
Dissolution: The Bane may pay one Essence when attacking a target to coat its claws or fangs with a hideous spiritual acid. The difficulty to soak such an attack is 9.
Dream Warp: The Nighthag spends one Essence to corrupt a dream with the intent of disturbing the sleeper and driving a wedge between her and one of her loved ones. The target does not regain Willpower from this troubled sleep.
Empathy: With a Wits + Empathy roll (difficulty 5) the Heart Eater can discern not only whom an individual loves passionately, but if the object of the target's desire feels the same way. By consuming an individual's heart and brain and spending two Gnosis points, the Heart Eater can perfectly impersonate the victim. They instinctively mimic the victim's personality, mannerisms, and even habits, and have access to the victim's memories. This access is instinctive rather than deliberate, however. The Heart Eater can't "rifle around" in the victim's memories selectively. Instead, memories arise and present themselves as necessary for the Heart Eater to maintain its masquerade.
Everybody's Secret: This Charm is similar to the Shadow Lord Gift: Whisper Catching, save that it encompasses every secret event or exchange to occur within a building. The echoes of domestic violence, perversion, and hate slowly work their way through the building's ducts and corridors. Eventually, everyone who lives in the building knows the secrets of everyone else: Perhaps they drift under a door, or through an air conditioning vent, or rattle about in an old elevator as it carries tenants up through the building's black throat. Speaking of the secrets of a building learned through Everybody's Secret is extremely difficult, requiring a point of Willpower and a Willpower roll (difficulty 9); failure causes the desired words to die in the tenant's throat, and a certainty to fall down around him that it's just not the business of anyone from outside the building.
Incite Frenzy: The spirit can cause a werewolf to enter a frenzy. The Storyteller rolls Rage (difficulty of the target's Willpower). Any success causes a frenzy; six or more successes causes the werewolf to fall into the Thrall of the Wyrm. All normal frenzy rules apply.
Innocuous: Harpies excel at hiding in plain sight. By spending one point of Essence, witnesses overlook a Harpy and its nest. This Charm doesn't make the Bane or its taint invisible, but rather keeps anyone from noticing it. Only those specifically looking for something out of place will have a chance of seeing the spirit, and even then an observer must succeed at a Willpower roll (difficulty 9) to overcome the effects of the charm. The effect lasts for one scene.
Lightning in the Meat: This Charm allows the Rot Walker to spend one Essence per day to re-animate the brain of a corpse possessed with Carrion Walk. There must be a brain present for this to work. While the body's soul has long since moved on to whatever awaits beyond the veil of death, a residue of memories and personality still dwell in the wrinkles of the mind, and it is this shadow of the deceased that the Rot Walker resurrects, up until the body falls apart. The revived persona knows nothing of the possessing Bane, and may even believe itself alive at first. It is likely to try to head back to familiar surroundings, such as the house where its grieving family awaits. Some Rot Walkers resume control at this point; others prefer to simply let the lightning continue to drive the meat, watching the corpse and its loved ones go through the agony of decay, dissolution, and a second and final demise.
Possession: The spirit may inhabit a living being or inanimate object. The Storyteller rolls Gnosis (difficulty equal to the victim's Willpower, or 4 for an object). The possession takes the time indicated. The spirit can take no other actions. If it does, or is engaged in spirit combat, the link is broken. A spirit that possesses a human can warp and change the victim's body, making a fomor. Possession is permanent.

Successes Time Taken

1 Six Hours

2 Three Hours

3 One Hour

4 15 Minutes

5 Five Minutes

6+ Instantaneous

Sleaze Aura: The Bane can lend the effects of the Gift: Persuasion to anyone who goes along with the suggestions it whispers through Corruption, so long as they continue following those suggestions.
Smoke: By spending a point of Essence, a Shattered Hart can snort out a cloud of sulfurous smoke that shrouds the Bane in darkness. Increase the difficulty of all rolls to hit the bane by one, or two for Garou in Lupus form due to the stench. The Shattered Hart can see clearly through the smoke and suffers no penalties.
Sting: The Heart Eater can inject a paralytic toxin into its victim through the tips of its tentacles. Unless the target makes a Stamina roll against difficulty 9, they will be rendered unable to move for the rest of the scene. Injecting a dose of toxin costs one point of Rage.
Yawning Void: This Charm stands as the most fearsome of the Nihilach's powers. It activates reflexively by paying one Essence whenever something dies in the Nihilach's presence, be it a discorporate spirit or a murdered Garou, and the death need not be at the Nihilach's hands. The billowing emptiness of the Nihilach's body unfolds into a sheer, sanity-scraping void that draws in the soul of the slain. Anything swallowed by the Yawning Void is gone forever. A Garou hero will not persist as an ancestor spirit, nor be returned to Gaia's embrace and reincarnated. He, like anything else swallowed by this Charm, will simply cease to be.

Weaver Charms

These Charms are granted by the Weaver. A spirit with one of these Charms can use Airt Sense to travel via the Pattern Web.

Calcify: The spirit binds a character into the Pattern Web. The Storyteller rolls Willpower, contested by the target's Rage. Each success subtracts one dot from a Physical Attribute of the spirit's choice (or Essence in the case of spirits). When the target's Essence or Attributes drop to zero, the target is held in the Pattern Web. Werewolves must be freed by their packmates, while Wyld energy can disrupt the Pattern Web to free spirits.
Solidify Reality: The spirit extends and strengthens the Pattern Web. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis. Each success increases the target's Essence (or effective health levels) by one per success. The effects last for a day. A target can only benefit from one use of this Charm at a time; all further uses before the effects wear off automatically fail.
Spirit Static: The spirit increases the Gauntlet in an area by one. Up to three spirits may work in concert (increasing the Gauntlet by three). The spirit must remain in the same area and is distracted, reducing all of its dice pools by 2.

Wyld Charms

Break Reality: The spirit can change something's Umbral form: Turning water into acid, turning part of a wall into a door, or even changing a couch into a steak dinner. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis (difficulty depends on degree of change), with one element of the target changing with each success. On a failure, the spirit loses a point of Essence. On a botch, it loses a point of Gnosis as well.
Disorient: The spirit can alter landmarks and directions. The Storyteller rolls the spirit's Gnosis (difficulty 6 or the Gauntlet rating, whichever is higher).

Spirit States

The Umbra is unlike the physical world in a number of ways, and spirits are unlike physical beings. As such, different rules apply.

Communication: Spirits "speak" via shared thoughts and feelings, rather than what humans consider a language. Some spirits, such as the servants of tribal totems, can speak the Garou tongue or other human languages. The Gift: Spirit Speech is required to speak with and understand spirits in their own language. Gifts that deal with spirits do not need the user to understand spirit speech -- the power of the Gift transmits the Garou's intent without needing to translate his words.
Movement: Spirits can fly or float up to (20 + Willpower) yards or meters per turn, and can float in place if they wish. In the Penumbra, the distance between any two points is the same as it is in the physical world; further into the Umbra the concept of "distance" and "time" can both warp in unpredictable ways.
Slumber: Spirits regain Essence by entering an inactive state called Slumber, during which it floats in a secluded part of the Umbra. A spirit slain in the Penumbra fades away into the Umbra after several minutes. A Slumbering spirit can be bound through a rite without regard for the spirit's willingness. The spirit in a fetish is always in Slumber -- the user activates the fetish's powers, not those of the spirit.

Rumble Street