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Necromancy Vertical Slice


Darth Nyrys

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Necromancy

 

Among the Necromancers are found the wisest and most arrogant of the Sith sorcerers in equal numbers. Necromancy is a shared path by both those who seek to command death and those who seek to understand it. Knowledge of death offers sorcerers a variety of abilities, though often at great cost to their mind or body. Necromancy is also one of the most common disparities for Dark Siders outside of the Sith tradition to learn. Many powers listed are designated as belonging to one of the two subtypes of necromancy, tied to the two opposing factions the Necropolis Kings and the Forlorn Veil. The two groups have a murderous rivalry that has spawned from their competition over a vital common resource, the dead, and even masters can find it difficult to force the cooperation necessary to learn the opposing faction’s necromantic secrets.

 

Echoes in the Flesh: Early on in a Necropolis King’s studies, the first steps of reanimation are discovered. This spell turns corpses into basic subservient automatons that rot away quickly from saturation of death energies. Simple minded and slow, these zombies are best used as menial labor or to scare civilians. Unlike more advanced spells, this incantation is using imprinted energy of the person’s life rather than overturning death.

 

Invocation of the Remembered: A highly advanced ritual to bring about the return of a departed individual. First, the body is ritually rendered down to bones, lacquered,  and laid out on an altar amidst items and trinkets of personal significance. The necromancer and his or her assistants write down memories of the person on strips of cloth anointed with oils and begin laying the strips over the bones. If the early stages of the ritual were performed properly, the cloth will hang in the air suspended, clinging to a form that no longer exists. The more strips that are provided the more substantial the revenant will be, and variation in the memories is also important to create a complete picture. For example, a widower seeking to bring back his dead wife who only uses romantic memories will create a revenant only capable of being a lover and having no concept of existence outside of that framework. Madness often awaits such fractured creatures. 

 

Upon completion of the ritual, a Nin’tash is created, a sort of Dark Side ghost but with greater physical presence than is normally associated with specters, something like a hybrid between a ghost and a ghoul. Sacrifices and offerings allow the Nin’tash to maintain its corporeality and sanity to a degree, but if the altar is neglected, or the Nin’tash is drained to the point that the offerings are not enough, it may go feral temporarily and attack the living to gain sustenance. The consumption of raw life energies is highly addictive, and even carefully restored Nin’tash may devolve into Derriphan spirits if they develop too much of a taste for it. 

 

Regardless of how well fed they are, Nin’tash skin is always of a deathly pallor and room temperature. Their words echo unnaturally, although the degree to which this happens is dependent on how complete the ritual was and their current state of fulfillment. If a Nin’tash can exist long enough without devolving into a Derriphan while still accumulating energy, it can reach a critical mass where it ceases to be a simulacrum created from memories and is remade as a sentient being. Such spirits are coveted by necromancers like a gardener with a prized rare orchid.

 

Nin’tash dislike being far from their tombs, and as such serve better as guardians of temples and laboratories than traveling companions. Some Sith will create Nin’tash of hated Jedi enemies known for their compassion and peacefulness, and intentionally starve them to turn them into blood crazed killers, although admittedly without access to the Force.  

 

Dark Jade Eyes: By attuning themselves to the energies of death, necromancers can gain insight into the past, at the cost of awareness of the living. While this spell is in effect, the necromancer can see artifacts left behind by Force use, observe emotional moments that occurred around a death, and discern the value of souls. While the first use of this spell requires a ritual to open the mind’s eye, later uses are just a matter of refocusing perception, a process that takes one to two minutes.

 

A Sleep Like Death: The necromancer enters a comatose state of deathly stillness, with their vital signs becoming undetectable and their presence in the Force distended away from their body. While in this torpor the Sith becomes akin to a Dark Side spirit, although tethered to the area around their body.

 

Soul Extraction: The highest quality soul material comes from extraction at the point of death, which makes this spell’s ability to finish off defeated opponents with soul theft invaluable for soul connoisseurs. Soul extraction requires that the sorcerer be focused on the victim, but not necessarily the one to deal the killing blow. Sometimes powerful Sith will have necromancers accompany them into battle to ensnare the souls of their fallen enemies, offering a cut of the reaping in exchange. Some souls are too powerful for this spell to extract, in such cases a shard is obtained while the rest disperses into the ether. (This is to explain PCs returning with souls post soul extraction)

 

Gravemist: At the Veiled’s command, ethereal fog pours into the area, dampening long range visibility, but making it easier for the restless dead to manifest as apparitions. The effects are felt particularly in areas of conflict and past atrocities, where the dead are both angry and plentiful. These specters are not capable of harm on their own, but they make it hard for enemies to distinguish living threats from echoes of the past, even with the Force.

 

Bleak Eviction: With a series of slicing finger motions the Veiled attempts to seize the soul of its enemy with spectral threads and temporarily tear it from its fleshy confines. This spell sends forth necromantic distortions through the air, as if the gestures are emitting echoes of where the fingers tore at reality in cutting lines. Should the attack land, it tries to rip the soul out of the body, but against more competent threats it’s more likely to temporarily paralyse a limb while the soul is knocked out of alignment. Just like with normal attacks, getting hit in the head with this spell is worse, temporarily reducing the victim to a vegetative state. Realignment for a nonfatal hit is quick, rarely lasting more than a couple seconds, and some people recover even faster.  

 

Claim the Empty Vessel: With dark rites and sinister incantations, an apprentice necromancer can leave their own body to inhabit a recently deceased corpse. The necromancer’s own body is unconscious for the duration of the effect, and if the necromancer is slain while in the new host body it still takes three days for them to their original body as per the rules. Having their own body destroyed also initiates the three day respawn process. The deceased body will appear relatively alive until the next sunrise, at which point a build up of necrotic energies will putrefy the corpse into obsolescence and the necromancer is expelled back to their body. The necromancer cannot use the Force while inhabiting the body, outside of necromancy spells that involve perceiving or interacting with spirits. If the necromancer is in space, the duration of the effect is roughly half a standard day.

 

Cursebound Sentinels: The necromancer can bind the restless dead to a location or object, allowing their wrath to be triggered by trespassers or thieves. Necropolis Kings often use this spell on cadavers in and around their tombs to animate corpses to strike down would be grave robbers, while the Veiled protect their most valuable relics and libraries with bound wraiths that torment the uninvited into madness.

 

Soul Shatter: Such is the power of a Necropolis King that they can disassemble the inner bindings of a restless dead in the palm of their hand and then launch the unstable entity at their enemies with implosive results. The effects of this spell are equivalent to a fragmentation grenade except in reverse (imploding instead of exploding, and the shrapnel coming from the objects in the area around the implosion instead of the soul itself), and the necromancer can only destabilize one wraith per round. Furthermore, once destabilized the time to implosion is only a rough estimate and cannot in anyway be stalled or combined with any catalyst for greater yield or area of effect. Once destabilized, the former ghost is visible to the naked eye and can be spotted and avoided like any other attack. The Kings have a reputation for intentionally casting this spell in front of the Veiled to spite them. This spell cannot be used on PC souls. 

 

Prison of Jade: The process by which Necropolis Kings convert large quantities of soul stuff into tradable currency. The ritual is not an efficient or delicate process, and a considerable amount of the total energy harvested is lost, along with most of the defining traits and qualities of the souls, but it allows the Kings to convert entire battlefields worth of corpses into easily portable wealth. The origin of the jade coins came from Sith finding regular currency of little worth when dealing with other Sith, as amassing great wealth is a trivial matter for the Sith. Jade coins, on the other hand, can fuel the construction of relics, temples, rituals, and machines of war, making them a representation of meaningful power to the Sith. As such, the Kings are financial powerhouses in the Sith Empire, controlling the flow of new currency.

 

Gravetide: With this spell, the Necropolis King roughly animates corpses to blindly charge (or otherwise move towards, limbs are often not a guarantee on Star Wars corpses) their opponent and tackle or otherwise lash out at them. The corpses will not use weapons even if they are still holding them, and after the initial attempt they will decompose into obsolescence and be untargetable to raise again. The number of corpses that a necromancer can simultaneously animate is dependent on their rank, an apprentice can only raise one at a time, a lord can muster between two and four, while a master can raise all corpses within their immediate locus of control.

 

Sepulchral Resplendence: Necromancers who treat death as an unexploited resource from which they can draw armies and commanders from are inevitably drawn down this path of defilement and grandeur. Constructing massive tombs to serve as places of power with which they raise silent ranks of undead soldiers, the Necropolis Kings essentially stripmine graves to build sprawling armies of corpse minions. The dead are not cunning or skilled warriors, but they are many and relentless, and have no qualms about obeying even the most psychotic orders of their masters. Most of these undead are unarmed, but warriors and soldiers who were buried with their weapons still clutch them on these new battlefields. Sith tombworlds such as Korriban were known for burying armed guards alive with their lords to serve them in the afterlife, and so armies that are raised on such worlds have a higher percentage of armed warriors. Sith Lords who walk this path are instrumental to the process of directing and sustaining their forces, but Sith Masters can weave incantations that allow their armies to outlast their own mortal span as long as there are other Sith(PCs) to direct them. These mass resurrections destroy any traces of individual hauntings, making certain grave sites a massive point of contention between the Necropolis Lords and the Forlorn Veil. 

 

Unlike traditional NPC soldiers, the presence of undead swarms should be treated like an environmental hazard that ebbs and flows through cities and battlefields. They aren’t fast(they can’t move faster than walking speed) or skilled enough to threaten even marginally competent PCs on their own, but their sheer numbers press in on a character’s ability to maneuver and interfere with their actions with grasping hands if left unaddressed and allowed to close. Necromancers that are focused entirely on controlling their forces to the point of having no weapon readied can fuel them with dark vigor, allowing them to run and respond to basic commands beyond murder everything. Masters that are using this approach can passively raise corpses that haven’t already been raised and are in their direct locus of control.

 

The Dark Side corrupts the Necropolis Kings by consuming their minds with an obsession regarding their legacy, driving them to build great temples, statues, and monuments. They demand carefully scribed personal histories and detailed portraits so that their greatness may be remembered in the coming eras. This maddening fascination with posterity ages them rapidly, turning their hair grey, their eyes dull, and their skin sallow and loose. Most Necropolis Kings will never see their grand designs completed, or the truth of how their legacy has been recorded, as their eyes fail well before the rest of their bodies do. But they are too vain to concede or even imagine such a defeat, so their minds deceive them with visions of ages past, during other times of Sith glory. Masters of this path are often deluded into thinking that they are fighting the wars that they once read so eagerly about as apprentices, completely oblivious to current events.  

 

Implements of the Old Hatreds: The Necropolis Kings are obsessed with the collecting of ancient relics, and the Sith swords of bygone conquerors are a particular favorite. Their most prized pieces will drive them to do the unthinkable, willingly conduct business with the Forlorn Veil. The Veil can bind a wraith of considerable skill in swordsmanship to the blade, allowing the necromancer to wield it just like a real Sith Lord. Relying on the wraith’s expertise is dangerous, as the spirit is contemptuous of any Sith that lacks the training to use the sword properly on their own. As such the wielder must focus on resisting the influence of the wraith while fighting, effectively reducing their rank for casting by a level. Wielding such a weapon while maintaining control gives the wielder sword skills equal to a warrior a rank beneath them, but offers no benefit to Sith that are already trained in the warrior arts (For them it’s treated as just a regular Sith sword). This does not allow players to subvert the rule regarding canon character relics, players should instead reference non canon historical Sith. ((Clarification, letting the bound Sith spirit take over is not a means to go super saiyan, it's getting your soul yeeted into the void while something that is not your PC joyrides in your body.

 

Toll of Ages: The Necropolis King taps into the energies of decay and entropy, manifesting them into orbs of unmaking that swirl around the sorcerer trailing sulphuric dark smoke clouds. The general area around the necromancer begins to erode and rust over, with anything coming into direct contact with the spheres degrading at frightening speed. The necromancer can widen the orbit of the projectiles to effectively launch orbs at enemies, or keep them close as a deterrent. It should always be possible for an attacker to reach the necromancer, but a direct charge of unbroken momentum is likely to end poorly. The higher the rank of the sorcerer, the harder it is to detect and pursue an opening. People that are touched by the orbs are aged rapidly wherever contact is made.

 

Ancestral Jade Conqueror: Many necromancers are obsessed with studying and documenting the lineages of Sith warlords and generals, in the hopes of finding the most capable and powerful warriors to resurrect as servants. Braving tombs brimming with curses and traps, the necromancers bind the spirits into canopic vessels that are placed within carefully constructed effigal bodies. Enslaved to the necromancer’s will, these dark slaves serve as their hands on distant battlefields. Mechanically speaking, this is a flavorful way for necromancers to use the Champion rule to create a Sith Warrior golem or a Sith Empire NFU general golem. The components used to bind and maintain these creatures are of equal sturdiness to a human body, with internal components that are as vital as organs for the living.

 

Alternatively, these golems can be constructed to serve as a means for the necromancer and their more useful allies to cheat death. Without the narrow focus of bound servitude though, occupants of these bodies often quickly succumb to madness as their minds fail to properly adjust to their new artificial bodies. This offers an alternative to respawning through cloning.

 

Power Behind The Veil: While the Necropolis Kings seek power through innumerable mindless servants and vast sepulchral temples, the Forlorn Veil prefer more subtle methods. Seeking out the most bitter and observant wraiths, these necromancers entice them into dark pacts as hidden agents in the dark places of the empire. Acting as spies and saboteurs, these ghosts often serve to enforce loyalty and punish disobedience and failure among the necromancer’s living agents, although some serve the Dark Lord as spymasters keeping watch over the higher echelons of the Sith Empire. 

 

The necromancer can bind loyal wraiths to objects and locations that are attuned to the Dark Side, making them blend in rather easily in the Sith Empire and among its operatives, but absurdly noticeable amongst the Jedi and rebels, making them far less useful for spying in enemy territory. A necromancer can hold active contracts with a number of wraiths equal to twice their rank. The necromancer can summon wraiths to deliver reports on what they have observed, regardless of distance. The wraith’s awareness is limited to the general area of the object it is bound to or the area of the building it is haunting. 

 

Renunciation of Mortality: One of the greatest seductions of the Dark Side, this profane ritual is synonymous with the Forlorn Veil, and counted as one of their greatest triumphs even in its imperfect state. Upon completing this dark rite, the Sith is removed from the mortal coil, becoming a static presence that does not age, hunger, or die. Both unliving and undead, the Sith now exists in a twilight state on the threshold between worlds as a transient wraith that steals bodies.

 

There is an indifference about the Veiled that have undergone this transition, being so distant from pain and death, that allows them to treat wounds with utter disregard. While this is often a boon, it also has a tendency to make the Veiled apathetic towards defensive measures like armor or vampiric healing in combat, and unlike other Sith they cannot boost their spiritual strength through physical pain. A necromancer can still be dismembered sufficiently enough that they abandon a body, which is treated as a normal duel loss death, and they are treated as looking for a new host body over the next three days. Mechanically speaking, new bodies should be found on Sith held worlds or neutral worlds that hold significance to the character.

 

In the darkness of night and deep places where the sun cannot reach, the Veiled have an ethereal glamour to them, akin to how romanticized works portray ghostly figures. In direct sunlight though, their true ghastly nature is revealed. In places attuned to the Light, their reflection can also reveal them for what they are. Given their immortal state, the Veiled also suffer from a deep paranoia regarding other wielders of the Force, seeing them as the only potential threat to their deathlessness. 

 

Pact of Vengeance: Sometimes the bodies that the Veiled inhabit still have a wraith anchored to them, a harrowed soul with similar aims or at least trauma that can be subverted to the whims of the necromancer. The spirit can be coaxed or coerced into offering up details of their life and context regarding people they knew and places they had been, but that’s only the beginning. Necromancers have three paths that they can pursue with regards to their involuntary cohabitants. Some necromancers simply use the wraiths as a quick fuel reserve, sacrificing them at the earliest convenience for a quick boost of energy. Others might use the wraith to get their bearings in the new body and plot revenge against whoever killed them, leading the wraith on with false promises of aiding them in finding resolution. The third and most time consuming option is to embrace the wraith’s suffering as the necromancer’s own, internalizing the pain and hatred while feeding the wraith’s vindictive nature. This last option creates a codependent relationship where the Sith and wraith fuel each other's worst tendencies and behaviors. The necromancer becomes, for lack of a better term, haunted, and the wraith can reach across the veil into the physical world to interact and make its presence known (In terms of affecting a duel, the extent of the wraith’s potential would be at most simple tasks like turning on or off lights, closing or opening doors, temporarily manifesting or moving objects with enough bludgeoning force to disrupt or hurt someone, but not majorly wound them, and not striking with any particular accuracy or precision.)

 

Dark Passenger: The Veiled imbues a nearby wraith with a small measure of their power and attempts to propel it onto an enemy. During this phase of the attack the wraith is visible and avoidable, moving at the same speed as a charging humanoid, and able to move through walls (the necromancer still needs to know where precisely the target is for it to connect). While the wraith can do simple course changes, if the opponent can dodge it then the wraith will be distracted and stop its pursuit. For anything outside of their own psychodramas, most ghosts have less of an attention span than goldfish, so the spell’s range is not indefinite. The effects of this spell should it land vary depending on the target, with Force users finding their concentration threatened by alien thoughts and emotions, and non Force users finding their more sensitive gear like comms, sensors, and scanners heavily disrupted and behaving erratically. When the ghost departs, it takes a measure of the victim’s vital essence with it, a spiritual wound that leaves them cold, nauseous, and often irrationally panicked.

 

Death Touch: A spiritual scalpel in the Veiled’s toolkit, this spell tugs a touched victim’s fears regarding death to the forefront of their mind with startling intensity. When used in combat, the intent of the necromancer is generally to disrupt their opponent’s concentration or hinder their ability to react effectively. Outside of combat, the effect is more subtle and insidious, with victims potentially being unaware that a spell is being cast on them. Light siders often see the emotional fallout from their death and how people would be left to suffer should they die, with the specters of those potential futures blaming them for their woe. The war against the Dark is cast in a futile light, a fool’s crusade that sends people to mass graves instead of their proper place in the galaxy. Dark siders see everything that they’ve worked towards fall apart or be forgotten as “lesser” individuals surpass them in their absence and mock their legacy, and underlings that they believed to be faithful raise glasses to the demise of their former master while furthering their own plans. Amoral survivalists are confronted with amorphous dread and the terror of non-existence.

 

Burden of Regret: Another of the Veiled’s more subtle powers, this spell discreetly foments the idea that the victim needs to do or confess something before it’s “too late”. While the necromancer can choose a fabricated and unlikely desire, doing so has a very real chance of undermining the curse, as the victim might realize that an outside force is at work. Ideally, the necromancer wants to leverage a plausible desire to manipulate the victim into acting a certain way.

 

Skeleton Key of Despair: Whereas Burden of Regret focuses on the fear of leaving things unfinished, this curse tries to encourage self destructive and short sighted behaviour with the embedded notion that the victim is going to die soon so they might as well act without inhibition since the end will come for them before the consequences do. If applicable, the victim will attribute their sense of foreboding to an appropriate upcoming event such as a major battle.

 

Cistern of Sorrow and Chains: The Veiled can transform a location into a place for keeping wraiths that they have collected during their studies, much like other sorcerers construct libraries to house their collected lore. Generally speaking, places that are already conducive to haunting work best, particularly places that have an extended history of pain, misery, and hatred. Like the Veiled themself, the place and any objects within it(including deceased bodies) become caught in a liminal state, tearing at the edges but not neglected beyond usability. 

 

Wraiths have increased potency within the bounds of the location, and are able to interact physically with the living if they choose to. If the Veiled has already completed the Renunciation of Mortality rite, then they can move about the area in either their possessed body or their wraith form with ease, and their physical body will not decay while they are out of it. Emotions in the cistern well up and saturate the area, moving through people’s skin in currents as if they were permeable and things like woe and anger were like weather phenomena. Wraith infection is also significantly easier and potent.

 

The place itself often becomes a sentient Dark Side nexus that inherently desires to claim more dead within its bounds as wraiths, and people that die within it are more likely to leave behind restless spirits. 

 

Death Masque: The Veiled can manifest the appearance of a dead person, either someone they killed or even just is known to them to be dead. In this way they can confront the living with specters from the past, eliciting dread, regret, and loss. For some, the experience can shatter the mind, and these people become convinced that a dead loved one or slain enemy has come back to haunt them. The form manifested is clearly dead, this is a tool for psychological warfare, not infiltration.

 

Alternatively, Death Masque can be applied to a place that the necromancer has used Cistern of Sorrow and Chains on to temporarily conceal the rotting and tumultuous nature of it. For a few hours to a few days, the place will seem deceptively welcoming and definitely not crawling with angry ghosts. The unwitting people that enter it feel a false sense of belonging in the place, as if by staying there they could be part of the location’s gilded legacy. As the blood begins to seep through the walls, the false notion that something of value could be found here or some innocent soul could be saved if the victim stays replaces the initial lie within.

 

Haunted Blade: Forlorn Veil necromancers can bind wraiths to their lightsabers, imbuing them with unnatural quietude and grisly aura. The blade’s energies seem to subsume all other light, casting the world around it in brutal subdued (usually red) tones that devour all other colors. The weapon does not emit the standard lightsaber sound, instead sounding like hushed whispers and dark chanting. 

 

Dark Side wraiths and grisly specters are drawn to the crimson beacon, and find the veil between the realms of the living and the dead significantly more thin. They use this opportunity for mayhem with gleeful abandon, lashing out at the enemies of the necromancer by throwing objects, disrupting technology, and should the necromancer be of significant power such as a master, inflicting physical wounds that look like the flesh was torn at with feral mania to such a degree that unseen fingernails rent angry furrows into the skin. These attacks are by no means lethal or incapacitating, but they can be incredibly distracting, and sometimes quite painful. Furthermore, these attacks are not being performed by the Necromancer directly, allowing them to focus their power on other fronts.

 

If necessary, these weapons also prove effective in dispatching unruly or rebellious ghosts, shattering them into a spray of broken echoes and incoherent memories. The Veiled prefer to preserve their toys if possible, but that doesn’t always stay their hand, especially if one of the restless dead is foolish enough to directly challenge their authority. 

 

Hellweaver: While the Veiled may be reluctant to admit it, certain problems require a more firm hand than what the restless spirits they command can employ. In such cases, the Veiled find themselves dependent on assistance from the Necropolis Kings to undertake a ritual that creates an unholy champion through a fusion of Sith relics, ancient remains, and a wraith bound to the Veiled. Resurrecting ancient Sith is a notoriously risky prospect, most of them are more interested in restoring their own power than following orders, and would only feign loyalty until they were ready to betray there would be masters. Like any true Sith however, the Veiled figured out a way to cheat the system. 

 

The Hellweaver ritual consists of making a rigged contest of wills between the dead Sith and a bound wraith, with the living Sith feeding massive amounts of power into the wraith to allow it to overpower the ancient Sith ghost. Once the dead Sith is subdued, the two spirits are merged into one being that has the Sith’s power but also the wraith’s bond to the necromancer. The amalgam is bound to a Sith mask which is placed on a physically bound person wrapped in bands of cloth bearing elaborate spells and curses. The darkness within the mask begins to seep into the person before taking root on their face with an evil that slowly burrows through the rest of their body. When the ritual is finished, the Veiled now has a bound agent of significant power to act as their hand in the mortal world. In mechanical terms, this is a way for the Veiled to gain a Sith Warrior or Assassin champion.

 

Haunting Condemnation: The Veiled can infuse a restless spirit with a measure of its power so that it can confront someone that it blames for wronging it. Sometimes used in battle to undermine the focus of an enemy, but primarily used for psychological warfare and to punish enemies. This spell does require the necromancer actually tracking down the ghost in question and binding it, and the ghost actually having a grievance that it believes to be true. Sith masters, however, can summon smoke demons to assume the likeness of the dead and make whatever false claims that they want. Eye contact must be made, the victim must be marked in some way, or a cursed object worn for this spell to begin. The duration of the curse varies depending on how it is afflicted. Eye contact is brief but intense. A marked target remains cursed until the mark is removed. Someone that wore a cursed object remains cursed until the object is destroyed or cleansed. The longer duration curses tend to be more active at night, but the victim might catch the spirit watching them during the day out of the corner of their eye. 

 

The Peculiar Madness of the Veiled: With great power comes an exceptional amount of neuroses, and the Veiled are no exception to this rule. The further along in their studies that the Veiled progress, the more its conceits affect their minds, particularly after the completion of the Renunciation of Mortality ritual. The ways that this can express itself are many and varied, but certain key traits remain consistent. First among them is that because much of the Veiled’s power lies in making deals with specters, and because the dead are always watching, the Veiled are obsessive about keeping their word and honoring contracts, even if it requires them to go against their own nature or work cross purpose to their own designs. Granted, it is a position that they had to put themselves in, but it can still become rather problematic at times. They do however draw a very distinct line between keeping their word in an official capacity and lying in casual statements.

 

The second consistent trait is a deep and overwhelming paranoia of being watched at all times. It’s not an entirely unfounded fear, given that the dead are always watching, but in most cases the dead that are present are not bound to any master and are only around because they’re stuck there. In the mind of the Veiled though, every restless spirit is a potential spy, and everything that they do is being, observed, reported on, and judged. This paranoia heightens as the enemies of the Sith weaken and scatter, allowing Sith the freedom to pursue buried vendettas.

 

A third common consequence is fear of the loss of self and falling to the influence of others. Many Veiled work so closely with some wraiths that they notice traits and quirks infecting their own personalities, sometimes accompanied by alien thoughts. As time goes on, especially after the Renunciation ritual, the Veiled begin to question more and more what thoughts and feelings are their own and which ones are only echoes of past lives.

 

The fourth flaw is an obsession with connections between the Veiled and people, places, and things. Since so much of Sith Sorcery is based on occultism and pageantry, most veiled believe (incorrectly) that strong connections enhance their necromantic powers in the same way that ghosts are empowered by their fetters. This draws many of them to seek out and remain in unhealthy situations because they believe that it will enhance their otherworldly power. Granted, some might consider this standard Sith modus operandi, but it’s more pronounced with the Veiled, and more akin to extreme apophenia as they pursue scenarios that by insane metrics they believe will yield the greatest power. After all, every ghost they find is defined in its power by how broken it was in life. 

 

Bleak Usurpation: The Veiled can perform a rite similar to Claim the Empty Vessel, but instead of putting their own consciousness into a corpse, they implant a specter into a subdued mortal of weak will, often having been drugged or otherwise made compliant. The specter can temporarily live again, using the body as its own, but they have to kill and consume a person at some point in the first night and every three nights after or else their borrowed body will rot away until it cannot sustain their spirit.

 

Jailer and Savior Alike: While the Veiled have extreme difficulty in developing and sustaining positive emotions like love, obsession and fixation come readily to them. This spell binds a specter to someone that has had the misfortune to catch the necromancer’s eye. It’s dormant during the day, but will actively protect the victim at night, both from threats and the (perceived) romantic advances of anyone other than the necromancer. If the victim, who may not even know that their hidden admirer exists, continues to court others and be receptive to advances, the psychotic ghost will begin lashing out at them just as it does to “threats”, angry that the victim is slighting its master. The curse requires seeing the victim, but most Sith wrongly believe that it also requires marking the victim in some way or secretly hiding a curse bag in the victim’s home

 

Forlorn Talisman: The Veiled can, with careful study and laborious incantation, crystallize a wraith and its final moments into a synthetic jewel of considerable beauty and power. Each jewel radiates the emotions of the wraith’s final moments, and the Veiled are known to keep carefully curated collections of souls that they feel best embody the emotions of the Dark Side. It takes significantly more time and effort to manifest such an object compared to the jade coins that the Necropolis Kings mint en masse, making them both significantly more valued and more coveted. In terms of intrinsic value, jade coins are often significantly more valuable due to the sheer bulk of souls that they can hold, but master artificers needing souls of specific quality and traits pay exorbitant fees for the jewels, along with Sith elite who see them as symbols of status. Non Force users that wear them tend to go rather mad if they subject themselves to extended exposure.

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