Exorcism

 

Art Of Exorcism (Occult •••)

Roll: Varies by task — see below

Cost: 6 motes per attempt

Aspects: Ghosts, Fair Folk, demons, spirits

Perhaps only slightly less respected than the Art of Warding is the Art of Exorcism. Rogue spirits and the dead are often found harassing mortals — sometimes with justification, often without — and it is the duty of the ghost hunter or exorcist to deal with these problems and send the beings plaguing mankind back to their rest. Exorcism is, like warding, mostly a matter of ritual and observance of the correct rites. Some of these rites are intended to mollify or placate a spirit wronged or to bring closure to a ghost that has lost its way. Others are less beneficent, intended to repel or destroy a ghost that has mischief, or worse, on its mind. Exorcism is broken up into three basic tasks: placation, expulsion and banishment.

 

Placation: Sometimes it’s possible to negotiate with spirits or ghosts. When a minor god or a revered ancestor feels it has been wronged, it may visit misfortunes upon those who have betrayed or crossed it, and if the wrong is properly atoned for, the suffering can be alleviated. Placation is the process of drawing forth the spirit and forcing it to actually state its demands. Beginning the ritual of placation first requires that the exorcist draw the spirit or ghost’s attention. In some cases this can be accomplished simply by offering it tea (or perhaps blood, in the case of a ghost or demon). In other cases, long, drawn-out rituals involving incense, the beating of gongs and chanting are required. Once the spirit has materialized — or at least made its presence known — negotiations can begin.

Negotiations are an extended Charisma + Occult task. The thaumaturge must accumulate successes equal to twice the spirit’s Willpower + Essence, with an interval of one hour between rolls and a difficulty on each roll equal to (6 - the spirit’s Compassion). A failure adds the dice failed by to the total number of successes needed. The exorcist’s player can make a total number of rolls equal to her character’s Endurance (or Stamina -2, if she has no Endurance). A botch immediately halts negotiations, but the thaumaturge can often lure the spirit back to the bargaining table with sufficient acts of contrition and sacrifices. Most spirits will be suitably impressed with rituals of exorcism and contrite acts. In total, this process involves the sacrifice of Resources equal to the spirit’s permanent Essence — higher levels may bring a more favorable reaction.

Once the reasons for the spirit’s misbehavior are known, an appropriate form of atonement can be decided upon. Sometimes, the method of atonement is obvious — an ancestor whose tomb has been allowed to fall into disrepair will normally be satisfied if it is cleaned up and brought back to its former glory… with perhaps new shingling and some better doors and a pair of stone guardian lions at the entryway. In other cases, proper atonement may mean some quest undertaken, sacrifices of precious things — some of them material, others less so (reputation, innocence, virginity) — or merely an apology. A particularly aggrieved — or merely callous and petty — spirit will be satisfied only with the shedding of blood, although it need not always be that of the guilty party.

If the price is too high, impossible or merely unfathomable, the exorcist can attempt to arrange some other form of atonement. The exorcist must first attempt to ascertain what kind of atonement or punishment will be acceptable to the spirit in lieu of what it demands. This requires a Wits + Occult roll, with a difficulty equal to the spirit’s Conviction. Extra successes are added as dice to the next roll — conversely, one die is subtracted from the next roll for each die by which this roll failed. The exorcist’s player can then roll her character’s Manipulation + Occult, as an extended roll, with a difficulty equal to the spirit’s Willpower + Conviction, to try and convince the spirit that it should accept this alternate form of atonement instead. If successful, the spirit has accepted this new form of punishment — if not, it is obstinate, refusing anything other than the original terms.

An exorcist can also try to outwit the spirit — indeed, many are the tales of the clever Immaculate monk who tricked the fearsome (but perhaps not so bright) god into forsaking some terrible vengeance. The stories rarely mention the countless numbers of would-be exorcists who were not so clever as they thought, for they rarely come to good ends. Fooling a spirit is a contested roll — the exorcist’s Wits + Occult versus the spirit’s Perception + Awareness. Even if a spirit notices the dupe, it may choose to do nothing about it, pretending to be fooled — a well-done feat of misdirection is a good way for the spirit to back off of an untenable claim without losing face, so long as the exorcist is circumspect in his telling of the tale after the fact — and if he is not, there is nothing to say that the spirit may not chase down and kill the exorcist for his temerity.

 

Expulsion: Some spirits or ghosts take over the living for sport or to slake some unnatural thirst or another. Others, such as demons, have darker motives. A skilled exorcist can attempt to drive out a spirit or ghost that has taken a mortal over with some Charm or Arcanos. Driving a spirit out of a mortal is an extended Manipulation + Occult roll, with a difficulty equal to the spirit’s lowest Virtue. The exorcist must accumulate successes equal to twice the spirit’s highest Virtue. Each roll represents 10 minutes and costs a Willpower.

 

Banishment: When a thaumaturge is unable to come to some arrangement with a spirit or demon, she can try to banish the spirit from her presence, at least for a time. This is typically a delaying tactic and nothing more — the exorcist must take steps to make sure that, when the entity returns, there are plenty of surprises lined up for it — or that the exorcist and her charges have long since vacated the premises.

Spirits cannot be banished or forced to vacate a location for more than a few scenes. The best ways for a thaumaturge — even a powerful one — to get a spirit to leave is to flatter it, to appease it, to bribe it, to ask its superiors to please take it away — or to get an Exalt to kill it or drive it away. Prayers can be made to try and invoke the intercession of a rogue spirit’s putative superiors, but these are rarely effective (increases the normal difficulty of prayers by 3). If these prayers are successful, the spirit will normally be called away by some important missive, rather than through a more direct or overt kind of action — even in removing rogue spirits, the gods are typically subtle.

Demons can also be banished from a place for a night and a day by a thaumaturge. Prayers to the gods regarding demons are routed to the Bureau of Destiny and, when successful, are often far from subtle. Effects can range from a hasty intercession by a Sidereal or other demon hunter (though the characters may never know this is what happened, seeing only an old holy man or wandering Immaculate monk drive the demon away) to the sudden arrival of a Crimson Panoply of Battles’ quick-response force of celestial lions, lesser elemental dragons, thunderbirds and huraka.

Elementals can be exiled from a place defended by an exorcist for up to a month, although rarely does this become necessary — elementals are notoriously prone to bribery and other, less coercive tools at the exorcist’s disposal.

Ghosts can be permanently laid to rest or, at least, driven back to the Underworld. The gods are loath to answer prayers regarding the dead (+2 difficulty) not because of fear of the Malfeans or the Underworld, but simply because most of them feel that mortals ought to be able to handle their revered ancestors without help — and they are largely correct in this assumption.

The process for performing a banishment is identical in each case. Banishment requires an extended opposed roll — the exorcist’s player rolls the better of her character’s Manipulation + Occult or Willpower + permanent Essence (depending on if the thaumaturge is trying to convince or trick it into leaving or force it to leave with brute power). The Storyteller rolls the Traits of the spirit that are listed in the table below. Each roll costs the exorcist 3 motes and represents one minute. The exorcist’s player cannot make more rolls in a banishment than her character’s Stamina + permanent Essence. The entity must also pay Essence for each roll to resist banishment. If it is unwilling or unable to spend the motes listed below for each roll to resist, it automatically fails and is banished for the set period of time. Extra successes garnered in the banishing process double the banishment period (one hour, two hours, four hours, etc.).