Everything

Necronics

One of the newest Paths, only discovered by ghost hunters in the late 1990s, the Path of Necronics was first studied by “Black Hat” hackers attempting to combine their understanding of electronics with the world of the dead. They use various techniques to manipulate their own bioelectricity, or life energy, to affect the world of the dead in some way. Because living energy is antithetical to the Shadowlands, this tends to result in impeding ghosts’ efforts to manage their hauntings.

As a new Path, there’s a lot not yet understood about Necronics. Almost all current practitioners use electronic devices — usually computers, phones, and tablets — to cast Necronics spells. Though analogues in traditional cultures exist, those Paths may or may not be the same as Necronics, using lower-tech and more traditional methods. Ghost hunters investigating Necronics tend to be fascinated by these practices. They think studying them will provide new techniques they can apply to handle hauntings.

In addition to the consequences of botching noted below, Necronics holds one other great danger for the ma­ gician. Because users are manipulating their bioelectricity so strongly, touching them while they are working is dangerous. Even the lightest touch by another living thing throws off

the magician’s focus and control of bioelecticity, causing a feedback loop to form. This feedback causes them to take a level of aggravated damage and fail the spell or ritual. The magician needs immediate medical attention to stabilize them and is left weakened (–1 die to all actions) for one week per level of the spell or ritual disrupted.

System

Aspects: Area, Duration, and Impedance:

Impedance

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The magician floods the local underworld with electrical energy, shutting down all active ghostly powers. Ghosts may ignore this, continuing as they were, if they succeed on a Willpower roll (difficulty 8).

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At this level, instead of merely stopping a haunt­ ing, the magician can increase the Shroud rating. This costs one success per rank increased, with the first rank included in the base cost of the spell (so in addition to the regular requirements, 2 successes are needed to increase the Shroud from 6 to 9).

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Places can be defended from haunting by the simple technique of tricking the ghost into haunting somewhere else. At this rank, the magician can create a trap, a fake realm the ghost can haunt instead of the real location. A ghost can realize they’ve been tricked with a Wits + Enigmas roll (difficulty 8) and can escape with another one.

••••

At this level, the magician may directly use their bioelectricity as an attack against a ghost. When using this rank of Necronics, the Area and Duration Aspects are replaced by Damage and Range.

••••• Masters of this Path are capable of devastating a region of the Shadowlands and its inhabitants. They call it “creating a zero,” and they “format” the space to a default pattern. When successful, there’s nothing left. For the duration of the spell, the region becomes uninhabitable to ghosts, causing the Restless Dead to lose Corpus at a rate of 3 per turn until they can escape the area. If they fail to escape before running out of Corpus levels, they disappear. Magicians generally believe these ghosts have been destroyed completely, rather than the

usual consequences of running out of Corpus. As no Necronics expert has ever seen one that survived being “zeroed out,” this seems to be the best guess.

Price of Failure: Because the Necronics magician uses their own bioelectricity to interact with the dead, botches are particularly risky. They aren’t just extending mystical senses, but rather a very real and physical part of themself. On a botch, the intended effect doesn’t happen. Instead, all ghosts in the area gain Pathos and Angst equal to the level of the spell or ritual being performed. They also become acutely aware of the magician trying to control or banish them and can affect the magician directly with their powers as though they were a ghost, rather than having to work through the Shroud or specific powers allowing them to touch the living.

Sample Rituals

Shroud Bubble (•••)

Sometimes, when all else fails, the best thing a ma­ gician can do when faced with a troublesome haunting is to hide and wait it out. The problem being that ghosts have a nasty tendency to walk through walls and most other protective barriers. They also tend to be relentless, often obsessed when their minds are turned to a task. Desperate magicians being haunted by perseverant ghosts invented the concept of the Shroud Bubble to protect themselves, especially when waiting for backup to arrive to handle the ghost more directly. The ritual requires three successes but increases the Shroud to 10 near the magician. In fact, the Shroud rating increases in a sphere just large enough to contain them. The effect remains stationary, so the magician can’t leave the area without increasing their risk from ghosts and lasts for 8 hours.

Shut It Down (•••)

Hauntings can vary in scale. For ones confined to a room or two, it’s fairly simple to shut down the powers the ghosts are using to interact with the physical world. More often, though, there’s a whole building or larger area being haunted, and if the ghost is denied one room, they’ll just go to another. With Shut It Down, a much larger area than usual can be quieted, such that ghostly powers are impossible to use. The magician must mark the corners of the building or area, which can be as large as a full city block of empty land or a single building. The ritual requires at least 3 successes, and ghosts inside can only use their powers if they succeed on a Willpower roll at difficulty 8.

41 Chapter One: Hedge Magic