Everything

Another ruthless tactic – described in more detail later in this chapter, under Summoning, Binding, Bargaining, and Warding (pp. 104-106) – involves torturing the ghost, or at least threatening to do so. This is a pretty rotten thing to do, but it is a traditional part of many necromantic practices. Story-wise, such “wracking of the spirit” involves trapping the ghost and then using Spirit magick to hurt it.

Game-wise, such torment involves Spirit 4 to compel the ghost to appear and then trap it in place. Spirit 3 can inflict pain, Spirit 4 can bind the ghost into an object, and Spirit 5 may destroy the ghost entirely. None of these options will exactly win friends and influence people to be anything but hostile. Still, necromancers tend to do this sort of thing, if only as a tactic of intimidation when dealing with a hostile ghost.

Mystics, incidentally, aren’t the only “necromancers” who do this sort of thing. The Border Corps Division from the

Void Engineers uses such tactics on the Restless Dead, and a certain group of ‘80s-movie heroes built their business model around grabbing ghosts and trapping them in containment-field technology. (Just don’t cross the streams…)

Any sensible necromancer knows to ward herself against ghostly attacks. Typically, this involves a Spirit 2 Effect to thicken the Gauntlet within a given area that’s defined by the focus-instruments employed – a circle of salt, Hermetic pentacle, Ectoplasmic Shield-Grid, and so forth. As the Spirit Sphere entry in Mage 20 states, each success raises the Gauntlet rating by +1, for the duration of the Effect. A Correspondence 4/ Spirit 3/ Entropy 2 Effect can also ward an area from the influences of ghostly powers. Although this sort of ward doesn’t alter the spiritual environment, it prevents a ghost from using its Entropic powers against protected people. Each success after the first two (which secure the protection) subtracts one success from any ghostly attack that has been directed against the protected parties. As an option, the player can also decide to spend one additional success per character so that she can ward more than one person from ghostly attacks.

A powerful mage can also use Spirit 4 or 5 to create ephemeral walls, banish spirits, exorcise ghosts, and seal them up in enchanted objects. Such actions aren’t exactly friendly, but in the case of certain ghosts – especially the evil-tempered spectres – it’s always good to have several options to choose from. For rules about Exorcism, see that entry in the Uncanny