Everything

Winged eyes. Crawling hands. Finger-scorpions and literal talking heads. Necromancers and mad scientists with a gruesome sense of humor sometimes reanimate corpse pieces, flayed skins, dried bones, removed organs, and other heralds of mortality. Imaginative bio-tinkerers occasionally graft such things together into disturbing playmates that scurry around the lab. And while these gruesome goodies rarely have much capability beyond a single specific purpose (holding candelabras, fetching drinks, spying on one’s enemies, and so on), they provide grotesque amusement and really liven up a place. At the higher levels of the necrotic Arts and Sciences, full bodies may be animated with a sense of purpose and identity that set them apart from mere walking corpses. Despite taboos and legendary risks, revival of the dead remains a mainstay of Awakened Arts and Enlightened Science.

The game systems for animating mortal remains can be found in the “Necromancy” section of How Do You DO That? (pp. 87-88). Aside from Frankensteinian Monstrosities, these odd critters possess few Traits beyond the powers of movement, perception, vestigial consciousness, and perhaps speech — all represented by Special Advantages and perhaps Flaws. Occasionally, a morbid magus may invest a spirit into these reanimated parts, creating a spirit Fetish or a familiar character… which, especially if the mage in question has high Ranks of Mind or spirit, could create an especially disgusting prison for a living consciousness.

Clearly, such perversions of mortality involve vulgar magick. While they do not age as such, they attract bugs and other scavengers, smell awful unless treated to prevent rot, and continue to molder unless, again, magicks have been employed to stop decay. In game terms, all reanimat­ ed scraps have the highest level of the Unbelief Flaw, not merely because witnesses might not accept them as real but also because their continued existence in this state involves defying core principles of the material world.

Encountering certain flamboyantly constructed reani­ mates might constitute one of the “Things Mans Was Not Meant to Know,” described in Mage 20, pp. 407-408. A person acclimated to horror and mortality may take such things in stride, but the average person — Awakened or not — probably won’t.

Eye Scream

Composed of eyeballs equipped with tiny wings and taloned legs, “eye screams” serve as spies for mages who weave a bit of Correspondence perception into these eerie little forms. Though vulnerable to any amount of force, they move near-silently, hide well, see even in darkness, and communicate the things they see back to the mage who created them.

Creeper

Assembled from parts that don’t belong together in any nat­ ural configuration, a creeper reanimate features grotesque mashups of dead remains: spiders made from severed fingers, chairs made from limbs, lumps of flesh peppered with mouths, eyes, and so forth… the potential applications are limited only by the parts at hand (so to speak) and the perversity of the creator mage.

Unlike the more dangerous Shambling Horror or Slaughterer, creepers tend to be small, weak, fragile, and unin­ telligent. Their primary value involves freaking the shit out of whoever’s unfortunate enough to see one. From time to time, a particularly ambitious (read: bent) necrotinkerer will house a spirit or consciousness inside one of these freakish reanimates; in such cases, the creeper might speak (or more likely, scream a lot), think, and possess abilities like Telekinesis or Cause Insanity that make up for the creepers’ ungainly physical nature, as if the mere sight of such a horror wasn’t bad enough already.

Flayed Skin

Among the most sadistic applications of the Arts and Sciences, a dismal rite invests a living consciousness into a flayed skin. Although the trapped mind remains conscious of this atrocity — and probably still feels pain from it — it cannot move except perhaps to flap or tense itself a bit.

Dropped to the ground, a flayed skin may creep along, inch by agonizing inch, so long as nothing large or powerful gets in its way. Draped like clothing, tapestries, or other loose materials, the skin might tighten itself with a small degree of

strength. A merciful creator might remove the sense of pain from such a skin so that the residing consciousness may endure without endless suffering. For the most part, though, such necrotic materials are helpless to change their ghoulish state. Hung on walls, tailored into clothing, stretched to form musical instruments, worked into props for rituals or harrowing experiments, these reanimates expose the most awful face of malignant magick.

Frankensteinian Monstrosity

Whether composed of portions from the recently de­ ceased (as popularized by the infamous Dr. Frankenstein) or animated from whole corpses (a la Herbert West), the whole-bodied monstrosity may be perhaps the most famous sort of reanimate. Not quite like the zombies detailed elsewhere in this chapter, a Frankensteinian monstrosity maintains a certain degree of self-willed intellect. Oh, sure — that intellect tends to be damaged by the ravages of brain death, but some vestiges of individual personality remain… a personality that might have carried over from the murderer whose brain or hands had contributed to the final result, but a personality nonetheless.

Traditionally hampered by death trauma, brain damage, and other effects of reanimating dead bodies in defiance of natural laws, monstrosities generally bear a grudge: revenge against the parties responsible for their deaths, hatred of the creator who brought them back to life, isolation angst thanks to their horrible appearance, and probably a combination of all those factors… such creatures are seldom happy and often pissed. Their once-dead bodies tend to retain a certain degree of rigor mortis, and their physicality feels disturbing to living things even if the scars from their death and resur­ rection don’t show. Flaws like Alien Impression, Horrific, Impediment (clumsy stiffness), PTSD, Stress Atavism, and morbid forms of Obsession are almost essential, and Unbelief (manifesting as accelerated decay) is almost standard for monstrosities who leave the grounds where they were cre­ ated. On the plus side, such reanimates are almost always

Immortal and Physically Impressive (as per those Merits). Though uncanny in presence, a well-constructed monstrosity might not be ugly after all. Regardless of appearances, such reanimates possess a strength and vitality (though rarely dexterity) that put living humans to shame.

Unlike “scrap” reanimates, monstrosities can be­ come viable characters outside the lab, and may be (with Storyteller approval) employed by players, too. The Etherite celebrity Elias was a full-fledged member of his Tradition, although whether or not he was truly Enlightened in the metaphysical sense of that word is open for debate. An especially skillful creator can craft a former corpse who’s almost indistinguishable from a living person except under close examination; few creators, however, are that skillful, and even the best monstrosities suffer psychological scars if not physical disabilities. They were, after all, dead, and might have understandable personality crises if they were cobbled together from various corpses.

Handy Hands

Why deal with whole people when a hand or two will do? Properly animated and imbued with vestigial intellect, a

severed arm or hand can provide useful assistance around the lab or sanctum. Such companions might heft lamps, taunt and attack intruders, or hang out in a box until needed. Hands can’t speak, of course (though they can write), don’t eat (but they might cook), and lack the leverage and physics necessary to do more than crawl around on their fingers (unless they’ve been anchored somehow). Even so, they appear to be able to “see” without eyes (possibly due to tactile sensitivity awareness), and often manipulate objects with fair dexterity and a surprising degree of strength.

Shambling Horror and Slaughterer

A variation on the creeper theme involves grafting ma­ terial or mechanical appendages onto hacked-up pieces or reanimated corpse parts. Spikes, blades, chainsaws, hooks — anything that the proper Ranks of Matter and Life can merge together can become a shambling horror or slaughterer. The former is good mostly for shock value, intimidation, and gross-out humor, while the latter adds the capacity for killing in the grisliest manner possible.

Essentially mindless apart from their intended pur­ pose, these reanimates merge the tormented identity of a Frankensteinian monstrosity with the relentless singularity of a reanimated hand. If one is meant to scare, then one scares; if meant to kill, then one kills. Essentially unique, each shambler or slaughterer reflects the crazed imagination of its creator and the role — bodyguard, mass-murderer, gross sex toy — for which it was created. There’s nothing remotely natural about such reanimates, and outside their intended setting they self-destruct and decay with nauseating speed.

Talking Head

Preserved in a vat, dropped in a box, mounted on a pike, or hung on the door, a severed human head may be­ come a literal conversation piece. Though it’s traditional mad-scientist procedure to keep a living head around the lab (typically hooked up to tubes, wires, and other accoutre­ ments), mystics have employed this sort of necrofetishism for millennia, often as a way of tormenting their enemies, preserving their loved ones, and scaring the living crap out of trespassers.

The amount of personality a severed head retains depends upon whether or not the creator trapped a spirit or consciousness in the head or simply animated it with a facsimile of life. Either way, these gruesome decorations have a distinctly unnerving effect on people who aren’t used to seeing this sort of thing, much less having a speaking head talk back to them.

Playful necrotinkerers sometimes attach hands, crab or spider legs, and other mechanical or biological appendages to severed heads, making them somewhat mobile and oc­ casionally proficient at limited sorts of combat. Otherwise, a talking head has the Flaw: Limbless and no ability to get around on its own unless it possesses some form of wings or levitation.

Stripped of flesh and muscle, a talking head might be a talking skull instead. This, too, is a pretty traditional prop for mages with a morbid sense of humor or a sincere reverence for the dead.