Bestiary

As certain people know, the spirits are very real. Although this sort of hedge magician lacks the full spectrum of Awakened magicks, a spirit-talker can deal with the invisible world in ways that materialists believe to be impossible. More of a religious vocation than a form of “magic,” the art of spirit-talking turns a practitioner into a vessel for les invisibles; it’s those spirits, not the vessel, who bring miracles to pass.

Despite the New-Agey feel of that last paragraph, spirits can be wicked bastards. Assuming that “all spirits are kind and holy” is a good way to turn one’s soul into a nice snack for some amoral or outright malignant spirit. On that same note, certain spirit-talkers can be vicious, malicious, even downright satanic. Some spirit-talkers become healers and intermediaries between the human world and the worlds of the spirits and the dead; others are either tools of powerful and malevolent spirits, or else monstrous individuals who use their powers to enrich themselves and destroy their enemies. The distinction between a holy shaman and an unholy one depends largely upon the spirits she deals with and the purposes to which she turns such talents.

Suggested Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3, Charisma, 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 2, Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3

Suggested Abilities: Academics 2, Art (Dance, Singing, or Music) 3, Awareness 3, Brawl 1, Computer 1, Cosmology 3, Crafts 2, Drive 1, Enigmas 2, Esoterica (culturally appropriate spiritual practices), Firearms 1, Lore 3 (Spirits), Medicine 2, Occult 3, Technology 1

Willpower: 5

Health Levels: OK, ‒1, ‒1, ‒2, ‒2, ‒5, Incapacitated

Suggested Powers: Spirit-talkers can detect spirit-possession, and they often see and hear spirits and ghosts. Unfortunately, most of these folks can’t stop seeing and hearing spirits and ghosts — a fact which often makes them seem highly eccentric or mentally ill — and may wind up possessed, temporarily or permanently, by them as well. Such people can also summon, exorcize or banish spirits (see “Necromancy” and “Summoning, Binding, Bargaining, and Warding” in How Do You DO That? pp. 84-87 and 90-106), and may raise or lower the Gauntlet within a small area (never lower than 2 or higher than 9). They can awaken the spirits inherent in objects or places, duplicating the results of the Spirit 3 Effect Rouse & Lull Spirit. (See Mage 20, pp. 443 and 521-522). As with the hedge magician above, the spirit-talker character must conduct long and elaborate rituals in order to make things happen. Such rituals generally last between 20 minutes and three hours. At the end of such a ritual, the spirit-talker’s player makes a roll using Charisma + Esoterica or Occult (whichever is higher), and then spends a point of Willpower. Once summoned or awakened, the spirits may do as they will; temporary actions like raising or lowering the Gauntlet only last until the next sunrise or sunset. Spirit-talkers also tend to have one or more of the following Traits: The Background Totem; the Merits Mark of Favor, Spirit Magnet, and Spirit Mentor; and the Flaws Strangeness, Uncanny, and Primal Marks.

Image: In certain subtle (and not-too-subtle) ways, the spirits leave their mark. This spirit-talker might be an urban shaman in primal-chic tatterwear; a fashionable medium with a thriving practice; a cultural traditionalist in ancestral garb; or perhaps a person who avoids talking about or showing off the things she knows or does. Even so, the spirits linger. Those who understand their ways can plainly see their mark.

Roleplaying Notes: Those who cannot see beyond the obvious things in life are fools. Your life might not be easy, can be quite difficult, in fact, but at least you’re not that kind of fool.

Jacqui High Thunder

Russell Means said: “If you take away all the four-legged beings, nothing on earth could survive. If you took away everything that flies, nothing could survive. Or if you just take away everything that swims or crawls upon the earth, nothing could survive. If you take all of our green relatives, everything that grows, all the medicines, nothing could survive. But if you take the human being away, everything will flourish. Our knowledge of that makes us very humble.”

Frank High Thunder froze to death on the side of the road on a cold February morning. He was walking home from the bar, the one that had a floor covered in peanut shells to soak up the puke and urine, and that kept serving after legal hours. The cops never bothered to check in on it. It was an Indian dive. No one found Frank right away, but a week later his remains were perfectly preserved in the ice. It was a bad winter, and they conducted the ceremony quickly to get out of the cold. Jacqui never got to see her father before he was buried, and no one liked talking about him much after that. No one was proud of him. No one was proud of his family. No one had much faith in Jacqui either. But she stuck close to the elders, and she listened. Jacqui listened to their stories,

and of whom they spoke praise. She listened to their songs, and especially to their silence.

She was a resentful teenager. She went to school because she had to, and because the cops would pick her up during the day. They never took her to juvie — they just took her to uncle’s house, and he was drunk and handsy, so she stayed in school. She gave plenty of lip to her teachers, and plenty of fists to her classmates. She didn’t fool around much with boys because she didn’t want to be just another teen pregnancy. Everyone gushed about those girls, and talked about the future in the next generation, but Jacqui recognized just how little future there was.

Jacqui held a heart full of resentment and wrath. The elders counseled peace and she listened, but nothing could still the rage in her. She witnessed the atrocities at home. She witnessed the atrocities afar via social media. Her inimitable fury piqued the interest of the spirits. Every time she heard a classmate’s story of violent abuse, and every time she witnessed white supremacists chanting hate down the streets of major cities, she opened the secret doors in her hearts to another spirit. Soon the spirits flocked to her, and eventually a powerful one slipped inside of her.

If the spirit had a name before it possessed Jacqui, no one can call for it any longer. Now it only calls itself the High Thunder. To call the High Thunder a spirit of anger would be to not truly cognate the nature of it; the High Thunder is a spirit of awesome wrath, of revenge, and of cold, certain faith. Although the teenager known as Jacqui High Thunder struggled with feeling helpless to change a corrupt and damaged world, the spirit that is now melded to her soul gives her its strength and powerful charms. The problem with this world, she knows, is the people. Without them, the world will fall back into peace and goodness. Without people, the stories the elders tell of the before time will become true again.

Jacqui High Thunder is a murderer; not some sloppy serial killer who targets anyone who strikes her fancy for a fleeting moment of ecstasy, but a precise tool driven by hatred. She seeks out CEOs of oil companies, and presidents of international banks. She practices and hones every form of murder — the quick knife, the long-distance rifle, the burning agony of fires drawn from the spirit world — in order to become a perfect killer. She spends the rest of her time researching and stalking those deserving of death, her studies aided by the supernatural senses of her spirit rider. The High Thunder seeks the death of the wicked, and will one day come to understand that anyone who cannot be humble is wicked and seek the slaughter of thousands. For now, her strikes are swift, precise, and permanent.

It is possible to try and draw Jacqui’s calmer self out through the stories of her people’s ancestors and the ministrations of her elders, but such soothing can never be permanent. Jacqui will fight until she is dead… and killing her won’t be easy with the power of the High Thunder keeping her safe

and feeding her bloodthirst. Jacqui is ridden — permanently possessed — and an attempted exorcism of the High Thunder would simply kill them both.

Young, tall, lovely, and furious, Jacqui is a teenager consumed with seething fury. She is rude and temperamental, and she resists the influence of authority. Her only two interests are hunting those in need of death, and then dealing out the murder itself.