Merits & Flaws

Haunted by a past life (often as per the Background Trait of that name, described above), you suffer from awful memories and act out in ways that are, shall we say, not pro­ ductive to your current incarnation. Perhaps you still loathe the clergymen who tortured a former “you” for witchcraft 400 years ago; the smell of cooking meat still sends you into panic attacks. Or you’ll get vertigo and acrophobic surges from that time a previous incarnation fell off a castle wall. You may slip into archaic accents, foreign languages, or terminology that is not exactly au courant (or socially acceptable) in today’s world. Flashbacks, time segues, inappropriate behavior – it’s all part of the package in this life you lead today.

For each point in this Flaw, up to a maximum of five points (and dice), the Storyteller will roll one die against difficulty 8 when the potential arises for a past life to affect your present life. The more successes he rolls, the more that past life affects you. The symptoms of this “throwback syndrome” generally depend upon the Storyteller’s whim, but you could collabo­ rate with him to hash out a backstory (or several backstories) for the previous incarnations your character recalls, and then roleplay symptoms that seem appropriate to those histories. For especially strong flashbacks (three successes or more), you may need to roll your Willpower (again, difficulty 8) to suppress the reaction to what your character recalls.

Described in Guide to the Traditions as an adversarial Background of Past Life, this Flaw makes a fitting companion to that Background, the Dream Background, and to other Merits and Flaws related to reincarnation (Twin Souls, Shat­ tered Avatar, and similar Traits described within this section). With a few appropriate changes to the symptoms, you could also describe the Throwback Flaw as manifestations of a Leg­ end Background, or as memories from a life that goes back

several centuries. You’d rather forget the things you did, and endured, back during the Conquest of the Americas, but you never really can.