WESTERN NECROMANCY

Not long after prehistoric man first made the distinction between life and death, he taught himself magic to contact ghosts of the departed. The ancient vampires who preyed on these early tribesmen took notice of this development, immediately devising ways to exploit it for their own ends. Few vampires feared or respected the petty deities of the kine — some even had the temerity to count themselves among the ranks of the divine. They stood before the gods' blood-spattered altars, stealing the gifts meant for their worshippers. Early Kindred magicians reversed the boons of earth gods, stripping land, cattle and women of fertility. They stole luck from the gods of fortune, fire from the tricksters, strength from the deities of war. And from the gods of death, they seized maps to the Underworld and the power to compel the obedience of ghosts. The death gods, like the others, are now forgotten, but death magic retains its pale allure. Over the intervening millennia, magicians refined their death magic to exploit evolving cultural notions about gods, ghosts and the afterlife.

The history of necromancy begins, as does so much of Western thought and tradition, in the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Greek myths shaped Western conceptions of the afterlife, and of possible ways in which living magicians could draw upon its power and conjure the inhabitants of the underworld. The Greek poet Homer described a grim afterlife in which unhappy ghosts lingered, trapped in shadowy dreams of their past lives. By the time of Virgil, folk beliefs in the afterlife and the fate of dead souls had become much more elaborate. Virgil described in detail the geography of an underworld that operated as a justice machine. Souls were ferried to a court where three immortal judges praised the good and passed sentence on the wicked. The former spent eternity in the Elysian Fields, while the latter went to the fortress of Tartarus, where they eternally repeated an array of torments tailor-made to their specific misdeeds. For stealing the ambrosia of the gods, King Tantalus of Lydia suffered eternal hunger and thirst—fruit dangled out of reach, even moving out of his hands, while the water that stood to his neck always flowed away when he tried to drink. The judges of the damned sentenced the founder of Corinth, Sisyphus, to roll a huge boulder up a hill, which would return to the bottom when he had reached the top. In this way he paid eternally for the restlessness that drove him to continually engage his neighbors in destructive and pointless warfare.

Magician-scientists of the Classical era treated inquiries into the nature of the afterlife and ways of interacting with its residents as an entirely legitimate aspect of their ongoing effort to expand human knowledge. The first century philosopher Apollonius of Tyana allegedly summoned the shade of Achilles and raised the dead, in addition to a range of other feats including clairvoyance and healing the insane. In the second century, Lucius Apuleius, now better known as the author of The Golden Ass, explored the control of shades, again as part of a wider portfolio of wonders ranging from dream interpretation to transformation into animal form. The third-century Neo-Platonists, who attempted to synthesize a holistic religion combining mysticism, Christian ideas, and the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, studied the mechanisms by which ghosts operated and could be cajoled to bring about miracles.

Unfortunately, these figures attracted enemies who found it useful to accuse them of black magic. Apollonius stood trial for supposedly sacrificing a boy in order to use his entrails to read an augury. Authorities charged Apuleius with using magic to win the hand of a wealthy widow, and of plotting to poison her son. Necromancy was never considered one of their crimes; contact with the souls of the dead was not yet viewed as inherently evil. Magicians who restricted themselves to contact with the wraiths of the virtuous, and who used what they gained to good ends, were no more distrusted than other wonder workers.

This attitude changed with the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, which began with Emperor Constantine I in the third century. Many magicians used Christian mythology in a way true believers found blasphemous. Twisting a doctrine that frowned on the practice of magic, sorcerers began to call upon Jehovah and His angels to assist in the deliverance of magical effects. Some professed to be devout Christians and limited the subjects of their invocation. Vampiric sorcerers, knowing their souls were bound for no Christian Heaven, saw no reason to bother with the many annoying restrictions of the "pure" form of this sorcery.

However, they took sharp interest as other mortal sorcerers blithely added Jehovah and His angels to a hopper of deities, heroes, ghosts and demons from the many traditions of the Mediterranean basin. Likewise, necromancers — mortal and Cainite alike — mixed cosmologies and summoned damned souls from the Christian Hell while at the same time drawing power from the Classical underworld. Seeing the contradiction in this didn't stop them from doing it, because, for whatever reason, it worked.

Magicians saw themselves as practical men repeating whichever experiments they found successful. If God truly disapproved, He wouldn't let the magic work, would He? Although such rationalizations might have suited the magicians, they scandalized the emerging ecclesiastical class. Christianity forbade all sorcery, frowning especially on contact with the dead. As Christianity's sway grew, wise magicians hid their activities. Church fathers took the story of Simon Magus of Samaria, mentioned in the New Testament as a sincere but misguided magician who seeks to purchase the wonder-working secrets of apostles Peter and John, and held him up as the first heretic. Anyone who followed his path could expect eternal hellfire and earthly persecution. Many magicians themselves became Christians, seeking to invoke the power of saints and angels; they forswore necromancy as not only dangerous but evil. Magicians interested in necromancy therefore became double rebels, spitting in the face not only of religious orthodoxy but of their fellow sorcerers.

In their rebellion, necromancers found power. These clandestine researchers, whose names are now lost to history, used a variation on Platonic logic to posit that the rules a society chose to live by sustained an inherent mystical force. Those who best lived by those rules could draw on them to gain power. However, great energy could also be gained by deliberately breaking those rules. The Church's condemnation of necromancy merely increased its potential for those few daring souls willing to flout Christian morality. Thus the principle of Taboo became central to necromantic practice. The greater and holier the rule, the more energy it contained. Ergo, the most powerful effects could be conjured by ceremonies that broke the most potent laws of society. One of the greatest taboos concerned the manipulation of human remains. Contact with corpses and body parts thus became a central focus of necromantic ritual during the early Christian era, which it had not been during the more open and inquisitive Classical times. Present-night practitioners, who watch as once-unassailable taboos of Western society fall left and right, are grateful that contact with bodily remains has stayed as abhorrent as ever. This revulsion makes their magic work — or so the theory goes. This belief explains why the details of necromantic paths and rituals tower above all others in sheer, visceral perversity.

The other principle of necromantic magic, Authority, also arose during the third century, and grew in influence in the course of Europe's conversion from paganism to Christianity. The anti-Christian magician and philosopher lamblichus proposed the doctrine of theurgy, which drew its powers from symbols and the law of correspondence. lamblichus developed a detailed hierarchy that placed gods, heroes, ghosts, angels and demons into a single system, which the magician could call upon to escape from the bounds of necessity. lamblichus did not design his system so that it could be exploited by necromancers, but exploit it they did. If these entities could be defined and placed on a grid in descending order of importance, the necromancers thought, it stood to reason that necromancers could approach the lesser-powered entities not as supplicants but as masters.

Biblical ideology, ironically enough, supplied the rest of the philosophical equation. Ever since the story of Adam and Eve, Christian myth repeatedly stressed that the world of nature was a gift from God to humanity, who could dispose of it as they wished. Man was meant to dominate nature. Necromancers extended this European way of thinking to the world beyond: Magicians should dominate the souls of the dead, because they can. Tonight's necromancers look upon the ghosts of the dead as little more than a resource to be exploited. They care no more for the welfare and desires of the shades they call upon than they would for a barrel of crude oil or a cart brimming with iron ore.

Although fullest expression of the Western credo of domination over nature occurred at the time of the Renaissance, during the era of exploration and coloni-zation, necromantic theory had by that point already been fixed into its present form, with the ascension of the Giovanni clan. As cutthroat arms merchants who made their fortunes during the Crusades, the principle of domination proved second nature to them. They were already accomplished necromancers when Augustus Giovanni tricked a decrepit Antediluvian into Embracing him, and then slew the vampire and his descendants in order to become the head of his own new clan. Much of the magic of Necromancy as practiced tonight was refined in the few short but monstrously productive years between the clan's first dabblings into the art and its Embrace. To their dismay, the Giovanni found that their talent for innovation had died with them. For the last five centuries or so, despite their continual efforts, they've advanced the state of the art of Necromancy only by increments.

Although contemporary necromancers do not often believe in the literal existence of the Greek gods and heroes, many of their rites continue to draw on the names and imagery of the Classical mythology, especially as it related to the world beyond death. Even as mortals, the eldest members of the Giovanni family felt a greater sympathy for the grand pagan ethos of the Classical era than they ever did for Christian parables and iconography. Ever anxious to display their erudition, Giovanni necromancers delight in tormenting their foes with obscure classical references. Thus the ritual called Chair of Hades refers to the Chair of Forgetfulness Hades used to trap Theseus and Pirithoiis. Instead of a mere magic circle, Giovanni magicians protect themselves from malign ghosts with a Circle of Cerberus, an allusion to the gigantic, dragon-tailed, three-headed dog that guards the gates of the underworld and prevents the dead from escaping back into the land of the living.

PRACTICAL NECROMANCY

As his first lesson, any new student of Necromancy learns the importance of separating magical sendings based on Taboo from sendings based on Authority. Taboo-breaking sendings require the magician to wallow in the filth of the grave. Authority sendings demand physical purity and cleanliness. (Spiritual purity is, conveniently, not required.) To realize both principles in the course of one working is to risk failure at best and destruction at worst. Any rite that allows the necromancer to interact with otherworldly beings takes great pains to protect her from possible harm or influence.

The Greek originators of these rites considered purity and cleanliness a necessary component of this protection; wraiths, they discovered, could seize on impurities and imperfections and use them to circumvent the worker's protections, gaining freedom of action in the mortal world. Thus, in order to prepare for dealings with shades, the necromancer must purify herself through fasting, chastity and bathing. Long preparation times decrease the chances of an entity overcoming the necromancer's safeguards. Mortal necromancers are often urged to meditate as well, to divest themselves of emotional preoccupations. Vampires learn that their chronic inability to experience strong emotion works in their favor in this situation. A summoned wraith capable of turning on his would-be dominator searches the magician's aura for his strongest passions, which can be used as a mystical lever to compel obedience. A wraith summoned by a vampire searches in vain, sensing only a grayed-out aura of muted values.

When the necromancer has concluded her prepa-ration, she dons a set of robes, which must be spotlessly clean and perfectly maintained. The merest stain or dangling thread end may provide the wraith the lever-age it needs to reverse the power relationship of the rite and command the necromancer. The robes must fit perfectly; an overlong sleeve or hem also counts as a dangerous imperfection.
The necromancer then draws a magic circle to act as a barrier between her and the wraith she intends to summon. It also keeps out unexpected interlopers; some opportunistic ghosts wait along the boundary between world and underworld, hoping to cross over on a rift between the two temporarily brought into being by a necromantic ceremony.

Having prepared herself in the formulaic manner, the necromancer then commences the specific gestures, incantations and prop manipulations of the particular sending she wishes to accomplish. The physical items used in the procedure must always include objects symbolizing the following concepts: one, the necromancer's mastery over the shade; two, the shade's imprisonment in the underworld; and three, the individual identity of the wraith. The necromancer needn't bother with the last item if he doesn't care which ghost he summons up.

Classic symbols of mastery include crowns, tiaras, scepters, ermine collars, thrones, jeweled rings and medallions of office or rank. Modern variants might include Rolex or Cartier watches, money clips distended with high-denomination bills, mahogany office furniture or expensive designer clothing. The latter are frequently substituted for old-style robes, provided that they're perfectly maintained and constructed; beware of the substandard tailoring of many top-name designer brands! Clever necromancers match their symbols of authority to the understanding of the wraiths they intend to summon. A parody papal miter works well against the ghost of a devout Roman Catholic (so long as it is superbly fashioned), whereas a general's uniform of the appropriate period and nationality establishes authority over a soldier's shade.

Symbols of imprisonment include chains, metal rods sawn from jail-cell bars, handcuffs, shackles, prison uniforms, gurneys with restraint straps, straightjackets and rubber gloves. Medievalist necromancers may prefer torture implements such as red-hot pokers, racks, iron maidens or face-cages. Modernists might select electroshock machines, electronic ankle bracelets, tasers or trays of sedatives. Although it helps if the wraith was imprisoned during his life and faces the object that he most strongly identifies with that confinement, this is a bonus, not a necessity.

The best symbol of a wraith's identity is his Fetter, an object with which he has a pre-existing emotional relationship. One of the hallmark necromantic abilities allows the necromancer to acquire the Fetter of a wraith he plans to command on a regular basis. The Fetter isn't necessary, though; the necromancer need merely prove to the wraith that she knows enough about him to make him dance to her will. The symbol may be professional, as in the case of a doctor's stethoscope, a judge's gavel or a lion-tamer's whip. It may be personal — a treasured photograph, a high-school yearbook or a wedding ring. Or it might reflect a favorite interest or hobby — a camera to capture a photographer, a model bike to drive a motocross enthusiast, a hook to catch a fisherman. It would be incongruous for the Taboo-breaking rites to follow a formulaic arrangement like that above. Each working is unique. However, certain common elements unite them all.

The most obvious common point is that all employ the remains of the dead (usually human remains) or other powerful symbols of death that arouse disgust and anxiety in the living. Grave dust, chunks of tombstone, maggots (especially those recently engaged in devouring dead flesh), coffin nails, embalming equipment and autopsy tools all fit the latter category. Necromantic doctrine states that the symbols of death must be relevant to the society in which the practitioner operates. For example, traditional Chinese avoid the ancient funerary bronzes of their nation's archaeological past, because of their association with death; at the same time, Western collectors of Chinese art covet them as attractive antiquities and art objects. A funerary urn would be no good to a necromancer of Western origin in a Western country, but might be useful if the necromancer is either breaking a tradition of his own upbringing, or is working his magic in China.

Taboo-breaking rites seek to combine the remains and relics of death with actions society at large sees as wholly separate from death. Youth is seen as the opposite of death, so necromancers involve children or symbols of childhood in their ceremonies. Fertility is the opposite of death, so necromancers commit plea-sureless, sterile sexual or quasi-sexual acts to in the course of their sendings. Necrophilia represents the ultimate expression of this concept. Already experienced necrophiliacs before introducing sorcery into the equation, the debased members of Clan Giovanni have explored countless exotic variations of this abhorrent act in an effort to keep their magic potent. A currently fashionable technique involves the surgical, postmortem creation of new penises and vaginas from the flesh and bones of the dead. Giovanni surgeons install this new genital equipment on the corpse's back, belly, neck and thighs, so that as many as a dozen practitioners can simultaneously conjoin with the same dead sex partner, regardless of its original sex. This practice should retain its power for a few more decades; after that, the Giovanni will have to come up with something really perverse.

NECROMANTIC RITUALS

The following rituals enhance the necromancer's powers and offer her protection from the dead.

System:
The player rolls Intelligence + Occult against a difficulty of three plus the level of the ritual (maximum 9).

Certain ceremonial practices give necromancers bonuses when working their ritual magic. The difficulty of any effect targeted against a wraith decreases by one if the symbols of imprisonment (see page 104) used in the working happen to be those the individual wraith most strongly identifies with captivity or torture. For example, the wraith of a kidnapping victim remembers being gagged with duct tape; a necromancer wishing to work magic on her may subtract one from his difficulty by adding a roll of duct tape to his ritual gear.

CIRCLE OF CERBERUS (LEVEL 1 RITUAL)

The necromancer bathes, fasts and abstains from all physical comforts and pleasures, most especially sensual ones, for a night. Then she dons well-maintained, high-quality robes or other clothing. She draws a circle on the floor in a place of safety. She may then proceed to use other necromantic powers, confident that her protection against ghosts and spirits has been enhanced.
Each success subtracts two from the difficulty of all rolls the player must make to resist any attempted harm or influence on the part of a ghost, Spectre or spirit, so long as the necromancer remains inside the circle. Treat any botches scored while attempting to use necromantic paths as failures instead.

RAPE OF PERSEPHONE (LEVEL 1 RITUAL)

A team of surgeons trained in the unpleasant ways of Necromancy performs an elaborate operation on a freshly dead or well-preserved corpse. From the cadaver's dead tissues, they create up to seven new penises, vaginas or other sexual apparatuses.

The necromancer engages in intercourse with the corpse's new genitalia. He may then subtract two from the difficulty of all necromantic magic — except those targeting ghosts, Spectres or spirits—for the remainder of the night.
If a number of necromancers perform the ritual together, they may freely trade Willpower points between one another for the rest of the night. During this time, one participant may experience the tactile sensations of another by concentrating for a few seconds and spending a point of Willpower, regardless of the distance separating them. No more than seven necromancers can perform the ritual together.

JUDGMENT OF RHADAMANTHUS
(LEVEL 2 RITUAL)

The necromancer chooses a wraith she will later summon, using the Summon Soul power of the Sepulchre Path. In a cleansed bronze brazier, she burns several pages of a law book and a religious text matching the faith the wraith held in life. She mixes the ashes of the books with silver powder and uses the mixture to make her Circle of Cerberus (see above). When the wraith appears, the necromancer tells him that she has the power to send him to the real afterlife, the one he believed in when he was alive. If the ritual works, the wraith believes her. If the wraith fears judgment and hellfire, she can induce him to do what she wants by threatening to use her power. If he yearns for Heaven and escape from the bizarre existence of the underworld, she can secure his cooperation by promising to use it. Since she can't make good on this promise, Judgment of Rhadamanthus won't work twice on the same Heaven-seeking wraith.
Wraiths who were atheists while alive, or didn't believe in life after death, automatically resist this ritual.

DRINK OF STYX'S WATERS
(LEVEL 3 RITUAL)

The necromancer robs a grave and steals the corpse's skull. He saws off the top of the skull; the sawn-off piece, flipped over, forms a cup-shaped piece of bone. He covers this piece with clay, making a bowl, which he proceeds to fire in a kiln. If any blood descendant of the corpse eats from the bowl during a meal with the necromancer, any promises the subject makes to the necromancer gains otherworldly enforcement. If the subject fails to live up to them, he is visited by a Spectre, which torments him relentlessly until he makes good on them or offers the necromancer acceptable compensation.

In addition to the time it takes to rob the grave, the modeling and firing of the bowl takes at least four hours, depending on how fancy the necromancer wants it to look. It may be reused until destroyed.

DRINK OF LETHE'S WATERS
(LEVEL 4 RITUAL)

The necromancer acquires an object once owned by, or symbolic of, a particular wraith. The object must be able to be damaged by water; the necromancer destroys it by leaving it to soak in water. During the soaking, he periodically spits into the water. After the object has been destroyed, the necromancer conjures the wraith or otherwise arranges to be in her presence. The wraith loses all memory of her identity, becoming highly susceptible to suggestion on the part of the necromancer. Obviously, this ritual is of no use if the necromancer wants the summoned ghost to answer questions.

The wraith's memory loss continues for one night per success scored. It may not use Pathos points to counter any action on the necromancer's part. Its Willpower drops by the number of successes scored; it may not replenish its Willpower pool while the effect lingers.

CHAIR OF HADES (LEVEL 5 RITUAL)

The necromancer acquires a corpse's femur and tibia bones — decreasing the difficulty of the casting by one if he does so by personally robbing a grave. He wraps the bones in coarse cloth and then encases them in wood or metal so that their lengths match and they become capable of bearing weight. He then builds a chair; each encased bone forms one of its legs. If a blood descendant of the corpse sits in the chair, she loses all desire to do anything but sit in the chair. She leaves the chair only to quickly fulfill basic bodily needs.

Whenever a qualified victim sits in the chair, the necromancer's player rolls Intelligence + Occult against her Willpower. If successful, the effect lasts until the chair is destroyed. Otherwise, even if the victim is forcibly moved from the chair, she does everything she can to sit in it once more. In addition to the time it takes to obtain the bones, the construction of the chair takes at least eight hours. The necromancer may spend additional time on the chair to make it look fancy or to mimic an existing piece of furniture.

VOUDOUN NECROMANCY

Followers of voudoun, the religio-magical tradition of the people of Haiti, greatly fear the effects of Quangos, black magic intended to aggressively harm people. Bokkor, practitioners of ouangas, accept no categorical limitations on their bad magic. In addition to their powers over the dead, they claim to be able to curse people, control the weather, blight crops and generally perform the sorts of harmful acts blamed on sorcerers by folk traditions the world over. Despite the range of powers attributed to malign sorcerers, common people fear no form of black magic as they do the spells and rituals involving death and the souls of the dead.

Voudoun worshippers dread the attentions of human voudoun priests (houngans) gone bad, but in doing so they misdirect their anxieties. Jealous and fearful worshippers periodically subject even the most virtuous houngans to baseless rumors of involvement in sorcery and death magic. Some of the most vociferous accusers, when not beating the bushes for witches, hypocritically pressure their houngans to perform ouangas rites to curse their own enemies. The few houngans willing to admit to being sorcerers generally rely more on trickery and suggestion than on actual supernatural powers. For example, a human houngan makes people fear him by dressing outrageously and spreading rumors about his willingness to lay curses on others for the least provocation. He performs sleight-of-hand magic tricks and passes them off as magical sendings. He takes credit for sicknesses, natural disasters and eruptions of madness. A few vulnerable people come to fear him so much that they begin to exhibit psychosomatic health problems — further enhancing his dread reputation.

Genuine outbreaks of voudoun death magic flow not from living houngans, but from Kindred who exploit a magically potent belief system to grant themselves useful powers. The Kindred didn't invent voudoun, ouangas or even the tradition's death magic; an adventurous few of them simply moved in when rumors of zombies and a cooperative god of death began to filter out of Haiti.

The voudoun religion began to take shape not long after 1512, when Haiti's Spanish overlords brought the first African slave laborers to the island to work its mines. Voudoun flourished as a new amalgam of different beliefs from the enslaved laborers' various tribes of origin. One or two Kindred made their havens in Haiti at this time, attracted by the opportunities for unre-stricted feeding offered by the slave trade. They numbered among the many European pirates lured to the region by Spanish vessels laden with gold and ripe for plunder. When they arrived at Haiti, a few pirates settled down and established plantations, again run with African slave labor. Early Kindred colonists paid no more attention to their slaves' religious develop' ment than the mortal pirates with whom they mingled. If they had, perhaps current Kindred practitioners of voudoun necromancy would understand even more of the metaphysics underlying the magic they now use.

In 1698, France signed a treaty with Spain, taking possession of the colony and bringing with it a few French Kindred. French became the language of Haiti, and Catholicism its state religion. The slave culture in turn adopted and adapted elements of Catholic iconography into its pantheon of gods and spirits. One of the island's Cainites, a Lasombra with Giovanni connections named Gisele Hemmet, took notice of Quangos and the new possibilities it offered to the moribund traditions of Western necromancy. Inculcating herself into a cell of roving ouangas practitioners, she secretly underwent initiation as a houngan, and, as she had fervently hoped, was "mounted" by the loa (god-spirit) called Baron Samedi.

Samedi is the Lord of the Cemetery, the incarnation of the threshold between life and death. Although he can be a dreadful and frightening figure, believers do not identify him as apetro loa, or malign spirit. Ordinary worshippers propitiate him in hopes that he will guide their deceased family members to their proper final rest as loa-racines, or ancestral spirits. He does so when pleased by graveside sacrifices of food, crosses and the ritually obligatory three centimes (pennies). Simultaneously imperious and impish, Baron Samedi mocks humankind for its lusts and passions. Images of his grinning, skull-like face gaze out from murals on the houmfor walls, reminding all who behold them of the folly of mortal concerns in the face of the eternity of death. (The houmfor is the central hut in a modest temple complex, where ceremonies are performed.)

Gisele Hemmet expected Baron Samedi to be pleased by the chance to make a Cainite his horse, and he was — but not in the way she'd hoped. She'd entered into the initiation ceremony assuming that this primitive death spirit would be so shocked and delighted to learn of the existence of Cainites that he'd welcome his new houngan not just as a special servant of death, but as a child he'd never known. The naive, rustic deity would doubtless shower her with new mystic abilities she could use for her own purposes. Instead, as the Baron's presence entered her body and mind, she found herself overwhelmed by an ancient consciousness vastly more forceful than her own. Gisele shook as the amused disdain the Baron felt for her and her kind reverberated through her. The Baron did offer her power, which she greedily accepted, only half-understanding that the price she would pay would be her sense of confidence and entitlement. She had foolishly submitted to something much greater than herself. Something, as she would soon discover, which would never leave her side, no matter how much she might want it to.

The Baron came to her many times in the next years, always unbidden. Sometimes he offered her more magic, like a barman placing a free glass of rum under a drunkard's nose. More often he came only to turn her certainties into doubts, her assurance into dread. Vampires, he whispered in her ear, were even more ridiculous than mortals. (He insisted on using the vulgar term vampire, especially when he saw Hemmet bridle to hear it.) Their plans were doomed. Their sense of immortality was false. They were trapped on the threshold between life and death, neither here nor there, yet had deluded themselves into thinking that they were masters of the world. He would give Hemmet power all right; he would give it to any of her kind who submitted to be ridden. Not because the powers would help them; quite the contrary, his help would only cement their folly. He would give his gifts because it amused him. Vampires were the rudest joke he'd heard in centuries.

Several Cainites flocked to Hemmet seeking the occult knowledge she'd gained. She brought others to the houmfor to be mounted. Still seeking Samedi's approval, she promised to bring him a legion of Cainite devotees who would become his houngans. At this news he laughed until acrid tears flowed down his cheeks. Sometimes she warned her eager recruits they were making a mistake. Few heeded her words of caution. Those who were as foolish as she was, Hemmet ruefully decided, deserved to share her discomfiture. A small coterie of Cainites, claiming various clan allegiances, came to see what she'd been warning them about; those most intrigued became the Baron's houngans.

In 1791, the island's slaves revolted against their masters and overthrew them; Haiti became the hemisphere's second republic. Hemmet wouldn't have dreamed of contributing to such a shocking upending of the social order, but helped the revolt along in a few subtle but important ways once it got going. She did so hoping to prove her worth to the Baron and escape his campaign of mockery. She told him she'd done it to help his people; he threw back his head and laughed as he always did. The slaves' new success was just another illusion; in the face of death, there was no freedom. Haiti would always belong to him; even he lacked the freedom to change this.

THE BARON AND HIS HOUNGANS

The mere intervention of 200 years has done little to change the humiliating relationship between the houngan and the mocking loa who gives them the magic they wish for, in hopes that they will use it to destroy themselves.

To become a houngan of the Baron, a cultist attends a ritual led by priests already initiated to his service. The houngans offer food and drink to the Baron to gain his attention. Accompanied by drums, officiates and aspiring initiate join together in an ecstatic dance, employing fast, exhausting moves that induce an altered state of consciousness (the robust vampiric physiology demands that neophyte worshippers spend much more time dancing to attain the trance state than humans require). The ceremonies can require many nights of ritual activity before Baron Samedi deigns to mount his new charge. (Experienced houngans, like their human counterparts, learn over time to slip easily into the trance state.)
When mounting comes, the loa takes over the initiate's body, speaking in a different voice — sometimes a different tongue—and adopting a body language all its own. It declares that it is Baron Samedi, and engages other participants in conversation. If mounting comes too soon, attending houngans suspiciously interrogate the loa to ensure that it is Baron Samedi who has come and not some lesser petro loa mischievously hijacking the ceremony for its own amusement. If it is not the Baron, the houngan employ a rite to drive out the interloping loa and then continue the ceremony until the Baron does appear.

When the Baron arrives, he declares that the initiate has finally submitted to the cosmic realities of death, even though it may take centuries for her to fully admit that she has done so. He asks the houngan which of his boons the initiate seeks. He announces that he has granted this boon, in hopes that it will lead this errant child to see the truth of her position. He then departs, leaving an exhausted supplicant to collapse on the dirt floor of the houmfor like a plaything suddenly dropped by its owner. When she recovers, she finds that she now possesses the powers she sought.

She also learns that she's forged a binding personal contract with the Baron that cannot be severed, even if she renounces the use of the boons he has granted her. The Baron can come at any time; he refuses to limit his surprise visits to moments when his houngans happen to have submitted to the trance state. A selection from Gisele Hemmet's journal, much-circulated in Kindred circles, describes one such incident in detail. At the time, Hemmet was preparing herself for a meeting at which she expected to be attacked by an Assamite contract killer. The Baron first appeared to her in the shower, materializing from nowhere, startling her so badly that she fell backward and opened her scalp on the shower head. As she tended to her minor but embarrass' ing wound, he perched on her sink, swinging his legs and making pointedly pointless small talk about what various famous people might say just before they die. The Baron interspersed his annoying banter with a series of sly gibes and insults, pausing at one point to lick up a few stray spatters of blood that had fallen into the sink from Gisele's head wound. He then made a face and performed a supposedly comical spit-take that didn't amuse Gisele one bit. She ordered him to leave; he responded with a cryptic statement about the disturbing numerological significance of this year's climactic statistics, hinting that it meant disaster for Gisele and her plans. Unable to restrain herself, she launched for the hundredth time into a plea for more respect and tolerance for his humble servants. In the journal, Gisele recreates an ensuing hour of philosophical discussion, in which the insufferably smug Baron invited her to ask questions about his origins and motives, to which he provided inconsistent and evasive answers. He proceeded from there to poke holes in her plan to protect herself from the assassin, planting fresh doubts about allies she'd until then trusted completely. Before departing, he informed her that she was doomed, that her plans if completed would bring her more misery than sorrow itself, and that he would possess her completely one night — even though he had no particular desire to do so.

If an annoyed victim of a visitation tries to attack the Baron, he vanishes, leaving behind echoing gales of victorious laughter. If he thinks his target hasn't been unsettled enough yet, he immediately rematerializes, laughing, elsewhere in the room.

When appearing uninvited, Baron Samedi does not possess the houngan. It's too hard to hold a conversation that way. He manifests himself as an apparition, altering his appearance at whim. He always appears as an impressive-looking black man. He usually chooses to look about six feet tall, but may on occasion show up as a dwarf. The Baron may be bald or elaborately coiffed; his face may be shaven, bearded or decorated with a gigantic handlebar moustache. He always appears in grand clothing. He may deck himself out as a 16th-century pirate, sporting a black velvet topcoat, frilly cuffs, an array of looted medals and other military decorations, and a wide-brimmed hat with a 10-inch crown; an insinuatingly friendly, painted skull and crossbones appears on the front of the crown. As whim strikes him, he may adopt the face paint and loincloth of an African shaman or the dark suit of a 19th-century undertaker. After the voodoo-themed James Bond movie Live and Let Die came out in 1973, he often appeared in the form of actor Geoffery Holder, who memorably played him in the movie. He dropped this joke in the mid-'SOs, when Holder appeared in a series of commercials for the soft drink 7-Up. These days, he most often materializes in a stylish outfit, each piece of which is an animal product of some kind: long leather jacket with ermine collar, white silk shirt with ivory buttons, sharkskin pants and snakeskin boots. When a houngan comes too close to the Baron, the snakes' heads on the boot toes widen their baleful eyes, open fanged mouths and hiss. In any of these guises, he may wander through the ranks of ritualists as they perform one of his ceremonies, pinching or kicking some, licking and kissing others.

When the Baron is not present, houngans may suffer other unwanted visitations. Whenever they find themselves in the presence of petro loas or free-roaming souls of the dead, they hear the voices of these entities in their heads. These beings lurk everywhere in Haiti. Their constant murmuring, gossiping and pointless chatter poses less of a threat to the listener's sense of well-being, however, than the Baron's impertinent interjections. Nonetheless, they can be annoying or — where concentration is of the utmost — lethally distracting. Loas and similar spirits dwell in abundance wherever animistic beliefs hold sway. In Brazil, where followers of the spirit religions candomble and macumba practice rites similar in broad structure, if not in detail, to voudoun, spirits chatter in Portuguese patois instead of French. Local spirits prove just as bothersome in Africa, where the roots of voudoun lie, or in the totem-haunted depths of the Pacific Northwest forests, or on the howling expanses of the Arctic tundra. As practitioners of spirit magic urbanize, bothersome loas and their kin extend their range. Whether they were summoned by practitioners of mojo in New Orleans or Santeria priestesses in immigrant New York, they wait to annoy the houngan. Don't think you can avoid us, they whisper. The whole millenium thing is going our way. We're globalizing. The people are tired of the big gods who ignore them. The world belongs to us again.

THE SAMEDI

Not long after the slave revolt, Hemmet's under' lings brought an unpleasant surprise to her attention. They'd captured a gaunt, strange-looking Cainite lurk-ing on the grounds of her estate. The creature, who appeared more like a walking rotting corpse than a proper Cainite, identified himself only as Macoute. Under torture, the creature claimed to be a member of a bloodline called the Samedi. Hemmet accused it of having stolen the favors of the Baron, assuming that he was creating a new group of Cainites to mock her and to compete with her. Although terribly injured, Macoute just laughed at this suggestion. His rueful, half-mad manner reminded her utterly of the Baron's manner, convincing her that her theory was right. She engaged in a brief campaign against Macoute's fellow Samedi, stopping only when the shambling vampires diablerized several of her own comrades. Macoute has passed himself off as the Baron many times, and has even gone so far as to name one of his childer Brigitte, after the Baron's wife.
Tonight the Samedi and Hemmet's houngans steer clear of one another. The solitary, fringe-dwelling Samedi keep to themselves, or act as independent contractors in Cainite power struggles. The houngans treat the existence of the Samedi as another of the Baron's elaborate jokes at their expense. The Samedi consider Hemmet and company to be nai've fools leading wretched unlives in a prison of their own making. They share the Baron's fatalistic worldview. He rarely needs to visit them to show them the futility of their existence; they feel it in their rotten bones. He appears to them only when they forget their impermanence and try to build things or carry out complex plans.

Certain Samedi believe that their terrifying master is an Antediluvian Cainite who has merely taken on the identity of the Haitian death spirit. Although their association with Haiti and its magic are comparatively recent, they claim that their bloodline is very old.

Like any bloodline, the Samedi add new members by Embracing mortals. To learn the magic of the Baron, they must undergo the same initiation rites as the houngans.

SERPENTS OF THE LIGHT

The luckless island of Haiti veritably crawls with vampires. A small group of Setites called the Serpents of the Light make their havens here, too. They've adapted Set's mythology to voudoun belief; the serpent god of life, Damballah, replaces Osiris as the hate object in their practices. Several Serpents of the Light can use Baron Samedi's magic, though their connection to Set seems to immunize them from his visitations. While pretending to be occupied with other matters, they're arming themselves for a battle to drive Hemmet's group of poseurs from the island. Exactly what resolution can come of Haiti's three-sided undead conflict remains to be seen.

THE AFTERLIFE

Voudoun worshippers believe that the souls of the freshly dead go to a watery waystation. There they spend an amount of time that varies with social status; prominent individuals may leave early, while the less socially well-off endure longer stays. If the families of the dead perform the proper rites when the interval ends, their souls find their way back to the shores of Haiti, whereupon they occupy special jars provided by the ritualists. The worshippers take the jars home, confident that their ancestors are now loa-racine who can provide them with luck and guidance. If the ceremony of return is disrupted or neglected, the spirits turn sour and return to haunt people and wreak havoc. The magic of the houngan revolves in part around the diversion of these souls for nefarious ends.
Common people fear two forms of death magic most of all. They worry that the soulless bodies of their dead kinfolk might be turned into walking dead — the zombies of voodoo pop culture fame. Even more than that, they fear that they will be turned into zombies while still living, and forced to work the cane fields in a form of slavery that deprives them even of the ability to think. Adherents of local folk beliefs also dread a female vampire they call the lou-garou. (Despite the name, this is not a reference to the lycanthropes of Werewolf: The Apocalypse.) Evidently, Gisele Hemmet was a bit careless about maintaining the Masquerade during her early nights on the island....

RITUAL ITEMS

In accordance with his lessons on the impermanence of all things but death, the Baron scorns the idea that ancient, historically resonant objects are more powerful than ordinary ones. In Baron Samedi's magic, objects gain mystic resonance through their connection to their user, not their provenance. A houngans ritual blade is more likely to be an old, rusted utility knife with a handle wrapped in dirty masking tape than a dagger of gleaming gold retrieved from some Roman ruins. The idea that holding a relic of the ancient past confers even a momentary sense of connection to anything that might be called immortality is sheer nonsense to Baron Samedi.

Neither does Baron Samedi show any respect for riches or any other indicator of success in the material world. People frantically accumulate jewels and gold and houses and works of art to try to proclaim their power in the face of death, but they're fooling themselves in the eyes of the Baron. He offers his followers no special favors if they use especially valuable items in their rites. The poorest laborer enjoys just as great a chance of reaching him as the richest landowner up on the hill. They'll be united in death anyway. That's why the Baron's favorite monetary gift is just a few tarnished pennies — that's all anyone is really worth in the end.

As he will no doubt tell you the next time he pops in for a visit.

VOUDOUN IN DISCIPLINES

The Baron's initiates use the same paths as Western necromancers, but perceive the underlying cosmology differently. The houngan doesn't meet spirits from the underworld of Western tradition. He finds loas in the temporary underwater resting place of the freshly dead, the mortal world, where restless spirits lurk or from the funereal jars where dwell the benign ancestral spirits called loa-racines. The spirits themselves believe they are in a storm or sea, sometimes calling their watery limbo a tempest. In some instances, houngans face different limitations or risks when using the paths. If a power goes unmentioned here, the houngan use it without significant modification.

SEPULCHRE PATH

SUMMON SOUL

Voudoun believers whose souls go to the underworld, or are destroyed or lost, cannot be summoned. Loa-racines more easily resist summoning; add two to the difficulty of attempts against them.

HAUNTING

Again, increase the difficulty of using this power when a loa-radne is its subject.

BONE PATH

SOUL STEALING

Houngans sometimes call this "Make Living Zombie."

DAEMONIC POSSESSION

Howngans refer to this effect as "Make Zombie."

ASH PATH

EX NIHILO

Known by the houngans as "Visit the Dead," this power allows the necromancer to travel to the underwater holding area where the freshly dead wait to be called back to land as loa-racines. To reach this place, the practitioner must physically travel across a body of water and slip beneath the surface. The journey takes about six hours. Conveniently, vampires needn't worry about breathing.

VOUDOUN RITUALS

Baron Samedi's houngans use the following rituals to interact with dead spirits and the realm where they exist.

System:
As with other necromantic rituals, the player rolls Intelligence + Occult against a difficulty of three + the level of the ritual (maximum 9).

KNOWING STONE (LEVEL ONE RITUAL)

By use of his own blood and the proper rituals, a houngan can mark a person's spirit, allowing the vampire to see where his subject is at any time, even after he has died. In this fashion many of the spirit-haunted vampires keep tabs on their close kin and their enemies.

The houngan bleeds herself, then uses the vitae to paint the name of the target on a consecrated stone. If the ritual is successful, she can afterward learn the target's current whereabouts by dancing around the stone in trance state until the Baron or one of hispetro loas whispers the desired information into her ear. The stone loses its powers on the night of All Saints Day unless the houngan spends a blood point.



TWO CENTIMES (LEVEL TWO RITUAL)

The houngan ceremonially "kills" a mortal, laying him out on a pallet in the middle of her houmfor and putting pennies on his eyes. The mortal's soul journeys to the underworld, which he perceives, initially at least, as the way-station where voudoun believers congregate after death. The mortal can interact with the souls of the dead and travel elsewhere in the underworld, while also retaining the power to speak to the houngan and describe what he's experiencing. While in the underworld, however, the subject's soul cannot affect the environment. Although he may talk to other spirits, he may not physically interact with them or their surroundings — he is a "ghost among ghosts," as it were.

Minions may voluntarily undergo the ritual to assist houngans. Houngans may use Two Centimes to terrify unwilling victims.

NIGHTMARE DRUMS
(LEVEL THREE RITUAL)

The houngan using this ritual sends the dead to haunt the dreams of an enemy, using the wraiths to drive an opponent slowly insane. Once the ritual is cast, the houngan has no control over this power, save to stop it from continuing. The shape of the nightmares and the images that assault the target are not under the control of the houngan; they are under the control of the wraiths who actually do the haunting.

The houngan uses his own blood and a personal possession of the target's in this ritual. Once the item has been coated with blood, the houngan must burn the item, sending a ghostly icon of it to the Shadowlands both as an identifying badge and as a reward to the spirits who agree to haunt the target. While the item burns, the houngan (and assistants, if available) pound out a relentless beat on gigantic drums, headed in human skin. The drums are inaudible in this realm but thunderous in the underwater home of the dead. To silence the deafening drums, the wraiths resignedly agree to negotiate with the houngan They promise to send nightmares to the victim for as long as the houngan demands, in return for a favor. Their request normally runs along the lines of passing a message to a living relative or exacting revenge against someone who slighted them.

BLOOD DANCE (LEVEL THREE RITUAL)

The Blood Dance allows a spirit to communicate with a living relative. They perform this ritual for people in exchange for money or favors.
The houngan must dance and chant for two hours, calling forth the right spirit and entreating all other ghosts to leave the area. (As usual, the power of this ritual means nothing to Baron Samedi should he choose to manifest himself.) While dancing, the vampire pours colored sands and ocean salt on the ground in a precise pattern and then makes the link between the living person and the deceased associate. If successful, the wraith "appears" within the houngan's sand-sigil and the living person can communicate with her for one hour. Failure means the spirit could not be contacted.

BALEFUL DOLL (LEVEL FOUR RITUAL)

A baleful doll is a powerful figure that is linked directly to the spirit of the target. This doll must be handcrafted, and is only finished when it has been painted with the vitae of the houngan and dressed in some article of clothing from the victim — which should be unwashed for a better connection. Once the doll has been cursed, the houngan can use it to cause physical damage to the target. If the doll is destroyed, the target suffers six dice of lethal damage. If the doll is injured (often with pins or other items), the victim takes six dice of bashing damage.

The houngan must craft the doll, using ritual chants throughout the process. This normally takes four to five hours. The player rolls Stamina + Crafts (difficulty 8) to succeed in this part of the ritual — a doll that does not resemble its victim is useless for the purposes of this ritual, though some houngans sell them as "authentic voodoo dolls" to tourists.

DEAD MAN'S HAND (LEVEL FIVE RITUAL)

The houngan takes a rag stained in the blood, sweat or tears of the intended victim. She takes a freshly severed human hand (which can come either from a corpse or a living "donor") and closes it around the rag. As the hand decomposes, so does the victim. His flesh bloats, turns gray and then green, then starts to slough off. The victim's brain remains fresh until the very end, so he can see the maggots writhe in the putrescent rack of meat that once was his healthy body.
The houngan makes the standard roll and spends two blood points for each point of Stamina possessed by the victim. The victim loses health levels according to the timetable below. Only the removal of the rag from the hand can stop the process. If this happens, health levels return, also according to the chart below.

Mortal characters who suffer more than 12 hours of incapacitation die, while Kindred who remain Incapacitated for more than 12 hours succumb to torpor.