Mortis: The Grieving

By B. Thrall (bathrall@artsci.wustl.edu)

Prologue

Amy felt herself pull away from her dream, the darkness of sleep receding before her to reveal her bedroom ceiling, dimly lit by moonlight. It looked ominous, but it wasn't just the shadows, long and grossly misshapen. Amy's stomach twisted sickeningly, and her face burned.

"I'm sick," she thought. She slipped out from beneath her bed covers and into the hallway outside her room. She began to turn toward the bathroom, but her gut said otherwise. Slowly, she turned the other way, shuffling toward Grandpa's room. The door was cracked open, and within, Amy could hear her grandfather shifting in his sleep. She quietly pushed the door farther open and saw that Grandpa wasn't asleep, he was laying awake in bed.

After a while, he noticed her standing in the doorway. "Amy, what are you doing up? It's late," he said quietly, kindly. He beckoned for her to come over and sit on the bed beside him.

"I'm sick, Grandpa," said Amy as she shuffled over to the bed and sat down.

"Ah, well, do you want something to drink then? Or medicine?" He felt her head with his hand. "You're forehead is very warm, maybe we'd better wake up your parents."

"No, that's okay, Grandpa."

"Are you sure?" She nodded. "All right, then, lie down here and try to go back to sleep. I'll keep you company. Hopefully in the morning, you'll feel better."

Amy curled up beside Grandpa, and he put his arm around her and sang her the lullaby he used to sing when she was a little girl. Gradually, he trailed off, thinking she was asleep, but Amy couldn't sleep, her stomach twisted and complained inside her so. She listened to Grandpa's wispy voice, though, as it drifted off to silence and after.

Minutes, half an hour later, Amy sat up in bed and looked down at Grandpa. He was silent, relaxed, with his arm still curled around the impression she had made in his soft mattress. He looked calm, not happy, not sad, but calm and relaxed like she had never seen him in life. Amy's fever flared harshly, burning her up inside. Her very skin seemed to crackle under the heat as her hand reached inevitably down to cradle Grandpa's face. His skin sparked at her touch, and Amy was lost in a flood.

Grandpa tugged at her, pulled at her mind. He was rushing by her at incredible speeds, his life, his memories, all like water ripping at her, trying to steal her away. There, she saw Grandpa stealing bread to feed his mother and sister during the Great Depression, but it was gone too fast. There, Grandpa married his wife, his love, her grandmother. There, she died. Amy's eyes stung with the pain of the memory rush. There, Grandpa watched with loving eyes as he sang her to sleep. There he died. This was Grandpa. This was a man. This was a man no longer.

The fire died, leaving Amy cool and shivering. Tears fell down her cheeks and splashed onto the earthly remains of Grandpa.

Introduction

When we die, we leave behind us only memories of who we were. There is not one person who can say "I knew him, I knew everything that made him him." All we have are little pieces of life and that only through action and word. How can we know who someone is without knowing their thoughts, ideas, emotions. Mere words cannot convey an experience, any experience, because even though "I'm sad," denotes sadness, it says nothing of why nor of the depth and quality of that sadness. Sadness over the suffering of others has a different quality than sadness over the death of a loved one.

All that is left is memory, imperfect memory at that.

The Mortis

The Earth shines with six billion souls, and some of these souls shine brighter than others. One day, for no reason at all, a soul could flash bright and hot. These hot souls burn faster and more furiously than the others, for they use their fuel faster. These hot souls are the Mortis.

The power of these hot souls is great, so great even that it floods into the physical realm and draws back into the spirit realm, like the advancing and retreating of the tides. It is the connection between life and death, the ebb and flow of death and life, and the Mortis are the pathways.

Becoming

When a soul first flares, the Mortis can feel the heat generated by the new font of energy passing through her. Generally, this is taken to be a high fever, but it does no injury to the Mortis. The Mortis will also feel a strange compulsion to be somewhere, and soon. And so she will find and release her first soul, initiating herself into the ranks of the true Grim Reapers.

The Burden of Death

The greatest consequence of being a hot soul is that the Mortis must act as a conduit for souls from this life to the next. Just before someone dies, a Mortis feels their imminent demise and will be compelled to attend that event. Souls cannot leave the body without the aid of a Mortis. There are, however, side effects to releasing a soul. The soul actually passes through the Mortis's soul to reach the afterlife and in so doing, shows the Mortis the soul's hopes, dreams, indeed, their entire life. Literally, the soul's entire life passes before the Mortis's eyes and is imprinted upon the Mortis's memory. They are made very aware of what the loss of the dead person means to the world, and they cannot forget. This, they call the Grieving.

Every Mortis feels every death in the world. This might seem extreme, but the farther away the death occurs, the less the Mortis feels it; the vast majority of deaths in the world are barely felt at all, almost on an unconscious level. Only nearby deaths are felt enough to draw the Mortis to them to release their souls. Usually, only the nearest Mortis to a death feels the irresistible pull of the death, though others close at hand will feel it, but not as strongly; if for some reason the first Mortis does not reach the death, others will be pulled in to accomplish the task.

Mortis Society

The Mortis have existed since the first Man died. His soul opened the gateway to the afterlife and the tides of life and death were created to carry the souls of mankind away from the physical realm and to bring new life to replenish the losses. And upon the Earth, the souls of a precious few flashed. These First remembered the lives of the dead as their small bands of people put them to rest, and they spoke of the dead as if they still lived, for within the memories of the Mortis, they did. The families of the dead thus believed that death was not the end.

When humans began congregating in cities, the Mortis first saw that their sad duty could be much more than that. With such a large number of people in a single place, the Mortis were no longer easily recognized by everyone as the spirit-speakers that they were thought to be. When a single man is discovered at several deaths, let alone several dozen, the king's soldiers tend to get suspicious. Many Mortis were persecuted for murders and deaths that they only had a peripheral relation to before their fellows learned not to be near the bodies of those souls they released when they were discovered. This was the first Lesson.

Mortis have always been associated to religion with their close proximity to that great unknown, death. From ancestor-worship to the Greek pantheon to Judaism, many Mortis saw in their burden a call to the church, seeking positions as shamans or priests of Hades or rabbis, and with the advent of Christianity, many Mortis either became or were born Christian. As Christianity grew, more and more Mortis were associated with its church, being either priests or devout church-goers. They wanted to believe that they were releasing the souls of the dead to a better place. The Inquisition changed everything.

For the oppressed and the non-Christians, the Inquisition was a truly horrible thing, but to those whose duty was to release the souls of the dead, even the heathen dead, and to relive those souls' agony, the Inquisition was a monstrosity unimaginable. The Mortis learned a second Lesson then, as all but a very few left the Christian church, unable to stand its acts, yet still forced to bear the scars it left on the souls of the dead.

The Inquisition was bad, but war is even worse, though in an entirely different way. With war must come the release of thousands of souls as their mortal bodies die. These huge requirements are too much for just the Mortis nearby to handle. Therefore, new Mortis are created within the battle, but these are not ordinary Mortis. Rather, their souls are great, incandescent flashes that burn out in minutes or hours instead of years or decades. The Mortis themselves are generally unaware of what they have become, knowing only that suddenly they are full of flame and fire, burning to be released. These Mortis may be responsible for accounts of "berserkers" in battles, men who lose all control and become fanatical killing machines. They also must carry the cross of the ordinary Mortis, must release souls to the afterlife, but not just one at a time; in battle, too many die too quickly for that. Mortis created in battle must release many souls at once, with every soul searing through their mind at once, tearing, shredding. The Mortis himself is subsumed beneath all the souls he carries the memories of. If he survives, he will emerge totally insane and incapable of functioning in normal society. At best. A much more common event, however, is the Mortis's death and the resultant release of his soul by another Mortis.

Today, Mortis society is fragmented. No longer are do the majority hold positions with their respective churches. Instead, most Mortis go it alone, desperately trying to reconcile what they are with their daily lives. Many cannot handle the stress and now subsist in the gutters. Others, though, have managed to balance their curse with their existence through various means. Some have withdrawn into themselves. Some of them have taken solace in the presence of normal people. There are still those who take their Mortis burden to the church.

The Mortis not only act as conduits for souls to the afterlife, they also remember. They remember everything about every soul they ever released, though the memories fade as time passes. The most recent soul, however, haunts them, only gradually receding to the back of their minds with the release of new souls. This is the basis for the Church of Remembrance.

The Church of Remembrance is a link between the normal world and the patch-work quilt of Mortis society. Within the human world, it is a poly-denominational church, but it does not hold weekly masses. Instead, masses are held upon the death of one of the Church members. These masses are less sermon than eulogies, lasting for hours while the Mortis who released the soul recounts the life of the deceased, whose family and friends are welcomed to attend. The public is also welcome, and it is from these people that new members of the Church come. To Mortis, the Church is a repository of memories. In addition to the masses, the Mortis priests inscribe the lives of the released souls in books, which are stored carefully in the Church basement, and though the priests see these biographies as their duty, it is more of a great emotional release that they find in the writing, as if they achieve some fulfillment in it. Any Mortis may record a biography for the Church and it will be kept with care, but only Mortis Priests of Remembrance may speak at the heads of masses, for that is the greater emotional fulfillment and is reserved to the believers.

The Church of Remembrance itself is located in an old Catholic church in New York, New York, USA. The church is owned by the Church of Remembrance, but no one knows how it acquired it, or how the Church began. The Mortis priests either do not know or their story of the Church "just being there" when they needed it has a grain of truth. There are also small branches of the Church of Remembrance around the country, but these are merely missionaries and not true churches. Mostly, they consist of a single Mortis priest who holds mass relatively often to gather members and establish the Church's presence in the minds of the public.

Mortis Death

Death is the one certainty in life, and normal humans get only one chance. Once they die, there is nothing else for them here in the physical world, they pass on to the afterlife with the help of the Mortis. For the Mortis, however, it is different. They have a duty, a curse, a soul burning with hot fire. This fire, though, is not the heat of a normal, living soul; it burns hotter and faster, burns out earlier than normal. Once a person becomes a Mortis, her life becomes dramatically shortened. The longest living Mortis so far survived for twenty-three years before his soul burned out. Most Mortis survive only ten to fifteen years.

There are, of course, the usual myths that arise from the desperate wish against dying that every man has. Some distant Mortis somehow managed to quench the flame and restore the normal burning of his soul. In some land, almost impossible to reach, there is a spring that removes the burden of death every Mortis carries, and with it the shortened life. Most of these myths are spread by the Mortis who have been able to manage their curse rather than those who have lost control or fled from reality. Whether these rumors are true or not is anyone's guess.

Another rumor that can be found among any group of Mortis actually has some basis in fact. Mortis, goes the rumor, cannot die until their soulfire burns out. Indeed, Mortis souls are not simply released to the afterlife when they die; they carry too much energy to do that. A dead Mortis can walk, talk, and think as if he were still alive, unlike a normal human, who for all intents and purposes is dead, with only the removal of her soul to make death complete. Dead Mortis, are different from live ones, however. Their death calls Mortis to come release it like any other, though some of the more powerful Mortis have been able to hide their death. Other Mortis arrive soon after the death of a Mortis, intent on releasing his soul. If he escapes them, he will not die. Yet. But, he now has a great weakness: if any Mortis ever touches him, he is instantly dead, his soul released to the afterlife. Until then, or until his soulfire burns out (it burns much more rapidly in death), he will continue to live.

A kind of side note is the fact that when a Mortis soul is released, it does not pass through the soul of the releaser -- it would carry with it all the memories of every soul the Mortis ever released in one instant and that would be too much for the releasing Mortis. Instead, the soul merely requires the touch of a Mortis to open its own pathway to the afterlife and leaves the body through that passageway. Another side note is that when a Mortis's soul burns out, its last action is to release itself to the afterlife; the touch of another Mortis is not required in this case.

Themes

Mortis: the Grieving is not really designed to be played. Instead, it is intended more to instill certain themes in a chronicle. For the Storyteller who wishes to make his chronicle more tragic, the Mortis are a good technique of conveying that theme. In each of the other Storyteller games, the characters have both curses and benefits. The Garou are cursed with a losing battle against the Wyrm, but at least they have the spirits and their own determination, let alone the other Garou abilities, to stand against their foe. The Kindred are created cursed, but in turn, they have Golconda to counterbalance their unholy existence. Wraiths, Mages, and Changelings are similar, but the Mortis have nothing to hold up against their curse. This is what makes them tragic. They were normal people, but now have had the mantle of releasing the souls of the dead, but not only that, but to be made horribly aware of what the loss of that soul means to the world. Their only hope of happiness is the rare soul that made the world better by living in it. A loving grandmother, a charitable man. But even this carries the heavy weight of the fact that this noble soul is no longer here. It is gone forever.

My god, how depressing, you say, but remember the other major theme of Mortis: that of remembrance. Even though the soul is gone, it is remembered by the Mortis who released it, and remembered with perfect clarity. Every person who ever thought they knew that person actually only knew a small portion of their thoughts and actions and emotions, their hopes and dreams. But the Mortis knows it all, and from the perspective of the soul. Not only that, but knowing every moment, the Mortis can understand the soul, if he so wishes. To the family of the deceased, in addition to their precious memories, another remembers as well, and knows what they feel, but a thousand times more so. Somewhere out there is someone who remembers who that person really was. Life goes on, but the past is not forgotten, not ever.

World of Darkness Relationships

The Mortis are awakened beings, but they are not like the other supernaturals. They do not stand out in a crowd, do not work Magick or speak with the spirits of the Umbra. They are not undead, or exist in a world of dreams. They are, in fact, more of a natural order, a fact of life rather than an exception to it, and as such, they are generally unknown to anybody. There have been, however, certain encounters, generally in the nature of the release of the soul of a Changeling or a Mage, so the Mortis themselves are aware of the others, but they see no reason to make themselves known to them. Those who bring death are rarely welcomed.

Werewolves actually have no need for the Mortis; their souls already have a connection to the powerful energies of life and death, which they believe to be a single entity called Gaia. This connection allows the automatic release of a Garou soul to Gaia when he or she dies. Mortis and Garou have had almost no contact whatsoever, and a Garou will never become a Mortis or vice versa.

Mages are probably the supernatural beings that the Mortis have the most contact with, because they can detect a Mortis if they are using the quintessence usually found in Mage patterns to search for other Mages. Such a Mage would see a Mortis soul blazing even brighter than a Mage's but in a slightly different way. Of course, the Mage would assume that he had found another Mage and take what actions he thought necessary for his purposes. At least, he will try. Any action that the Mage tries to take that could keep the Mortis from performing her duty will fill the Mage with nausea and an aversion to that action; even a Mage knows, though subconsciously, that Mortis are essential to the natural order. The Mage must succeed in a Willpower roll, difficulty 10, to actually perform the action. Admittedly, the vast majority of Mages who encounter Mortis are incredibly curious about them, and many have approached them to ask questions. A few have even struck friendships. The Technocracy, of course, is still trying to kidnap a Mortis to study this "phenomenon." A Mortis will never become a Mage, because he is already awakened and his awakened abilities do not include Magick.

The Embrace of a new vampire is a most confusing thing for any Mortis in the vicinity. Suddenly, they are called to release a nearby soul, but a few seconds later, the call is reduced to almost nothing, leaving the Mortis to wonder why she no longer needs to release that soul. Most just assume some other Mortis reached the soul first or someone had a "near death" experience, and leave the area, grateful that, for once, they do not have to go through the horror of releasing a soul. A few Mortis, however, have gone to investigate. They generally come back dead, possibly even drained of blood. Mortis encountering vampires not in the process of the Embrace will feel uneasy, as their souls push them to release the souls bound by the blood of Caine to the physical world. These souls are unnaturally kept here, and a Mortis will feel compelled to release them to the afterlife, but a mere touch cannot break the bond of Caine; it takes much more than that. A few Mortis have dedicated their lives to hunting vampires because of this. A Mortis may not become a vampire, because she cannot die until her soulfire burns out, and then her soul is sent straight to the afterlife; no blood of any vampire can keep it in this world.

Being affected by Banality as the Kithain are, the mere touch of a Mortis could destroy their soul, shattering it into a million pieces. All Kithain will do almost anything to avoid being in the presence of a Mortis, let alone being touched by one. Because of this, Mortis who are called to release the soul of a Changeling merely have to come within a couple of feet of the Changeling for the soul to flee the body. Touch is not necessary. A person with a Kithain soul will never become a Mortis.

Mortis and Wraiths generally have no way of interacting except at the moment of the Wraith's birth into the Deadlands. Very few Wraiths remember the moment of their death, and therefore the Mortis who released them from their bodies, but those who do are generally curious as to what this person did that they ended up in the Deadlands instead of Heaven, or even Hell. They might blame the Mortis for their death or try to use him for one last reconciliation with life. The Mortis who released a Wraith's soul could easily become a fetter for the Wraith, understanding her and knowing her as he can, and if the Mortis records the Wraith's life in a book for the Church of Remembrance, that, too, could easily become a fetter. It is very rare for a Mortis to become a Wraith when his soulfire dies.

Systems

I have provided these systems for the Storyteller to create NPC's, or for players who really want to play a Mortis. There is also an optional aspect of the Mortis that should make them more playable rather than just pawns of death. Hopefully, these mechanics work relatively well even though they have not been playtested.

Characters are created normally, with the exception of their Life rating. Life is explained in detail below. Life begins at 5 permanent points, with each additional point costing 4 Freebies. It may not be increased with experience.

When a Mortis releases a soul, it does not go easily. The vast majority of souls grasp and clamor at the Mortis, desperately trying to keep their connection to this world. People do not want to die.

The player/Storyteller makes a Willpower roll every time a Mortis releases a soul. If the roll fails, the character will be haunted by the memories of the soul and might take on some of its mannerisms or goals. If the roll botches, the soul takes control of the Mortis's body for a short period of time, determined by the Storyteller or until the player makes a successful resisted Willpower roll against the soul.

The deaths that surround a Mortis depend heavily on the area that he is currently in; there are probably more deaths in New York than in the whole state of Nebraska each year. While there are more Mortis in cities to compensate for the higher death rates, they do affect the Mortis themselves. Generally, the Storyteller should decide when and where a death occurs and who, if anybody important, but there may be times when the release of souls are not as important as other story elements, so the Storyteller may also use the following tables to randomly choose a death.

Roll a number of dice equal to the character's permanent Life rating:

Location	Difficulty
Large city**	7
Small city	8
Large town	9
Smaller	10

^*In large cities, due to the large number of deaths, characters must spend a temporary Life point every month instead of every two.

The number of successes should determine approximately how many deaths occur around the Mortis that he is forced to attend per week. Or day, if the Storyteller really wants to make the character's life hell.

Mortis Life

The power generated by a Mortis soul is measured by his Life rating, which has both "temporary" and "permanent" ratings. Characters begin with 5 permanent points and no temporary points, but they can increase their rating with Freebies (1 permanent point for every 4 Freebies spent) or take the flaw Short Life (4 point Flaw, character begins with 3 permanent Life points). Every two months (or every month, in large cities), a character loses a temporary Life point, and when he reaches zero, a permanent point is converted to 10 temporary points. When a Mortis's Life rating reaches zero permanent and zero temporary points, he dies. Dead Mortis lose Life at a rate of one temporary point per week. Life may also be used with the optional Mortis ability.

Making

For a player, playing a Mortis character would probably not be very fun without some Mortis ability to balance out the curse that all Mortis labor under. Therefore, I have provided rules for an optional Mortis ability called Making.

The Mortis are beings of destruction. They are the conduits of the final unmaking of humans: death. However, no being created by nature can survive as unbalanced as this for long. Every unbalanced creature either dies, or finds a way to compensate. In recent years, some very few Mortis have discovered that they carry within themselves both the seeds of unmaking and making. The very Life that makes them conduits for souls to the afterlife magnifies their ability to create and repair.

The fire of a Mortis's soul has both the energy of creation and the power of death, and, while the Mortis has no control over the power of death, some Mortis have been able to harness the energy of creation.

Creation is actually two distinct powers, pure creation, and building. Pure creation actually creates matter from creation energy. Roll Making against a difficulty 10, and match the number of successes against the table below to see how much of the material was created. This costs 1 temporary point of Life per use. Building creation is a very different power. Building works only with the materials at hand, and creates something new out of those materials. From wood, a chair. From metal, a ring. Roll Making against a difficulty that varies dependent on the complexity of the object. The materials used in making the object must be present, or created using pure creation, and the character should have at least some knowledge of how to make the object in the first place; creation magnifies ability, it does not create it. Machined parts, microchips, and other objects that can't be made by hand cannot be created or built using this power.

Mortis with the Making are not only good at creating and building things, they are also remarkably good at repairing broken objects.

Roll the character's Making against a difficulty determined by the Storyteller according to how complex the object is and how knowledgeable the character is about such objects. Every success adds a die to the actual roll to fix the object. This ability costs nothing.

Characters begin with a Making of zero, but may buy the ability with Freebie points. Each Making dot costs 5 Freebies. This ability may also be advanced through experience, at a rate of 8 times the current rating per additional dot.

End

If you have any comments, suggestions, or additions to Mortis: the Grieving, you can email me at bathrall@artsci.wustl.edu. Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed reading Mortis.