By Peloquin (ka.vanadis@karlskrona.mail.telia.com)
Two men, sharing the profits of the night. Wallets of all sizes, credit cards, a few pieces of jewelery, and a cut off finger with a small diamond ring still on it. "Hey, did ya notice the look on his face when I cut off his pinky?" The other man grins. "Yeah. And then his wife started screamin'."
The first man gives his partner a sour look, putting the finger in his pocket. "Hey, man, I had ta shut her up!"
"Yeah, well, ya could've broken her jaw instead of shootin' her. I'm tellin' ya, if ya keep dis up we're gonna get in trouble wid da cops sooner dan we like."
"Aww, shaddup!"
A shadow moves along the ground. Silently, smoothly, quickly it moves towards the two men, and slips into the shadow of one of the men. It watches. And waits.
"Hey Jimmy, did ya just feel dat?"
"What?" The first man (let's call him Bibbo...it's not his real name, but it is what he is known as on the streets) shrugs uneasily. "I dunno, man...it just got cold allofa sudden..."
Jimmy grins again, (the smile never reaches his eyes) and throws a bloodstained ID-card at Bibbo. "Ooo, spooky. Hey, man, ya just been watchin' too much late night TV. Or you got a virus or somfin'."
"Cut it out man, I'm serious! It felt like...like somebody walkin' on my grave..." Suddenly a pair of silhouette hands appear from his shadow, grabs him by his neck, and drags him inside the darkness. He barely gets a chance to scream. Jimmy stares at the ground. Bibbo's shadow is there. But Bibbo isn't. "Buh-buh-Bibbo? Uh, yuh-you thuh-there man?"
And then the voice, soft, emotionless, cold. "No. Bibbo is gone. Gone, gone, gone. And he's never coming back."
Jimmy jumps up from his place on the ground, and starts running. He runs for a whole of three city blocks until he's sure that the shadow hasn't followed him.
"Poor Jimmy. You can't run. I'm everywhere."
Jimmy screams, and grabs a trash can, throws it at where he heard the voice, but the can just hits the wall with a loud clang. "Hey, man, leavemealone, I din'tdonuffin', whaddyawant wid me!?!"
The voice changes, becoming deeper, more emotional, and the emotion is hatred. "You killed me. You left me for dead in an alley three years ago, and you say you haven't done anything? Liar! It's time to pay the price!" The shadows surrounding him suddenly develops arms, each grabbing an arm, or leg, or by his throat. And then one of them shapes itself into a vaguely humanoid form, the eyes piercing his mind with black light. "Look what you've done to me!"
The voice changes again, to the calm, unemotional drone. "Time to die, Jimmy."
An old bag lady down the streets hears the screams, and then the ripping noises, and she hurries off, clutching her battered purse to her chest.
When a mortal dies, the outcome is almost always the same. Either they goes on to whatever paradise or hell they always believed they would be sent to, reincarnate, or become a wraith. But there are some who get the worst deal of them all.
The Shades.
Lost souls who died a violent death, and then got sent back as a shadow, to do whatever it takes to gain some sort of retribution. Some kill the men or women who murdered them. Some try to reconcile with their families. And some go mad and destroy everything they loved.
A shade is not, literally a ghost (those are the wraiths). They are, shadows of themselves, given strange, frightening powers, and sent back to perform some mission, what they are supposed to do, even they don't know. Some say that they are a sort of merging os Shadow and Psyche. Some say that they are a completely different form of wraith, and others say they are scary bastards you should avoid at all costs.
Whatever they are, their numbers have increased in the past two centuries. From barely one or two in the world at the same time, there are now more than a hundred of them spread out in the World of Darkness.
Again, I have to repeat, the Shades are not wraiths. They do not have Corpus, Pathos or Angst. They cannot use Arcanos, and they do not have Life- or Deathsight. Instead they have something called Wraithscent, Soulscent, and Shadow. Wraithscent allows them to sense if there are wraiths nearby, and communicate with them, and Soulscent determines how far into Oblivion the soul you are researching has gone. Soulscent works only on still corporeal beings; it can't be used on a wraith, but to use it on a vampire, one would be able to determine that he has gone very deep into Oblivion indeed...(charts below) Shadow allows a Shade to manipulate shadows far better than any Lasombra Elder, since the Shade is, in effect, one with the shadows.
Another issue, treat every dot of Strength as a permanent success. The Shade may only have up to five dots in Strength, but it is usually enough.
The Shades are also immune against any supernatural mental assaults, including Mind magicks, Dominate, faery Chicanery and the like.
Shading: Shading is the power of controlling shadows; look for inspiration in the vampiric Discipline Obtenebration (even the higher levels). This power also allows one to drag one person per dot into the shadows and leaving them in the Void, forever. This costs 5 freebies per dot. It is also what you roll to avoid damage, do note that the only thing that can possibly hurt a Shade is fire.
Vivate: Vivate costs 2 freebies per dot; this is what the Shade must roll every time he is deemed to get highly agitated or upset, (like above, his killer claims he's innocent, so he gets....mad). If the roll (diff: 6, +1 for each reason to get upset) fails the Monster takes over. The Monster has the same goals and needs of the character, but it has a lot less qualms and compassion; it would not mind ripping through a group of children to get to its target. The Monster doesn't care who gets hurt, it just goes berserk. The berserk lasts for a whole scene, after which the player is returned control of of the character.
The Monster is not like a vampire in frenzy; it is quite able to communicate, but whatever it says is bound to be threatening, cruel, or completely void of any emotion but hatred. That is whay Shades try to remain as emotionless as possible. The ST runs the Monsters actions.
Soulscent: To gain knowledge about any beings descent into Oblivion, one must roll Perception + Awareness diff:7. Two successes are needed for Mortals, three for Awakened beings of any sort.
1 | The subject is as innocent as a newborn babe. |
2 | The subject is no more evil than a child of 2-10 years old. |
3 | The subject has never done anything particularly mean. |
4 | The subject has done some things it deems as unpleasant but necessary. The subject may or may not be Garou. |
5 | The subject is probably involved in the darker sort of illegal actions. |
6 | The subject is mean. |
7 | The subject has committed murder more than once; average for a Camarilla neonate. |
8 | The subject is consciously evil, average Sabbat member or Unseelie changeling. |
9 | The subject is highly corrupted by Oblivion, and is probably what the Garou call Wyrm-spawn |
10 | Antediluvian, Wyrm Incarna, Malfeas itself. |
Kindred: The vampires have given many dead reasons to return, especially the last centuries, with the Sabbat.
"Run. Not from your city, from the country. If that isn't enough, away from the continent."
Garou: Mostly we only avenge ourselves on the Oblivionthralls known as Black Spiral Dancers. Noone can dance without legs.
"Uh-huh. Yeah, well, I've heard of'em. They scare the shit out of the Shadow Lords and the Wyrm-spawn. Still, they're too creepy to be lovable, in spite of their good grasp of what's right and wrong."
Mages: We almost never deal with these, except the Nephandi. They soon learn that lightning bolts and other magics are useless against a shadow.
"Never heard of'em. Shades, eh? Hmmm...now that I think about it, there was this Nephandi I heard of that got killed by a living shadow, we just thought it was Paradox..."
Changelings: What? Faeries hiding as humans? Quite possible that I've met one, but I wouldn't know about it.
"I heard of this band of Redcaps...brrr, icky story, let's talk about my incredible magic bicycle instead! What, you don't think I have one? I promise! Really! Would I lie?"
Wraiths: We can speak to them. They're as sad as we are.
"Ah yes. At least they can interfere in the Skinlands."
Gargoyles: What? Gargoyles? Isn't that what some leeches use for protection?
"We've seen these tortured souls, but as of yet we have not dared approach them."
NightBreed: They've given us a lot of grief.
"They've given us a lot of grief."
Windrunners: Never heard of them.
"Lookup! Lookdown! Whoa, tooslow! We didn't have time to get a close enough look on him? her? it?
Yavelins: Mad killers. But they stay away from us, and very rarely are they the reasons for our return.
"Look out, kid, the bogeyman is comin' for ya..."
Adephi: Angels. Sure. As if.
"Gabriel's tools. And they don't even know it."
Mortis: I stopped one from taking care of my dying killer. He almost went ballistic.
"They are mad. And they need some tutoring in their responsibilites."
Aegis: They have aided us occasionally.
"Creepy. Real creepy."
Crows: Freakier than we are. We do not get along.
"You can't exact revenge without costs. I wish they could understand that."
Cursed: Poor bastards.
"Poor bastards."
Highlanders: Hah. If you think about it, they have it real good. they're on their final inning these days.
"I saw one pull Droken inside a shadow. Considering Droken's immortality, I can't say he deserved it, but he must've done something to warrant that Shade."
Cenobites: Ah. The servants of Oblivion. We have encountered them far too often the past century. Someone should burn those damn boxes before they bring about Harmagedon.
"Sweet shadowchildren. Even they can feel pain. I didn't stick around to get his name, hey, I'm not stupid...