Overview

This website is an effort to present a "life after death" role-playing game that's consistent with White Wolf's World of Darkness setting.

The Risen are those souls of the dead who have been revitalized and who have reclaimed their earthly remains. They now walk the Earth as undead creatures, seeking to be more.

Themes

The Risen is a game about life and death, and about second chances and what you do with them.

Original Thread on White Wolf's Forum

Chapter 1: Life after Death

Chapter 2: Character

Chapter 3: Secrets of Death

Chapter 4: Storytelling and Antagonists

Appendix One: Transcendence

Appendix Two: Underworld

Character Sheet

Nature of the Risen

When a person dies, his soul divides: his higher soul moves on to the Afterlife, and his lower soul either lingers in the mortal world as a ghost or descends into the Underworld. For the most part, ghosts in the Underworld are well and truly trapped. With no anchors to bind them to the mortal world, they're lost in the dismal realms of the dead. Every so often, though, a ghost will find its higher soul in the Underworld. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that the higher soul finds the ghost, having departed the Afterlife in search of it.

When the two halves of the soul meet, a bond is forged and they combine to form a wraith. A wraith differs from a ghost in that it is a more complex being, and that it is tied to the material world through a link to its corpse known as Vitality.

The wraith can remain in the Underworld if it chooses, at least until the mortal remains decay. At that point, the wraith's Vitality breaks; the higher soul departs once more to the Afterlife, and the lower soul once again becomes a regular ghost. In the meantime, the wraith can use its Vitality to return to the mortal world. Once there, it can expend Pneuma that it gathered in the Underworld to restore the body's integrity, and then inhabit the body to become one of the Risen.

The process of Rising is decidedly unnatural, and results in an undead being walking the Earth. Every Risen has the ability to separate its soul from its body in a manner that reflects ghostly manifestations. The body enters a lifeless state during this Twilight venture, although the wraith remains bound to it as a ghost is bound to its anchor. If there are any portals to the Underworld within its reach, it may pass through and travel freely in the Underworld, safe in the knowledge that it is still tethered to life, and may return to its body at any time; but beyond that, it must remain in the body's vicinity.

As undead beings, the Risen do not heal naturally; they must expend Pneuma to do so. On the other hand, they don't need to breathe; they never hunger or tire; and they have little to worry about from the elements.

The Risen are beings of duality: death and life, ghost and soul, past and future. Likewise, their passions cover both the negative and the positive. Like Prometheans, they occasionally experience emotional overload, due to their Vitality magnifying the emotions that they feel. Unlike Prometheans, their "frenzies" come in two diametrically opposed versions: Rapture and Torment.

Powerstat: Vitality

Although they have died, the Risen have a powerful link to the land of the living. This tether, known as Vitality, is what holds the Risen together: body, mind, and soul. A Risen who loses his Vitality ceases to be a Risen; if he continues on at all, he does so as a ghost or revenant. Conversely, the intense feelings that come with a high Vitality can be addictive, and the Risen run the risk of becoming driven purely by passion. Risen with high Vitality find it harder to overcome Rapture and Torment.

Energy: Pneuma

Pneuma is a rare form of "life force" most easily found in the Underworld.

Morality: Memory

Ghosts and revenants rarely remember anything about life beyond the things that they've come back to accomplish. This is often the case with the Risen as well. However, remembering what life was like is essential to the Risen's well-being, as it grounds him. Memory is the foundation upon which rational thought depends, and those who lose it become spectral monsters who live only in the now, driven entirely by their fears and desires.

Inborn types: Deathmarks

The way that the Risen died is crucial to what he is, and leaves an imprint on his soul known as a deathmark. There are five kinds of Deathmarks, corresponding with the manner of one's death: Age, Despair, Happenstance, Pestilence, and Violence. Each comes with a Strength and a Weakness.

Not every Risen has a Deathmark. Sometimes, this is because the Risen has no idea how he died, or why; other times, it's because his manner of death wasn't important to him. This can be thought of as a "seventh Deathmark", of Mystery. There is no Strength or Weakness associated with Mystery; but if the Risen ever takes an interest in his death and figures out how he died, he can "solve the Mystery" and embrace the Deathmark appropriate to his death.

Adopted types: Testaments

As the Deathmark is the Risen's reaction to his death, a Testament is his reaction to his new life: what will he do with it?

• Wisps - The Longing: Wisps have the power to confuse mortals, stemming from their own implacable longing and a feeling that they don't "belong", neither in life nor in death. Wisps also are the best at finding gates to the Underworld, ironically - they have easy passage between life and death, but don't feel comfortable in either.
  
  
• Banshees - The Vengeful: Banshees are driven by vengeance and by strong passions, usually aggressive but sometimes romantic, creative, or even sexual energies. They feel as though they must make a difference in the world, and have power over emotions. They can also influence sound, making loud noises that at extreme levels even can raze buildings.
  
  
• Spooks - The Wary: Spooks are afraid of true death. That's not to say all of them prefer to be "alive", but their instincts seem to keep them locked in their bodies - something which other Risen prefer. The Spooks can be terrifying in their ghost shapes, since they always retain the scars of their death. Spooks inevitably died in violent or gruesome ways; drowning, murder, et cetera. Spooks can be tremendously scary, but their obsession with evading "True Death" also gives them a more powerful tie to life; they have troubles using their ghost shapes and many (but not all) don't want to use them at all.
  
  (Some Risen scholars, incidentally, claim that the "True Death" that the Spooks have seen is not Death at all, but something far more sinister that preys on the souls of the dead)
  
  
• Poltergeists - The Willful: These individuals are driven by sheer will to stay alive. Not all of them have high Resolve scores, but something motivated them to rise beyond death when they faced it, and most Poltergeists retain this willful spirit. The catch is, unfortunately, that sheer will alone sometimes isn't enough to fight death, so Poltergeists are more comfortable in their ghost forms and more innately tied to death.
  
  
• Haunters - The Caring: The Caring are driven by a strange form of altruism, a feeling of responsibility towards the world. Most can't pinpoint exactly what it is they're supposed to do, they just know the world would be worse off without them. As a result, they return to live out their "purpose", which may be as vague as just sticking around in case something happens, or as specific as making sure a certain radio program doesn't stop airing. The Haunters have powers to alter their environment, usually in more subtle ways than the Poltergeists. They also possess rudimentary control over people and tend to have a rather potent charisma - and very often over-inflated egos, since they genuinely believe in their own importance to the world.

Advanced Types: Transcendence

As a Risen's Vitality increases, he has the opportunity to initiate a transcendence of his current nature. This can take one of two general forms: Life and Death. If the Risen embraces Life, he gradually becomes more lifelike: his wounds heal on their own; he starts to breathe as his heart starts beating once more. Once he has mastered a Transcendence of Life, he becomes one of the Reborn: more alive than the living. In doing so, he gives up the benefits of undeath as well as the drawbacks: he now needs to breathe and eat; he suffers from exposure; and he will succumb to old age if he lives long enough.

If the Risen embraces Death, his soul begins to transform into a chthonic entity - a personification of the cycle of life and death. This yields the potential for tremendous power in the Underworld, but makes it correspondingly more difficult to interact with the living.

Powers: the Secrets

These come in three broad categories: Secrets of the Body, Secrets of the Mind, and Secrets of the Soul. The Secrets of the Body deal with Flesh, Blood, Skin, Bone, and Breath; the Secrets of the Mind deal with thoughts, emotions, senses, memories, and dreams; and the Secrets of the Soul deal with various divisions of the soul: since Egyptian lore has the most elaborate view of the soul that I've encountered so far, and since Risen is intended to pay homage to Mummy as well as to Wraith, I'm leaning toward using the Egyptian breakdown as a basis for this - though not in the same way that MtR did.

Secrets of the Body tend to incorporate physical attributes into their dice pools; likewise with Secrets of the Mind and mental attributes, and (to a lesser extent) Secrets of the Soul and social attributes. As well, the Secrets of the Body generally depend on being in a body, while the Secrets of the Soul tend to deal with matters relevant to the wraith-form.

Every x-splat has a preferred Secret of the Body and of the Soul; every y-splat has a preferred Secret of the Mind and a preferred Path of Necromancy; and every z-splat has a preference for a single Secret or Necromancy of any type. A Secret or Necromancy that is uniquely the preference of a z-splat is said to be "deep"; so there are fifteen standard Secrets, five standard Necromancies, and an open-ended (but initially small) number of Deep Secrets and Necromancies.

Secrets of the Soul

The Secrets of the Soul would be patterned loosely after what the Egyptians called the Ba, the Ka, the Ren, the Khaibit, and the Ab. Mind you, I'm taking some liberties here. I may also end up choosing less Egypt-centric names for these.

• The Secrets of the Ka deal with matters involving ghosts and the ghostly state. This is probably where the abilities to possess others or to inhabit objects go.
• The Secrets of the Ba deal with matters directly involving Vitality and Lifeforce.
• The Secrets of the Ren (literally, "name") draw on ties of recognition - whether it be the continuing recognition of the character by others, or the recognition of others by the character.
• The Secrets of the Khaibit involve the shadow - both literally (the ability to manipulate shadows and darkness) and figuratively (tapping into the subconscious).
• The Ab is the heart (figuratively, the conscience). Not quite sure what to do with its Secrets; maybe something having to do with Virtues, Vices, and/or Derangements? Or maybe this is the Risen analog to Dominate; I'm not sure.