Geister, Geister and More Geister

[ajf115]

This is a thread for posting ideas for Geister. I'll kick us off with a bit of a description:

The Corpse That Bloomed

A man sits at a small round table next to the window of a cafe, typing on a laptop. He is in profile against the outside world, which is fuzzy through the glass. A coffee cub sits on the table next to the laptop, gently steaming. His hair is dark, short-cut and scruffy and a pair of wires lead to earbuds in his ears. A ropy, discolored patch rings his throat.

Behind the man stands a humanoid figure. Its body is a tangle of vines and thorns wound about a bleached skeleton. Its innards are concealed by innumerable rose blossoms, forming a soft and irregular skin. The skull gleams white among the red, grinning where a head ought to be. Lilies bloom in the eye sockets. Below the waist it's humanoid shape loses definition, and the legs are only vaguely separate. It sinks roots into the vinyl floor and leans forward attentively. A hand is outstretched, pointing at the screen over the man's shoulder, seemingly as to comment on whatever the man is writing.

The Corpse That Bloomed is a Geist of lost love and bittersweet memory. Its Keys are Passion and Stigmata. The former is born directly from its connection to love and grief, but it cannot recall the source of the latter. If one were to touch it one would find that its crimson color comes not from the natural pigment of roses but rather from a thin coating of blood on the petals. The Corpse remembers nothing of its life besides emotion - feeling is all it is.

When calm it is relatively personable as Geister go, even capable of holding a human-like conversation. If its emotions are roused, however, it becomes entirely fixated upon them. If it sees a beautiful person - male or female - it will sing their praises for days (or at least until it sees someone else it can attach its affections to) and if it is angered it will rave and rant, demanding that its Bound destroy the object of its wrath immediately.

[Leliel]

Inspired by Evolutionary Biology, on a phone:

The Synatomorph Judge

Mutation is a fundamentally random process. Evolution is not. The Synatomorph Judge personifies why this is not a contradiction: she (she sees herself as a dark Mother Earth figure, gender included) is a geist of evolutionary pressures, competition and environ that drives species to adapt or die. She is eternally frustrated by the fact individuals cannot evolve, the closest thing possible being how psychology is affected by personal experience-and outright angered by how the dead generally aren't even capable of that. It's for that reason she Bargains; she wishes to see how her Bound change in response to the advent of their new state, and to use them as a vector to affect further change in the living world, and with it bring much-needed adaptation to the Underworld, making it more of a true ecology capable of its own balance and dynamism. Curiously, she's actually something of a traditionalist when it comes to Sin-Eater culture-she got her title from the term for biological traits shared among related species, and in her view favorable to survival. Humans have running ability, endurance, and altruism, Bound have a unified set of ethics and more of behavior that serves as both guide and limit. She is not unkind or even ruthless, viewing virtuous behavior as favorable to survival of the population, but her Bound would take care to remember she personifies the alternative to survival; she is infamously pragmatic and views the world through an alien lens where the only true measure of worth is sustainable population growth and resistance to extinction. Those who fall, in her view, simply were not good enough.

[Adrasalieth]

Apologies in advance, I'm really bad at writing prose.

The Shroud-Seamstress

It’s been three full minutes now, and the guy in the tank top still hasn’t looked away from you for a single moment. Standing painfully straight at his corner of the bar, he hasn’t yet drink a sip of the drink you ordered him from across the counter. It’s definitely his first time here – and probably his first time in a gay bar at all. You rarely hit on guys like that – especially when they’re so out of your league: but there's something about him that's simply... enticing. He keeps eyeing you, a mix of shyness and excitation palpable in his gaze, and slowly, resolutely, he raises the glass and downs it. His fluorescent wristband slips slightly down his arm, and in its diffuse halo, you first notice the intricate net of parallel scars upon it, stretching like furrows on the field of his flesh.

What you do not see, however, is the form that hovers above him: a spectral, feminine form dressed in a mass of white silk ribbons, floating and undulating around her as if underwater. From the jumble of fabric, two immaculate arms emerge: but instead of hands, each appendage ends with an eight-fingered silvery metallic construct made of needles and clockwork, oddly remindful of a spider: and indeed where she grazes and strokes the boy’s shoulders, small patches of glistening gossamer start to form. Her bust and head are those of a mannequin, lacking hair, eyes and, in fact, any facial features – save for the mouth: red, luscious lips, parted in a wide grin displaying two bright white rows of teeth, and currently mouthing something repeatedly to the guy in the tank top, something that sounds a little bit like “Go on.”

Once upon a time, the Shroud Seamstress likes to narrate, there was a man who loved her and whom she loved. He proposed her, and they both enthusiastically starting planning and preparing for their wedding – she even started sewing her own wedding dress. But there were constant setbacks, changes of plans, bickering between the two families. And somewhere amidst those preparations that weren’t really theirs anymore, love slowly went away.

She doesn’t remember having ever worn the dress at all. Probably because she died prior to the wedding, she reasons: but that's only speculation on her behalf, for she has no memory of the true cause of her death. Suicide? Murder at the hand of her fiancé? Sickness, due to her physical and psychological exhaustion? It’s all blurry now – and mostly, she doesn't care to look for the answer. She doesn’t have to worry about her dress fitting her: now, her gown is fused to her very being, woven and unwoven at the whims of her Plasm.

All that’s left for her to find is a wedding to attend.

The two keys of the Shroud Seamstress are Stillness (the slow, painless inner death caused by routine and things unsaid) and Industrial (for the pragmatic experience she acquired during all those nights working at that wedding dress she never got to wear). Where some Geists tend to harm their Bound through their recklessness or hothead maneuvers, the Shroud Seamstress is all about pragmatism and safety. Having concluded many consecutive Bargains with numerous Necropolitan Krewes, she has quite the reputation as a matchmaker… especially between her Bound and the numerous widows of both sexes they won’t fail to cross path with during their missions as a Sin-Eater.

In her bad days, she’ll do anything to drag him towards the “living”, ordinary side of his existence, no matter the urgency of his Sin-Eater prerogatives, or the boredom he may feel about a domestic life. She will have her perfect wedding – whatever it will take.

[Seraph Kitty]

I was wiki crawling when I found this mythic figure, and started getting geist-y ideas:



Ankou, the Psychopomp of Brittany

This geist is one of the most infamous in the British Isles. It has stalked these lands for nearly 3000 years - and has, according to legend, been Bound to Sin Eaters for nearly all of it. So much of its time has been spent with a Sin Eater that it's taken the purpose of shepherding lost souls as its own on-going mission - the only thing it demands of its Sin Eaters is to guide lost souls... for exactly one year.

Appearance: Ankou draws its form from legends of the Grim Reaper, or is perhaps the basis of them. The geist is a skeletal human form in a dark robe, its face hidden by a large black hat, carrying a scythe. Many of its Bound mimic this appearance as a symbol of office, and many also learn the Caul Haunt.

The Bargain: the first person to die each year (in its territory of Brittain, Cornwall, and Whales) is offered a Bargain by this geist: one year of service helping lost souls move on before being released to their own destiny. Since most people assume this is a god of death, and that they can't go to Heaven unless they accept, nearly everyone offered has taken its Bargain. True to its word, the geist ends the bond one year later (whether or not they want it to), only to make another Bargain almost immediately. The geist only remains unbound for a very narrow window: the time between when the last person dies in a year and when the first person to die does so. No one's clear how it knows either of these events, but it might point to a higher power - or to the entity's Ban.

Synergy: Sin Eaters are apparently free to interpret how to "help lost souls move on". Some hosts choose to banish every ghost to the underworld; others take on the responsibility of trying to resolve every ghost they can. However, the geist grows angry and demanding if they do not actively work toward one of these goals every single day. Attempting to destroy a ghost, give them new anchors, help them interact with the living, or escape the underworld are all grounds for a Breaking Point against Synergy.
Because Ankou binds with the first person to die every year, their personality and threshold can be wildly different. Many have no prior occult experiences, though, and their short period of service means they don't have long to learn from other Sin Eaters or occultists. Many are, therefore, naive and buy in to their geist's posturing. During some terms, the Bound interacts with no one else, relying on Ankou for all their knowledge and direction, and diving headlong into the geist's mission.

Rumors: because this geist is constantly active and changes hosts so often, the geist itself is a figure of infamy and renown among local Sin Eaters, and many contradictory rumors exist. Sometimes the Bound decides to start a new Krewe, sometimes they reclaim leadership over a Krewe that Ankou previously founded, sometimes they work alone - even being hostile to other Sin Eaters, claiming that it is their sole right and duty to guide ghosts. Rumors abound that Ankou has a cult, thousands of years old, which has actively shaped mortal ideas about death - an ancient Sin Eater conspiracy. But you'd think there'd be more evidence of that one.
Many think Ankou is actually a Deathlord masquerading as a lesser being - certainly no other geists seem to encourage the business of being a psychopomp as it does. Others say that the geist is itself bound into service to a kerberoi, deathlord, or some other power which desires Sin Eaters fulfill this function.
Some believe the geist's personal goal is to experience life for as long as possible, and knows that being Bound is the best way. Others think that it's spent this whole time searching the lands of the living for something it lost... or is waiting for a monumentus event.
Many people know that geists feed on a particular type of death, and speculate as to what that is for Ankou. Perhaps the specter is trying to avoid causing the death its meant to. But the most persistent rumor is that it feeds on the death of Sin Eaters, killing its host after the year of service.

[PrinceVertigo]

The Desiccated Bride

You take in a sharp breath when you see him. He's long and thin, pale as death but always smiling. He always comes into class late and leaves early sometimes. But not today, today is different. He looks peaceful and serene, his attention not scattered into a million places as he sits down in the empty desk in the looming lecture hall. No one sits next to him, and you make eye contact before picking up your things and sitting next to him. What your mortal eyes can't pick up on, is the figure between the two of you.

She leans in close and whispers sweet nothings into his ear, her teeth blackened like tar and eyes obscured by long black locks. She wears presumably her pajamas, though she's been wearing them every night since she passed. "He's going to use you up and spit you out like tobacco." He winces as you place your things and get comfortable in the cold plastic chair; would he do that, he ponders. She placed a paper white hand on his shoulder, her silk pajamas frayed at the ends of the sleeves. She prowls around you, like a panther, her marble-like feet making no sound against the floor. You smile at him eagerly, and he offers a trying smile back. Maybe you could share your notes with him? He misses class a lot, and he looks lonely. What you don't know is that he hasn't been lonely since he came back. He is physically incapable of being 'lonely'. Because he has her. And she, him. She slithers behind him and wraps her cold arms around his head, planting a dead kiss on his head. "If this is really what you want, I guess I'll be waiting to say 'I told you so.'"

The Desiccated Bride was hopeful, once. Her hand taken in marriage by a wealthy young man, she said yes and they ran away, eloping far away. So far away, that when she denied him the chance to know her intimately, no one was there to stop him. He took and took and took, until she was nothing. Less than nothing, a whisper of pain and loneliness. And when she heard her Bound calling out for help, she reached out with her pasty white fingers and hasn't let go. These days she keeps her Bound safe. She saved him, and isn't letting go. Like a jilted lover, she keeps people away from him, and wants nothing more than to extinguish the loathsome spirits that plague her host.

The Keys of Passion and Pyre-Flame are hers to command, from the love she thought she had, and the way he left her out in the sun to dry, her skin bleached from the effervescent light.

[Adrasalieth]

I'm not necro-ing this thread. I simply make a Bargain with it, and rise it as a Bound

Since we know a bit more about how Geists work, here's my proposition of update for some of our creations.

Shroud Seamstress
Favored Haunts: Dirge, Tomb, Marionette.
Her Key: Stillness (killed by routine)
Her Bound’s Key: Stigmata (opened his own veins).
Ban: The Seamstress still fantasizes about her future weddings, and seeing persons dressed for the occasion allows her to keep indulging in that reverie. She can’t use her ghostly powers on anyone dressed in a formal fashion (i.e. clothes with a minimum Availability of 1-2)
Bane: A pair of shears made of glass.
Possible Numina: Telekinesis, Fate Sense, Implant Mission.

Corpse That Bloomed
Favored Haunts: Dirge, Boneyard, Rage.
His Key: Stigmata (passion and bloodied petals)
His Bound’s Key: Cold Wind (hanged)? Stillness (silent and overlooked)?
Ban: Whenever he sees beautiful people showing their beauty, the Corpse that Blooms can’t help but swoon. When someone in his line of sight scores more successes than his Bound’s Resolve or Composure, whichever is lower, on a Presence-based roll (mundane or supernatural: a mage flaring a Presence-based Nimbus or a Daeva using Majesty also count), the Corpse immediately feels the compulsion to Manifest, make himself known to them and praise their good looks.
Bane: The pollen of ice-blue flowers growing on the banks of the River of Woe.
Possible Numina: Entrap, Sign, Emotional Aura.

Desiccated Bride
Favored Haunts: Dirge (replace Passion Key), Shroud, Oracle.
Her Key: Pyre Flame (duh)
Her Bound’s Key: Stillness (because he seems calm and shy) or Chance (comes late and leaves early, his attention focused on a million things…)
Ban: The abuse she suffered turned the Bride into the perfect chaperone. Each time someone in the vision field of her Bound manages to remove an article of clothing that reveal a large segment of bare skin (shirt, jeans, underwear), either their own or – God forbid – her Bound's, her heightened sense of decency drives her to avert her eyes, dropping one step down in the Initiative queue.
Bane: A fistful of beach sand mixed with powdered bones.
Possible Numina: Stalwart, Speed, Omen Trance.

[PrinceVertigo]

Great update! Especially the Ban, very unique and definitely fitting her theme. In the meanwhile, I came up with a new one.

The Last Oracle

Drip. Drip. Drip. The ceiling above you pounds and pulses with the booming tempo of the rainstorm outside, and you pull yourself closer to him. It's been a while since you've been this intimate, at least, since the incident. The torrent of rain above you does nothing to calm the fear you feel, reliving the fear of finding him face down on the floor, in a pool of his own blood. It's all you can do to grip his body in your fingers and clutch him like a vice, hearing him breathe softly against you. Sometimes you wonder what happened while he was on that floor, his eyes like glass while you screamed and desperately pounded against his chest in vain. He isn't the same person you fell in love with. There's something going on in his head. Something you can't see. He thinks you don't notice him mumbling and writing things down. When you check the notepads around the apartment, the things he writes don't even make sense, like garbled poetry.

But behind those dead eyes is the source of those words, an ancient voice who led the empires of Greece and Rome to their current status as heart of Western Civilization. Garbed in simple flowing yards of white gossamer, The Last Oracle slithers and slinks around her Bound, awash in smoke and venom dripping from her eyes, eager to whisper the secrets of the Underworld in his ears. She died when the temple at Delphi was permanently closed, giving her last prophecy, that the empire of Rome would fall with her, and within 5 years, it did. Since then, the Oracle wandered the Underworld, until she managed to find and drink from one of the Rivers. In her long journey, the Oracle's come across a lot of hidden knowledge, and she'll share it - if her Bound can sift the information out of her visions and dreams. When the Emperor closed down the Temple at Delphi, the Oracle, who had been a great source of information and guidance for people all over, was left with no where to go, and killed, so that never again could the future be used against the glory of Rome.

Favored Haunts: Memoria, Oracle, and Boneyard
Her Key: Chance
Her Bound's Key: Disease (her bound suffered from some sort of aneurysm, giving him vivid hallucinations, not unlike the Oracle's visions)
Ban: The Oracle treasures knowledge, ever since the Romans burned down her temple and had her killed, and has a tough time destroying or leaving repositories of information. Because of this, anytime her Bound is within line of sight of rare books (anything that contains Occult information, anything with an availability of 1-2, etc) they must make a Composure-based roll against their Geist's Power attribute. Failing results in the Bound gaining an Aspiration to steal the book, replacing their least important Aspiration.
Bane: A silver dagger dipped in ink.
Possible Numina: Omen Trance, Fate Sense, Implant Mission

[Leliel]

The Synatomorph Judge

Favored Haunts: Memoria, Boneyard, and the Caul. The Judge seeks to stress-test all forms and strategies of life, both through the modification of her own body and the environs of her subjects, and then observe data she was not directly present for.

Personal Key: Beasts. What is the wild without the animals that die within it?

Bound Key: Pyre Flame. Fire is the ultimate recycler, turning dead and living matter into resources to absorb, and opening ecological niches for new species to thrive in. This paradox gives it a natural harmony with the Judge's current host.

Ban: All who survive are worthy. All those whose genomes survive are worthy. What is worthy must be nurtured. A person who has survived a near-death experience or otherwise averted an event that would lower their ecological fitness (ie, their ability to have children or existing children) in the past month may ask the Judge up to three favors that are not obviously suicidal for her, and she will obey. She has no particular ban against seeking vengeance for an otherwise degrading task unless it conflicts with a previous favor (and then she's capable of obeying the letter alone, with extreme effort; it costs her half her current Essence to try), but there is no limit on this. If another risk that qualifies for her Ban occurs to the same person, both the clock and number of favors reset. Yes, this means one can force her to grant infinite wishes by putting one's children at risk, but be warned that the Judge is a mother figure, too; she's more than willing to surrender to Reapers in return for her own favor against those who truly enrage her.

Bane: Bones from a creature that died of a bacterial disease or parasitic infection. Life that causes death by its nature is so similar to her it passes her natural defenses easily.

Possible Numina: Aggressive Meme, Regenerate, Seek. The Judge is not a fighter, she is a scientist who is often involved in dangerous research. Occasionally, she does find herself needing to add factors to the human species as well, something the Beasts key doesn't work with.

[Korogra]

Old Man Two-Guns

A glint of light caught in the dim gloom of the hallway, gaining the dead man's attention. Jeremiah Cain had been lucky this time and had found a body resonated with his own death; and he wasn't going to let this corpse go without a fight - he had far too much to do to be kicked back down to the darkness below again. But that light set the ghost on edge, he couldn't place why.. but he had seen light like that before; decades ago. An instant later a young man calmly strolled out of the murk, wearing an easy going smile on his face. Jeremiah could sense the ghost within him, and opened his mouth to speak before the stranger interrupted him.

"I know you just got here and haven't caused any trouble, yet, but I'm sorry to tell you that you have to go."

Cain narrowed his stolen eyes and set his jaw at that, already the broken pieces of glass around the room beginning to vibrate to his will.

"Yeah? Who th' fuck gives you the right to come in here and tell me what to do?" He asked, causing the stranger to grin even more. as he reached into his pocket.

"Funny you say that, Cain, you might actually know him." he replied with a chuckle as he pulled out an old and partially rusted sheriff's badge, and the ghost's pilfered blood ran cold. It was impossible, he hadn't seen that badge in years, decades even. Immediately the the various shards of glass rose into the air and launched themselves into the stranger, piercing him and causing him to stumble and then lose his balance, falling onto his side. Cain then loomed over the downed man, grabbing a piece of glass and driving it in between his ribs over and over again.

"Where did you get that? Where did you get THAT!?" the last word was a scream as he gradually slowed, sitting back from the bleeding stranger. His expression growing more frantic as thick mist began weeping from the wounds as the stranger started to laugh as he sat up.

"I got it in a Bargain from a man you murdered long ago; you and your gang. He wants to say goodbye one last time before you get what you deserve."

Raising the shard of glass with a strangled scream Jeremiah lunged, swinging his impromptu weapon wildly as a pair revolvers emerged from the fog. An instant later a pair of shots rang out, and Cain collapsed, a hole in his chest and one in the middle of his forehead - smoke the color of blood escaping from the wounds as it was then sucked into both ghostly barrels as the stranger got to his feet.

"You've been running for over a hundred and fifty years, you should of known that it was futile to run from the Old Man forever. We are going to make sure no one else suffers at the hands of your crew again and finish what he started." He said softly as he put the badge back into his pocket and dusted his clothes off, walking out of the room. As the fog of Plasm dissipated, the sun withered face of a man in a broad rimmed hat grinned at the corpse before fading away.


The Geist known as Old Man Two-Guns is a creature of both Justice and Revenge. In 1868 The man who would one day become a Geist was a simple lawman in charge of protecting a small town in Oklahoma from the various law breakers and other less than virtuous people, and proved himself to be a fine sheriff before the town was eventually besieged by a gang of thugs. This gang was particularly vicious, having caused all kinds of woes for numerous towns before stopping in Two-Gun's town, setting fire to houses and shooting men dead in the streets with little provocation. Try as he might, the Old Man and his three deputies were unable to stop the carnage - though they put up one hell of a fight and were said to have killed nearly half of the gang with the help of a few of the other townsfolk, killing almost fifteen men. Sadly it ended with the sheriff and his men getting put down like dogs, each getting shot and then drawn and quartered - a grizzly and truly needlessly brutal death. The injustice of this tragedy wouldn't let him remain trapped in the Great Below, and he would eventually return to the living world as a Geist hell bent on righting what was wrong: hunting down the shades of the men who brutalized his town and inflicting the justice they avoided upon them. He often seeks out police officers killed in the line of duty or innocent civilians who were caught in the cross fire of violent crimes as his Partners, appealing to their own desire to get administer justice on those who wronged them in order to convince them to take up his crusade of retribution, and is strangely biased towards helping those mortals or ghosts that he determines to be 'innocent', urging his Bound to aid them however they can when the opportunity presents itself - He may be dead, but a lawman always does his duty.. even from the grave.

Favored Haunts: Tomb and Memoria; The Old Man has a great love and yearning for the past, manifests these Haunts to help make things more familiar and comfortable for himself. It doesn't hurt to want to hunt down the ghost of a fugitive while on the back of a phantasmal horse while herding them into the memory of a burning city every now and then either.

Personal Key: The Key of Blood. His death was a traumatizing one characterized by brutal violence - that violence has its uses.

His Bound's Key: The Key of Chance. The current person who harbors Old Man Two-Guns was killed when a stray bullet hit a neon sign, causing it to fall and crush him underneath it.

Ban: Never Allow Law-Breakers to Flourish. Two-Guns was a stickler for the law even while alive, and in death this became an all-encompassing obsession. Should a crime be committed in the Geist's presence and he witnesses it, the Old Man must try to bring the culprit to justice in a way that fits the crime - though his limited understanding of modern law often means that he undertakes somewhat archaic and draconian measures in order to punish criminals when possible ( branding a thief or hanging a murderer from a telephone pole being two potential outcomes. Should the Geist witness a crime but be unable to stop it or punish the offender, he suffers a penalty to all actions equal to his Rank until he does so; or until a new, more severe crime is committed before him, in which his focus then switches to the new offense.

Bane: A bullet fired by a murderer who has killed four or more people.