WHAT IS A RISEN?

A Risen is a wraith who has fought his way back across the Shroud and reanimated his body in order to achieve some concrete aim. The Shadow, without whose negotiated permission none of this happens, comes along for the ride. For most of a wraith’s time as Risen, the Shadow resides in the Conduit, an object (or pet) that’s dear to the Risen. If the Shadow takes over, it’s the Psyche that then gets shoved into the Conduit temporarily.

In order to become Risen, a wraith must first acquire certain specialized knowledge and skills, particularly a few specific Arcanos arts. With those in her arsenal, she then must travel bodily into the Labyrinth to negotiate a Pact with her Shadow, essentially bargaining for the Shadow’s willingness to come along across the Shroud. If the Pact is successfully made, she then utilizes the appropriate Arcanoi and climbs back into her body — assuming it’s still in good enough shape to be climbed back into. At that point, she begins to function as a Risen.

Risen are exceptionally tough, fast, and strong. Designed to reach a goal quickly and deal with it efficiently, they have tremendous potential as killing machines — which is part of the reason the Hierarchy is constantly on the lookout for Risen, prime violators of the Dictum Mortuum.

Most wraiths are only Risen for a short time. The journey to becoming one of the returned is long and arduous, and the risks of Rising are numerous and deadly. As such, few wraiths actually make the trip, and most of those who do flame out spectacularly along the way. There are numerous things that can go wrong for even the best-intentioned Risen: the ease of gaining Angst in the Skinlands, the increased power of the Shadow, the potential to give one’s self away as undead, and the temptation to just start ripping things apart and the hell with the consequences — all of these come together to make sure a Risen’s stay in the Skinlands is potentially very bloody but generally very short.

 

THE RISING

The character’s mortal remains and the act of actually diving back into them. For this to happen, the corpse must be relatively intact in the broadest sense.

 

A cremated or decapitated body cannot be reinhabited, and there have to be the shriveled remains of a heart and brain for Rising to work.

 

A fleshless skeleton is thus a no go as a vessel, and bodies that have been dead too long are also often unfitting.

 

If the body is able to Rise, however, the wraith must travel to her body’s location in the Skinlands and settle in. This is where the necessary Arcanoi come into play, and a show of Willpower is absolutely critical when binding the wraith back into her own flesh. Note that once the bargain has been struck in the Labyrinth with her Shadow, the wraith can take as long as she wants — or needs — to actually return to the Skinlands. Odds are, however, she won’t want to wait. Getting out of the Labyrinth and back into her body in order to take care of business will almost certainly become her highest priority.

 

Stitching one’s self back into their corpse is no mean feat. The body carries the residue of traumatic memory, and as the soul hooks itself back into the flesh, those memories are a blast from a double-barrel shotgun, as strong and intense as thy were the moment they happened. The wraith relives her final moments with a sudden, terrible clarity of the senses. After that, as the residual memory bleeds off, the body stitches itself back together. Tissue and tendons that are missing regrow like kudzu; bones reknit as they grind back into solid pieces; heart, brain, eyes, and tongue refill their cavities, inflating inside the Risen’s body; skin tightens; muscles stretch, snap, and regrow; embalming fluids, maggots, worms, and anything else that doesn’t belong in the human body comes back up in a torrent of vomit.

 

The process is incredibly painful. Thankfully, it is over in a matter of minutes, leaving the Risen with a new problem: getting out. Most Risen are buried, and a coffin is a terrifying place to wake up, especially with wraith senses. The sensory overload gives the Risen the panic-fueled strength to escape her confines. Fortunately, she doesn’t need to breathe or eat. Thus, escaping the grave or the mausoleum is a matter of time and brute force, even though experience is screaming at the Risen that she should be suffocating. Once the Risen emerges, things get interesting. Odds are she’s broke and wearing her rotted funeral best, which means there are two immediate problems staring her in the face. How she deals with them can set the tone for her entire experience as a Risen, for good or for ill.

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THE KNOW HOW

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According to the Hierarchy, becoming Risen is illegal. Sure, the Hierarchy has Risen agents in the form of The Order of Acherontia Styx, but breaking the rules is the privilege of the elite. For everyone else, knowing how to become Risen is a crime in itself, officially punishable by a swift trip to the forges.

This makes practitioners of the art very cautious about who they talk to and who they take in as students, and encourages
them to be hard to find. The fact that the process is illegal is but the first of many reasons the returned are relatively rare. Those who know how it works aren’t talking, because those who talk aren’t around for long.

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Atop that, Risen fall more quickly to their Shadows, and those in the know don’t trust anyone else to use their knowledge safely. Additionally, there is no social networking, which means gossip never reaches widespread saturation in the Shadowlands.

What does become widespread is invariably inaccurate or so diluted as to be meaningless. Everything known about the Risen,

unless taken from actual knowledgeable sources, comes from a game of telephone. The odds that any information a character
receives is 100% accurate are laughably low. Still, it’s impossible to kill an idea, and becoming Risen holds the status of an urban legend in the Underworld.

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Everyone’s heard about it, and everyone has a friend of a friend who crossed over before something terrible befell them. Said sources of information, however, might have some or all of the information required to become Risen. They include knowing the correct Arcanoi and how they relate to inhabiting one’s former body, how best to negotiate with the Shadow, where to go in the Labyrinth and even how to reach it “safely” (if there is such a thing), and the dangers a wraith faces in the Skinlands once she repossesses her body.

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THE ORDER OF ACHERONTIA STYX 
The Order of Acherontia Styx is an arm of the Order of the Unlidded Eye, but it’s the equivalent of a government basement operation receiving hand-me-down technology from a decade ago, featuring agents too talented to fire and too troublesome for the Inquisition to handle. Acherontia Styx is distrusted by the majority of the Eye for its offbeat approach to the Skinlands, not to mention their offbeat approaches to pretty much everything else. But someone has to investigate the worst, most dangerous breaches of the Dictum Mortuum, and these are the wraiths who drew — or volunteered to take — the short straw.

The Order carries the full power of the Inquisition. Their mandate is the Risen, which means everything from returning themselves to deal with catastrophic Risings to hunting down purveyors of knowledge of the process. They operate on both sides of the Shroud because they have to, and some of them are unsettlingly good at transitioning between wraith and Risen. They play their cards close to the vest and are granted a wide degree of discretion in how they pursue their goals. This makes them particularly unloved by their fellow Inquisitors.

Being part of Acherontia Styx means bending the rules because sometimes a little negotiation with the devil isn’t just necessary, it’s essential.
To do their job means crossing a few lines, as each and every one of them has returned at least once. That gives them little patience for sticks in
the mud and Dictum Mortuum literalists. Their work — tracking down Shadow-possessed Risen, preventing waves of returned from overwhelming
mortal cities — is too important.

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PLAYER CONSEQUENCE:

Should your Risen character be involved in a scene where the breach witness mechanic is employed, you can expect to garner the attention of the Order Of Acherontia Styx.  The greater the severity of the breach, the greater the likely hood of Agents of the Order being sent to investigate. Multiple breaches are likely to speed up the time it takes for the order to pick up the scent. Once the Agents arrive in New Orleans, its only a matter of time before they track down your risen character with the aim of destroying your Risen body. At this point, escape into the underworld in wraith form is the only way to preserve your wraith character.... though of course you will be a fugitive of the hierarchy from this point onwards. Thankfully Bartaria Bay has a relatively low hierarchy presence.

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 CHARACTER NOTES FOR RISEN

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When it comes to the Risen, there are certain inviolate rules that bind their existence. Wraiths who don’t abide by these rules simply fail to become Risen — they’re lacking one of the essential elements that allows for the repossession of their physical forms. When in doubt, Storytellers should refer to these as guidelines in making hard and fast decisions about what’s allowed and what isn’t.

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• You Have Unfinished Business:

Those who return, return for a reason. It’s likely tied into why you died or what forced you to stick around. The clinical word for it is objective, or agenda, but the reality is that it is an obsession that brings you back. It’s one that pushes you to risk danger, censure, and even destruction, because you simply cannot stop.

 

• You Are Not a Zombie:

Risen are the walking dead, but you are not a zombie. Your hunger is rooted in the Psyche and is an emotional need. It is never a physical desire that overrides reason, and you are not a mindless engine of hunger. The body unrots when you rise, and aside from some wear and tear and a paleness about the flesh, you can pass for one of the living (assuming no one checks for a pulse).

 

• The Shadow Rules:

You cannot become Risen unless your Shadow agrees to loosen the ties that bind you both to the Shadowlands. If the Shadow does not agree to Rise, you cannot physically threaten it or overpower it into doing so. That said, the Shadow is made powerful by becoming Risen and the danger of falling to its machinations is much greater on the other side of the Shroud.

 

• Returning is Forbidden:

This is true on multiple levels. The Hierarchy hunts down practitioners of the arts of Rising to quash the knowledge of it, while the practitioners try to keep the knowledge hidden to protect themselves, to protect their edge, or to protect everyone from another wraith tempting fate and their Shadow. A Risen who falls to her Shadow is a terrifying monster, one that can wreak untold havoc across the Skinlands.

 

• Getting to the Other Side is Not Easy:

It’s as simple as that. Finding the knowledge, putting it into practice, convincing the Shadow to cooperate, surviving on the other side… these are dangerous and difficult tasks. Becoming Risen is an endeavor of mythic proportion, and every Rising runs the risk of becoming a study of what happens when you get what you thought you wanted and it turns to ash.

 

• Staying on the Other Side is Harder:

Returning to the Skinlands is never the homecoming a Risen expects. In the land of milk and honey, the milk tastes curdled and the honey is made from poisoned flowers. Somehow, people simply know that you’re not quite right, and they’ll ignore or avoid you if they can. The sensations you once experienced are somehow muted. It’s easier to become frustrated, and Angst builds up more easily as a result. The Shadow already expected this, however, and that may have been its ultimate objective in letting you get what you thought you wanted. 

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 • Deathsight is always active!

People aren't attractive anymore, they certainty aren't something that would arouse you sexually, they all look like rotting and decaying corpses.

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• Everything tastes rotten.

You can't enjoy food or drink, you can't even drown your sorrows or look for solutions at the bottom of a bottle because you are immune to toxins. Luckily you don't need to eat or drink.

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• You're incredibly numb.

Physically you can't feel any pleasurable sensations or even light touches. You can't feel physical pain either, this can be dangerous as you may take more damage than you should.

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• Double Angst

Using non Risen Arcanos doubles the Angst gained, this should be a constant fear at the back of your characters mind. If they lose control while Risen, the Shadow will have a powerful body to use against your passions and fetters!

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