Book of Bone and Ebony

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The player of the target of this spell is allowed a Willpower + Essence roll against a difficulty of 7 while scenes from the spectre’s life before becoming tainted play out in shadow. The caster may purchase additional successes for him at a rate of 3 motes per, up to a maximum of her Essence. If the roll is a successful, the spectre has been separated from the whispers of the Malfeans and is freed of his obsessive obligations toward the Labyrinth, other spectres and Oblivion. He could, if he desired, return to his previous afterlife in the Underworld. A spectre so severed from the Void retains all the memories and skills from his time as a servant of the Malfeans, and he will always after have a frightening insight into the minds of the dead gods. He retains the alterations made to his ghost flesh, and most rescued servants of the Void find operating in the societies of the Underworld difficult, at best, before severe reconstructive moliation. When cast upon a ghost suffering from the taint of Oblivion’s Whisper (see Exalted: The Abyssals, p. 284), this spell completely expunges from him that black shadow upon his soul. All his tainted Passions are cleansed. The Twilights of the First Age utilized this spell to learn the secrets of the Labyrinth and of the Malfeans, using what secrets they could glean to develop further spells of necromancy. The most kind-hearted would occasionally enter the Labyrinth on missions of kindness, freeing as many spectres as possible before returning to Creation. In the Age of Sorrows, Deathlords have sent ghostly agents into the Labyrinth to become spectres with the knowledge that they can be recovered using Golden Shadows Cast in Frieze. This sort of reconnaissance against the masters of the Void is rare, even for the most paranoid and scheming, for most believe that the Malfeans can sense the loss of a spectre in this way. GRAY EYES SHIELD AND SHELL Cost: 25 motes Target: Varies The necromancer crouches, and when she arises, she is rubbing her hands with the gray dust that is everywhere in the Underworld. Mixing it with a dash of spit and blood from her lip, she dabs her eyes with the concoction. When she next opens them, her eyes are both a dull gray in color, entirely unremarkable. More so, her entire image is struck by a pallor, anything vivid about her becoming less exciting, more drab. Her shield of gray eyes bars a ghost from affecting her with any manner of Arcanoi. Skinriders cannot grasp a hold of her, the phantasms of the dead appear transparent and listless to her bored gaze, and ghosts cannot steal her Essence. A ghost’s self-moliation is the only thing that can affect her, and even then, she is immune to any mental effects. It is only the great claws and teeth that can pull at her flesh. Ghosts who peer at the necromancer with the 135 CHAPTER FIVE • NECROMANCY Arcanos Aura-Reading Technique (see Exalted: The Abyssals, p. 245) see only a dull gray aura, meaningless and unreadable. Alternatively, as the spell is completed, the caster may choose to instead expend its power in an instant. She casts her gaze upon a single pitiable ghost, and her gray eyes flash, glowing with the pearly gray light of the spell. Her player rolls Wits + Occult with an additional three successes — if the necromancer’s victim fails to dodge, he is struck unable to use his Arcanoi. Any effects currently operating cease, and he is unable to begin new ones. Either effect lasts until the Calendar of Setesh next marks midnight. INFINITE FOOTSTEPS Cost: 26 motes Target: One journey Standing within the edge of the dead gods’ dreams, the necromancer throws out her arm and splays her fingers wide. The Labyrinth around her bends and stretches, a small portion of the Malfeans’ slow nightmares bending to her will. From her outstretched arm flies an infinite hallway of the Labyrinth’s black stone, shored up by the shining white ribcages of long-dead giants. The passageway is broad enough for seven of the animate dead to stagger abreast, and the echoes of footfalls disappear into the distance. This passage, carved by necromantic influence, directly connects any two points of the Labyrinth that the caster has previously visited or scried. No matter where they may be relative to the Underworld above, travel between the two points takes one full day of travel. Speedier methods of transport will not alter this time. The tunnel will remain for a number of days equal to the necromancer’s Essence, after which it is as likely to disappear as any other portion of the Labyrinth. It may remain for a second or a century before it dissolves to make room for a new dream. This spell causes a sizable rearrangement of the Labyrinth’s physical and temporal representations. Although the effect avoids running through existing inhabited locations, it often comes shockingly close. The nephwracks and mortwights who call such places home may, at the Storyteller’s discretion, take offense at such actions and attempt to make passage difficult. JOYLESS SPIRIT’S CORRUPTION Cost: 30 motes Target: One god This spell is a ritual that completes a corrupt spirit’s transition from being a god of the world of the living to a god of the land of the dead. Only the most foul and base spirits of decay or death ever choose to follow this route, but there are some exceptions who have made that choice: Fou Tung, Transcendence of Brigands’ Passing, is the most notable
EXALTED • BOOK OF BONE AND EBONY spirit to make this journey. Only a willing spirit can partake of this ritual, and each that does is fully aware that it means turning away from the Celestial Bureaucracy and the light of Creation and the Unconquered Sun for all time. The ritual lasts six hours and must be timed to end when the sun of Creation and the sun set in motion by the Calendar are at equal declinations from the zenith. Among other foul actions, a mortal ridden by a possessing ghost must be sacrificed and the blood sipped by both necromancer and spirit. Once the ritual is completed, the spirit has forsaken Creation and becomes a part of the Underworld’s bare ecology. It regains Essence at normal rate in the Underworld and at half-normal rate in shadowlands (see Exalted: The Abyssals, p. 25, for more details). In addition, the spirit and necromancer maintain a link. Once per year, as marked by the Underworld’s Calendar, the necromancer may approach and request a task of the spirit. This task may require up to a month of the spirit’s time and have nearly any object. Only if the request would demand more than a month of time or require the spirit to take an action inimical to its being may the spirit refuse. LINKS BORN OF TUMULT Cost: 22 motes, 1 lethal health level Target: Caster Although usually cast in privacy, an observer to the hour-long ritual that Links Born of Tumult requires would see the caster appear to grow smaller and weaker, while his shadow swells and grows almost tangible. The caster must use a silver wire forged from pyre flame and quenched in blood to draw out his lower soul, or po. Lowering the wire down his throat, hooking the po and pulling it up through his throat, the necromancer coughs up spirit and blood. It is a uniquely excruciating experience. Once done, the necromancer has placed his lower soul into his shadow. The shadow then has the statistics that the caster’s hungry ghost would (see Exalted: The Abyssals, pp. 61-62, for the process for creating exceptional hungry ghosts). The shadow will obey simple commands given by its master. The necromancer can also choose, at any time, to send his consciousness into the shadow to control it himself. When doing so he can use his Charms, Combos and spells through the shadow without complication, but his body lies powerless and vulnerable until he chooses to return to it. Links Born of Tumult has no set duration. The spell ends when the caster voluntarily devours his shadow and lower soul, returning each to its rightful place. If the 136 shadow is destroyed, the necromancer’s lower soul returns to him in a blurred tatter and rips through his consciousness in a fury. The necromancer loses a permanent Willpower as a result. If he is actively controlling the shadow when it is destroyed, the necromancer is stunned for an hour while he recovers from the shock. RATTLED BONES OF WAR Cost: 22 motes (committed) Target: Caster The center of the necromancer’s chest begins to glow with a glistening white light. Bones, one by one, burst forth from the ground around her, encased in the same luminescence. The bones, all shapes and sizes, fly through the air toward her and begin to surround her in a whirlwind of increasing size. The necromancer is soon deep within a storm of ivory bones and light, which lifts her from the ground. The hundreds of bone fragments lock together around her, forming greave and cuisse, vambrace and gauntlet, helm and visor and a cuirass that bears, in its center, the necromancer’s personal sigil. The last of the bones come together to form an enormous dire lance. When the necromancer casts this spell, she may choose whether to form a scout or a common warstrider. Whichever her choice, once encased in the massive construct of bone and iron, she is attuned to it as she would be to a normal warstrider — it responds to her actions, and attacks that pierce its thick armor will wound her spirit, manifesting as woundless injury. The warstrider remains for one hour or until the necromancer lets her commitment lapse, at which point, the assembled bones fall to pieces around her, leaving her on the ground, as she was before the spell was cast — although perhaps worse for the wear. This deadline can be extended at any time the warstrider is active if the necromancer spends 11 motes per additional hour. Wounds and, more importantly, fatigue gained while in the warstrider do not magically disappear with the machine’s integrity. An alternate Labyrinth-circle version of this spell, Walking Gore Titan, costs only 16 motes (committed). But before it can be cast, a number of sentient beings possessing a cumulative permanent Essence of at least 10 must be ritually sacrificed with an obsidian knife. Once the spell is cast from the center of the massacre, a crimson warstrider rises from the pooled blood of the slain and congeals around the caster. The Walking Gore Titan wields a dripping fighting chain of bile-black, steel-hard entrails. Apart from its garish design and slick, disturbingly organic semblance, the war machine conjured by this spell exactly duplicates one raised by Rattled Bones of War. Name Speed Accuracy Damage Defense Warstrider Fighting Chain +3 -1 +4 +2
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AND A Compendium of Necromantic Lor
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EXALTED • THE BOOK OF BONE AND EB
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Book of Bone and Ebony

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