Apparition

Apparition

Ghost: Tend to masquerade as living people. They are not weak to daylight, but in daylight they appear transparent so they are easily identified as a ghost. They drain life from the living through proximity and tend to use fear or helplessness to entice living people to stay in proximity with them. Many ghosts require an area to haunt and operate within, and tend to be territorial. There is no reason for them to stay and they can stray, but they have a territorial tendency. Ghosts have a weakness to magic, silver weaponry and magical weaponry, but are completely immune to mundane physical attacks. Tend to rise up from people who have died to other fallen – usually ghosts don’t make ghosts.

Phantom: They are very similar to a ghost except that only a vague image remains of them. They tend not to move around or talk or do anything, and locating them can prove very difficult. They cannot interact with the physical world in any way and often look like a translucent image of a person. They tend to repeat or cycle through things they had done once living, but within a radius of where a phantom is haunting people will have nightmares and visions that drive them mad and are driven to suicide. They also drive people to bring them objects they once possessed so a phantom can often be seen surrounded by an item they cherished in life. Phantoms are unable to drain life from a person who is mentally well and can only feed off the deranged or emotionally distraught. Once found they will put up next to no resistance and can be slain by destroying the site that the phantom is on (such as destroying a house, the object, or area they are in). Fire, magic or other mundane destruction is enough to disrupt the area.

Revenant: Tends to come about from tainted who kill themselves. This is not common, but a tainted may realize they are tainted and instead of going to the church or continuing their madness they will take their own life. The extreme self hatred and isolation leads to the birth of a revenant. The weapon or object that ended its life, if such exists, is wielded by the revenant. The revenant will travel the world seeking to eliminate all life in its path. As such they tend to not be subtle or stealthy and simply slaughter. Their weapon of choice takes on a spiritual form and they are immune to all normal attacks. They are also immune to all normal magic except world spirit magic, sulfur, and necromancy spells. Something in spiritual form can also harm or otherwise interact with them. Every time a revenant kills something or ever causes it to bleed it absorbs that creature, usually as chains of blood draining into it making it more powerful. If it does not kill over an extended period it dies. A revenant has come across and slaughtered an entire village it may be wiser to contain it and wait for it to weaken over time rather than fight it in a direct confrontation. They can drain life from even the redeemed with every attack, enhancing its own power. If you know the revenant’s name and carve it into a weapon, it will deliver slaying criticals against it. If you chant the revenant’s name during a spell that spell will overcome any of the revenant’s resistance. If you perform a presence attack with its name it may be overcome by fear and run away.

Specter: Appears as cold white lights floating and bobbing around the area it inhabits. They tend to have a constant aura of fear around them and when their nearly invisible form is revealed (usually a translucent human in tattered robes) they will usually attack. Specters feed off of terror and suck life out of things that can feel fear such as humans or animals. They cast powerful ice magic and can cast at a very far distance, but tend not to attack things that don’t notice them and prefer to passively such life from the terror of their radius (usually around 100 ft radius, but larger if the specter is old). Also possess intelligence but are so consumed by a lust for power that their motives are twisted into inhuman desires. They are pulled between the twin motives of wanting to lord over everyone, but attacking them when noticed directly. Their life drain rate is high among the ghosts, and a healthy male in his prime may be drained to death in a month merely being in the specter’s presence of fear. Tend to be weak against fire, world spirits, and anything that negates magic (as all their abilities are considered magic) such as sunlight. Specters rarely ever run and tend to fight to the death.

Shadow: Come in many forms but tend to look like giant dark clouds or swarms of darkness. They are barely visible against the night sky and often posses the ability of flight. Tend to drink blood or may rip a person apart and eat their innards. Usually remember what it was like to be human but this memory is twisted, turning them into a cannibal who eats out of the desire to become his old self. As such, a shadow darkman will tend to feed on other darkmen. They have two forms, an intangible form or a physical body. The physical form resembles either a type of race and they will turn into a random specimen of it (such as a random cat, a random darkman, etc) or they will be able to look like exactly the last thing they ate. The older a shadow is the more forms it has access to (so a physical shadow may have a list of creature types it can turn into, or the ability to mimic the last 5 things it ate). Their magic tends to manipulate flesh or blood, and can transform the fluids of things they eat into familiars. Shadows tend to be weak against daylight. While intangible they possess no form of attack but can cast spells that are not attacks such as invisibility or fear. Tend to be incredibly intelligent or long lived, and can hear their name anytime it is spoken. As such they are popular in the fallen land as couriers when the fallen wish to communicate.