Combination Disciplines

Eyes of a Thousand Shades (Auspex •, Necromancy •••)
While not everyone who has died went on to become
a ghost, the dead are legion. They stand in your room
while you sleep, and walk the halls when you work late.
This power allows the necromancer to harness the ghosts
in a given area to act as a kind of phantom clairvoyance.
Some younger members of the clan refer to this power as
“spook surveillance.”
System: The player spends one blood point and rolls
Perception + Occult. Each success widens the effect by 25
yards/meters, giving the necromancer a wider variety of
ghosts to pull from in a broader area. While this power
is active, the necromancer can see through the eyes of
all the ghosts within the area of effect. He can flip from
one ghost’s perception to another’s at will. However, the
ghost’s vision is filmy, colored by the sudario. The detritus
of memory is strewn about, and can cause confusion or
obscure fine details of the living world.
This power costs 12 experience points to learn.

Sharing the Master’s Vigor (Dominate •••••, Necromancy •••)
Those who walk the Bone Path of Necromancy can
summon grotesque zombie hordes to perform their will.
For those few who have learned the secret of this power,
those deathless guardians may be imbued with extra speed,
strength, or toughness.
System: The player spends one blood point and rolls Wits
+ Occult. Each success allows him to imbue one zombie
summoned through the Necromancy power Shambling
Hordes (V20, p. 165) with a dot of a physical Discipline
(Celerity, Fortitude, or Potence) that the necromancer
possesses. For example, he may choose to spend two
successes on the same zombie by giving him 1 Celerity
and 1 Fortitude or 2 Celerity. However, the necromancer
cannot share a Discipline rating higher than his own. For
example, if Beniamino has Potence 2, but achieves three
successes on his activation roll, he cannot give a zombie
Potence 3. The zombie retains these abilities as long as
it is animate.
This power costs 24 experience points to learn.


Backgrounds

Memento de Morte
Death leaves its mark on the world around it. Cold spots,
places where the light seems too pale, the colors washed
out and faded. Sometimes, something seeps into the items
surrounding a death in such a way that it taints them
forever. The fainting couch in a Victorian serial killer’s
parlor, or the portrait that hung on the wall of his abattoir,
Vittorio’s estate, reclaimed from a plague ship lit aflame
to cleanse its still-living passengers. Books wrapped in the
flesh of the monk who inscribed them, carved from his
still living body, and bound by him in his last moments of
life. But the most common mementos of death are murder
weapons. The scalpels of serial killers and the sabers of
war criminals. Bludgeons and .38 Bulldogs, nooses and
punchbowls. The more death that has drenched the item,
the more power it absorbs.
This Background gives you one or more of these
mementos of death, allowing you to benefit from the
ambient energies when using Necromancy. You must have
the relic (or relics) with you to receive the bonus. Many
necromancers have a special sanctum set aside for their
ritual work for this reason.
• You have one minor relic. +1 bonus die to
Necromancy rolls.
•• You have a relic of middling power or two minor
ones. +2 bonus dice to Necromancy rolls.
••• You have a few reasonably powerful relics. +3 bonus
dice to Necromancy rolls.
•••• You have a very powerful relic, or a couple of less
powerful items. +4 bonus dice to Necromancy rolls.
••••• You have an incredibly powerful relic, or a couple
of powerful items. +5 bonus dice to Necromancy
rolls.

Spirit Slaves
This trait represents a hold you have over a ghost, or
several ghosts. Usually this hold is in the form of catene,
or fetters — either something that the ghost valued highly
in life, or possibly a random object or place to which
the spirito has been attached via a necromantic ritual.
Regardless, you have a hold over the spirit and can bully
it by threatening its fetter. Alternatively, you might have
information about the spirit’s goals and can control it by
aiding or impeding it.
All Spirit Slaves are assumed to have statistics similar to
a recently deceased ghost (V20, p. 385). However, higher
levels of this Background might reflect more powerful
spirits at the Storyteller’s discretion.
• You have a hold on one weak spirito.
•• You have influence over two minor ghosts, or one
of greater power.
••• You’re the boss of three lesser ghosts, or fewer who
can do more.
•••• Four ghosts are under your sway, or fewer who are
stronger.
••••• You have mastered five weak ghosts, or fewer who
are more talented.


Necromancy Rituals

Death’s Communion
(Level One Necromantic Ritual)
The Giovanni have spent centuries going through the
motions, making sure that nobody can question their public
devotion to the Catholic Church. In private, however,
the family often practices their own warped Black Mass,
showing devotion to Dis Pater and drawing power from the
darkness. This ritual acts as a grim parody of the traditional
communion, ingesting literal blood (perhaps even of the
father) and dedicating the subject to the Endless Night.
This ritual is not performed at every family black mass.
An expedited, powerless version may be observed, but the
full ritual is more involved.
for example. The blackened wood floorboards at uncle
System: The caster of this ritual is usually not the
beneficiary. If the caster and the subject are the same, the
caster suffers a +1 difficulty to her casting roll. Death’s
Communion takes one hour to complete. The subject
of the ritual gains a bonus of +2 dice to all Necromancy
rolls for one night per success achieved on the casting roll.

The Ferryman’s Recall
(Level Five Necromantic Ritual)
This obscure ritual is for the rare instance when a
prospective convert has been killed before they could be
Embraced, and they are determined to be too valuable to
lose. Knowledge of this ritual is jealously, if not entirely
successfully, guarded by certain Premascine Giovanni.
System: The caster must have access to the corpse as
well as one of the subject’s fetters, perhaps obtained
using Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter (V20, p. 181). The
Ferryman’s Recall takes 8 hours (reduced by one hour
per success on the casting roll) to perform.
The corpse must be relatively intact for the ritual to
work, and the subject must have been a ghoul before
death. If the necromancer performing the ritual was not
the domitor, they must have a blood point worth of the
domitor’s Vitae. The Generation of the Kindred giving
the Embrace (usually, but not always, the necromancer
performing the ritual) determines how much time may
have passed since the subject’s death, as more powerful
vitae has a more potent effect.
Embracer’s Generation - Time Dead
Thirteenth Generation - 12 hours
Twelfth Generation - 1 day
Eleventh Generation - 2 days
Tenth Generation - 3 days
Ninth Generation - 4 days
Eighth Generation - 5 days
Seventh Generation - 1 week
Sixth Generation - 2 weeks
First, the subject’s body must be cleaned and prepared,
drained entirely of blood or embalming fluid. Then
the necromancer paints a series of sigils onto the
body, intended as place markers for the subject’s spirit
to relearn how to use his body. At the climax of the
ritual, the Kindred performing the Embrace pours
her vitae into the subject’s mouth, and the Embrace
continues as normal. Any wounds suffered before the
ritual (including the cause of the subject’s death and
any decomposition) close, but do not entirely heal,
leaving scars on the newly Embraced Kindred’s body.
In addition, the subject’s time across the sudario leaves
its mark on him; giving him the ashen complexion of
the Harbingers of Skulls, as well as endowing him with
an improved facility for necromantic magic (see the
Mortuario Merit on p. 106 for more information).

Manifest
(Ghost ability)
This art allows the ghost to manifest in a mortal
body that reflects her spotty memory of her
living self. The ghost’s personality will color
their appearance, however. A Spectre full of
rage will be flush with anger, her face marked
by intensity, while a forlorn shade will appear
fragile and washed out or faded. All manifested
shades are cool to the touch, and will seem
constantly distracted (a side effect of the
concentration necessary to maintain this form).
Although most onlookers won’t notice anything
wrong with a ghost using this ability, those close
to her in life may pick up on the differences.
System: The shade spends two Passion (V20, p.
385) and rolls Willpower; each success allows the
ghost to remain solid for one scene. He takes
damage as mortals do while in this form, gaining
the standard seven health levels. However, if he
is “killed” in this form, it merely ejects him back
into the Shadowlands, where he must rest and
recuperate for a number of days equal to his
Passion pool. He may spend passion and activate
powers while manifested, and use his stats in the
physical world as if he were in the Shadowlands.