SOLITUDE AETURNUS: Wraith Revised

SOLITUDE AETURNUS

WRAITH: THE OBLIVION -- Revised

A Story: Eternal Solitude INTRODUCTION
OK, once again here is a White Wolf product I didn't much care for. You'd think I didn't like the game-company at all, if you saw how I ranted about Changeling the Dreaming...but I do. I like them so much, that I still haven't figured out why they missed the mark so much on those two storylines. I'm currently just putting it down to differences in taste and/or a changing staff, and so I figure, what the hell (no pun intended) -- I'll just rewrite the parts I don't like, use the parts I do, and publish it to express myself and offer others my system. So that's what this is. I never really felt as strongly about ghosts as I do about the faeries, and so my WoD Faeries write-up will likely remain the largest of these two...that, by the way, is linked here, and is called Faerie: the Lost Kingdom. Anyway, on with the show....

DECONSTRUCTION
Here we are again. This is where I criticize constructively (I hope) and devastatingly (?) the game called Wraith: the Oblivion. The following essays and tidbits are my opinion only, and are how I run the restless dead in my games; please get what you can out of it, and if you are a fan of the as-is game, please don't send me flame letters. I won't give a damn and you won't change my opinion, there's nothing to be gained (I am not opposed, however, to intelligent discourse and dissention, I love a good debate or discussion).

SOLITUDE AETURNUS (or THE SOCIAL WRAITH)

"To be a wraith is to be forever near to those things one held dear in life, yet eternally banished from the pleasure of them.

What an exquisite torture it is, to see daily the faces of those one loves...but forever to be an unseen audience, denied congress

with them more surely than a theatre-goer is prohibited a part in the doings upon the stage. One can neither celebrate their

joys nor commiserate with their misfortunes; one can only watch, and watch."

"Friendship of the type known to the living, offering consolation for life's misfortunes, and shared strength in the face of

hardship -- such fellowship is made almost impossible by conditions in the Underworld. Each poor wraith must look to its

own strength and well-being, and place no trust in offered solace from another."

-- Wraith: the Oblivion, Prelude: "Our Wretched Lot"

The main problem I have with Wraith is the fact that, despite the continual talking about how wraiths are so wretchedly & gothically alone, you look at the Underworld of the restless dead, and what do you have? Societies. Governments. A justice system. Marketplaces where goods are bartered for and purchased. "Circles" of wraiths who get together at wraith-Nodes, use wraith-magics, and talk about a Day In The Life Of A Wraith...life. The restless dead shouldn't have lives -- isn't that kindof the point? But they do. They have governments to oppress them, cars to drive and machine-guns to shoot, armies to wage wars, systems of trade, a rate of exchange along with a common currency. They gather in political groups, which are grouped into such worn-out cliches as the Ghosts of Order and Pattern (the Hierarchy, a cheap dead Technocracy or Camarilla), the Ghosts of Chaos and Rebellion (the Renegades -- dead Marauders or Sabbat), and the Heretics, who are a wishy-washy sort of esoteric middleground (basically like ghosts of really limp-wristed Tradition mages or Inconnu).
I just really get turned off when I look at the main rulebook and see pictures of wraiths in tanks, or in the back of a pickup truck armed with a bazooka, or creeping around a plasmic waterfall with an uzi. Of course, I'm the freak who objected to sidhe in Atlantic City with AK-47s...what can I say. I suppose that I simply think there should be a little more meaning, or at least more mythic seeming, to the Underworld than just an entropic, "Raistlin's-view" reflection of a cheap action-movie version of reality. There's so much more that White Wolf can do, so much better that they can put out of their studios...I've seen it. Of course, you're going to have the inevitable gaggle of dungeon-crawlers who use W:tA or V:tM or even M:tA to relive their XP-whoring days, but does the sourcebook really need to encourage and even foster that?

BY BLAKE:

Driven:

Lost: Doesn't understand that it's dead. Tends to make the Umbra around it take on a Videre such that it resembles the area circa the time when it was alive. These ghosts could be pretty nice, and downright useful as Umbral allies. At the same time they have this bittersweet sadness about them... it was hard for the players to decide what to do. Keep them around? Try to cheer them up? Lay them to rest?

Restless: Can't 'move on' and doesn't no why, may have a task or goal but be in denial. Usually it's psychological, problems letting go, 'fetters' in the Wrath sense... very
hard to lay to rest because you have to solve a mystery.

Waiting: Basicly like Driven or Restless, but more passive, waiting for someone to come or something to happen before it can move on. Problem is the something or someone is probably long gone...

Angry: Hates being dead, and hates the living for /not/ being dead. May actually have some power to mess with the real world that it uses agressively. Needs a source of quint to maintain it's active deathstyle, too. Usually attached to a node or parasatising a living person. These have to be taken down, and the link with their quint source severed. Think Tanith Lee's 'Kill
the Dead.'

Hungry: The closest thing I used to Spectres. Ghosts that refuse to die and are willing to do anything to go on, or who are so vindictive they want others to die. They lure people into deadly danger so as to feed on their quint flow as they die...

Ancestral Spirit: Dead and dealing with it. Watches over it's descendents... Typically have the power to see the past/future and distant places and to aid thier descendents in small (coincidental) ways. May be spirits representing the concept of ancestors, rather than actual ghosts, or maybe people who awakened at the moment of death?

INNATE ABILITIES

LIFESIGHT -- As per Life 1; always in use
DEATHSIGHT -- As per Entropy 1; always in use
HEIGHTENED SENSES -- Base difficulty for sensory rolls are 3, instead of 6 (-3 to difficulties). Also allow the wraith to identify supernatural beings when they are seen; this requires 3 successes on Perception + Awareness, and without at least 1 dot in the appropriate Lore Knowledge, only gives the wraith knowledge that the being is supernatural (example: the wraith Benner is standing by his river, when a wolf lopes across the field, and Benner--with three successes--senses something strange about the creature. Since he has no Werewolf Lore, he only knows that it's a supernatural wolf. If he had a dot in the Lore, he would realize that it was a werewolf, and three dots might grant the knowledge that it's of the Fianna Tribe.)
INSUBSTANTIALITY --

THE SHADOW

COSMOLOGY OF THE UNDERWORLD

THE SHADOWLANDS --
THE TEMPEST --
THE DOMAINS -- Stygia, Niflheim, Hades, Tarterus, etc.
THE FAR SHORES --

THE HIERARCHY

THE SEVEN HILLS -- The seven Necropoli that the Hierarchy rules in the Shadowlands

ARCANOS

USURY -- This Arcanos is so uncommon as to be nearly unused. The few who do use it are, without exception, members of the hierarchy.
CASTIGATE -- Also rare, mainly used by Heretics and very old wraiths.

ARTIFACTS

These are so rare that even the most useless of them are treasured.

RELATED LINKS AND DOCUMENTS

Sand Creek Haunt

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