Blue Collar Necromancy

by Jacob Possin

It’s just a job, dealing with this stuff. The high and the mighty talk all day about High Sorcery and Holy Alchemy, but when things go wrong the necromancers come in to fix the problem. There ain’t no theory in necromancy, it is practical know-how that matters. All the book learnin’ in the world won’t save you from the eldritch horrors and their minions. It’s a dirty job. It’s a messy job. It’s our job.

-Jedidiah Black, Veteran Necromancer

Magics of the Modern World

Magic has always existed. It was dark and mysterious, the power of the gods. For thousands of years, witch doctors, god talkers, and shamans kept the secrets of magic and used them to keep back the night. Three hundred years ago, two events upset this equilibrium: the discovery of High Sorcery and the Church’s monopoly on Alchemy. Thus began the primacy of the greater magics and the decline of the old magics, the basis of modern necromancy.

High Sorcery, High Alchemy

The discovery of High Sorcery by Gretta the Great changed everything. She unearthed the secrets of manipulating aether, the breath of the gods. Only a select few had the ability, and Gretta gathered all she could to her banner, leading directly to the first Lineage of High Sorcerers.

At around the same time, a man named Christophe Victorine left the Hermetic Order and wrote Une étude de l’âme de la Matière, A Study of the Soul of Matter. It set out the precepts of alchemy and how it related to humanity’s place in the universe. More importantly, its contents worked consistently and well. The Church destroyed all copies of the book save for those they controlled. This was the beginning of Holy Alchemy, and the Church’s monopoly on technology and science.

The Fall of the Old Ways

As these discoveries were made and these power bases began to grow, the shamans and priests of the old ways began to lose prestige, seen as rudimentary and superstitious. Only the most dedicated or desperate would remain practitioners, and the skills and knowledge took on a distasteful new name.

Many called these old ways black magic—not because they were evil, but because they were seen as a remnant of a darker age when magic was simple and rough. Much like a garbage collector or a plumber, these practitioners were seen as necessary but undignified. As High Sorcery and Alchemy rose in power over centuries, it was thought that these practices would fade from the world. Then the war began.

The War and Rise of the Dead

The Final War began when Princess Brunhilde of Austria-Hungary was assassinated by an anti-royalist group said to have received funding from the British. War came quickly to these two nations, drawing in the allies and enemies of both. During the conflict, horrors were unleashed upon the world, weapons and magics never before seen. The death toll was incalculable.

Influenza and attrition ended the war fifteen years ago, but the wounds suffered—mental and physical—have yet to fully heal. Plagues followed the war as flies follow garbage. Economies crashed and a great depression set in. Some claim these are but signs of the true horrors to come.

During the aftermath of the war, necromancy’s necessity became apparent. The millions dead or dying—and the millions more mourning the loss of life—unbalanced the universe, threatening cities and towns alike. Necromancy slowly rose as a profession once more, unpleasant but essential in a world filled with the dead. Yet after ten years, the scars are still burnt into the aether. There has been no rain in the farm lands for years, and the dust storms rattle across the Great Plains. The despair and horror create more ghosts every year, and draw in things far worse than that.

Setting Creation

As a Quick Start Adventure, Blue Collar Necromancy has everything you need to jump right into your first session. Before you start, you’ll want to discuss the broader setting with your group. The game is set in Chicago in early 1934—the height of the Great Depression—so read aloud parts of the setting you think they need to know.

At the start of play, explain the current issue to your players and ask them to fill in one or two additional faces associated with the issue. These extra characters will provide new plot hooks and twists to tie your players more deeply to the strange phenomena they face as necromancers. Then ask your players to choose from one of the two available impending issues: Those Who Meddle and End of the World. Have them fill in one or two additional faces for their chosen impending issue, as well, rounding out the larger cast of characters.

Current Issue: Undead on the Rise

With the Great Depression and the remnants of the Great War, the aether is out of balance. The weather and the soil have begun to turn on folk—many say it is due to the undead or the overuse of High Sorcery or Holy Alchemy. Nobody’s quite sure why it is happening, but everyone is quick to blame. Suicide and murder are on the rise, and the dust that gets kicked up is causing all manner of maladies. The dead are not getting proper funerals. It is not just ghosts on the rise—zombis and evil spirits are arriving in record numbers.

Faces:

• Thomas Kildere, a doctor devoted to unlocking the secrets of life and death.

• The Ghost of Adler House, the ghost of Henry Adler, formerly an outspoken advocate for the lower classes.

Impending issue: Those Who Meddle

The sorcerers at the college have begun to disappear and there are signs of spirit activity related to this. In truth, a vampire is attempting to overcome the limitations of the half-dead and become truly immortal. His very presence is polluting the aether, making ghosts and other phenomena more common. If left to his own devices, he will kill and devour, unbalancing the aether even more.

Faces:

• Lord Fillip, a vampire from Spain, recently arrived in town to kidnap magical theoreticians in order to further his research into immortality.
• Dr. Hugo Riccardo, a professor of magical theory who is searching for his missing graduate students.

Impending Issue: End of the World

A prominent businessman has decided that the world has grown corrupt and evil, and wishes to destroy it by summoning the Great Unchanged. Over the years he has constructed several odd buildings at specific locations. Each of these was designed to enhance and channel the aetheric energies. Should he and his doomsday cult succeed, the Titans, the Jotun, and worse will return, and all will suffer.

Faces:

• Father Mallory, a local priest concerned with the rising number of undead.

• Herschel, a businessman-turned-cult leader who seeks the end of the world in the service of the Great Unchanged.

Character Creation

In Blue Collar Necromancy you take on the role of necromancers attempting to drive back the darkness and save the living from the ravages of the dead. No one respects the job you do, but you are the last line of defense between mankind and the end of the world.

Blue Collar Necromancy is designed for use with Fate Core. Create the characters as normal, save for a small change in aspect generation and the addition of a new skill; complete only two phases of the phase trio for your character, and use the final aspect for a necromancy aspect—explaining why your character chose to hunt ghosts and put them to rest.

After creating characters, the players should take a few moments describing their office and their relationship with the powers-that-be. Remind them that the relationship is strained. They provide a useful service, but no one likes to pay them to do such a dirty job. Discuss a few previous jobs and how they went.

Necromancy

Necromancy is, at heart, dealing with horrible things from outside the normal universe—primarily the undead and the restless dead. Other things reside outside the universe; some will trade information, and some are just pests to be kept out.

Necromantic Summoning

Removing ghosts and other spiritual entities requires work. The Necromancy skill is only useful after you have gathered the correct information. Once you have the ingredients and requisite information, you must perform a summoning ritual to bring the spiritual entity to you. This is a dangerous proposition, as your spirit must touch the one you are contacting and draw it back in. If something goes wrong, you could die. Once you have the creature bound in a circle, you must either make it physically manifest so it can be fought directly, or you must engage verbally with the creature and convince it to leave this mortal plane.

You will need several things in order to bind a ghost: the ghost’s True Name, its connection to the world, its weakness, and the properly created circle and accoutrements (goat or chicken blood, incense, sanctified salt, and more esoteric items). The difficulty of summoning a ghost is based on its power. Poltergeists are the most powerful and require a difficulty +8 (Legendary) to summon. Knockers are less powerful and require a difficulty +6 (Fantastic) to summon. Haunts are the weakest type of ghost and only require a difficulty +4 (Great) to summon. These numbers are high, but for each task you have completed, you may lower that difficulty by 1. If you fail the Necromancy roll, you take stress equal to the difference you failed by. Should the stress cause a consequence, the ghost gains an attachment to your character and a bonus of +1 to one of its skills for the remainder of the game. Ghosts gain power by creating emotional links to others.

The Nature of Undeath

The undead come in many shapes and forms, but they tend to fall into one of three categories:

The Restless Dead

When aether becomes unbalanced, it focuses on points of great human emotion. Wars, funerals, murders, and suicides are lightning rods for aether imbalance, though no one is sure why. When that emotion builds up, it draws a piece of the soul out and creates a ghost. The greater the emotion, the more powerful and unbalanced the ghost or spirit. The longer a ghost exists, the more power it has. The ghost’s power is connected to the number of people who have had a negative encounter with the ghost. Ghosts feed on the pain of the living.

The Hungry Dead

Sometimes a burial goes wrong. Sometimes the subtle humors of the body remain after the soul has passed. This is when the hungry dead rise. There’s nothing left of the soul—only the desires of the flesh remain. The simplest of the hungry dead are the zombi. Those few that survive long enough go through a transformation. They become guhls. Faster, stronger, and more cunning, the guhls hunt actively for prey. Should there be enough aether around to draw it in, a spirit or demon can inhabit the guhl, granting it powers and intelligence and enhancing its appetites. Beware the demon-infested guhl.

The Half Dead

When an Alchemist or Sorcerer tries to gain life eternal, an exchange must be made: a life for a life. As time passes, these now damned individuals must kill more and more to continue their existence. The magics slowly drive the users mad, shattering their soul, and something else inhabits the body. This is where vampires, werewolves, mummies, and others originate. Experiments in immortality always fail.

Spiritual Aspects

Spirits have two aspects that motivate them. Passion is their driving emotion, a simple and direct negative emotion, as those are the easiest for the dead to deal with. The Secret is their hidden self—anything from memories they cling to and repeat over and over, to a strong affinity for an object or person. Spirit minds are fragmented, so they often cannot express why their secret is important or even remember what it is.

Spiritual beings have a broad set of skills that let them interact with the world of flesh. As creatures of emotion that require strong connections to grow in strength, many of their abilities are focused on creating advantages and attacking mortals’ mental stress tracks.

Elements: the ghost can increase or decrease the temperature of a room, shake the ground, or create strange phenomena (like blood dripping from walls and the like).

Sounds: from ominous whispers to terrifying, booming shouts. Ghosts can terrify with auditory commands.

Knocking: pushing objects over, flinging them across the room, stacking them in unusual formations.

Attachment: ghosts can elicit strange feelings in people, bursts of intense emotion that seem to come from nowhere. This also can cause terrifying nightmares.

These abilities are relative to the strength of the ghost. A poltergeist will have +7, +5, +3, +1, A knocker will have +4, +3, +2, +1. A haunt will have one at +3, one at +1 and the remainder at 0. Should the ghost deal a consequence to a Player Character, increase one of the ghost’s skills by +1. A ghost has stress based on its Attachment skill, equal to the rating.

Undead on the Rise

The characters are approached with a job by the police. A man has been murdered and it looks like a zombi attack. The murder scene is the Adler Mansion, a labyrinth of a building on a sprawling estate.

Scene 1: A Dark Intelligence

The Adlers, a well-to-do family of great wealth and renown, claim to have no knowledge of what happened, only that they’ve had otherworldly issues with the family estate. A ghost of some power has begun to exert influence over the family. Both the zombi and the ghost are of the eldest son, Henry.

As the PCs investigate, some facts will crop up: there are signs of a haunting throughout the house, and the family is very evasive about Henry, claiming he has been on an extended business trip for the last year—the same timeframe for the strange happenings. While the PCs search the house, the zombi is hunting them.

With a connection to the ghost borne from its creation, the zombi has more subtlety than most and attacks only when it becomes difficult to leave the house. While filthy and terrible to behold, the clothing it wears is of the highest quality and tailor fit. The zombi is the notable villain, but the ghost will also take turns to quietly grant aspects to the zombi and manipulate the situation to gain power. Play up the strange effects of the situation and let the players know something is feeding on them. The zombi fights until defeated.

To properly put a zombi down, you need to complete a challenge scene: the necromancers need to hold the thing in place (Physique vs +3 difficulty), incant the ritual (Necromancy vs +2), and then burn the body and salt the ashes (Resources vs +1 to have the right materials on hand, or a Investigate vs +2 to find and use makeshift materials that will do in a pinch).

Aspects: No One Wants a Necromancer Here; Labyrinthian Decadence; Emotion in the Air; Secrets Buried Deep

Scene 2: The Grind

Once the PCs are deep in the house, the ghost will try to place aspects on the scene to hinder the PCs and get them to fear it. It gets one create advantage roll for every PC die roll. Throughout, make sure the PCs understand that something is interfering with them. They are necromancers; they’ll know what to do. This scene involves gathering the information, tools, and resources required to summon the ghost.

Information the PCs may gather from the house and NPCs:

• The ghost’s True Name is Henry Adler.
• Mary and Horatio teamed up to kill him so they would inherit.
• The ghost is weak to any artifacts of its mother, Beatrice.
• Beatrice died of influenza and all of her things are sealed up in the attic.
• The ghost is connected to the location of its murder, the root cellar beneath the kitchen.
• Percival has been ill recently; this is due to slow poison by his daughter and brother.

While the PCs travel through the house and talk to the detective and the Adlers, the ghost will be continuously trying to harm them. Stress does not go away—there is no rest on this job. Players should see you spend the fate points against them. Make sure aspects in use are visible so they can try to remove them or use them in interesting ways against the ghost.

Scene 3: It All Falls Apart

When the PCs summon the ghost, the last act of the story begins. If they make it manifest, this final confrontation is a straight fight: the ghost can attack with Knocking or Elements and defend with Attachment or Elements. When enough stress has been inflicted, it will disperse. Should there be more than a minor consequence to one or more of the PCs, there is a chance that it’ll come back in the future, with a different connection and weakness, based on how they took it out.

If they decide to talk it into letting go, the PCs must engage in a contest with the ghost. It will use Attachment as its primary rolling skill and use the other skills to build advantages. If it succeeds, it wants the whole family dead before it will go away, and it breaks free of the circle. If it loses, then it disperses and never troubles the world again. The players can negate one of the ghost’s successes by taking a consequence, and if the uncle and sister were arrested prior to summoning the ghost, they start with a one success lead.

Plot Hooks and Adventure Seeds

Digging into the Nature of Things

After the fight with the undead in the Adler house, there will be some cleanup. The body needs to be laid to rest and there may be evidence of misdeeds to be handed to the proper authorities or kept as leverage. In the chaos that follows, the body of Henry Adler goes missing. Dr. Kildere has hired thugs to get ahold of the remains of a zombi. For what dark purpose does the Resurrection Man want zombi remains? Can the necromancers stop him?

Love of Fear

College boys have gone missing at a local university. One every week for the last month. The police have had no luck in finding them. Last week, a body turned up drained of blood. Rumors begin to fly that a vampire is loose on the campus. The detective in charge of the investigation has been told to bring in necromancers in case it is true. Will the necromancers find the vampire before more young men go missing? How old must the vampire be to need a victim a week? What do they do when the police obstruct their investigations?

Sounds from the Void

Father Mallory has come to the necromancers for help. He believes a social club started by Herschel is seeking to end the world. The Diomedes Club is filled with rich and powerful members of society seeking to remake the world in their image. Will the father get past his bias as a priest and alchemist and deal fairly with the necromancers? Can they stop the plots of the mad cult? What horrors has the cult summoned and kept in the depths of their club? +

Sample Characters