Echo Type Ghost Template

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I could believe it. If belief empowers even echos in a setting, the belief that there's faeries in the mound could prolong and strengthen that echo, perhaps upgrading it to another sort of spirit. If spirits can 'upgrade' like that, it could be where a setting's gods come from - e.g. Zeus was a Bronze Age - or even Chalcolithic/late Neolithic - king, who was especially randy in life, and the stories of him empowered whatever ghost he left behind.

Yeah, that would probably work. In this context all "ghosts" and "echoes" and other spirits are essentially Tulpas. Ghosts and echoes would be largely low level spirits created by people accidentally as the result of instances of intense emotion, namely death since that tends to create strong emotions in us mortals. As far as upgrading... I was thinking about this in the context of reading GURPS Horror (which has helped this project of mine quite a lot) and thinking about the Genius Loci ghost type described in that book:

Basically I was thinking that a Genius Loci could form when a lot of different echoes were created in the same location. All that psychic energy in the same place, left to stew long enough, could form into a "chimera spirit". No reason the same couldn't happen with an existing ghost as it's focus rather than a location: after Zues's death as a mortal faithful followers would invoke him to come and watch over them in battle, as people sometimes think of their family members as watching over them, the intense emotions of fear and terror mixed with the hope that he is watching over them, especially reinforced when they survived, would form echoes that would latch onto Zues, empowering him. If he was an exceptional lover and "bro" I could see people invoking him before trying to seduce him ("Here's to you, Zues!"). Sex includes a lot of intense emotions as well and could produce echoes which would empower him... So basically yes, the existence of ghosts and echoes could explain most spirits and "gods" in the world.

But on a more mechanics level I need a little help:

Since posting this I acquired GURPS Horror, which was extremely helpful on this matter. I've divided the various types of ghosts listed there into things the two categories I've described above.

Echoes:

• Eidolons
• Apperitions
• Phantasms?

Ghosts:
Standard Ghosts (I usually call them Lost Spirits), Poltergeist, Shade, Revenant, Shadow, Doppelganger, Headless Horseman, Phantom Ship, All other "Higher Order" spirits.


I've been trying to create tables so that if I determine an echo is present I can randomly determine what type of echo it is and I wouldn't mind peoples help and thoughts on the matter. Here is what I've got.

3-4 - Eidolon
5-12 - Lesser Eidolon*
13-16 - Apparition
17-18 - Phantasm

*: Lesser Eidolon is as the Eidolon on H79 but use Apparition (H78) as the base instead of Phantasm (H79), and use Haunt (H27) in the base instead of Spirit (B263).

if an Apparition is rolled use the following table to determine it's type:

3-4 - Positive Message
5-8 - Death Echo
9-12 - Life Echo
13-16 - Will-O'-The-Wisp
17-18 - Negative Message

- Messages (possitive and negative) are images which return to deliver a message, but lack any sort of sapience beyond the compulsion to deliver that message.
- Life and Death Echoes are images which play through a particularly intense moment: death echoes play through an individuals dying moments, life echoes play through a particularly emotionally or psychically intense moment from someones life (an example includes a Hotel in New Orleans which has numerous reports of a ghostly woman dancing through its courtyard and laughing every couple of nights at a particular time.)

If an Eidolon is rolled use the following table and then consult Parrott's emotions by group for an appropriate emotion under that catagory.

3-4 Love
5-9 Joy
10-11 Anger
12-16 Sadness
17-18 Fear

Note: Eidolon's can be from life as much as from death, strong positive emotions CAN commonly exist (E.G. a state building might have a lot of "pride" eidolon's floating around.)

But I'm not sure about Phantasms. Other than the howlers talked about in GURPS Horror, I was someone at a loss for what different types of Phantasms might exist? Thoughts?
For those of you who don't have access to the book a Phantasm is an Apparition which is capable of effecting the physical world, but still isn't sapient.

I haven't really begun to try to randomly create Ghosts.

[Prince Charon]

You could perhaps use Phantasms as the basis for classic 'Elemental' spirits. I vaguely recall something about hauntings where water, blood, or other substances appear where they shouldn't, and/or behave oddly. That would basically be the Phantasm template with one or more Element-related powers, like Telekinesis (Water Only, -??%) (possibly combined with Exoteleport (Psionic Powers pp69-70) with the same limitation), or Pyrokinesis (Psionic Powers pp56-57).

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

You could perhaps use Phantasms as the basis for classic 'Elemental' spirits. I vaguely recall something about hauntings where water, blood, or other substances appear where they shouldn't, and/or behave oddly. That would basically be the Phantasm template with one or more Element-related powers, like Telekinesis (Water Only, -??%) (possibly combined with Exoteleport (Psionic Powers pp69-70) with the same limitation), or Pyrokinesis (Psionic Powers pp56-57).

I love this! That's a great idea!

[oneofmanynameless]

Originally Posted by schmeelke

2 questions:

Is there really a need for that particular table? It looks close enough to "take the square root of the number of generations and round up" to eliminate it.

Do you really need that many generations in the table? 2000 generations is ≈56,000 years, and 16,000 generations is ≈450,000 years.

It's the multiple targets modifier table from Thaumatology p243 with the modifier halved. I mostly just copied it.

As far as the need to have a table: looking something up on a table is easier for some people than finding the root of something, especially for quick use. So no, it's not at all necessary, but it can be nice to have around.

As far as the number of generations: no, it's extremely unlikely a location would have over 56,000 years of use. Although it's certainly possible in a fantasy campaign!