Becoming Risen How does a wraith go about becoming Risen? There as many or as few steps as the Storyteller dictates, but based on canon alone, the following section details the unspoken but official steps in Rising.
• It starts with intent. Why does the wraith need to come back?
• Following that is the how, the investigation into the process of Rising, since the information is mostly apocryphal and difficult to find.
• Next comes the Pact, the bargain with the Shadow, and that means finding a way into the Labyrinth itself for a tête-à-tête. This is the where.
• Then comes the transition: the Rising, “who’s reentering the character’s body and for whom they might be doing this.
• After that, it’s all about the what, as in “what’s next?” and the Risen’s adventures in the Skinlands.
Those are the five steps. The devil, however, is in the details.
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Shortcutting the Steps
Storytellers are free to modify their chronicles as they see fit, and one option includes shortcutting steps to adjust to the playstyle of the game. While these options aren’t canonical, they are here to offer versatility. The only steps that remain sacrosanct, however, are Step One: Intent, and Step Three: The Pact.
The Rabbi: In law-enforcement circles, a “rabbi” is someone who mentors subordinates and offers them political leverage or protection. In
Wraith, this is likely a Renegade who knows everything there is to know about becoming Risen, and offers the characters the information and guidance required to succeed, cutting out large chunks of Step Two: The Investigation. The rabbi might have her own agenda, but if she’s been purchased as a Background (Contact or Mentor), the rabbi shouldn’t set out to screw over the Circle, not deliberately.
The Artifact: The Artifact is a powerful item that replaces a wraith’s need to understand the necessary Arcanoi to become Risen. Regardless of its form, it should not eliminate the risks of being Risen and it carries the high price tag of turning the wraith who possesses it into a target — such a valuable item is bound to be coveted by many other wraiths. Storytellers can make this a five-dot Artifact, but once the characters use it to become Risen, they can’t bring it into the Skinlands with them. It remains in the Shadowlands and must be protected/hidden or be lost. The Artifact cannot work on more than one wraith at a time, and it should be treated as a deus ex machina under Storyteller control, and not the player character’s.
No Labyrinth: This eliminates the need to venture into the Labyrinth completely. The wraith deals directly with the Shadow without a need to make the dangerous trek. It doesn’t mean that it might not take days or weeks to convince the Shadow to reach a mutual accord, but it’s a far less dangerous process than a Helldive.
Step One: The Intent The
why of it is the most important and the most personal step. All chronicles with Risen in them must consider this step regardless of their focus. The Intent is the driving force behind the desire to cross the Shroud and operate once again among the Quick.
While all wraiths have unfinished business, for a Risen it has to be something more powerful. A Passion so strong, so all-consuming that it subsumes everything else, it can be anything from avenging one’s unsolved murder to needing to get hands on to protect a loved one from certain peril. Left unattended, the Intent will gnaw at and distract a wraith, putting himself and all the other wraiths around him at risk.
The locus of the Intent need is a quantifiable thing, something simple to grasp as a concept: a person, a place, an object, a secret. It has a verb attached to it, often with a sense of constancy to apply pressure to the need: protect, hide, destroy, inform, etc. A character trying to avenge his own death is seeking to destroy the person responsible. A character protecting the stolen money that’s keeping her son’s medical bills paid is either protecting the secret of the theft or the stash of money itself.
Players can make the agenda seem more complex, but it should always boil down to a straightforward object and an easy to understand verb. “I was murdered by my partner on the force because I wouldn’t play dirty, and now the murderer is trying to seduce my wife” is fine so long as the player remembers that it’s all about “Kill my murderer” or “Protect my wife.”
These simplicities give the Shadowguide or the player a way of obfuscating the terms of the Pact so that what seems like one agenda is, in fact, another. The Shadow may gravitate more toward “Kill my murderer” because of the opportunity for Angst when the real driving force behind the wraith’s actions might be “Protect my wife.”
Player and Storyteller should discuss the Intent before starting any story involving a Risen. The duration of a Risen-centric section of the chronicle should guide the character’s obsession. If the story arc is short, the obsession can be easily solved (“Kill my murderer,” “Tell my husband I love him,” “Unearth the money from the robbery,” etc.). If the game is a full chronicle, the Risen needs a longer obsession arc that requires detail, work, and attention (“Find my runaway sister,” “Destroy my traitorous partner’s life,” “Protect my unit buddies who became hunters,” etc.).
It Isn’t All Altruism One of the reasons the Shadow might want to enable the wraith to become Risen is because the obsession is dangerous and can easily be twisted into something else. “I love her,” can quickly become “Nobody else can have her.” “He got away with my murder,” can transform into “I’ll ruin everything he loves.” “My children need protection” is a small step away from “They’re useless without me.” Everything can be twisted, every noble motivation broken and made selfish. The Shadow revels in tearing down the Psyche’s delusions, and if it thinks it can turn an obsession against the Psyche, it will cheerfully do so.
Step Two: The Investigation For characters that start as wraiths, the “how” is where their focus might lie for quite some time. The investigation into becoming Risen is a conflict and suspense-rich environment for the entire Circle of characters, and something that would require everyone’s help given the potential number of smaller steps along the way to the ultimate goal.
There are three crucial steps involved in the investigation phase of uncovering the secrets of the Risen. The first is tracking down legitimate sources of knowledge, the second is convincing said sources to share their secrets, and the third is obtaining the components of the secrets to prepare for the attempt.
Tracking Down Sources According to the Hierarchy, becoming Risen is illegal. Sure, the Hierarchy has Risen agents in the form of
The Order of Acherontia Styx, but breaking the rules is the privilege of the elite. For everyone else, knowing how to become Risen is a crime in itself, officially punishable by a swift trip to the forges. This makes practitioners of the art very cautious about who they talk to and who they take in as students, and encourages them to be hard to find.
The fact that the process is illegal is but the first of many reasons the returned are relatively rare. Those who know how it works aren’t talking, because those who talk aren’t around for long. Atop that, Risen fall more quickly to their Shadows, and those in the know don’t trust anyone else to use their knowledge safely. Additionally, there is no social networking, which means gossip never reaches widespread saturation in the Shadowlands. What does become widespread is invariably inaccurate or so diluted as to be meaningless. Everything known about the Risen, unless taken from actual knowledgeable sources, comes from a game of telephone. The odds that any information a character receives is 100% accurate are laughably low.
Still, it’s impossible to kill an idea, and becoming Risen holds the status of an urban legend in the Underworld. Everyone’s heard about it, and everyone has a friend of a friend who crossed over before something terrible befell them.
Said sources of information, however, might have some or all of the information required to become Risen. They include knowing the correct Arcanoi and how they relate to inhabiting one’s former body, how best to negotiate with the Shadow, where to go in the Labyrinth and even how to reach it “safely” (if there is such a thing), and the dangers a wraith faces in the Skinlands once she repossesses her body.
Negotiating with the Sources Once the characters find a reputable source for the appropriate knowledge, then the negotiations can begin. The style of the chronicle should dictate the source’s agenda, what they know, and what they want in return for teaching the character how to Rise. Anything is fair game, from access to characters’ resources and social networks to having the Circle do a favor for the source. The trick is in making the players feel uniquely qualified to earn the knowledge.
Bear in mind, however, that while coercion and blackmail are also tools that can be used to learn the secrets behind tearing through the Shroud, it’s likely that someone with the knowledge to become Risen has also been around long enough to be a threat in their own right. Meddling with these individuals is dangerous, and may have unexpected repercussions.
Training After the appropriate knowledge is acquired, the would-be Risen requires some training. In order to tear through the Shroud and reinhabit her corpse, a wraith must have a grasp of Puppetry as well as an understanding of either Lifeweb, Inhabit, or Embody. All four involve touching upon and affecting the Skinlands in delicate ways. Specifically, the wraith must have 1 dot in Puppetry and 2 dots in any combination of Lifeweb, Inhabit, and Embody. They must also learn the proper techniques for becoming Risen. These vary from teacher to teacher, but some form of guidance is necessary in order to focus the wraith’s efforts. There are, of course, rumors of codices and tomes on how to become Risen, but these are rare at best, mythical at worse, and most likely kept very secure in any case.
Storytellers may want to parse out the secret of becoming Risen among several different individuals. One wraith might know who holds the secret of becoming Risen, the next knows the correct Arcanoi involved, while a third has Risen before and knows the dangers involved and how to avoid them. And of course, each of them wants something in exchange for their knowledge. Spreading the information out not only provides storytelling beats, but also meshes with the timing it takes for a wraith to learn the proper Arcanoi for her quest.
Storytellers can tackle this situation in one of four ways:
• The first is that it takes as long as it takes, and the characters can embark on other storylines and misadventures, but it’s understood that their downtime involves learning the necessary arts.
• The second way is a slight twist in that the characters learn about the necessary Arcanoi early, so while hunting down more information on becoming Risen they are also learning and training.
• The third way is effectively a montage. The chronicle takes a leap forward in time and the characters emerge from hiding having undergone the required training. There’s no telling what happened while they were away, however, meaning that friends could be missing, enemies might be on their tail, or worse.
• The fourth option, but certainly not the last, is that the Circle can work together. So long as one of them possesses Puppetry and Lifeweb, Embody, or Inhabit, then they all benefit.
This last option is for Storytellers who want to get to the Skinlands in a hurry, but it is recommended that this method comes with some strict caveats to keep it from being abused.
In the end, though, nothing happens without this next step: the Pact.
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The Order of Acherontia Styx
The Order of Acherontia Styx is an arm of the Order of the Unlidded Eye, but it’s the equivalent of a government basement operation receiving hand-me-down technology from a decade ago, featuring agents too talented to fire and too troublesome for the Inquisition to handle. Acherontia Styx is distrusted by the majority of the Eye for its offbeat approach to the Skinlands, not to mention their offbeat approaches to pretty much everything else. But someone has to investigate the worst, most dangerous breaches of the
Dictum Mortuum, and these are the wraiths who drew — or volunteered to take — the short straw.
The Order carries the full power of the Inquisition. Their mandate is the Risen, which means everything from returning themselves to deal with catastrophic Risings to hunting down purveyors of knowledge of the process. They operate on both sides of the Shroud because they have to, and some of them are unsettlingly good at transitioning between wraith and Risen. They play their cards close to the vest and are granted a wide degree of discretion in how they pursue their goals. This makes them particularly unloved by their fellow Inquisitors.
Being part of Acherontia Styx means bending the rules because sometimes a little negotiation with the devil isn’t just necessary, it’s essential. To do their job means crossing a few lines, as each and every one of them has returned at least once. That gives them little patience for sticks in the mud and
Dictum Mortuum literalists. Their work — tracking down Shadow-possessed Risen, preventing waves of returned from overwhelming mortal cities — is too important.
Step Three: The Pact Now comes time for one of the most difficult steps, the “where.” To seal the deal, the wraith who intends to Rise must venture into the Labyrinth to bargain with her Shadow. It’s a process akin to — but not precisely like — a Harrowing, with one of the key differences being that the wraith enters the Labyrinth voluntarily.
Wraiths who attempt to make the pilgrimage alone tend to have a poor survival rate. As such, even if it’s only one member of a Circle who intends to Rise, it’s best if the entire group accompanies her in order to get her to her destination (and to keep from sidelining the bulk of the Circle during the final stages of the character’s quest).
Reaching the Labyrinth There are a number of ways to reach the Labyrinth, most of them involuntary, but those wraiths versed in the mythology and process of becoming Risen also know of the safer ways into this dire maze. Most would recommend hiring Harbingers who specialize in transit to and from the Labyrinth using Argos, but there are other routes. Hooking up with Helldivers, following Spectres home through the Tempest — there are multiple ways, each with their own challenges. Storytellers should consider tying elements of the journey to the Labyrinth with the obsession behind becoming Risen. At what cost will the character become Risen? Will he betray comrades for a shot at it? Will she ignore others in peril to reach her goal? What does the journey itself reveal about the obsession to reach the Skinlands and how does it change that obsession?
It is entirely possible that taken this way, the quest to become Risen never happens because the discovery leads to character growth, and that growth allows the character to cope with their obsession in other ways.
All that said, venturing to the Labyrinth as a Circle means trusting one another on the deepest level. The Labyrinth is where whispers carry weight, where monstrosities swim beneath oceans older than recorded memory, and where Oblivion awaits, the ultimate end of ends. Asking friends and associates to go there has no precedent because it beggars simile and metaphor. The best one could hope for is that whatever happens in the Labyrinth, it is swift and decisive.
Wraiths belonging to a Circle need a better reason than “I need help” to go along on something like this, because while the wraiths themselves might still undertake such mammoth favors for a friend, their Shadows will not. So even before the journey begins, a group of wraiths better have damn good reason to say “yes” to the adventure.
Dealing with the Shadow Once the characters arrive in the Labyrinth, the aspiring Risen can now deal and negotiate with the Shadow. At a suitably appropriate spot, his Shadow manifests itself, powered by the wraith’s obsession and the nearness of Oblivion. The Shadow is merely a vision, incapable of physical interaction, but this first step to separation leads down the road to the Conduit.
No wraith can return to the Skinlands without the cooperation of the Shadow. The Shadow must agree to return and it cannot be forced except through applications of Castigate — ones that could prove very risky in the Labyrinth.
Coming to the Labyrinth is no guarantee that the Shadow will cooperate, either. While becoming Risen is something that most Shadows are interested in, largely because of the accelerated rate at which Risen accrue Angst, not every Shadow wants to take the risk. As for those who do, many of them are smart enough to adopt refusal as a negotiating tactic in hopes of getting a better deal. The terms of the deal can range from “Let me be in charge when we get back” to “You have to deliberately feed a Dark Passion” to “You must destroy your favorite Artifact before we go,” and they’re infinitely fluid until the moment the deal is formally struck. Then, they’re locked in stone.
That being said, the negotiations do not occur in a vacuum. The Spectres who haunt the Labyrinth have no respect for the sanctity of the discussion, and will cheerfully set upon any interlopers they find in their halls. It is entirely possible for the aspiring Risen to be conducting feverish negotiations with his Shadow while his Circlemates fight off a shrieking horde of Striplings. It’s just as possible that the Shadow summoned those Spectres to add a little bit of urgency to the negotiations.
If the entire circle is going Risen, then they’ll need to follow these steps too, and there’s no telling what the individual Shadows will do to get the Psyche in trouble. Shadows have no need to cooperate with each other, and may do things to thwart each other’s ambitions. Storytellers should be ready to deal with the repercussions of doing this, up to and including thwarting the Circle from Rising.
What the Shadow Gains So, why would the Shadow ever agree to allow the wraith to reinhabit her body? It seems natural that either whatever the Shadow agrees to will be to the detriment of the wraith, or that the Shadow will automatically refuse any request to help the character, but those aren’t the cases here. In these instances, it’s all about risk versus reward for both parties.
For the wraith, the stakes are in tending to an obvious, immediate, and driving desire. For the Shadow, the appeal lies in the risks the Psyche faces by the attempt. By saying “no, you can’t play,” the ploy is straight-out frustration or perhaps even fear on the Shadow’s side for the very real dangers it’ll face in the Skinlands. To say “yes,” however, means the opportunity to watch the character fail, to grow increasingly disillusioned with the life he can no longer have, or (best of all) to see him pervert the very reason why he went back.
The Pact The Pact is a solemn agreement between Psyche and Shadow, unbreakable without dire consequences. To make a Pact, each side states their terms, and then the wraith invests a point of permanent Willpower. It’s a steep price, but now both sides are bound and the Shadow cannot prevent the wraith from Rising.
What the Shadow gets from the Pact must be clearly defined, and the wraith must act in good faith within a reasonable timeframe to meet those terms. Failure to do so gives the Shadow a point of permanent Angst. Certain Shadows are not above diverting their Psyches from fulfilling the terms of a Pact in order to get the juicy payoff at the end, while others will hound the wraith incessantly until they get what’s coming to them.
Step Four: The Rising Now we come to the “who,” the character’s mortal remains and the act of actually diving back into them. For this to happen, the corpse must be relatively intact in the broadest sense. A cremated or decapitated body cannot be reinhabited, and there have to be the shriveled remains of a heart and brain for Rising to work. A fleshless skeleton is thus a no go as a vessel, and bodies that have been dead too long are also often unfitting.
If the body is able to Rise, however, the wraith must travel to her body’s location in the Skinlands and settle in. This is where the necessary Arcanoi come into play, and a show of Willpower is absolutely critical when binding the wraith back into her own flesh.
Note that once the bargain has been struck in the Labyrinth with her Shadow, the wraith can take as long as she wants — or needs — to actually return to the Skinlands. Odds are, however, she won’t want to wait. Getting out of the Labyrinth and back into her body in order to take care of business will almost certainly become her highest priority.
Stitching one’s self back into their corpse is no mean feat. The body carries the residue of traumatic memory, and as the soul hooks itself back into the flesh, those memories are a blast from a double-barrel shotgun, as strong and intense as thy were the moment they happened. The wraith relives her final moments with a sudden, terrible clarity of the senses.
After that, as the residual memory bleeds off, the body stitches itself back together. Tissue and tendons that are missing regrow like kudzu; bones reknit as they grind back into solid pieces; heart, brain, eyes, and tongue refill their cavities, inflating inside the Risen’s body; skin tightens; muscles stretch, snap, and regrow; embalming fluids, maggots, worms, and anything else that doesn’t belong in the human body comes back up in a torrent of vomit.
The process is incredibly painful. Thankfully, it is over in a matter of minutes, leaving the Risen with a new problem: getting out. Most Risen are buried, and a coffin is a terrifying place to wake up, especially with wraith senses. The sensory overload gives the Risen the panic-fueled strength to escape her confines. Fortunately, she doesn’t need to breathe or eat. Thus, escaping the grave or the mausoleum is a matter of time and brute force, even though experience is screaming at the Risen that she should be suffocating.
Once the Risen emerges, things get interesting. Odds are she’s broke and wearing her rotted funeral best, which means there are two immediate problems staring her in the face. How she deals with them can set the tone for her entire experience as a Risen, for good or for ill.
The Systems Behind Rising To actually inhabit one’s body and Rise, a wraith must ride the corpse as she would any other mortal. This means doing two things. The first is spending one point of Pathos and rolling Dexterity + Puppetry (difficulty 6). The second is spending one Willpower point to claw through the Shroud, and then making a Willpower roll (difficulty 8).
If the wraith fails to make the necessary roll in Puppetry, the attempt fails and she remains a ghost in the Shadowlands. If she succeeds in using her arts but fails in the Willpower roll, however, the Shadow slips into the body instead and the Psyche is relegated to the Conduit. If the player botches the Willpower roll, the Shadow gains control and the character gains a point of permanent Angst for each 1 rolled beyond the number of successes.
The Conduit When a wraith steps into her body and reclaims it, the Shadow splits off to reside in the Conduit. The Conduit is one of the wraith’s Fetters, usually the strongest one, and being separated from the Conduit pains Risen and Shadow alike. This constant distraction puts the Risen at +1 difficulty on all Willpower rolls as long as the two are separated.
The Conduit is critical for the Risen and, ironically, it’s because the Shadow must be protected regardless of their relationship. The Conduit is a talisman of sorts, a physical part of the Risen, and its fate is tied to her. It’s for this reason that the Conduit has 10 health levels.
If the Conduit receives damage, the Risen is equally hurt for said damage type and cannot heal. Destroy the Conduit, and the Risen is sent screaming into a Destruction Harrowing. Conversely, if the Risen’s body is destroyed and the Conduit is left behind undamaged, it becomes a potent link to the Shadowlands, imbued with the malicious intent left behind by the Shadow. Hunters of such items would pay a fortune to get their hands on said Conduit or do their utmost to kill whoever possesses one.
Because of the significance of Conduits to the Risen and vice versa, the Fetter in question should be small and easily transportable so the Risen can keep it on their body, and more importantly, the Conduit should be near the Risen when she returns to the Skinlands. Some Risen insist on carrying their Conduit with them at all times for protection, while others prefer to risk the distraction and hide it in a safe place.
Sometimes, the positions are reversed and the Shadow slips into the body while the Psyche is forced into the Conduit. This can happen during a Catharsis roll, or when the Risen first attempts to occupy her body. When this occurs, the Shadow must still keep the Conduit safe, but the player still plays her Risen character with the objectives of the Shadow. This means trying to fulfill its Dark Passions, or undermining the Risen’s objectives until the Psyche resumes control. As for the Psyche, during Catharsis, the Shadow can sever its connection to its body’s senses, putting the character in utter, hellish darkness and absolute silence as long as the Catharsis lasts.
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Animal Conduits
Sometimes, a Fetter is too large and the Conduit becomes something tied to it rather than the Fetter itself. A family home is too large to serve as a Conduit, but the family dog who lives there is a much more appropriate size. Should it be chosen as a Conduit, the animal’s psyche is obliterated and the body becomes a husk for the Shadow, which can enjoy a newfound freedom not previously available to immobile Conduits. Animal Conduits tend to follow their Psyches closely, but they’re not frolicsome pets. Empowered with mobility, fully aware Shadows guiding the bodies of animals can provoke all sorts of havoc.
If the Psyche is ever forced into the animal Conduit, it can use the animal’s senses just fine, and even “run away” from its owner to force the Shadow to come after it (rather than embarking on mayhem).
Step Five: Existence as Risen Welcome to the land of the living, also known as the “what” or “what next?” The Risen has emerged and this is as good as his body’s going to get: passably alive. This is everything he’s geared himself toward, pursuing the object of his obsession and putting matters to the right. This will not be the happy reunion a Risen expects, however. The Risen returns with senses that have beheld and were warped by the Underworld, and they can never see the living, breathing world the same way. Everything is doomed to die, and the wraith will often fixate on the ebb of that cycle.
The lost human senses don’t return with the same clarity, and the reality of a rose cannot hold up against the memory of its beauty. More so, the Risen comes back with additional senses: their Deathsight, Lifesight, and Heightened Senses. Their eyesight and hearing are microscopes and microphones held to the living world; they no longer perceive the painting as a whole, but rather see the individual brushstrokes of dried, cracked paint. How can one appreciate the beauty of life when all they can see are its imperfections?
Then there’s the obsession, the one compulsion that drove the wraith to risk damnation and destruction to get this far. The Risen is less likely to stop and smell the roses when all he can think about is his obsession. Everything becomes a distraction, with the clock ticking, the Shadow waiting, and the obsession that powered the wraith out of the grave not letting him rest.
As a result, Risen strive toward realizing the object of their quest with all speed. They don’t sleep, they don’t eat, and they power themselves endlessly toward their driving obsession. At the same time, they may need to collaborate with mortals to achieve their goals, and that means trying to fit in with humanity long enough to build the needed relationships to achieve the Risen’s ends. Making human connections could ameliorate the Shadow’s pernicious influence, but at the same time they could distract the Risen from the reason for returning, and that potentially opens the door to disaster. It’s a fine line to walk, and a Risen is always caught in that tension.
Roleplaying: Risen & Wraith Alike Risen chronicles can go one of two ways: Everyone’s a Risen, or a small subset of the Circle — usually one wraith — Rises and his friends operate with him from the other side of the Shroud. Each offers unique challenges and opportunities.
If all of the characters go Risen, then the focus of the narrative shifts to the Skinlands, and to making sure everyone holds it together long enough to take care of business without succumbing to Catharsis or the perils of the material world. A Risen Circle can find themselves working together to track down the man who murdered them all, or they can find themselves working at cross purposes if one Risen’s Fetter turns out to be another Risen’s target. Note that not every Risen story needs to be about bloody vengeance. Tales of love, redemption, and preservation work just as well as Risen narratives as vindictive gorefests.
Alternately, if only part of the Circle returns, then the dynamic turns to one of interplay, with the wraiths potentially helping the Risen from one side of the Shroud while the returned wraith takes care of business (and maybe sees to her friends’ requests as well) in the Skinlands. This sort of narrative can encompass anything from a heist story to a desperate drive to protect endangered Fetters to a straight-out quest for vengeance with the rest of the Circle insubstantially cheering the Risen on. That being said, there’s also room for tension, if the wraiths who did not Rise start dealing with Hierarchy pressure, or someone’s Shadow fuels resentment that his friend got to Rise while he didn’t.
Happy Endings Risen stories rarely end well, at least not for the Risen. It’s impossible for one of the returned to have a “happily ever after.” The best a Risen can hope for is to leave a loved one better or safer than they were before, and maybe with a little closure. But even if a Risen succeeds in his obsession to keep his widow safe from the hired killers pursuing her, what’s next is inevitably a return to the Underworld and a constant fear that the victory was only a temporary one. This infuses even the most over-the-top Risen campaign with a hint of melancholy. Success, at least for a Risen, carries its own punishments with it.
Closing Time All good things must come to an end, and that includes a wraith’s time as Risen. In some cases, it’s as simple as the Psyche choosing to renounce Risen status in order to flee back across the Shroud. If Shadow objects, there’s a contested Willpower vs. temporary Angst roll (difficulty 7), with the winner making the call on whether to stay or go. Once the wraith leaves her body to return to the Underworld, it immediately begins decaying normally. Risen who wish to return at a later date often try to make arrangements for their mortal shells in order to preserve them against the ravages of time, but these efforts are not always successful.
A Risen who chooses to go back isn’t always successful in her driving mission, and not every mission results in a Resolved Passion or Fetter. Sometimes the wraith is only able to score a partial victory, staving off immediate peril but aware of the dangers that lie ahead. Alternately, maybe the Risen’s goal can’t be accomplished, even with all the power at her disposal, and she has to admit defeat — for the moment. Such failures, partial victories, and tactical retreats provide rich fodder for the Shadow.
Other times, the choice is taken away from the Risen. If the Risen’s mortal body suffers enough damage both Psyche and Shadow are booted unceremoniously back into the Underworld. The same applies if the Conduit is destroyed — both Psyche and Shadow are pulled into the Labyrinth immediately, and the wraith faces a Destruction Harrowing.
If the Risen actually succeeds in wrapping up and Resolving his driving Passion, then he loses his impetus to Rise and, within 24 hours, finds himself drifting back across the Shroud, Shadow in tow. The extra time should allow for appropriate farewells and the return of the Risen’s body to a proper location, granting closure on the story arc to player and Risen alike.
As for Transcendence, while it is theoretically possible for a Risen to Transcend if she has resolved her last Fetter and Passion while in the Skinlands, such an event would be extremely unlikely, not to mention liable to attract all sorts of attention.