Grave Goods and Buried Treasures [Geist: The Sin-Eaters]

Geist: The Sin-Eaters

The latest from Travis, our humble Geist 2nd Edition developer:

Sin-Eaters borrow the term Memento from the Latin phrase memento mori, “remember that you must die”. People have been finding or making tokens by which to remember death for nearly as long as they’ve been dying, but to the Bound they are something more. A Memento is a physical object with a Twilight presence, transformed by the resonance of death into something that’s no longer entirely of the living.

Death Trinkets

Most Mementos are ordinary objects that were transformed by playing an important role in someone’s death, or by acting as one of a ghost’s Anchors. The Bound have never been able to figure out exactly what turns one object into a Memento while another remains untouched; one grisly murder might result in the murder weapon itself becoming a token of death, while another death, just as violent, leaves the murder weapon unaltered, but creates a Memento out of the porcelain doll sitting on the shelf next to where the victim died.

Mementos can also come from more unusual sources. Objects brought back from the Underworld often become Mementos, resonating with the purpose for which they were returned to the world of the living. With effort, the Bound can even create Mementos, infusing an object of their own creation with Plasm and deathly inspiration. Geists can also create Mementos, through their own demise: a geist that’s torn apart or otherwise ended leaves a physical token of their existence in the form of a mask, and certain Ceremonies can create Mementos by trapping a ghost in one of its Anchors.

Some Sin-Eaters claim to own even stranger Mementos: the bones of a Kerberoi, bottled souls, undead hearts, and more. Such stories are exactly as fanciful as they are impossible to prove, but if nothing else they turn a common Memento into a great conversation starter.

Enduring Treasures

Mementos, like Sin-Eaters themselves, are equally solid to physical matter and Twilight ephemera. They’re also damned hard to destroy — they’re never damaged by accidents or environmental hazards, and even deliberate attempts to destroy them require overcoming an extremely high Durability. (Yes, that means a Memento umbrella can be used as a shield, and a Memento leather jacket is roughly the equivalent of a Kevlar vest.) The Bound can feed a Memento to their geist for a full refill of Plasm, but that’s considered a tool of last resort.

Aside from their Key, which we’ve already discussed, all Mementos have a supernatural effect of their very own — from a marble that always rolls toward the closest exit to a bootleg record pressed onto an old x-ray film that plays new songs by dead rock stars, Mementos warp the world around them. Sometimes they’re obvious, sometimes subtle; sometimes they’re powerful, sometimes they don’t seem to have a practical use, but people do strange things for a taste of magic, and Memento cults are known to spring up around charismatic individuals or especially remarkable Mementos. Even the Bound are known to be impressed by a well-curated collection of Mementos, artfully arranged by theme or expressing the sheer variety of death.

Greater Mementos

While most Mementos have a weird, but ultimately minor, supernatural effects, rumors abound of those with truly staggering power: A watch that stops you from aging as long as you wear it. A perfectly-preserved Roman trireme that can sail to any port in the Mediterranean in one night. A date book that tells you exactly when, where, and how you’re fated to die.

No one can seem to agree on what makes these Mementos, if they even exist, so powerful. Is it because they’re associated with famous deaths, like Caesar’s assassination or the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper? Is it because they’re very old, like the 430,000-year- old skull of the first known murder victim? Or is it just sheer dumb luck and random cosmic convergence?

Whatever the truth, even the rumor of a greater Memento can set the occult world on edge, and an actual, verifiable greater Memento is the sort of thing krewes and cults go to war over.

Example Mementos

Just to whet your appetite, here are a couple of example Mementos from the book. (The usual disclaimers about this being non-final, pre-editing text apply.)

The Cold Harbor Diary

Key: Stillness

Description: A small, bloodstained, leather-bound book, filled with notes written by a Union soldier during the American Civil War. Despite being made in the 1860s, it looks almost new. The pages are a uniform cream, the blood on the cover barely dry. The entries begin cheerfully, but become increasingly nihilistic and distraught as the diary goes on. The final entry is uncharacteristically short and to the point: “June 3. Cold Harbor. I was killed.”

Effect: The body of anyone who dies holding the Cold Harbor Diary cannot be identified. Fingerprints, DNA, dental records, and more all fail. Even the deceased’s loved ones can’t do better than “It sort of looks like him, maybe, but it’s hard to tell.” This effect does not extend to the deceased’s ghost.

The Drowned Phone

Key: Deep Waters

Description: A banged-up smartphone a few years out of date. Drops of water under the screen and behind the lens of the back camera create weird distortions in the display and in any photos taken with it. Despite that, the phone functions perfectly, though the operating system refuses to update to the latest version.

Effect: The phone can make calls and access the internet from anywhere, regardless of reception, provided it is at least partially submerged in water (which doesn’t affect it the way you’d expect). Audio sent this way is raspy and distorted on the other end, but usually still comprehensible. The phone can even make — and, according to one previous owner, receive — calls from the Underworld.

Next Time

Power that goes unused is little more than bragging rights. Sin-Eaters use their powers in service of their fellow dead and in opposition to the forces that would exploit them. So, next week will we learn about Reapers, or about ghosts?