One Foot in the Grave [Geist 2e]

Geist: The Sin-Eaters

Here’s a peek at some text from the upcoming Geist: The Sin-Eaters!

One Foot in the Grave

After a close race, Sin-Eaters themselves pulled out in front of the Underworld by a narrow margin, so let’s talk about the Bound.

First and foremost: Sin-Eaters are dead. The fact that they’re still wearing their bodies and walking around with a pulse is immaterial — they died, they made their Bargain with a terrifying specter, and they got back up with a roiling ball of Plasm and fury where their soul should be. As far as the Underworld (and the Reapers) are concerned, they’re dead. As far as (most) ghosts are concerned, they’re dead. As far as other mystical forces are concerned, they’re dead. And yet, the Bound are still wearing their bodies and walking around with a pulse. They’re in a position of privilege denied the average ghost, who can scarcely do more than make herself briefly glimpsed or whisper a few brief words to the living — and that’s a bitter pill for some ghosts to swallow.

The reason the Bound occupy such a liminal space in the community of the dead is, of course, because they made the Bargain. At the moment of death, or shortly thereafter, before the nascent Bound’s ghost has fully shucked off her dead flesh, she meets the geist. Some Bound describe this meeting as happening in a place of featureless black between the worlds of the living and the dead, others describe it as happening on the banks of one of the Rivers of the Underworld, and still others describe it as though time stopped at the instant of their death and they heard a disembodied voice speak one terrible word.

“Choose.”

Though they call it the Bargain, it’s a mistake to think of this process as any kind of negotiation or compromise. It’s a primal choice, a yes or no — geists aren’t exactly talkative at the best of times, and the newly-dead Bound is in no fit state to haggle. Agree, and it’s done. Refuse, and you’re all-the-way dead (with the distinct possibility that the geist eats your ghost then and there). The recently-Bound often don’t fully understand what they’ve agreed to until later — usually the first time their geist encounters a crisis point and goes on an unchecked rampage.

Don’t expect your geist to be much help in figuring this new situation out either. Though geists tend to choose people whose death resonates with them in some way, few Bargains start from a place of comradely good fellowship. It’s a mutually coercive, self-interested relationship, at least at first — like two inmates on a chain gang, escaping together because the alternative is to stay imprisoned. Improving that relationship, building that Synergy, takes time and work. It’s hard enough building that kind of relationship between two people who can communicate freely, but a geist’s humanity is buried deep under the poison of the Underworld, like pure water under an oil slick. They’re elemental things, acting and reacting on pure, primal instinct. It’s a rare sort who can look past that, to see the wounded person beneath the horrow show mask, and draw that poison from the wound.

(This, incidentally, is the origin of the term “Sin-Eater:” a Bound who tries to heal their own geist. It has since expanded in scope to refer to any Bound who actively stands against the Underworld and those who exploit the dead in general, but that’s where it started.)

There’s one other catch to the Bargain, though it’s one many Bound never consciously realize. The Bargain requires death. Not just the literal death of the Bound-to-be as we’ve already discussed, but death in aggregate. The power to form such an insoluble bond between geist and Bound can only come from the metaphysical resonance of death, and lots of it.

To put it more plainly: the Bound only exist in times and places of tremendous death and suffering. The Black Death. The Taiping Rebellion. Belgian rule in the Congo, or British in India.

This means that the Bound don’t have a continuous, centuries-long history like some of the other game lines do. They appear and disappear throughout history like stormcrows, when plague stalks the land and atrocity runs rampant. It also means that a disproportionate number of Sin-Eaters themselves were victims: of war, or of plague, or of systemic violence.

The Bound are not immortal (even a geist can’t hold old age at bay). That means a lot of Bound throughout history haven’t had elder statesmen or mentors to learn from. Cultural archaeology and reinventing the wheel are commonplace, as successive generations try to build a foundation of understanding. The one-two-three punch of World War I, the global influenza pandemic of the 1920s, and World War II (not to mention 20th century improvements in communication and transportation technology) created the first long-lasting, global Bound culture in living memory, a culture that’s still going strong today.

While the Bound are still more common in places where disproportionate numbers of people are dying before their time, it now seems the Bargain can happen anywhere, at any time. The most popular (read: least pants-shittingly terrifying) theory is that the overall population has skyrocketed to the point that the sheer number of people across the globe dying every day (about 156,000, or a little less than one Battle of the Bulge per day) is enough to tip the scales. As for the other theories… well, let’s just say there are certain Mourner krewes researching correlations between periods of high Bound activity and Reaper incursions with great interest.

Next Time: There are two sides to the Bargain. Shall we talk about the hard work of Synergy, or the reward of Haunts and Keys?