Echo

Echoes, traditionally known as Ghosts<ref>How many years had the Shepherd been active? How many people had died in Toronto in that span of time? How many of those deaths had been violent or painful enough to make an imprint in reality?

Did he have a mechanism to handle it, or did he simply do it full time? Collecting the echoes? - Excerpt from Subordination 6.6</ref><ref>Necromancy
Primarily focusing on ghosts, also called echoes, Necromancers can take the ‘echo’ of a dead individual and bring it to bear, influencing the world. They straddle a place between present and memory, life and death, and leverage this position to see and manipulate things others wouldn’t be able to. - Pact Dice: The Practices - Wbow Version</ref> are created by someone or something that leaves a strong impression on the world. While this normally stems from emotional or painful events, moments of brilliance can also create impressions.<ref>“They’re not real beings, they’re echoes of major events that happened. Typically painful, sad, or angry events. Sometimes moments of sheer brilliance. Sometimes other things. Chances are pretty good that the ghost is going to have a limited script to work with. They’ll be single minded. But you should be able to negotiate something. Remember that every second that you’re using your blood to keep it here, you’re making yourself just a bit weaker. There isn’t time to hit your head against a brick wall. Don’t argue with them if they aren’t listening. But if you find leverage, then use it. Roll with whatever happens.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref> Again Echoes aren't the souls of individuals who had died, but are mere impressions that left a strong enough impact on the world and as such the person who creates the Echo can be alive at the same time, even reintegrated.<ref name=":1">The echo of a little boy with a stupid hat slipped from the bottle and landed beside the car, invisible to everyone present except Verona, K.T., and a woman across the street.  He looked around, a glimmer caught his eye, and the glimmer wasn’t lights reflecting off of the glass and headlights of incoming car.  His hands and feet were blurrier than normal, indistinct and faded.

The boy with the stupid hat spotted the boy he’d come from.  Enough months had passed that he’d grown a little, had even had a haircut, but the resemblance was there.  Echoes weren’t always from the dead.

He bolted, dashing, and Verona remained ready with the salt.

The echo merged with the original self, filtered by the bottle, and found a home.  The filter turned this brutal, emotional memory into a bit of reflection, the flashback following.  The tattered and shadowy arms and legs that would have helped him make contact were last, many of them disintegrating on contact.  Ass-first deployment, kind of.  Or headfirst, but ass-first was funnier.

The possession and impulse didn’t follow.  The echo returned home, and the kid impulsively reached over and hugged his mom’s leg, while she was in the middle of unloading the cart. - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.9</ref>

Could be classified as a natural form of Vestige<ref>Vestiges can arise naturally. In fact, you could make the argument that ghosts are a subset of vestiges as a whole - they're just really reinforced by the ongoing and complicated pattern of life and death, arising from things that push beyond the boundaries of that pattern. - Excerpt from a Wildbow Comment on Reddit</ref> and/or a specialized type of Spirit.<ref>“We chant the spirit’s name. This should establish a tenuous connection. You put power into that connection. [...] Let’s start with a ghost that isn’t too new and isn’t too old. The new ones are stronger, and the old ones have generally held on only because they’ve connected to other spirits or power sources, which is complicated and dangerous.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref><ref>Again, my eye caught a glimpse of another spirit in the Hyena’s woods. A ghost, I was pretty sure. A child in a long hooded jacket, running between the trees. - Excerpt from Collateral 4.9

Was I supposed to rationalize with this very confused spirit? Or take a different tack? [...] The ghost went momentarily quiet.

Which only made it easier to notice that other spirits were drawing nearer, some murmuring. I could see glimpses of them through the trees. [...] I climbed to my feet, walking around him. There weren’t as many spirits over here. But then again, most of the spirits had come in response to the noise. [...] The territory was his, almost like a demesne. All spirits fled from him, because there was no denying what he was and what he did to Others and mortals both. Thus, the rules of the world were bent. He made no sound, because there were no spirits to be found. He littered the area with wounded spirits. His spirits. When a connection did form, when something did reach him, he was sensitive to it. Easy enough to be sensitive, when the only spirits that maintained any connection to him were the ones that had to.

Any maimed ghost I had contact with, in turn, contacted him. - Excerpt from Collateral 4.11</ref><ref>“I don’t know that I am,” she said. “I’m… not there, but I’m here. The rules are different. There are spirits here.”

“His spirits. I get that it’s a bit of a shock to the system, I do, but-”

“Wait. Spirits. Give me June. [...] Binding spirits of the dead to objects. Using their power… um. I just need to remember how to do it.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.3</ref>

Specifics

Regular Echoes are mere impressions, as such they aren't generally sentient. They can only understand things in the context of the moment they died and resolving the issue that made up the impression will erase them entirely. They are known for haunting an abandoned house because they function well in enclosed spaces and especially well in places they have a connection to, outside they are exposed to the elements and the Innocence of passing humans that can destroy them.<ref>“They function best in enclosed spaces, especially any enclosed spaces they have connections to. Houses, houses with bodies still in them, lurking near their murder weapons, and so on. But that’s not the key bit. They also function in places with very few humans to mess with them. The wilderness.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref>

An Echo that has become damaged or one that has a lot of power but can't follow it's pattern are called Spectres. They often spiral out of control and appear in reality as flickers of a face or images in a mirror. They are too unreliable to use or bind in the same manner one would a normal ghost, possibly exploding if handled carelessly. They can also hypnotize or posses people.<ref>Damaged echoes or echoes with a lot of oomph but no ability to follow their routine tended to spiral out.  In those spirals they could appear in reality, often as visions, flickers of faces, images in mirrors or reflections, or tricks of the light, and often with short, brief lived bursts of activity.  They tended to implode or explode when handled and were pretty dangerous for non-experienced practitioners to handle.  They were termed spectres.  Some hypnotized or possessed people, even. - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.6</ref>

Likewise, a ghost that has taken in too many negative aspects of different individuals changes from being a ghost to a Wraith. These ghosts are different from their roots as mere impressions and can be hostile and capable of causing physical harm.

"Wild echoes" are Echoes of people who were destroyed by powerful abstract forces such as Incarnations, rather than killed per se,<ref name=":0"/> while "False echoes" can form of people who never actually existed, drawing emotional resonance from rumor.<ref name=":0"/> Neither of these echoes have strong ties to Death and don't follow the usual rules, and are sometimes encountered by Finders.<ref name=":0">Echoes & remnants. Ghosts, vestiges. Because they intersect with the Paths, they might deal with other kinds of echo.

• Wild Echoes - Overlaps with Incarnations, above. Echoes (ghosts) of humans who were done away with by very dramatic Incarnation-type events. Tend to be flavorful, hard-to-deal-with echoes who don't follow the usual tropes or tools of necromancers, so most necromancers won't bother. Tools and approaches with Death in mind don't apply if we're talking about an Other who was done away with by Ignonimity or Lust.
  
  
• False Echoes - Echoes of people who didn't exist, except by rumor. A real pain in the ass for necromancers, but not so much a problem for Finders.
  
  Spirits - Spirits are bread & butter, and not exclusive to the Paths, but frequently found are...
• Petitioner Spirits - Spirits consolidated around a question or set of questions. They often ask people they see and then may get power to act if the answer is right or wrong. Can be hooked into echoes or have echoes as central points, depending. - Comment by Wildbow on Finders</ref>

Ghosts can be absorbed by, and form a part of, complex spirits.<ref name=":0" /><ref>I found the Girl by Candlelight. A complex spirit. Remember how Edith just said you can have all those individual things in a twig? Those things can fall away or separate, and attach to something else. An echo, or a ghost if you prefer to call it that, or whatever event shook them loose shook enough free that the stray spirits were able to clump together. They form into something coherent, and the complex spirit that results can be a fleeting existence or a concrete one that gets its rougher edges sanded off by time. - Lost for Words 1.3</ref>

Poltergeists are those echoes made from powerful emotions but are not linked to death.<ref>A poltergeist is like a ghost, with ghosts coming from very strong emotions and events. When an individual might have very strong emotions, for no reason at all, they might make ghosts who can't quite let them go and always stay close to them. This often makes things more messy and awful and gets these individuals blamed for trouble, which make the emotions worse. This causes the Poltergeists to get more and more solid, which lets them pick things up or wear things like cloth or bits of trash.

Poltergeists can be banished following the diagnosis and treatment of certain mental illnesses, but when left untreated can have disastrous effect. - Wildbow on Discord</ref><ref>Poltergeists were echoes who synced up with an intense emotional battery, and acted a lot like spectres except they didn’t spiral so much as they orbited or looped through their target of choice. Those who were naturally vulnerable to seeing Others like the sick, the very young, the old, and the mentally ill were often also very emotional and the most emotional of those types made good anchors for the poltergeist in reality. Lots of knocking over of objects and increased echo activity when the troubled child or the abused old woman had a freak-out. - Excerpt from Dash to Pieces 11.6</ref>

Echos can link up with any number of phenomena,<ref>new PACT DICE doc</ref> for example: Portents are stable Omen and echo fusions with other influences inside, theirs is a cyclical existence drawing power from events related to their Echo and Omen constituent parts.<ref>Portentum "a sign, token, omen; monster, monstrosity". An Echo looks to the past, but omens mark future events. Between, if echo and omen find equilibrium, there is room for something to be held. Big, horrific events. Spirits, other echoes or splinters of the original echo may fill the space, or an elemental may settle in - usually less sapient or sentient forces, who value the hallow formed more than they mind the monotony of that particular existence. Most are tortured or put through the wringer as the echo and omen twist them and put them through the same events over and over again.

In practice, the *Portentum* marks a future event, and wanders or clarifies as it draws power and finds loose connections. Key figures who line up nicely for the event to happen may see themselves in the Portentum, or see the Portentum itself. A man sees himself burning as he's slated to do, his mirror self whispering a date. A nurse sees a school's worth of dead children in reflections behind her, her own expression in the reflection something emotionally tortured, with a seven-league stare. It's not easy, but the Portentum can be unraveled, challenged, or averted, by figuring it out or targeting the connections that tie it to reality, and this gets easier but higher-stakes as the event draws nearer. Most don't succeed in stopping it. - Wildbow on Discord</ref>

Uses

Echoes aren't typically used because they aren't seen as reliable to work with and burn out if drawn on for power.<ref>“Exactly. There aren’t many places where you find intact ghosts, and they aren’t really sought after, because they’re unreliable to work with and they tend to burn out if you draw on them for power.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref> As impressions, they can affect their surroundings depending on how they were formed.<ref>“Another thing? Misery likes company, and ghosts tend to try to bring others down to their level. Whatever grips them, they spread it. Anger, pain, sadness, madness…” - Excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref> A ghost who suffered a debilitating injury will share that same pain with all those around it; one that died from being burned or frozen will give off extreme heat or cold. While these sensations aren't real, they feel real enough.

In some cases a ghost might appear to ordinary vision like a normal human, only flickering under the Sight.<ref>He was square jawed, muscular, and, to her sight, flickering at the edges. - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.3</ref> In others they might simply be invisible to the unawakened.<ref>I looked down at Evan, then up at the officer.

“No way out,” Evan whispered, in his replay-of-a-memory voice.

There was no need to whisper. He couldn’t be seen or heard. - Excerpt from Conviction 5.2</ref><ref name=":1/>

By binding ghosts into weapons or items, their powers can be used and directed. An example would be Blake's Frost Hatchet, where a ghost of a woman who died of hypothermia enables it to freeze things it cuts into or have an area effect when the ghost inside is released.<ref>“We’ll need a way to inscribe the handle, or she can leave any time she feels like it, and she’s liable to go out in one big intense shot of cold the moment you hit something,” Rose said, as I made my way into the hallway. - Excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref>

Some Technomancers can find or create ghosts that are trapped inside a song, then copy that song to create a (weaker) copy of the ghost.

Ghouls and Echoes can form something of a symbiosis together, this is usually between natural 'ghosts' and 'standard' ghouls however; variants of either that step outside the natural cycle of life and death can harm each other.<ref>They’d patrolled for a while and [Nibble] had gotten walloped by a ghost.
[...]
Ghouls were creatures of Death, and many ghosts were as well. There were symbiotic relationships in some ghoul clusters with the ghosts of their areas. Being around a ghoul could sustain an ghost well past its usual expiration, and the ghosts could themselves deter innocents from the ghoul’s hunting ground.

Nibble wasn’t so great at that part of things. Chloe had a better sense of the things, and felt more comfortable around them. As last night’s issue with the ghost tearing into him had proven. - Excerpt from One After Another 10.c</ref>

They can also be used as a power source, but this runs the risk of using them up and wiping out the impressions entirely.

Ghosts can also be warded against by a circle or banished with salt.<ref>“Salt,” she said. “Is a pure substance, and any ghosts that actively want to hurt us are going to be naturally impure. Tainted by anger and hatred.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.3</ref><ref>The deal I’d struck with Evan, the de-facto deal, was to keep him from Death. Death, even with outside intervention, wouldn’t claim him.

But that deal, holding to that deal? That took power.

I was dimly aware as the dead bird was tossed at the side of the building. I felt it like a physical blow when salt was tossed onto the body. - Excerpt from Conviction 5.4</ref><ref>“This isn’t the time to start acting more like a ghost. Why can’t you?” Rose asked.

“F-frostbite?” Evan asked.

He held up one hand, showing us fingers that were frayed at the tip. More ghostly than they might otherwise be.

“Salt,” I said. “This is all very deliberate.” - Excerpt from Conviction 5.3</ref>

Notable Ghosts

• June Burlison
• Leonard Harlan
• Evan Matthieu has their Self intact

References

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