Petitioner

A Petitioner is a broad term for entities that ask questions and expect answers to them. It is unknown if practitioners can ape them.

Specifics

How they react to questions is a major issue, the Pattern of asking good questions and getting answers can give them Power.<ref name=":0">Most often, variations in spirits are subtypes rather than different Others borne of the same sources, often drawing on patterns or outside sources. A non-exhaustive list:

• Complex spirits are a patchwork of linked immaterial or divine forces with spirits, ghosts drawing on the spiritual, spirits mingling with the elemental, or gods interwoven with the spiritual.
• Petitioner spirits reach out to the mortal world, speaking to people to appeal. They draw power directly from the engagement they get, sometimes swelling in power as a result. They usually expect specific answers or kinds of answers before getting to act if they don’t get the answers they want, their function tied to the nature of the spirit (ex: poverty spirit asking where the local industry went, stripping an individual of all their wealth if they can’t name a place - any place will do). May become urban legends.
  

A spirit can easily be multiple of these: complex petitioner spirits drawing on an echo’s unresolved question, for example. - PACT DICE: Spirits</ref> Can be a straight Complex spirit; an enmeshing of Echo and Spirit.<ref name=":1"/> There are of course numerous variations, a Leathermen is arguably a type of petitioner with the test they administer.

Petitioners are not only passive sometimes they will outright attack if they don't get an answer to their question(s). Specifically, a "Type B" petitioner will try to force and gain power with each rejection.<ref name=":3"/>

Obviously destroying them<ref name=":1"/> removes the need to answer them as does running away<ref name=":3"/> or simply answering them.<ref name=":2"/>

Examples

• A boy Ghost in Kennet<ref name=":1">“Can you give us examples?” Lucy asked. [...] “Of some of these jobs?”
  
  “A boy drowned in a dip in the river, when the water level was high enough the flow was pronounced. There was a drop in the water flow, and it formed a tube that trapped him inside, flipping end over end. Enough of a violent and remarkable end to create an echo. Enough left unresolved around him that it encouraged spirits. He became a petitioner spirit, plaguing people by the water with whispered questions.”
  
  “Like a ghost by the side of the road who asks for a ride,” Verona said.
  [...]
  “Yes. But he wasn’t mature or coherent enough to ask good questions. If such a spirit learns to ask questions with a design, or to attach a pattern of action to the questioning, the actions can gain strength. Your roadside spirit could gain enough strength to punish the wrong or unwanted answers with a push, putting the victim in the way of incoming traffic. He wasn’t that strong. He whispered nonsense about being caught in the wash. Left to his own devices, he could have become a wraith, a spectre, a malign spirit, or connected to a thing of the Abyss, or enough collective sentiment to become a spot for an incarnation to emerge. I burned him, ending him.”
  
  “Is this common?” Avery asked.
  
  “Those spirits? They weren’t, but they’re appearing more while the Beast’s seat remains vacant. I’ll burn ghosts and I’ve learned to spot forces like Death, Desire, and Filth getting a foothold in the world, from my time evading my Omen. I burn them too.” - Excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.5</ref>
• Unidentified Urban Legend summoned<ref name=":2">A girl staggered forward, past the old man, who was breaking another computer.  Hands wrapped in electrical wire were suspended around her, covering eyes, constricting her throat, holding her wrists, ankles, covering breasts and nether regions.  The ends of the frayed wires spooled out past where the arms ended, floating and drifting in the air around her.  When they touched a surface they left huge electrical burns in paint and carpet.  She had more of the glitches around herself.  Injured dobermans paced alongside her, glitches dancing around them, repairing the damage they covered.
  
  “Hey,” the girl said, in a strangled voice that sounded like it had passed from bad microphone to bad speakers.  “Eyes, hair, throat, wrist, ankle, tits, pussy.  Choose.”
  
  “Know that one too,” Cliff said.  “Get out of the building.”
  
  “Choose!” the girl raised her strangled voice.
  [...]
  

The girl stopped in her tracks, giggling. The hands at her chest fell away.

“What the fuck, Ronnie?” Lucy asked.

“With a petitioner like that, if they’re demanding an answer, escalating, it can be better to answer.” - Excerpt from In Absentia 21.1</ref> by Tenant 2603

• Gardener Denizen<ref name=":3">The Gardener screamed, and Lucy turned to see her dragging fingernails through the finely cut patterns of flowers into skin, where it had been flensed away in fine detail to leave patches of petals and things behind.  She ruined it, howling.
  
  With Sight, Lucy could see the dark staining swelling around her, as bad as if someone was dipping into the Abyss.
  
  “She’s getting stronger?”
  
  “She’s like a type B Petitioner,” Verona said. ["] there are Others who quiz you or give riddles or whatever, and you can ignore them, avoid them, just don’t give the wrong answer.  But then there’s ones like, if you don’t have the right answer, or if you skip the riddle or try to be clever, they get righteous strength to smack you down with.  Sometimes they get to automatically eat you.  Like the original Sphinx.”
  
  “So what, we don’t play her death game, she-”
  
  “Gets powered up until she can force us to play, or punish us for skipping out,” Verona said. - Excerpt from Hard Pass 22.7</ref>
• Phix the Original Greek Sphinx<ref name=":3"/> (arguable)

References

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