The spirits section of the character sheet should look like this.
Spirit: [3-18] Serves as Sanity score.
Animism: [1-6]
Social: [1-6]
Esoteric: [1-6]
Mania = Rout [Panic]: 0+ The power of your name, the terror inspired by your attention, the essence achieved by Gilgamesh, Alexander, Roland and Tamerlane.
Pathos, at the bottom of the page, is often consulted by the spiritual actor, for the higher one’s pathos, the more attention he has gained from the Higher World.
According to the mechanics discussed above in the last section, the Spirit powers below will be presented, with the hopes that players, especially of science-fiction and fantasy settings, will expand and improve this effort.
Onward, diabolical and sagacious adventurers and GMs alike.
Spirit Actions
First, unfortunately, just as the bold bodily warrior is dependent on his mind to learn the skills of man-butchering and obstacle-overcoming, for you to ascend to Leadership of, Rule over, or Mastery of lesser men with your superior Spirit, you must be smart enough to learn the mechanics.
Spirit skills will be acquired in character generation, as much as the player succeeds, gaining the first skill, he may attempt the next. Alexander had this stuff when he was 16. The Spirit journey begins with a Single Overall Spirit check.
For the player who fails this—too bad, you are obtuse and doomed to wonder at the great souls that rule your life and cast you into strife. Practice with that ax, Ivan.
For the player whose character passed his overall check, he gets one, pre-play, character generation check against each of his specific abilities, permitting him to attempt to learn the first skill from each list below. When one attempt is successful, he may keep doing checks under that ability, even if it means he acquires the entire list. [Thulsa Doom territory there.] If he does, let him make up skills. Once skills are used up or the player fails a check, or he can’t make up any more magical bullshit, move onto the next list.
Spirit skill use always entails an Overall Spirit check, then the Specific Spirit check, then the subject of the Spirit user’s attention makes a check.
Then, if the check is in the interest of the subject, such as healing, honorable leadership, counsel, teaching, then the subject of the Spirit user’s attention, makes a specific ability check in the ability noted in order to heal, grasp, learn, etc. However, if, for instance a spirit user is attempting to manipulate in certain ways, like Alcibiades appealing to Athenian sense of honor against Athenian interests, then making the Animism/Honor check will result in the voters electing to die in some foreign land for no good cause. Essentially, this is the mechanic of democracy, a Politician using his social skill, and the people’s sense of honor, for his good, against the interest of the people.
Pathos checks will often come into play with groups and in tests of will. For where Animism does represent one’s natural Honor, one’s Pathos represents his Will.
Mania, in the spirit realm, represented by Rout/Panic is the character’s ability to instill panic, sow hysteria and to shatter confidence and conviction—“to keep up the scare,” among a confused enemy, as Nathan Bedford Forest, “Wizard of the Saddle,” used to say. Most warriors will want to direct this quality at foes. But political leaders, bankers and other kinds of sorcerers [like medical scientists during 2019-23] may direct their Mania at their own people, or people supposedly under their care, or an enemy population [for rulers are generally the enemy of their bamboozled subjects] in order to more totally dominate, deconstruct, use, profit from, enslave and even kill the target subjects.
How Skills Work
Unskilled Attempts
One who does not possess a skill must make the overall Body Check and then the Specific Ability Check. Likewise, after those two successful checks, a subject of an UNSKILLED spirit user’s attention, gets two checks to save himself, an Overall Spirit and a Specific Spirit ability check. So, for an unskileld charcter to try and convince a mob to follow him, he must make 2 checks and they must fail 2 checks.
Skilled Sorcery
But, one with the skill, may choose to make whichever kind of check favors his personal makeup: Overall or Specific. Anyone can try and sway the mob, but the politician is much better at it. The mob then makes a collective BS check. Dealing with such a group, I suggest the mob making a 1d20 check against the politician’s Pathos.
Gaining skills in order is only don pre-play, with any of these skills, unless noted, available to a hero who makes the regular guy ability checks and succeeds. One could, for instance, go from reality TV construction boss to Presidential candidate, just like that, if the fates align.
The GM may come up with a better way of resolving acts based on the skills, or an attempt to develop a skill in action, listed below.
The Skills
Animism
These skills are in the form of resistance to conditions and enemy Mania and Pathos based attempts to cause crisis in honor and faith. #1 thru 3 are typically reversed as spells by mesmerists, politicians and sorcerers. As noted above one can attempt to learn through acts.
-1. Discord: resistance to peer pressure, majority opinion and honor limiting civil convention, for instance, the fortitude to go to war when others warn against it, such as naysayers at Heroat discouraging Beowulf. Resistance to political discourse.
-2. Fear: to overcome fear of physical harm, through a gut check, the key quality of a warrior. Whenever a warrior’s Spirit Mania exceeds this number he may use that, with, in the case of a mania over 6, calling for a re roll and a second 6 failing.
-3. Rout/Panic: resisting mass hysteria, standing and fighting in an honorable last stand [like the 300 Greek mercenaries who decided to stand and die against Alexander, only to be spared and recruited for their bravery], and resisting esoteric pressure, of the expert class doctrine, ideology, theology and scienceology that you lack understanding of, just as the trooper in the Kyber pass that stood and died for his unit’s honor, may not have understood what blunders his general made that put him in that shit position, and was therefore not unduly troubled be questions of “should’ve done” and simply concerned himself with knocking this robed buggers from the saddle with his last few rounds..
-4. Prayer: honest appeal to Heaven, directly, with no sacrifice or recitation of scripture, for assistance. The skill is the ability to open the heart to Eternity, not in any technique. The boon, if granted, is defined by the GM in game terms most appropriate to the character and setting.
-5. Empathy: the ability to reach out in concord without the need of language or writing or sign, but simply with body language, transparently reflecting good will. This is the key skill of the horseman and the handler of hounds. The Tarzan character is the best example of a master empath in adventure fiction.
-6. Eyes of Resolve: this is your staredown skill. The art of this is to practice reflecting your will to do or die in eye to eye contact. This is the primary skill that permitted me to dissuade hundreds of hoodrats from touching me and getting stabbed. They never saw my knife. But they KNEW, that I was going all the way. Their perspective of being inclined to partway measures made them unsuitable for this pressure. How this works, is once the Resolved Man makes his check, then his foe must fail it. Against modern criminals, making your check means likely success, with the criminal having to roll against his 1 atheist score. But against a viking with a 5, your resolve will merely grant you respect. This is the key skill of the duelist. If the foe fails, he must make a gut check or suffer a disadvantage, a 20 or a 6 [he might have a choice if he has this skill. If he has no skill then he has to make and Overall Spirit Check and a Specific Mesmerism Check]. Failure simply means he quits, leaves, or surrender.
-7. Steel Eyes: One may not acquire this without Empath and Eyes of Resolve. It requires a double check, once against each, to acquire Steel Eyes. In case of failure, another attempt may not be made until after a mortal combat, duel, battle, etc. Making your check requires the foe to make his. If he fails, he has a disadvantage.
-8. War Cry: This is the plea to the God of Battle, or, for you Christians, to The Almighty. If you, or your fellows, make your War Cry check, then the foes must make a Spirit Mania: Rout/Panic check or suffer a disadvantage. This is not the common obligatory war cry, but the cry of Achilles, of men who have lion like wills. Those with the war cry skill might use their Discord mania instead. If they have a 6 or greater Discord, a double 6 fails.
-9. Mesmerism: permits the mesmerist to influence the subject, even against his better interest.
-10. Fanaticism: permits the fanatic to direct the subject as a willing slave, even into overt suicide.
Social
The following skills all build on one another and require the former to be possessed before the latter may be acquired. Unless, one successfully attempts to leap ahead, in which case he does so with 3 rolls, as he does an overall check, a social check, and has a disadvantage roll on the latter. If he does this, he might start out as high as 6. 7 and above, cannot be attempted without #6: Rally.
-1. Calm: ability to resist Discord, Mesmerism and Fanaticism
-2. Planning: to sell a plan to companions or have an alteration in an existing plan modified
-3. Council: negotiation with ally
-4. Counsel: to assist your leader in planning, at least in part, by offering information, such as an enemy position or characteristic
-5. Parlay: negotiation with rival or enemy
-6. Rally: to rouse discordant or broken fellows or followers to collective action
-7. Selection: to influence those who know you to support your rise to power, even of being the leader of a raiding party [tribal/Athenian democratic politics]
-8. Election: to convince people who do not know you to support your rise to power [modern/republican Roman politics]
-9. Autocrat: to convince those who oppose you that resistance is futile and to step aside or hide [postmodern/imperial Roman politics]
-10. Ascension: to convince those under your sway that YOU have the benediction of Heaven, that you are chosen by God to Rule in His name, by Divine Right, ancient Near Eastern and Medieval Christian politics.
Esoteric
These are abilities that only require a subject resistance at higher levels and are, at lower levels concerned with discovering hidden knowledge. Attempts to drive a person insane, either magical or through mesmerism or gas lighting, target Esoteric, the inner self.
-0. Stoicism, is not a requirement for higher skills, but makes one skilled in resisting direct attacks upon the soul of a person.
-1. Acts: to interpret [immediate] pending activity based on recent/current fraternal actions, to gain an advantage
-2. Signs: to interpret pending activity based on recent enemy actions, to gain an advantage
-3. Birds: to interpret the Will of Heaven based on avian activity [birds do predict hard winters and natural disasters], to avoid a disadvantage
-4. Divination: the ability to conduct sacrifices [like defaming a whistle blower through media press releases or cutting open a ram] in order to, if successful on a 1d6 to gain an advantage [1 or 2] or avoid/nullify a disadvantage [3 thru 6].
-5. Wrath of God: the ability to read the Will of Heaven based on large scale climate activity and of lesser phenomena like the sweating statue of Orpheus. Same result as Divination.
Interactive Skills
-6. Teach: the teacher makes a Wit check and an Esoteric check. If he succeeds in teaching a history or philosophy or sorcery subject, the student must now make the same two checks, or, continue in ignorance.
-7. Philosophy: To teach doctrine to a collective body, one must do it in a group of disciples or companions, making a Social check and then an Esoteric check. A Didact, or a Disciple, adhering to this doctrine [the root of “doctor”/ being an ideologue] need only make a social check, done in public, and the Faithful will automatically follow.
-8. Prophecy: if one possess 1 thru 7, he may make a Spirit Check and an Esoteric, to present a prophecy about long term events that will be presented with disciple support to the Faithful as defined above. Faithful with 4 or more Animism or Spirit Mania scores may choose to believe or not. If not, they become heretics. Those choosing to believe become orthodox didacts. People with less than 4 Animism and Mania have no choice, they believe!
-9. Sorcery: to include Science, is based on presenting a fact, a reality that can be understood by the subject, in order to form the basis for deceiving the believing person concerning a wider. The sorcerer or scientist simply needs this skill, to commit sorcery, which is deception based on real perception. The sorcerer makes an Esoteric Check. If he does, then he may then attempt to place his subject under the pale of a disadvantage roll. The sorcerer, then decides if he is going to force an Animism, Esoteric or a Wit check on the subject of his spell. This was done to America in 2020, and 90% of Americans failed the check that the Creep State coven of sorcerers forced upon them: Esoteric checks against Conservatives, Animism checks forced upon Liberals, and Wit checks forced upon the Religious.
-10. Gaslight: the ability to lie with such power from the pulpit, permits the Sorcerer to force the subjects within the hearing of his voice or that of his priests, preachers, agents, oracles [TV reporters, social media influencers, the Pythia at Delphi] to make a check against his lowest score: Animism or Wit, or potentially go mad. Missing a check, triggers an overall Mind or Spirit check, whichever is lowest. If the overall check is missed the subject becomes a zombie follower of the Sorcerer, or, if he makes this overall check, he becomes incapable of using his Wit in this regard unless he first makes an Animism check.
