Become a member of the most infamous voudon family of them all.
GUEDE: The Mercenary Shaman (also known as the Necromancer)
Attributes:
Not one quite knows when it happened in the mid-fifties when a young James Rich working as Jim Saturday, a hitman, ascended after killing Harry Cecil, some white-boy Kerouac biker-type and Shaman godwalker, in the wastes of Death Valley.
When the gunshot cleared away the dead shaman suddenly kicked upright with all wounds healed, looked at Jim with hatred and said: „I‚m coming to get you, you fucker!‰
With a head full of voodoo, a warm gun in his hand, and a fresh kill on his soul, Jim Saturday was lifted laughing by a cloud of dust and ghosts high up into the sun, never to be seen again.
All that was left was Cecil and the unknown body of the previous Shaman archetype with the three bullet wounds. Taken Cecil‚s fatality was the old shaman‚s last gift.
The Harry Cecil is the Guede‚s first and most dangerous enemy. He hunts Jim Saturday by killing his avatars to this day. Cecil is now Godwalker of Guede. His mission is to eradicate all of the Guede‚s lesser avatars, so that Saturday will get kicked out of the Invisible Clergy. Hopefully Cecil wants to ascend and resume the Shaman‚s position. He hopes he doesn‚t ascend before he can to run down and shoot at Saturday. Cecil now goes by the name Lil‚ Loa.
Taboos:
Guede‚s taboo and weakness is personal weakness, betrayal from one‚s resolve. If the Guede ever gathers more than two failed violence notches, he is bereft of his channels. If he gets his head sorted out he may continue where he left off.
Just remember Guedes are notorious for hoarding grudge-filled enemies and when the chips are down, many people come to collect.
Unlike the old Shaman, Guede is actually under no compunction to assist the souls of the dead across the veil and away from the living. In this sense Guede is more of a huckster of ghosts and the living ˆ pushing or pulling the dead back and forth the Veil as he wills. Doing what he wants with both as it suits him.
The Guede has been cast, like the Night Stalker, as a consummate villain and has a natural distrust of the regular, clean-living side of the sorcerous community. A few of the Guede‚s avatars are thanatomancers (pomoma111).
Symbols:
Robes, funerary gear and clothing, bones, skulls coffins and mausoleums, incense, weapons, corpses are all tried and true symbols of the Guede as every fantasy illustrator knows. Despite this a Guede is always well dressed. Anything less is disrespectful.
Suspected Avatars:
The infamous Haitian, Papa Loi, was said to channel the Guede while he was a murdering bastard. The former puppet-president of Panama, Manuel Noriega, was said to have assistance and training from some dodgy Santeria priests.
Channels:
Special: The Guede also automatically gets Dead Eyes; he „sees‰ these spirits of the dead as with Aura Sight and can speak to them.
The Guede can use Dead Eyes even if he‚s physically blinded or impaired.
01% — 50%
By chastising the malevolent demons of the dead, the Guede can harm their souls by rolling his Avatar skill and the applying the result as hand-to-hand damage to their Soul Stats. The painful psychic damage is healed at one point per day. A spirit that is reduced to zero or lower Soul is flung screaming beyond the veil permanently.
51% — 70%
The Guede can summon and dismiss spirits of the dead. He can also force spirits of the dead to animate corpses. The corpse-riding spirits have to perform a simple act for the Guede.
The animated corpses are pitifully weak. For every „ten‰ on the roll one corpse is animated.
The zombie‚s stats, apart from Soul which remains at zero, are the sum of the Guede‚s animating roll plus ten. A Guede that rolls 31% on his animating skill animates three zombies all their stats are (3 + 1 = 4 + 10) 14. Not great but enough in a pinch.
Remember that the zombies have their Wound level doubled and also have damage tolerance. The zombies have only standard skills, none of which can be higher than their stats.
Damage Tolerance equal to half the zombie‚s Body score. Any damage that is less than Damage Tolerance is simply ignored. Any damage exceeding the Damage Tolerance is taken as normal.
Dismissing spirits is similar to chastising but the damage is Firearms in value with the Guede‚s Soul stat as the damage cap.
71% — 90%
Once a year the Guede can raise a single killer zombie or a wake up a duppie.
By dragging someone‚s soul, from the lands of the dead, and magically gluing it to its corpse, the Guede makes the zombie. Essentially the Guede gives the zombie the Animate Corpse skill equal to his Avatar skill roll.
The zombie uses the thug tempate but may be created as a normal GMC. Remember the zombie still gets half his Body stat as Damage Tolerance.
The Duppie effect essentially creates a demon and requires a corpse older that has been through a sunset but not a sunrise. The Guede summons the demon whose Soul Stat is equal to half of the Guede‚s avatar roll.
The demon is stripped of all its memories of the afterlife while it is back in the lands of the living ˆ so no freebee information. It doesn‚t stop the demon spewing all sorts of drivel delusional or false.
91% +
The Guede can merely choose that this is the right time for a character to die. The person chosen has all rolls flip-flopped for the worst possible result. This lasts until a matched pair is rolled at which point the spell is broken.
If the avatar‚s Guede skill is above the target‚s relevant skill-governing Stat, the Guede‚s negative flip-flopping takes precedence. If the avatar‚s Guede skill is under the governing Stat the target may flip-flop avatar, Obsession or Passion rolls as normal
The Guede can only try this once on any person. If that person lives through it, the Guede cannot affect him or her in any guise again ˆ he is proof from any channel from any Guede Avatar even in death.
What you hear?
Lil‚ Loa is the first and current Godwalker of the Guede. His Godwalking channel was that not even in death would he stop. Henry Cecil died in 1976 and still continues as a demon.
Lil‚ Loa is the only known demon to channel an archetype.