Hedge Magic Revised Edition Chapter Six: Nightwalkers

In many parts of Europe there are unGifted folk magicians with the ability to allow their spirits to roam while their bodies are unconscious or in an altered mental state. These spirits may become material far distant from their mortal bodies, sometimes in animal shapes. These magicians form militias and use their powers to fight fertility battles, protect their communities from evil, and guide the dead. In the cases of the less scrupulous, they also blackmail their neighbors and steal their valuables. The nightwalker traditions of Mythic Europe have diverse names, and different powers and duties, in each culture. This chapter examines the abilities, duties, and enemies of several varieties of hedge magician that share this power.

Those members of the Order of Hermes familiar with this type of hedge magician call the power to travel in spirit ekstasis, which means “straying.” They call the straying spirit a phantasticum and people who can stray nightwalkers. This name gives the impression that all ecstatic hedge magicians use their power only at night, which is not true. But it suits the benandanti tradition of nightwalkers, who Roman-descended members of the Order encountered before meeting other groups with the same abilities. It also suggests these groups form a single tradition of magic, which is false: these groups merely have similar powers.

The Order has not encountered any nightwalker group whose members are sufficiently powerful to be adopted into House Ex Miscellanea. Nightwalkers often serve as the allies, enemies, or servants of magi, but members of the Order of Hermes do not consider them to be peers.

Characters

Nightwalkers are designed as conventional companions, not Mythic Companions like the most powerful members of the other traditions described in this book. Some nightwalker traditions have members who make their living as traveling magicians, but most nightwalkers have a mundane profession and perform their duties only at exceptional times.

New Virtues

The most powerful nightwalkers have the Nightwalker Major Virtue, which grants a series of powers. Players who select the Nightwalker Virtue must localize their character by choosing one of the regional traditions described in this chapter — benandanta, Hound of God, kresnik, kudlaki or taltós — or by creating a similar group that is active in the area around the covenant. Membership of each regional tradition is a Free Virtue.

Nightwalker

Major, Supernatural

A character with this virtue is able to stray; that is, he may send his spirit away from his body, and have it take material form at a distant place. This separated spirit, in solid or immaterial form, is called a phantasticum. The ability to generate a phantasticum allows the character to accept responsibilities, and perform acts, that are described in greater detail in the following sections.

This Virtue includes all of the following powers:

• The character may stray while insensible, and lead others astray.
• The character knows a method of forcing insensibility.
• The character may use the Second Sight Ability in phantastic form, and gains a score of 1 in that Ability. He may not use it while in his body, unless he has the Second Sight Virtue. If he does, he has one score in Second Sight that he uses in both situations.
• The character involuntarily creates the accouterments usual to his or her tradition while in phantastic form. If these accouterments include traditional weapons, these weapons damage foes despite their apparent fragility.
• The character may make his spiritual form tangible or intangible using a Stamina + Concentration roll.
• The character may harm spirits in intangible form, as if both were tangible.
• The presence of the character in phantastic form causes drowsiness.
• If the character’s tradition uses animal or elemental shapes to travel, for processions, or for fertility battles, the character may do so. While in inhuman form, the character has the combat statistics and senses of a creature of the appropriate species, but retains his Intelligence and identity.
• The character may speak to the sleeping, causing them to have dreams, and may converse with people who are awake, although this is arduous.

The Virtue also includes the following duties and limitations:

• The character’s body appears dead and is terribly vulnerable while the phantasticum is absent.
• The character has the Magical Air Flaw while in phantastic form
• The character must muster for every battle or procession, as described below, if these are part of the character’s regional tradition, and does so involuntarily. * Injuries the character takes in phantastic form are proportionally reflected on the waking form.
• The character must not describe the battles or processions, in any detail, to outsiders.
• This virtue does not provide Magic Resistance or Might.
• Characters in intangible phantastic form may be harmed by spells that affect ghosts or spirits, and may be seen with Second Sight (Ease Factor 9).
• Characters in tangible phantastic form may be harmed by anything that would harm mundane versions of their form.

Versatile Phantasticum

Minor, Supernatural

Versatile Phantasticum is a virtue taken by traditions whose members can fight in animal or elemental form when not at a fertility battle. A character may have a Versatile Phantasticum because all members of the character’s regional tradition have one, or because the character has powers superior to those usual to the regional tradition. Traditions that require this Virtue of their members are described below.

Minor Virtues Related To Straying Traditions

Some traditions of nightwalkers have weaker hedge magicians associated with them, who are produced when people develop incomplete versions of the power to stray. These weaker variants do not have the Nightwalker Virtue, and may be taken by grogs.

Half Taltós

Minor, Supernatural

A half taltós is a potential taltós — a regional variant of nightwalker described later — who failed to defeat an elder taltós at his initiatory battle. In folklore half taltós have a variety of powers, but this Virtue only grants a limited form of Second Sight and the ability to affect spiritual entities with a limited range of physical objects. Half-taltós player characters can be differentiated by selecting other supernatural Virtues.

Second Sight comes only with difficulty to half taltós. They must perform a simple ritual, which varies by taltós and takes a minute, before they can use the Virtue for one minute or until the conclusion of one battle, whichever is longer. Using this ritual repeatedly is very tiring. Each use requires an Athletics + Stamina roll against an Ease Factor of 6, or the half taltós loses a fatigue level.

The half taltós may affect spirits with his personal armaments. These are usually a sword or whip, with a smaller weapon for emergencies. These are physical weapons with a spiritual nature. If a half taltós loses a weapon, it takes a month of occasional work for him to create the Arcane Connection to a new weapon necessary for it to be used to harm spirits.

Hamr

Minor, Supernatural

Hamr is a Norse term for what Hermetic scholars would call a corporeal phantasticum. Warriors with a hamr have the ability to enter a trance within sight of the battlefield, so that they can send forth their spirit to do battle in animal shape. An example is the folk hero Boðvar Bjarki, who would hide before battles but was not considered a coward by his fellows because a great white bear would appear in his stead, and he would have the bear’s injuries after the battle.

If the warrior’s body is found while he is in a trance, he is in a very vulnerable state. His body will not awaken until the hamr returns to it. If the body is killed, the hamr becomes an unusual ghost, and there are several possible outcomes. The hamr may vanish as the character dies. Or the hamr may remain on the battlefield until the battle is over, fulfilling the ghost’s last wish. Most hamr are able to remain in the world only until the flesh of their decaying body falls from the bones. But occasionally the hamr remains on Earth indefinitely, single-mindedly seeking out those who killed the magician.

Such nemeses are usually unsuitable as player characters. Only their fixation on revenge allows them to remain in the world, which makes them unable to assist other player characters in stories unrelated to their vengeance. Hamr are also notably animalistic in their thinking, and so are rarely able to plausibly find ways of working patiently and methodically toward the downfall of their foe, as anthropomorphic ghosts sometimes can.

The character requires a prop that places him in a dissociated mental state. This is the hide of an animal in some groups. In others it is a drug, alcohol being particularly popular in some traditions. These characters take (10 – Concentration minutes) to enter the trance state and express the hamr — far slower than conventional skinchangers — but they do not take a season to replace their prop if it is lost or stolen. Many reduce this time by arriving at battles so severely inebriated that they are on the very verge of insensibility, which shortens the time required to three rounds (drink, lie down, express hamr). While in the trance state, they are unaffected by inebriation and the trance state does not cease as the body neutralizes the drug.

Hamr can be used for purposes other than battle. For example, bird hamr make excellent scouts. The Hamr Virtue doesn’t grant any other magical powers usual for ecstatic magic.

Sleepwalker

Minor, Supernatural

Hermetic magi prone to speculation on these things, particularly from the Houses of Bjornaer and Tremere, have noted that there is a class of hedge magicians who sleepwalk within their hamr, rather than entering a trance hidden away from the battlefield. The hamr is larger than a human is, and may appear to be a hybrid of human and animal forms. The magician is cloaked within the phantasticum, the more durable and combatworthy form. In battle, a Heavy Wound may cut the hamr so deeply that the skin of the human within is visible through the laceration. Sleepwalkers are unable to stray, in the sense of their phantasticum losing physical contact with the body, so lack virtually all of the powers of nightwalkers.

Sleepwalkers, like magicians with a hamr, require props and are likely to arrive at tense situations almost out of their minds. It often occurs that those sleepwalking in their hamr act with the ferocity of their animal form, and fail to recognize friends and family who are dear to them in the waking state.

Virtues Nightwalkers Often Possess

The following Virtues are not required of nightwalkers, but individual nightwalkers often have them.

Ghost

Nightwalkers whose bodies die while their phantasticum is absent are usually forced to wander the world as ghosts until their destined hour of death. In at least one tradition of nightwalker, every member becomes one of the unquiet dead unless preventative measures are taken with their corpses. These spirits become very similar to the dead that the nightwalkers battle, and retain many of their abilities from life, including the ability to take corporeal form. Further material concerning ghostly player characters is included in Realms of Power: Magic.

Greater Purifying Touch

Many nightwalkers are healers. Some have supernatural powers, like Greater Purifying Touch, that allow them to mitigate the effects of Infernal attack. Others are skilled herbalists or chirurgeons.

Sense Holiness and Unholiness

Nightwalkers use this Ability to detect their foes while awake. In northern Italy, they also use this ability to break curses. The Infernal witches indigenous to that area and to many others create curses that require small charms to remain near their victims for the effect to continue. While patrolling their villages, nightwalkers can detect these curse anchors and note their location. The following day, when they awaken, the nightwalkers remove these charms.

Some nightwalkers break curses using cthonic powers, as described in the supplement Realms of Power: The Infernal.

Born With a Caul In most of the traditions, potential nightwalkers are born with a caul. That is, most nightwalkers are born with a hood of membrane. This must be kept, and is given to the nightwalker by his or her parents. In some traditions, a nightwalker who loses his caul loses his powers until he regains it. This weakness may be taken as a Major Story Flaw. In those areas where nightwalkers are common, when the parents give their child a caul they usually also tell him what little they know about the night battles. Knowledge of the nightwalkers is an (Organization) Lore, but characters who have not mustered for fertility battles rarely have a score higher than 1. Having a caul, by birth or purchase, grants any of the properties below, each purchased as a Virtue. Caul-based Virtues are frequently found among nightwalkers, but are not required for membership of any nightwalker tradition. Immunity to Drowning (Major, ArM5, page 43). The character is immune to drowning, but this does not actually allow him to breathe underwater. He simply floats unconscious to the nearest shore if he would otherwise drown. Luck (Minor, ArM5, page 45) Self-Confidence (Minor, ArM5, page 48) Strong-Willed (Minor, ArM5, page 49) Being born with a caul, regardless of whether it has been retained, often grants one of the following Virtues: Dowsing (Minor, ArM5, page 41) Second Sight (Minor, ArM5, page 48) Weather Sense (Minor), The character has an intuitive understanding of the weather, identical in effect to the spell Sailor’s Foretaste of the Morrow (ArM5, page 127). The character needs only to concentrate to use this ability: it does not require a roll.

Flaws Nightwalkers Often Possess

The following Flaws are common among nightwalkers, but aren’t required for any tradition: Compulsion (to fight the battle in waking life), Dark Secret (lives in a community that persecutes nightwalkers as infernalists), Dependent, Diabolic Past (it’s possible for nightwalkers to change sides in most traditions, but difficult.), Dutybound (night battles), Enemies (local Infernal witch), Higher Purpose (fighting evil), Nocturnal, Oath of Fealty (to the group’s supernatural patron), Plagued by Supernatural Entities (demons seeking revenge for being thrashed, or the dead seeking rest), Supernatural Nuisance (as previous).

Powers in Detail

The magical power that defines these hedge traditions, called ekstasis or “straying,” allows a magician to send forth his spirit while unconscious. Straying is more common in people who are loosely linked to human society: outcasts, children, the mentally ill, the incorrectly baptized, and the painfully shy. It is a power that arises without training, and has no corresponding Ability, because characters do not become better at straying over time through practice.

Ekstasis

The range of actions that characters can perform while their spirits stray varies between the traditions that have developed in different locations. The section below includes those abilities found in all groups who have the Nightwalker Virtue.

Preparation for Straying

A character may cause his spirit to stray when the character is unconscious, or in an altered mental state. Characters usually stray while asleep, but serious illness can also permit straying. Religious mystics court the experience of straying through asceticism, self-mortification, sleep deprivation, and fasting, and player characters who think to can mimic this behavior. Hermetic magi can cast versions of Call to Slumber to render themselves or others insensible, for example (ArM5, page 151).

Characters can also render themselves insensible using drugs. Each tradition uses slightly different preparations. Many nightwalkers use an ointment that is worryingly similar to that provided to Infernal witches by demons to allow them to attend the Sabbat. Regardless of the exact method, a character using drugs takes (10 – Concentration) minutes to reach insensibility, with a minimum time of one minute. Characters who the nightwalker poisons with his drug may resist insensibility with a Stamina roll against an Ease Factor of 6.

The Insensate Body

While the character’s spirit is absent, the body appears dead. The skin drains of all color, and the limbs become rigid. The body continues to breathe, and its heart continues to beat, but both have such little power that those lacking medical skill cannot detect either. Those with medical training will assume that without immediate assistance the character will die. This is not correct: Aristotle records that some ancient Greek magicians, left undisturbed, spent many years in this semblance of death. Characters who stray for extended periods do not starve, or die of thirst, but the muscles of their unused bodies atrophy. In extreme cases, this can cause Decrepitude and Characteristic loss.

If a magician’s body is disturbed while the spirit is straying, the character may die. The degree to which disturbance is harmful varies slightly between nightwalking traditions. Laplander nightwalkers die if their bodies are simply touched, while benandanti only die if the body is rolled onto its face. Even in more-durable traditions, the nightwalker does not feel the sensations of the body, and so is unaware if the body is slapped, burned, or killed.

Straying is intensely arduous. Characters who stray for an hour feel lethargic for the rest of the day: they have lost a Long Term Fatigue level. Those who stray for a whole night are lethargic for the following day: they have lost 2 Long Term Fatigue levels. Usually a character requires two nights of rest to regain 2 Long Term Fatigue levels, but many traditions of nightwalkers know a method that allows them to regain a single lost Long-Term Fatigue level, which shortens the period of fatigue to a single night. These methods are described in the Returning Home section, later, and in some of the regional traditions.

The Phantasticum: A Spiritual Yet Corporeal Form

The spirit that strays from the body of a nightwalker is that part which, were the nightwalker to die in unfortunate circumstances, would become his ghost. The phantasticum is able to become corporeal or immaterial at will. While immaterial it has a ghostly appearance, although the nightwalker may also become invisible at will. Switching between corporeality and immateriality takes three rounds, and cannot be performed during combat without a Stamina + Concentration roll against an Ease Factor of 15.

Some nightwalkers have human phantastica, while others are shaped like animals. Many traditions allow a nightwalker to change between their human form and a particular animal shape at will, or to use particular powers and perform certain tasks. Switching between human and animal shape also takes three rounds, and cannot be performed during combat without a Stamina + Concentration roll against an Ease Factor of 15. Characters with animal phantastica may become immaterial or invisible in the same way that those with human phantastica do.

The species of a character’s phantasticum is often limited by his or her regional tradition. In some traditions, like the Hounds of God, the phantasticum is the same for every member. In others it derives from a narrow range of noble shapes, with bear, wolf, boar, and stag being popular. In many of the Norse traditions, the shape closely matches the psyche of the human, so odd shapes like whales and walruses have been reported.

Combat Statistics for Animal Phantastica To design a character’s animal phantasticum, use the following system. Base Statistics: Find the statistics for the animal species in the Book of Mundane Beasts appendix found in Realms of Power: Magic , or use the rules in House of Hermes: Mystery Cults to design the mundane animal. The statistics for the five most common shapes used for combat are given in an insert. Characteristics: The character has the same Intelligence score in both forms. For all other Characteristics, if both the species and character have a negative score, use the lowest score. If both the species and the character have a positive score, use the highest. If the character and the species have one positive and one negative score, add the two scores. Size: If the character has a Virtue or Flaw affecting Size, it changes the Size of the animal form. Virtues and Flaws: Apply all Virtues and Flaws related to the character’s human body to the animal form. For example, Missing Eye. Abilities: Use the General Abilities of the species. Human abilities cannot be accessed in animal form, except those that are used to know or understand. The character may communicate with animals of similar aspect and diet. Experience: Characters spending prolonged periods in animal form may spend experience on the Abilities of the animal form. This usually requires the Versatile Phantasticum Virtue. Combat: The combat statistics now need to be adjusted to suit the character’s Brawl score.

Second Sight and Magical Air

While in spirit form, the nightwalker may use the Second Sight Ability. Some nightwalkers patrol their neighborhoods in spiritual form. This allows them to examine the surrounding area carefully to find dangerous creatures and cursed objects. It also allows them to spy on their neighbors. Characters who wish to use Second Sight while sensate must purchase it as a separate Virtue.

The presence of a phantasticum causes uneasiness in humans, even if they lack Virtues that allow them to sense the phantasticum itself. Domestic animals are sensitive to the presence of phantastica. Horses usually flee phantastica, while dogs defend homes against them. Cats either avoid phantastica or treat them as just another human, so some cats attempt to rub against the legs of an invisible, intangible magician.

Travel Through Straying

Ecstatic magicians may travel great distances almost instantly while in spirit form. Different nightwalkers use various methods of travel. Some spirits take incorporeal human form, walking as if in a dream, or flying through the night like a breeze. Some take the form of ghostly animals that can run with supernatural speed to the site of the battle. These are usually not combat-worthy forms — cats, hares, and mice are common — but some militias have wolves and stags as members.

Much as the ghost of a knight may involuntarily make a ghostly horse for himself to ride and ghostly armor to wear, so the members of some militias of nightwalkers generate mounts and equipment. Mounts often include odd creatures like cats and hares, but at least one militia has cavaliers. Some militias ride agricultural tools. The militia that fights above Venice floats across the Adriatic in swift eggshells.

Spirit travel is, objectively, almost instant, but is experienced at a dreamy pace. A character may recall traveling for a hour on roads, or flying, or running through underbrush mounted on the back of a hare. The character may recall having conversations with his travel partners. This experience of extended duration does not alter the swiftness of the travel: it’s possible to appear on the other side of Europe after just a few minutes. A character attempting spirit travel needs to make a Stamina + Athletics roll, with the result as given in the table.

A character may carry the usual accouterments of a member of the character’s tradition of nightwalker without penalty. Carrying any other object increases the difficulty of the roll by +3 per object. The character may not carry objects heavier than the character could carry in physical form. Objects carried away become phantastic, like the character’s equipment, and become invisible if the character does.

Result	Location
3	Places the character sees daily.
6	Places seen in the last week.
9	Places the character has seen within the last year.
12	Places that the character has not been in the last year, but has visited and to which he knows the mundane route.
15	Places that the character has never been, but to which he knows the mundane route or has an Arcane Connection.

A character who fails this roll awakens exhausted, but may repeat the attempt once he gains better information about the route to his destination.

The following attempts at spirit travel are automatically successful:

• Traveling to the location of one’s own caul, in those traditions where nightwalkers are born with cauls.
• In those traditions that are summoned or led to battle or procession, traveling to the location to which the character is summoned or led.
• Traveling to the character’s True Love, or leading another to his or her True Love.
• Following a known route, at conventional speed. A nightwalker strolling through his village in phantastic form, for example, need not roll.

Communication Through Straying

A character whose phantasticum is corporeal may communicate normally with a group of people at his destination. This is arduous, and increases the exhaustion the character feels after straying by 1 Long Term Fatigue level. During the conversation, characters may also use other communicative Abilities, like Leadership or Charm.

When in spirit form, the character may converse with unconscious people. They remember these conversations as dreams. Simple messages or images are automatically remembered. Characters attempting to remember detailed conversations must make an Intelligence + Concentration roll against an Ease Factor of 12.

Leading Others Astray

A nightwalker may call the spirits of others from their bodies, and guide them. This is occasionally done to convince skeptical clergymen that the nightwalkers are not infernalists, but are instead fighting the minions of evil. To call a willing person along when traveling, the nightwalker must make a Stamina + Leadership roll against an Ease Factor 3 points higher than that for personal travel. On failed rolls, the unguided spirits may make Stamina + Athletics roll to find their bodies, once per hour. Lost spirits be come ghosts if their bodies die. When in spirit form, guided characters have all of the powers common to nightwalkers. They cannot act as spirit guides, however.

There is a singular report, from a Hermetic wizard who explored the far north seeking the Order of Odin, of an unusual use for this ability. He said he had encountered a warrior who, rather than leading friends with this power, or strangling his enemies as they slept, instead pulled them from their bodies so that they could fight honorable, but uninterrupted duels before significant battles.

Drawing a willing person into spiritual form, without leaving the current location, requires a Stamina + Leadership roll against an Ease Factor of 3. If the character fails, the person he intended to lead simply does not leave his body: The target does not come to harm. None of the nightwalking traditions that the Order is aware of have the ability to draw the phantasticum of an unwilling person from his body.

Combat and the Straying Spirit

A corporeal phantasticum may engage in combat with enemies that are material, while incorporeal phantastica can only engage immaterial threats like ghosts and spirits. Any damage a phantasticum in human form suffers appears, instantly and identically, on the body of the nightwalker. The phantasticum heals damage at the same rate as the body. If the phantasticum loses a limb, the body does also, but occasionally magicians who have lost body parts in mundane accidents have phantastica who retain them.

The body of the hedge magician reflects the damage suffered by the animal phantasticum, as well. If the phantasticum is more durable than a human is, the damage reflected to the body is never fatal until it is fatal for the phantasticum. Similarly, if the phantasticum is far weaker than a human is, death of the phantasticum kills the body, and small injuries magnify until they are equivalently injurious. A cat phantasticum that suffers a Heavy Wound of a three-inch-long cut along its belly, may be reflected by a human Heavy Wound of a cut from the hips to the throat on the body.

Drowsiness

The presence of a hostile phantasticum, either material or immaterial, causes drowsiness. A character without Magic Resistance, who is not in spirit form, wishing to stay awake when facing a phantasticum must make a Concentration + Stamina roll against an Ease Factor of 3. If the character is already asleep, the effect makes it almost impossible to awaken him. Certain murderous nightwalkers enter the house of an enemy immaterially at night, use their drowsiness to keep their enemy asleep, and strangle them.

Fertility Battles

All characters with the Nightwalker virtue participate in fertility battles: battles in spiritual form against either the forces of evil, or the nightwalkers of nearby communities. Different regional traditions vary the frequency of their battles, but most do battle four times a year. If the nightwalkers are victorious, the crops, hunting, and fishing in their area produce the normal amount of food. If the nightwalkers lose, crops fail and fishing is poor until the next battle. If they rout the enemy, a bountiful harvest is assured. All nightwalkers must answer the summons to battle, an involuntary action that requires no training.

Giving Battle

The night battles vary slightly between regions. In some places, the nightwalkers fight as drilled military units of infantry, while in others the individuals of each cause square off in a chaotic mêlée. Followers of a few traditions retain their animal forms during battle, and similarly, a small number ride combat-worthy steeds, like horses.

If a player’s character is part of a militia that is fighting as a disciplined group, then the player rolls on behalf of that group. If the player’s character is particularly formidable, the character may be the vanguard. A character is not the leader of the group unless he has become its leader through a story event.

If the two sides are fighting as individuals, the character must seek and defeat enemies on the battlefield. A Perception + Awareness roll of 9 or more will allow the character to seek an enemy of similar or lesser skill, or, if the player desires, one of the champions of the rival host. A character wishing to attack the captain of the other army can always find him on the field: generally a pennant marks his position. Some enemy captains lead their forces into battle, but most are protected by the ranks of their followers. In those areas where the nightwalkers battle the forces of evil, the enemy captains are usually powerful Infernal ghosts, minor diabolists, or lesser demons.

For example, in a particular battle a character with a human phantasticum uses a bunch of a sacred herb as a club to thrash an enemy. The nightwalker risks being beaten in return. Some nightwalkers fight in animal form, and those servants of evil that are not Infernal witches may have unusual weapons. The fighting continues until one side flees the field. Wounds taken in the night battles appear on the sleeping forms of the nightwalkers. Those who have been soundly thrashed may feel tired and sore for days, and may be covered in bruises.

Covenants Supplement Modifiers Sagas using the Covenants supplement may simulate the effects of fertility battles by selecting the appropriate outcome on the Income Modification Table on page 57 of that book. This selection replaces the stress die roll. Battle Outcome Result Favoured side utterly defeated and harried through the countryside. Slump Favoured side routed. Contraction Favoured side forced to flee the field in good order. Stagnation Favoured side wins the field. Status Quo Favoured side routs its enemies, who flee in disarray. Growth Favoured side harries routed enemies through the night. Expansion Favoured side traps and annihilates every member of enemy militia. Boom

Death in Night Battles

The proportion of nightwalkers who die in nightly battles varies between traditions. It is rare for a benandante to die in the night battles, while the tradition just to their south, the mazzeri, virtually all die in battle. As a compensating factor, mazzeri tend to die in battle only when they are of advanced age and in ill health. Traditions often balance lethality with length of service, which is why some members of the extremely dangerous taltós tradition retire at fifteen, and the Hounds of God pass on their powers to others when have passed their prime of life.

Each tradition has folklore that explains its apparent lack of lethality. Some Hounds of God speculate that their deaths make them martyrs, which weakens the forces of evil at the site of their martyrdom. Some magi who have studied the benandanti believe that if they die, they become a fertility sacrifice. The mazzeri believe that the time of every death is ordained, and so killing an enemy before one is forced to by the inner compulsion that drives this tradition is both impossible and immoral to attempt.

In most regions, Infernal witches, sorcerers, demons, and the dead do not have the same strange protection from death that nightwalkers do. The nightwalkers attempt to utterly annihilate them, and are often successful in killing their opponents. The number of enemy available is finite, so, in some traditions, a crushing victory in one year may lead to a string of easier victories while the enemy renews its numbers.

Enemies

Some regional traditions of nightwalker fight other nightwalkers from neighboring regions, some battle the dead, and others confront the servants of the Infernal.

Enemy nightwalkers are designed using the same rules as player characters. To quickly create an enemy nightwalker that retains human shape, simply use any suitable grog and give him a weapon Ability suited to the required regional tradition. Suitable foes for a character that fights in beast form can be created quickly by taking the player character’s own combat statistics and improving or degrading them as required by the enemy’s degree of experience. Enemies in elemental shape can be represented with statistics for elementals from Realms of Power: Magic, or can use cosmetically altered versions of the statistics given for taltós later in this chapter.

Statistics for the dead can be created quickly in two ways. The statistics for any living human might be used for a ghost, because when encountered by a nightwalker’s phantasticum, the ghost has a semblance of corporeality. Ghosts are some of the most popular creatures described in the Ars Magica line, and those from any other supplement might be considered as foes.

The dead faced by nightwalkers have some unusual characteristics, which can be used to make them distinctive. They are often described as having an unquenchable thirst. This is why they spoil wine and, in some cases, attack people. Some, like the German noheir, are the ghosts of people born with cauls. These have higher Might, and show a greater persistence and destructiveness than other dead.

The servants of the Infernal can be considered in three classes. The nightwalkers who serve evil, called malandanti by the benandanti, are designed using either these rules, or the rules given in Realms of Power: Infernal. The minor demons that nightwalkers face tend to come from the weakest classes, like the Tempters, and to be the servants of a human captain of the malandanti, who may be a member of one of the more potent infernalist groups described in Realms of Power: Infernal. In those regions where the captain of the evil forces is particularly powerful, the captain of the forces of good is similarly potent; he should have powers designed using the rules for those aided by the Divine, given in Realms of Power: Divine. No nightwalker has ever claimed that a battle was decided by combat between the two captains: player characters should play a significant role in any night battle.

In some regions, demons captain the hosts of the enemy. A character able to defeat a demonic captain can usually cause his associated host to flee, granting a rout to the forces of good. It is usually easy to locate the demonic captain, because most fly a large, dark pennant. This allows their subordinates to know where their leader is, which makes sending messengers easier, but betrays his location to heroic nightwalkers.

Demonic captains are generally Aerial Powers with a Might score of 20 or less. Some demonic captains are surrounded by a ring of bodyguards, because they are not physically formidable. Other captains, with fewer magical powers and more muscle, tend to lead their forces in the fray.

Some few demonic captains are of great power, such that if they were to interact with the battle, they would almost effortlessly destroy the nightwalkers. For reasons unclear to the nightwalkers, these creatures never participate in the battle beyond giving orders to their subordinates and retreating after their usual defeat. In some cases, this is because the forces of good are led by an angel who, similarly, refuses to enter the battle unless his rival does. In most cases, though, it is unclear why the demonic captain is content to lose seasonal battles.

Musters Out of Season

Occasionally nightwalkers are called to fight evil unrelated to fertility battles or the processions of the dead.

For example, if a player’s character discovers that a demon has come to reside in his village, he may ask for aid during the next seasonal gathering and his leader might arrange a special muster to repel the creature. On a suitable night, that captain appears in the player character’s village and calls the other nightwalkers to fight the demon. The other nightwalkers will not know which of their number they have mustered to assist. They usually do not know where they are, but may be able to recognize prominent landmarks or unique buildings.

Nightwalkers rarely meet in waking life and, because the battles are dreamlike or nightmarish, they rarely recognize each other. To recognize another of the nightwalker’s militia requires a Perception + Awareness roll of (15 – the highest applicable Reputation of the observed) if they are generally met in battle, or (12 – Reputation) if they are usually met during peaceful and social processions. This Ease Factor is reduced by 3 if the two nightwalkers meet at least once a month during their waking lives, and by 6 if they meet at least once a week.

Nightwalkers sometimes also recognize the Infernal witches they have fought if they meet them in the waking world. The Ease Factor is (18 – Reputation). Some Infernal witches can take on the forms of innocent people during night battles, so most nightwalkers prefer to use supernatural methods of detection.

Returning Home

While returning home from a battle, nightwalkers travel slowly through their communities in invisible, incorporeal form. This allows them a leisurely examination of their neighborhood with Second Sight or Sense Unholiness. If they find cursed objects or injured people, they either fix these problems immediately or, more usually, remember to mend the problem during waking hours. Returning nightwalkers often take spiritual nourishment so that they suffer Long Term Fatigue for a briefer time.

The form of spiritual nourishment varies between nightwalking traditions. Some traditions claim that after battles Infernal witches slip into cellars, drink the wine, and urinate in it. This curses the wine, so that it is destined to be spilled. The nightwalkers protect the wine by slipping into the cellar and sampling it first. As they are in spiritual form, this sampling does not diminish the quantity of the wine. Protecting, or spoiling, wine in this way raises the spirits of the nightwalkers, so that they regain the Fatigue lost in the battle more quickly.

In other regions, on the nights when the Infernal witches and nightwalkers make war, some people leave pails of water on their doorsteps. Fighting Infernal witches is hot and thirsty work, and leaving water gives thanks to the nightwalkers for their protection. It also allows the nightwalkers and Infernal witches to rest and regain a level of lost Fatigue. This convinces some Infernal witches not to sample the wine in the cellar of that particular house. In other, far rarer, cases, people lay out meals that are eaten spiritually by nightwalkers. In many of these communities, the meals are thought to be for the faeries or the dead.

Many of the lycanthrope traditions worry sheep or cattle to refresh themselves. These livestock do not die after their spirits have been sampled, but many lose their strength so that they are no longer suitable as plow or stud animals. Other traditions hunt deer instead, to lessen the impact on their community. In some rare cases, animals become stronger after they have been spiritually consumed.

Story Seed: Saving the Falsely Accused There is a folktale that describes a strategy of the Infernal. A nightwalker cut the face of an Infernal witch during a fertility battle, and recognized her as a woman from his village. Upon waking, he gathered his neighbors and broke into her house. The crowd found the woman asleep, with a cut upon her face just as the nightwalker described. Their effort to lynch the woman was stopped by the local priest. He forced a demon hiding in her house to become visible and explain its actions. The demon peeled a thin layer off the woman’s face, removing the cut, and admitted that one of its followers had borrowed the pious woman’s appearance. Player characters may discover the demon, instead of the priest, and try to find a way to save the innocent woman. Incautious player characters might be fooled by similar ruses, which can be even more elaborate. For example, if the woman was a servant of the demon’s then this story ends with her happy and safe, and the nightwalker discredited in his community. Where Do Captains Come From? In some areas the captains on each side of the fertility battles are supernatural creatures, but this is less interesting for players than if their own side can be led into battle by a human — a role to which the player character can aspire. The human captain is chosen by the supernatural patron of the host, and is chosen for loyalty to the cause and skill in battle. Characters wishing to become captains need to live up to the ideals that the sponsor favors, and develop Abilities like Leadership, Second Sight, and the combat Ability appropriate for the character’s militia. Captains are favored by supernatural patrons with abilities and items beyond those of average nightwalkers. Intervening in the Battles Magi who witness a night battle may intervene. The two sides are each in corporeal form, and may be affected normally by magic. If the captain of the forces of evil is a demon, the spells that usually harm that class of being remain effective. Magi who regularly intervene in the night battles may develop the Plagued by Supernatural Entities Flaw, as the sponsor of the evil host attempts to destroy the nightwalkers’ new allies. Saga Considerations Players required to regularly play out fertility battles may find they become a chore. In troupes that feel this way, the frequency of fertility battles, and perhaps their potential lethality, should be reduced. The troupe may also simply assume the character continues to fight the battles with no significant consequences on most occasions, and only run stories when something exceptional happens. They may occasionally include Story Hooks related to things observed in an otherwise uneventful battle.

Processions

Most militias of nightwalkers participate in three types of procession: the march of the dead, inspection of the community’s borders, and celebrations.

The Processions of the Dead

Some nightwalker groups travel the Ways of the Dead with the spirits of the recently departed, and with those souls unable to rest. This keeps the Ways of the Dead clear of obstructions, like the unquiet dead, which allows the recently dead to pass from the world. The processions also regulate the movements of the unquiet dead. They enforce boundaries, and prevent the dead wandering into towns except at exceptional times like All Hallows Eve.

Nightwalkers, in immaterial form, may harm and be harmed by the ghostly dead as if both were solid and living. The herbal weapons of the nightwalkers are effective against all types of undead. Nightwalkers often find striking the dead unnecessary: ghosts from the areas where nightwalkers are found recall folklore that says that nightwalkers can thrash the dead. To intimidate a ghost, a nightwalker must make a Presence + Leadership roll against an Ease factor of 6 + the ghost’s Brave score. If the ghost or the nightwalker is in a group, the number of additional individuals willing to fight for either side is added to the roll or Ease factor.

Nightwalkers may question the unquiet dead while in phantastic form. This requires a Presence + Charm roll (to ingratiate) or a Leadership roll (to threaten) against an Ease factor as given below.

Ease Factor	Circumstances
3	Question may be answered with a yes or no.
6	Question requires an answer a sentence long.
9	Question requires an answer up to six sentences long.

No roll is required for questions that the nightwalker may answer just by observing the spirit. Are they are in a procession of happy, pious dead or a procession of wretches whipped along by demons? Do they have injuries that give clues as to their manner or death, or the location of their bodies?

The Ease Factors above should be modified if the ghost has appropriate Personality Traits. Each nightwalker may ask one question of any particular ghost on a given night.

Other Processions of the Dead In Mythic Europe there are ghosts aligned to each Realm. With the exception of Divine ghosts, processions of each Realm are found, as well. There are people similar to nightwalkers who participate in the processions of the Faerie and Infernal ghosts, and the Magical nightwalkers described in this chapter keep a careful eye on these groups, sometimes mustering to fight them if they leave their designated route. The Faerie processions have various functions and leaders, but the ones best known to the nightwalkers are led by faeries that go by names like Diana or Perchte or Frau Holle or Ricella or Heriodas. The many faeries who assume this role collect the dead and lead them, each year, to pagan underworlds. Their charges are not well restrained, and they sometimes cause damage because of a riotous desire to taste the final pleasures of the living world. Frau Holle is also known to steal naughty children and carry them away forever. On a few occasions, a Faerie procession has been interrupted by the nightwalkers and put to flight in order to rescue a child. Generally, the processions avoid each other. There are many Infernal processions. Some form spontaneously, when many people die tragically in the same area. Plague and war, for example, can create wandering hordes of ghosts. Other processions are not spontaneous: they are punishments for corrupt souls. The best known of these is led by the demon Herlichinus, who wears a fool’s motley. If a charge of his escapes, the demon jester sends a minion to claw it back to him. The nightwalkers try to prevent too much damage from occurring as the demon seeks the fleeing shade, either by helping it to pass out of the world, or by capturing it and delivering back to the procession.

Beating the Boundaries

Some processions allow the militia to patrol its community, seeking infestations of evil and teaching new members the borders of the militia’s protectorate. When beating the boundaries, character may develop an understanding of the mystical landscape of their region. They may meet faeries or magical spirits, or be told of the presence of great forces that the captain or patron of the militia chooses not to disturb. The supernatural patron may also offer useful information, like sites where magical effects occur, the locations of potent herbs, places to dig for treasure, and the lairs of troublesome predators.

Celebratory Processions

Some nightwalking traditions gather their members for feasts and celebratory processions. These may occur on their own or as an adjunct to other processions or battles. Nightwalkers often eat the spirits of animals during these feasts. Feasting is an act of spiritual regeneration that reduces the level of the nightwalker’s Long Term Fatigue after waking, as mentioned earlier. Characters suffering Long Term Fatigue for other reasons, such as illness, can similarly recover it by performing the regenerative rituals of their tradition.

Waking Activities

Although nightwalkers are most powerful when insensate, they also serve functions in the waking life of their communities.

Battling Infernal Witches While Awake and Taboos

Nightwalkers and Infernal witches may contest while awake, with the witch cursing people or things and the nightwalker curing them. The nightwalker may attack the witch, and the witch may curse the nightwalker. But neither may speak, except in the most general way, about their night battles. If either breaks their taboo they are terribly beaten, in their dreams, by the representatives of the other side. And the injuries from these beatings are transmitted to their waking forms. The source of this taboo is unknown, but both sides abide by it in virtually all traditions.

Local Traditions of Nightwalkers

Players are encouraged to use the groups below as material for designing novel traditions indigenous to the region their saga inhabits. Unless otherwise indicated, these local traditions require only the Nightwalker Virtue.

Benandanti

The benandanti (“good walkers”) are found in Northern Italy, and serve as a model for similar groups throughout Europe. In many militias, battles are fought by men and processions are completed by women, but benandanti of either sex may participate in either activity.

Becoming a Benandante Or a Benandanta

A potential nightwalker is usually summoned to his or her duties. A figure appears to the teenaged recruit and asks him to serve.

It is possible for the adolescent to refuse, but this is rare. The recruiter is very convincing, and most potential nightwalkers know that if the annual battles are lost or if the annual processions are not performed, then the harvests will fail, catches from fishing will be meager, and quarry for hunting will be rare.

Some recruits depart immediately for their first battle or procession, drawn along by their recruiter. Others must wait for the appropriate season to attend their first ceremony. In either case, the character is now able to travel in spirit form. Characters receive brief instruction in how to stray during nocturnal visits from their recruiter before the first ceremony, while traveling to their first ceremony, or when being led home from the first ceremony.

By following the recruiter to battle, the new nightwalker is promising to do battle for a period of time. Sometimes this is as little as seven years, but many continue to battle for the good of their village their entire lives.

Battles

The benandanti are called to battle on the Thursdays of the Ember Days — four seasonal fasts observed by the western Church. The battles are always on Thursdays. They occur in the first week of March; following Pentecost; following the Feast of the Exultation of the Cross (September 14); and following the Feast of Saint Lucia (December 13, the winter solstice).

Their battlefield is selected by the captain of the benandanti in agreement with the captain of the Infernal witches. The benandanti usually travel to the battlefield by immaterial flight. Some come in the shapes of cats or mice, while others ride hares, cats, or farming implements. The battlefield is usually a desolate place where the battle is unlikely to be interrupted, but one militia of benandanti meets its rivals, in immaterial form, above Saint Mark’s Square in Venice.

The benandanti form a military unit about their captain, who sometimes carries a pennant to show his rank and position on the battlefield. They are opposed by the malandanti — the “bad walkers” — who are usually Infernal witches but are sometimes unruly ghosts. The malandanti captain also carries a pennant. The malandanti host feast, sport, and dance while waiting for the battle, but the benandanti do nothing but wait, pray, and speak of strategy. The benandanti fight in human form and are armed with bunches of fennel, while the malandanti use sorghum.

Fennel Fennel is a potently magical herb. It can be used as an insect repellent, and it repels the tiny demons responsible for disease. Some people place fennel over their doors and windows, or in their keyholes, to keep witches out of their houses. This is particularly common on Midsummer Night. When Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, he hid it in a fennel stalk. The Theft of Fire, some magi hypothesize, may have permanently changed the relationship between the Realms of Magic and Faerie, or between faeries and humans.

Feasts of the Domina Ludi: The Lady of the Game

When not accompanying the dead, the processions of many nightwalkers from the Mediterranean and western Europe are led by a magical creature that takes the form of a human woman. The Lady appoints the captains of these nightwalker groups, including the benandanti, and sometimes grants them magical powers not known to other nightwalkers. The Lady does not personally attend battles.

The Lady is deliberately anonymous, and forbids conjecture concerning her name, appearance, or powers. She calls herself “The Lady of the Game” and covers her form with nondescript clothing, so that the nightwalkers never see her features. The Lady demands anonymity because if a sufficient number of nightwalkers in a militia tell stories about their activities, that militia is lost to one of her Faerie counterparts.

Militias lost to rival Faerie Lords or Ladies no longer fight servants of the Infernal on their special days. They instead contest with dark faeries in battles that seem important, but in many areas are not. Such faerie nightwalkers can still be useful as player characters, in that they do have the ability to break faerie curses and interact with the faerie dead, but they cannot serve the Lady’s purpose.

After the night feasts of the benandanti, the Lady can bring the animals eaten back to life. The benandanti place all of the animal bones inside the skins, and their patron touches the pile, which restores the animal to life. If any of the bones are missing, they need to be replaced with small pieces of alder. If any of the bones are broken, the resurrected animal will be weak in the appropriate body part. Even if correctly resurrected, cattle that have been consumed by the procession can no longer work. Some nightwalkers from a tradition in the far north of Europe claim that the animals return better and stronger for having been eaten. (This tradition grants the sacrifice the Transformed Animal Virtue described in Realms of Power: Magic.)

A little is known about the Lady. She is beautiful, and can appear either young or old. Her skin sometimes feels hairy. She can freely converse with any animal, except for donkeys. She says that this is because a donkey carried the Messiah, and so they are marked with His cross, which means they are not her subjects.

Story Seed: Aristeas The Lady of the Game’s fears of losing her troops to one of her Faerie counterparts are realized when a nightwalker player character is approached by a powerful magician skilled in straying, who asks the character to forsake the Lady for the worship of Apollo. The character claims to be the ancient Greek poet Aristeas. Characters researching him can easily find references to him in Pliny and Herodotus, saying that he had the ability to leave his body in the shape of a raven and that he had visions of calamities. He is also said to have risen from the dead at least twice, and he claims that if the characters kill him, he will simply do so again. Aristeas offers the characters some of the secrets of his master’s version of faerie magic in exchange for their loyalty. Aristeas is not a faerie himself: he claims that in recent times he has remained in phantastic form as one of the ravens that accompanies the god Apollo in Arcadia. When word of this reaches her, the Lady calls the player character’s militia to fight off Aristeas. But first she sends these loyal servants to a place of power from before the Titanomachy — the war of the Titans and Greek Gods — to find magical weapons. The Lady has discerned that the way Aristeas rises from the dead is by never coming back to full life. He merely remains a corporeal phantasticum. Like most phantastica, Aristeas should have faded when the meat rotted from his bones. He, however, has a spiritual anchor that allows him to keep returning to the world from the pagan afterlife to which his spirit flies at death. When the ancient Greeks lacked a body to bury, and worried that the spirit of the body might molest their community, they instead buried a stone — called a kolossos — which acted as an Arcane Connection to the spirit and anchored it in its grave. Aristeas uses his kolossos as a way of finding his way back to the mundane world. Aristeas’s kolossos is mentioned in Pliny: it was a statue carved to honor and to commemorate the poet Aristeas himself. It looks like Aristeas with a raven emerging from his mouth. This statue has been hidden in one of the places of power of the god Apollo, and is guarded by some of his monstrous servants from ancient times. Hence, the characters will have need of the weapons of the titans gathered on behalf of the Lady, in order to find and destroy the kolossos.

The Hounds of God

There are many forms of werewolf in Mythic Europe. Most use the form of the wolf to express base human desires. Some, guided by spirits and trained within a pack, instead express the virtues of wolves. They are fearless, unflagging guardians of their community and its territory.

Secretive werewolf clans are found in many regions. Most of the lycanthropes that serve the Order of Hermes are of a simpler sort than nightwalkers. They are people who take the form of an animal, or who take a form that has the stronger features of both human and animal. These have the Skinchanger or Shapeshifter Virtue. Some are similar to nightwalkers, in that they have the ability to project an animalistic phantasticum for some distance, after falling into a trance. These use the Hamr Virtue, described in the Virtues section. Far rarer, and not publicly known to serve any covenant, are the Hounds of God — the werewolves charged with besieging Hell itself.

Becoming a Hound of God

There are two methods of becoming a Hound of God. Some are born to it: they are cauled or slightly deformed at birth. At puberty, these potential wolves are visited while they sleep by a spirit that takes the form of a lame child. He guides them to irregular musters, but does not participate in battle himself. In some communities, people are tricked into becoming wolves.

If someone toasts the health of a werewolf, that nightwalker can pass the power to stray to the toaster. To do this, the wolf does not drink to the toast, or give thanks for it. Instead, he blows three times across the mouth of the bottle from which the wine has come and says, “As was done to me, so be done to you.” Usually this trick is practiced by elderly wolves who want to retire from their duties. It is possible for wolves to pass their duties along families using this method. The abilities and duties of the Hounds of God are not generally passed to the children of werewolves in utero, or by biting a victim.

Battles

Three times per year — the eve of Saint Lucia, Midsummer’s night, and Pentecost — the Hounds of God raid Hell in phantastic form. They recapture the seeds stolen from the Earth by sorcerers in the service of the Infernal, so that they can be scattered through the sky and replenish the fertility of the Earth. The Hounds of each country, and perhaps each region, claim to raid a different Hell. The Hell the werewolves enter might be a regio, and is always entered by traveling to the end of the sea.

Hounds of God stray in wolf form. They are confronted by Infernal sentries, who use iron batons as weapons. They also fight sorcerers, who use broomsticks wrapped in horses’ tails as weapons. In most years, any given pack is successful. Werewolves hypothesize that a terrible loss suffered by one regional militia sometimes makes it easier for other militias to be successful in that year. This is why regions that are close together, and therefore conduct their raids at similar times, can have such different degrees of success, and such different harvests.

Some Hounds of God have the ability to fight in phantastic wolf form when not traveling or raiding Hell. These require the Versatile Phantasticum Virtue. Hounds of God worry the spirits of sheep, eat the vitality of cattle, or hunt game to refresh themselves spiritually. Their celebratory processions are hunts.

Hounds of God do not have a sacred herb and are found primarily in areas with Germanspeaking settlers, although this includes areas with German minorities, like Poland.

Kresniki and Kudlaki

Kresniks and kudlak are nightwalkers found in many Slavic areas, although the names vary in regional dialects. Every community has a kresnik as its protector, and each has a sorcerer that attempts to steal away its fertility, called a kudlak.

Vokudlak, of which kudlak is an abbreviation, is a nebulous word that may mean sorcerer, werewolf, or vampire. The living vokudlak is a sorcerer, and is able to curse others and steal the fertility of the harvest. He is able to stray, and his phantasticum is usually a black dog, a boar, or an ox (the form is chosen at character creation). This phantasticum is able to fly when immaterial. If the kudlak dies he becomes a sort of vampire. He then continues in his role as leacher of the fertility of the community, with additional powers. To prevent a kudlak returning as a vampire, it is necessary to drive a hawthorn stake through his corpse or cut the tendons behind his knees.

Becoming a Kresnik Or Kudlak

Both kresniki and kudlaki are born with cauls, but the caul of a kresnik is clear or white, and that of a kudlak is red or black. In some areas, if a midwife sees that the caul is the wrong color, she will announce loudly through the windows that a kresnik has been born, because this is thought to force the child to change roles. In other communities, a nightwalker is born with a vestigial tail or after his mother’s death.

Kresniki and kudalaki are usually trained in their roles by older members of their traditions. Most kresniki are first called to battle at the age of seven, although some are called at eighteen or even more rarely at twenty-eight. They refresh themselves spiritually through a variety of methods mentioned in other traditions, like drinking or feasting in spiritual form.

Battles

The kresnik and kudlak do battle regularly. Some battles are seasonal, and if the kresnik is victorious the community thrives, while if the kudlak wins he is prosperous and becomes more powerful. Other battles occur simply because the straying spirit of the kresnik sees that the kudlak is about to attack someone, and intervenes. Kresniks usually take one of the three forms that kudlaks do, but their phantastica are dappled in color.

These characters are required to take the Versatile Phantasticum Virtue, because they can use an animal-shaped phantasticum to fight outside of the fertility battles.

Kudlaks that defeat their kresnik have the Wealthy virtue until the next battle, and after a sufficient number of victories their Social Status Virtue improves. Powerful kudlaks usually turn to the Infernal or Faerie powers, and use the life they sap from their community as a sacrifice or item for trade, gaining additional powers. Hexing is particularly popular. Kresniks can kill kudlaks if they wish, but precautions must be taken to prevent their return as vampires. Even if the kudlak is destroyed, the kresnik will face a new, unfamiliar kudlak the next year.

Kresniks also gather on Christmas and the Ember Days to fight night battles. The foes in the night battles vary by region. In some it is hordes of sorcerers or vampires, while in others it is nightwalkers from neighboring countries. Sometimes, when neighboring countries do battle, the kresniks and kudalks of a region will declare a truce until they repel the raiders.

Hawthorn Hawthorn repels vampires for many reasons. Ovid reports it being used to mark a young princeling as being protected from vampires by the ancient Roman goddess Carna. The Crown of Thorns that was placed on the brow of Jesus was of hawthorn, and so it is a symbol of His sacrifice and majesty. Thorns can be used to prick the bodies of the dead, to make them less able to sense or walk. Hawthorns are also used as hedges, to mark and make boundaries.

Mazzeru

The mazzeri are a Corsican tradition of nightwalkers. Some fight Infernal witches or mazzeri from surrounding villages, much as their counterparts in other lands do. Mazzeri use stalks of asphodel as weapons. All mazzeri also have an extra duty. They are forced to stray, and hunt, through the Corsican night. Some take animal form, while others retain human form and use weapons. In these visions, the mazzeru has no choice but to kill one or more animals. Then, by inspecting the face of each dead animal, the mazzeru can determine which villager it represents. Those killed by a mazzeru are likely to die within a particular period of time — as short as three days in some villages, as long as a year in others.

Note that the mazzeru cannot choose who, or even if, to kill. Those mazzeri who accept this, and choose to have disturbing dreams without it affecting their waking life, do not gain a Flaw. Some mazzeri feel in some way responsible for the deaths they foresee, and attempt to prevent them. These mazzeri have a Story Flaw, and may, with some care, save those who they have hunted in their dreams.

Asphodel Some mazzeri use bunches of asphodel as weapons during phantastic battles. Asphodel is powerfully connected to the dead. The Greeks thought that most of the spirits in Hades dwelled in the Fields of Asphodel. It is also sacred to Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld. The Romans grew asphodel near graveyards, because it was considered a food of the dead.

Taltós

The taltós described here are Hungarian nightwalkers. Taltós are mentioned briefly in House of Hermes: Societates on page 169, and they are suggested as a regional variant of Pharmacopeians. This confusion arises because the term taltós refers to a social role — the wandering magician. Much as it is possible to have three witches, each with entirely different powers, so similarly in Mythic Europe characters who have the lifestyle of a taltós will be labeled a taltós.

Strictly, a taltós was a Magyar shaman with the full range of powers common to his tradition. These are unknown in Mythic Europe. Hungary converted to Christianity centuries ago, and between pressure from the Church, competition for apprentices with House Tremere, and the movement of the Axis Magica by House Criamon, the tradition has waned so that modern, unGifted taltós each have only a part of the power of their ancestors.

Becoming a Taltós

Taltós are marked by God within the womb: this mark usually appears as a minor deformity, like extra fingers and toes, or being born cauled or with teeth. Taltós children are notably hungrier than other children are, and are particularly greedy for dairy products, which is a trait that continues in later life. At the age of seven, the young taltós enters a coma for three days. Taltós comas have the appearance of a fever, and the taltós babbles disconnected words while his spirit strays. The young taltós usually hides his body somewhere safe, but taltós do not die if their bodies are moved.

During the first coma, which lasts for three days, the young taltós is visited by an older taltós in cow or horse form. It is usual in some areas for the initiating taltós to be of the opposite gender as the initiate. The two fight, and if the young taltós fails, he becomes a half taltós, as described in the Minor Virtues section. If victorious, the young taltós faces other initiations.

The young taltós’ initiations are arduous and painful. These are vision quests that require the child to be cut into pieces, his bones counted, and then boiled in a cauldron to return him to life. Fortunately this harm is not reflected on the mundane body. The dream quests also involve climbing the tallest trees in the forest while distracted and aided by spirits. This represents climbing the Great Tree that holds the world together. There is no record of a young taltós ever failing these later tests, so either every young taltós succeeds, or something dreadful happens to those who fail.

Taltos Battles

A fully initiated taltós is required to fight for the fertility of his village. Combat occurs either three times a year, or once every seven years, depending on the locale. Taltós fight in the forms of horses, bulls, or flames (the form is selected when the virtue is first gained). Their enemies include Infernal witches, the dead, diabolists, and nightwalkers from other regions. The animal and elemental forms of all taltós in a single militia are the same color, so colleagues and enemies are obvious when militias battle.

The battles of taltós are fought incorporeally in the sky. The battles often disturb the clouds and cause rain. Some taltós can use their inhuman phantastica for combat outside their fertility battles, and to cause storms. These taltós have the Versatile Phantasticum virtue.

Taltós revive themselves spiritually by eating enormous amounts of food during the day that follows straying. Some taltós demand gifts of food, particularly bread and cheese, from peasants, and threaten to cause storms that will destroy crops if they’re not appeased. In other places, when there is a drought the local people give gifts to their taltós to encourage them to fight a battle that causes a storm.

Taltós who continue in their role their entire lives are best suited as player characters, but many taltós serve only for a brief period. Some lose all of their abilities at the age of fifteen. Others lose a portion of their powers, while some retain them but cease to identify themselves publicly as taltós.

Statistics and Abilities for Flame Shape A character in the shape of a ball or wheel of flame has a form that is superficially similar to an elemental with a Might of 10. The character does not have the magical nature of an elemental, and lacks its Might score, but physically it has the characteristics of such an elemental. This gives Characteristics of Cunning 0, Perception –8, Communication –8, Presence 0, +4 Strength, +2 Stamina, +4 Dexterity, +2 Quickness. The character’s human Intelligence replaces the Cunning score. For all other Characteristics, if both the elemental form and human form have a negative score, use the lowest score. If both the elemental and human form have a positive score, use the highest. If the human and elemental forms have one positive and one negative score, add the two scores. The character may use any of his human form’s Abilities that a ball of flame is physically capable of using. This includes the ability to sense warmth and the locations of objects by the differences in their temperature. In flame form the character is able to use Second Sight to find friends and foes in phantastic form. The tremendous Perception penalty taltós suffer in fire form prevents them serving as effective leaders of groups. Abilities that are based on the character’s reasoning and experience remain available. The character may use the Brawl ability to fight, and does +5 fire Damage. Wound levels do not change between the forms, although the fire form is invulnerable to mundane fire and to wooden weapons. Characters striking a taltós in elemental form without weapons, for example other taltós using horns or teeth, suffer +5 burn damage for each attack (Penetration 0). If the character is completely extinguished, he dies. Some taltós report a feeling of continuous, nagging hunger when in human form, but the fire form makes this far more severe (Personality trait: Hungry +3).

Mythic Companions

The nightwalker traditions found in the Order of Hermes’ portion of Europe vary in power, and individuals within each regional tradition are similarly diverse. Most traditions produce characters suited to roles as grogs or companions. A few provide characters of sufficient power to be designed as Mythic Companions.

Players are, however, encouraged to construct their own traditions, either by incorporating the Nightwalker Virtue into a package for a new tradition, or by selecting the Nightwalker virtue as an adjunct to one of the other traditions found in this book. Some mazzeru claim to be folk witches during the day and dream hunters by night, for example, and some of the vitkir possess the ability to stray.

Hermetic Integration

Members of nightwalking traditions have often found service with the Order. The weaker varieties of Nightwalker, who have the ability to use Second Sight and injure spirits, are prized as guards. Those who are able to travel swiftly and invisibly are valued as scouts by militant houses. Those who can take material form at a distance, and return with the objects they steal, make excellent spies and saboteurs.

Although Gifted nightwalkers could theoretically be inducted into the Order as Gifted Companions (see Houses of Hermes: Societates, page 107) it would be difficult for lineages to form. Nightwalking isn’t taught: it’s something that the nightwalker simply knows once he joins his tradition. Also, there seems to be a mechanism that divides those who are called to serve as nightwalkers, and act as their community’s guards, from the Gifted whose supernatural taint prevents them from integrating with society.

There is an interesting, if partial, exception to this problem. The Hounds of God, who are little understood by the Order of Hermes, have the ability to pass their ability to stray to whomever they choose, using the toasting ritual described in their section. The Hound loses the power after his successor is toasted, but if the characters were able to convince a pack that they were more skilled guardians than other candidates, it is possible that a covenant of magi could be appointed as Hounds, and pass their Virtue to a single member of each subsequent generation.

Partial Integration in Progres

The integration of the power of nightwalking into Hermetic theory is closer than most magi imagine, because the process of incorporation has already begun. Hermetic magi assume that the certamen ritual is descended from Thessalian magic given to Bonisagus by Trianoma or her sister Viea, but this is false. The ritual of certamen is based on the spiritual battles of the nightwalkers.

The Lappish Origins of Certamen

Laplander shamans who wish each other harm can meet in phantastic form, the phantasticum of each racing toward the other and striking it savage blows. The injuries suffered do not appear on the bodies of the shamans, however. Instead, they suffer increasing fatigue as their phantastica are wounded. If particularly passionate for battle, the shamans can force their phantastica to collide, which leaves one shaman unconscious and sometimes provokes something similar to a temporary Twilight experience. The illusions constructed during certamen are the weak phantastica of Hermetic magi.

The virtues that allow a magus to perform certamen are included, free and unnamed, in the Hermetic Magus virtue package. They are a Minor Virtue for the ability to perform certamen, and a Major Virtue for the ability to perform certamen without developing a specific Supernatural Ability. Hermetic magi do not have a certamen score, just as nightwalkers do not have a Nightwalking score.

A character who completes a Major Breakthrough can extend the Hermetic capacity to perform certamen, so that it encompasses the powers of the true Nightwalkers. Magi from House Tremere have already achieved some Insight in this field: the effects that this Insight permits are expressed as their House Virtue: Focus (Certamen). This Virtue may be lost when the Nightwalker Virtue is integrated, depending on the research undertaken. Tremere characters created after the integration, at each troupe’s discretion, might retain the certamen Focus, swap it for an alternative Focus, or lose the Focus and allow Tremere characters to select Nightwalker at the cost of two added Minor Virtues.

These Hermetic nightwalkers are both more and less versatile than other nightwalking traditions. Their phantastica, provided they remain incorporeal, may have almost any shape, like the illusions created in the certamen ritual. The corporeal phantastica of these characters, however, are always a single shape that reflects their highest Technique and Form pair. A character with a Creo Animal pair, might, for example, have a particular animal as her shape. Characters whose primary pairs provide no obvious material form, like Mentem and Imaginem masters, have the human form instead.

Path of Seeming

Senior Criamon magi who follow the Path of Seeming have the ability to spirit travel, but can’t generate a phantasticum. Some of them are descended from a shamanic, but non-militant, tradition native to the area around the Cave of Twisting Shadows. The current prima, Muscaria, is named after the intoxicating mushroom they used, although neither she, nor her teacher, are on this Path.

Criamon magi are aware that the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras was able to seem to be in two distant cities at the same time. Those on the Path of Seeming hypothesise a link between Pythogorean mathematics and ekstasis. The recovery of Pythagorean relics might grant Insight into the Breakthrough necessary to initiate magi into this power. This is a Minor Breakthrough for a researcher who has mastered the Station of Passing Through Seeming, or a Major Breakthrough for one who has not done this. This will allow the Magi of the Path of Seeming to replace the current effects of the Station of Passing Through Seeming with a variant of the Nightwalker virtue that does not require spirit battles, and allows a human phantasticum.

Early practitioners of this mystery will rapidly notice the similarity to certamen, and may allow this information to reach their housemates in the Path of Walking Backwards. These violent magi may attempt to develop certamen-based nightwalking, as detailed in the previous section.

Rothiger, A Hound of God Companion Characteristics: Int 0, Per +1, Pre 0, Com 0, Str +1, Sta +1, Dex 0, Qik +2 Size: 0 Age: 21 (21) Confidence Score: 1 (3) Virtues and Flaws: Wanderer (itinerant agricultural laborer); Nightwalker; Intuition, Versatile Phantasticum; Dark Secret (he’s a werewolf who can’t control his urge to kill animals); Compulsion (Minor: he loves to kill things in wolf form, forcing him to migrate often to avoid detection), Higher Purpose (sought out his nightwalking role). Personality Traits: Loyalty (pack) +3, Enjoys hunting +3 Combat: Brawl: Init +2, Attack +5, Defense +6, Damage +3 Soak: +1 Fatigue Levels: OK, 0, –1, –3, –5, Unconscious Wound Penalties: –1 (1–5), –3 (6–10), –5 (11–15), Incapacitated (16–20), Dead (21+) Abilities: Athletics 2 (running), Awareness 1 (animals), Bargain 1 (food and lodging), Brawl 3 (knife), Carouse 2 (agricultural festivals), Folk Ken 1 (farmworkers), German 5 (peasants), Guile 3 (covering his tracks), Hunt 1 (small game), Pack Lore 2 (history), Profession: laborer 1 (slaughtering), Second Sight* 2 (demons), Survival 1 (outskirts of settled areas), Swim 2 (icy water). * Due to the Nightwalker virtue, and only available to the phantasticum. Equipment: Rothiger wears clothing of leather and wool. He carries a hunter’s knife, which he uses in combat in human form. Encumbrance: 0 (0) Appearance: A fit young man with red hair and freckles. Rothiger hasn’t completely outgrown the gangliness of puberty, despite his age, but his reactions are surprisingly swift. Rothiger in Wolf Form Characteristics: Int 0, Per 1, Pre –2, Com 0, Str 0, Sta +3, Dex +2, Qik +2 Size: –1 Confidence Score: 1 (3) Virtues and Flaws: Improved Characteristics (x2), Ferocity (when hungry), Long-Winded, Sharp Ears, Compulsion (killing), Infamous Qualities: Aggressive, Hardy, Keen Sense of Smell, Pack Animal/Pack Leader, Pursuit Predator, Sharp Ears, Thick Fur, Vocal Combat: Teeth: Init +2, Attack +14, Defense +12, Damage +2 Soak: +4 Fatigue Levels: OK, 0/0, –1/–1, –3, –5, Unconscious Wound Penalties: –1 (1–4), –3 (5–8), –5 (9–12), Incapacitated (13–16) Abilities: Athletics 5 (distance running), Awareness 3 (smell), Brawl 8* (teeth), Hunt 5 (track by smell), Survival 3 (winter) * Players seeking Abilities beyond the normal human maximum for a given age, because of the innate skill of an animal form, should negotiate with their Troupes. Rothiger can be used as a villainous werewolf with no statistical changes.

Saga Seeds

Individual nightwalkers are weaker than Hermetic magi, and must be careful to manipulate situations so that their powers provide them an advantage.

As Enemies

Militias of nightwalkers are powerful enough to threaten young magi directly, but foes who have the ability to stray are extremely dangerous in long-running disputes. Nightwalkers have no Might, so they are not held at bay by the Aegis of the Hearth. They can walk straight through the walls that most covenants use to defend their supplies, and nightwalkers can choose to be invisible. They are able to obtain information, steal small objects, and perform sabotage with a simplicity that is breathtaking.

House Tremere is aware of the military potential of nightwalkers, and used a few of them during the Schism War to good effect. Their problem is that nightwalking cannot be learned: so the House cannot simply train an army able to walk through walls. They need to form alliances with pre-existing groups, and these are tentative because the supernatural patrons of the nightwalking groups avoid magi.

If a militaristic House ever becomes cognisant of the transmissibility of the curse of the Hounds of God, then they might be able to manipulate the membership of a nightwalking pack. Used discretely, this could prove an asset of decisive military value.

As Allies

The nightwalkers are in a constant state of war. This means that magi are able to trade favours with the captains of militias, or with individual nightwalkers, if they can be identified. Nightwalkers are not trained insurgency agents, and so they cannot be expected to perform missions that require exceptional Ability scores, but for simple spying, stealing, or assassinations, they are excellent agents.

Return of the Taltós

The modern taltós are a memory of the Magyar shamans of pagan times. They were said to be able to tell the future, were superhumanly strong, could make women conceive with simple charms, transformed into horses, and flew through the wind. They could climb the Great Tree to other worlds. They couldn’t die, unless they had an heir or a broom was shoved in their hands and then burned.

That last power, — immortality until the Mystery passes to another — came to the Order’s notice about three hundred years ago. Magi from many houses sought these immortal hedge wizards in all kinds of inhospitable places, like sunken ships and collapsed mines. They could not be found, and so Seekers passed on to more productive concerns.

It will only take a whisper of the presence of a Magyar shaman, trapped somewhere, to make the Seekers resume their hunt. House Criamon privately hopes that a Magyar shaman somehow got caught up the Great Tree, and that when he climbs down again he will be surprised to find himself in the Cave of Twisting Shadows. He would appear in a suitably secure section, where his views on pacifism can be ascertained.

Arno, a Benandante Companion Characteristics: Int +1, Per 0, Pre 0, Com 0, Str +2, Sta +1, Dex +1, Qik +1 Size: 0 Age: 21 (21) Confidence Score: 1 (3) Virtues and Flaws: Craftsman; Nightwalker; Sense Holiness and Unholiness, Tough; Dark Secret (lives in a community that persecutes benandanti); Close Family Ties, Higher Purpose Personality Traits: Devout +2, Practical +1 Combat: Club and Shield: Init +1*, Attack +9, Defense +10, Damage +5 *Includes encumbrance, which is a result of phantastic armor that Arno does not use in waking battles. Soak: +8 Fatigue Levels: OK, 0, –1, –3, –5, Unconscious Wound Penalties: –1 (1–5), –2 (6–10), –3 (11–15), Incapacitated (16–20), Dead (21+) Abilities: Awareness 2 (battlefield), Athletics 1 (running), Bargain 1 (domestic goods), Brawl 1 (supernatural foes), Carouse 1 (Saturdays), Craft: Smith 5 (agricultural tools), Folk Ken 2 (festivals), Home Village Lore 3 (supernatural dangers), Second Sight* 3 (ghosts), Sense Holiness and Unholiness 3 (infernal witches), Single Weapon 5 (club), Speak Italian 5 (commoners) * Due to the Nightwalker Virtue; only available to the phantasticum. Equipment: Arno uses a club of fennel in night battles, wears a leather scale vest, and carries a round shield. Encumbrance: –1 (3) Appearance: Arno is a young smith, and it is obvious from his build that he does heavy work with his hands. He keeps his hair and beard short for safety. His eyes are brown, and his hair is black: blacker when he has been working his uncle’s forge. Arno is easily redesigned as a malandanti, an evil nightwalker. To represent his reward for serving evil, replace the Sense Holiness and Unholiness Virtue with the Venus’ Blessing Virtue, and move the points spent on the related ability to Charm 2 (women), and Guile 2 (women). The malandanti in Arno’s region use sorghum stalks as spears, so change the specialization of his Single Weapon Ability to spear. His new combat statistics are Short spear and shield: Init +2*, Attack +9, Defense +9, Damage +7, with his Initiative penalized for phantastic armor that he would not use during waking hours. To use Arno as a weak ghost, simply give him a Magic Might of 10 to grant limited magic resistance, and charge him a Might point every time he changes from immaterial to solid. In either form, Arno’s spear can harm characters who are in corporeal form.

Enemies Or Servants of the Lady

The Lady of the Game is one of the most powerful magical spirits currently active in Mythic Europe. She co-ordinates, and perhaps even creates, a vast personal army of magical soldiers. It is easy to suggest she is simply a fertility spirit, but magi interested in the Game have always suspected she is something else. She claims to predate the Olympian gods, but anyone could make that claim. What does the Order do if she is a historical figure who has no love for the Order, like Diedne or Viea, and is waiting for a new sign of weakness?

The Lady’s goals might not be directed at the Order, but might impinge upon it. For example, she hates Faeries and effectively helps to spread the Dominion. Her influence could impact on the vis gathering sites of many covenants. House Jerbiton, however, would probably seek to aid the Lady, if that was her goal, and House Criamon would like to speak with her in any case. She might be an Adulteration — a sort of psychic shadow of a Criamon magus. Or she might be one of the missing Primi that messianic Criamon think must be gathered as part of the process that makes the answer to the Enigma apparent.

Attribution

Attribution Based on the material for Ars Magica, ©1993-2024, licensed by Trident, Inc. d/b/a Atlas Games®, under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license 4.0 ("CC-BY-SA 4.0"). Ars Magica Open License Logo ©2024 Trident, Inc. The Ars Magica Open License Logo, Ars Magica, and Mythic Europe are trademarks of Trident, Inc., and are used with permission. Order of Hermes, Tremere, Doissetep, and Grimgroth are trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB and are used with permission.