The Ghost

Life, when you're barely living, can stretch on. There's only so long you can go on telling yourself that you exist, that you matter, when the matter of this world doesn't even recognise you. Doors, objects, people - it's as if you're not a person at all. Being able to move through a solid wall is novel for only so long. People who have people in their lives underestimate how having no one, makes you want to die.

Long Description: It might have started innocuously enough: an argument between two children. A friend or a sibling. One moment the stuffed animal is there, thumping you rhythmically in the face even as you turn this way and that and bite out your annoyance - the next, it's gone. Just gone. It never came back.

People call you a liar. Unless they're there to see it (a matter you do everything to avoid now, because that's much, much more dangerous), you accept you must have taken the things that go missing; you're the only one left in the room.

Things vanish around you. Once, painfully, a wooden plank vanished and you fell through the air, through two stories of the abandoned house until you met the ground and your shin ruptured through the flesh of your ankle.

The more you try to force things to stay as they are, the more they ignore you, and vanish. It's the same with people. Over the last year you've become all but a ghost in the world, living on the edge of other people's laughter and smiles, watching their lives. They don't see you. Or, if they do, they look over you. They forget you.

You had a life, once. Possibly that makes it worse because you can remember the days of love and kindness - of having things to do because other people wanted you at events, so they thought to remind you, they cared to reach out and see if you're doing well - if you were alive over there.

You can all but roll back under Laudanum. You can close your eyes and let the distant idea of friendship resonate through you. Drugs help the heart imagine what it would be like to have people in your life, a morning filled with breathless laughter and shoulder bumps and in thinking it, you can let it wash over you, you can let love play out on you like the sun on closed eyes, or salt on open wounds.

Loneliness is like an odour, like something alive that forms on your skin and clings to your clothes. You can't scrub it away. The more lonely you become, the more alien you appear to others. The comfort of walking among strangers is that there isn't time to sense your difference from them. There is no aloneness like the aloneness felt among those you know well.

You could try drinking a lot, though that only succeeds in creating a sense of alcoholic saturation, your body a tired sponge in a puddle of too much wine. Your head stays comparatively clear so you're just able to feel upset about how sluggish and drunk your body feels.

If this is a superpower, you want to return it. Walking through a wall or bypassing the rare door doesn't feel good anymore. It just reminds you how even the material world doesn't care if you exist. Now, there's people for the first time taking an interest in you. And all they want is to sell you to somebody or something else.

Mechanics: With focus, you can pass through solid objects, closed doors and walls, though not magically warded barriers or necromantic protections. You can deny the existence of small mundane objects which carry no particular occult power, though they may be significant to someone else. Sometimes the things come back, sometimes they don't. Your control over what vanishes and what stays seems dependent on your mood and just how much you will something away.

Now, you can all but will yourself away, at least to the minds of everyone else. You can all but turn invisible - or rather: unnoticed. Hard to know how effective it is, because when you're not using it, people forget you're standing there anyway. People talk about shouting to be heard; you've practically screamed, all your life.

You have access to a passive power that functions in the same way as a Strong level of the vampiric power Obfuscate, for your use of “invisibility” (see Mechanics page). You may use it at any time. It is not true invisibility but rather a notice-me-not effect where people just don’t really see you, they’ll move out the way for you and their minds will explain away your presence as something else. You can use this at any point, though high level Auspex users - another vampiric power - might be able to see you if they focus on you.

For the passage of space where you ignore doors, walls or objects, this counts as an Extreme use of a human power and like all such extreme powers (see Mechanics page) you can use it once per night on roleplay night one, and twice on nights two and three. It must be a single wall, object, cell or door and any active magical or necromantic chains tied around you will prevent you from dematerialising. Magical restraints do not stop you denying the existence of mundane objects - this counts as a separate, third, power that you possess and it may also only be used once on night one, twice on night two and twice on night three. The roleplayer whose character owns the object to be denied and vanished has the ultimate decision on how permanently or for how long the object vanishes. You have no control over willing things back, unfortunately.

You can step through a locked door that you “don’t see,” as if it is an archway, and a sword that you refuse to acknowledge fails to cut you, passing right through your body. You can only extend your power to objects you are touching. If you throw a weapon at a door you’ve chosen to deny the existence of, it would no longer be touching you the moment it leaves your hand and it would clonk off it, or get stuck in it.

This power cannot be used to deny the existence of living creatures, undead, or spirits; it works only on inanimate objects. You are consciously aware that, to the weak-minded, the object you’ve denied still exists, but for you, it is nothing more than a semi-transparent, obviously false reflection of reality. The object you’ve denied cannot obscure your sight, block your movement, touch, or harm you in any way.