The last time Sandie had seen Tom "Gordo" Gordon {kidnapper, sexual predator, willing pawn of a Spectre} he'd been dead.

And he was dead, too - there had been no question of that. Half of his neck had been shot away, thanks to a well-aimed bullet. If that hadn't done it, the ten extra slugs Sandie and her Crucible had put in him surely had. And then they'd kicked him repeatedly, when he was finally down, just to make sure the sick, murderering weasel wasn't getting back up again.

They'd left him there, dead on the floor of the abandoned factory he'd used as a demented playground. Chuck had wanted to burn him, or something, "just to be sure," but Sandie said they should just go on. She didn't want to waste any time destroying the creature he called "master." So they left him, there, to rot.

But here he was, again.

He was standing in Sandie's room, leaning on her dresser like he owned it: one arm on the dresser, the other resting behind his back, He was wearing the same style of clothing he'd had on the day they'd killed him, only new. He had paler skin than she remembered: dry and taut in all the wrong places.

And he smelled awful, like freshly-turned earth, or luncheon meat left out too long...

"You were dead..." She said, taking a step back: "Gone."

"Home again, Home again, Jiggedy-Jig...." Gordo sang, blinking eyes that were sharp with malice. It was his voice, alright, and even worse than before.

Sandie might have said something, then, but she was thinking what his next move might be. Her gun was in the closet, just past him. Had he seen it? Did he know where it was...?

He cocked his head to the side, his bones creaking as he did, and brought her gun out from behind his back. The revolver was unloaded, the bullets nowhere to be seen.

"Looking for your toys?" He asked, holding it before his chest with his index finger, dangling it by the triggerguard.

But Sandie wasn't looking at the gun. She was looking at his neck, instead - the lower left side, in particular. It was a mesh of badly-healed scars, all centered on where the fatal bullet had travelled...

"Oh yeah, I'm back, little girl," he hissed, twice as ugly for the sandpaper in his voice: "And now we're gonna play..."

With that, he tossed the gun aside and ran right at her, moving faster than anyone should be able to...

This article allows Storytellers to turn ghost characters {Hues and Spirits} into a new, hybrid Lament called the Risen. These "Risen" operate much like the old Risen from Wraith: the Oblivion, but with appropriate changes in keeping with Orpheus' new rules for ghosts.

In order to take full advantage of this article, Storytellers will need access to the core book for Orpheus {the main rules}, Shadow Games {details on Tapping Spite} and Wraith's The Risen {for information on the Risen, themselves}.

You can buy The Risen as an e-book, from White Wolf's online catalogue, here.


The Risen
Coming Back
Life in Death

Back