This is the start of an Origin story for the Geist, the ghost in the shell of the Sin-Eaters.

I was waiting for White Wolf to get back to me, but something became clear as I continued to work on this, and the other areas I’ve read in the World of Darkness… absolute origin stories are not that great for Storylines. Once they are known, limitations are … set in stone… and who wants that? So, this is only a ‘possible’ origin story, one which I will continue to work on and develop into a real ‘ready-for-game’ source.

Gais of the Geist

Places have power. This has been understood since the beginning of man’s awareness of the world around him. There are places, it is known, that the gods have walked. There are oasis which are holy, valleys which are damned, mountain tops where blood can be split for a god, and the groves of druids.

Places have power.

Through the eons of time, these places, the Gais (earth spirits, the kami, the shin, horgr, nemeton, temenos, whatever you wish to call them, because they have no name for themselves), grow in power and then into chthonic awareness. With awareness of themselves, comes the awareness of others; plants, animals, fish, the movement of wind, the rush of avalanche, the passing of the sun, the mirror light of the moon. Man.

With the awareness of man, comes the awareness of true movement, an insight into the possibility of being more than chthonic; something free of bonds — individual being as spirit.

Awareness grows slowly along this area, for while the Gais can feel, see, experience that man comes and goes, and changes; while it can feel the emotional burst of energy at the point of sacrifice, or the power brought down into it from the druid’s call, it is still land, a chthonic awareness, even if it is the Gais of a canyon of howling wind, it is still — a place. Watching and experiencing man, however, it learns that there is more, something more… something. The Gais can see the stream of their becoming, as man’s gais leave their earth bodies. Man has a name for this passage, it is called death, but the Gais do not understand this concept, it is far to foreign, all it knows is that something, something resembling itself, leaves the earth of the man, and slips into the stream which moves across the heavens.

The Gais wants to do this becoming, wishes to fly in the heavens, walk on the earth — like the other celestial beings it can see; it just, doesn’t know how that is done. So it watches, and hopes, and dreams of being released, as the eons of time pass, and its power continues to pool, and the Gais continues to become.

It is not only man, which continues to show the Gais that reaching, and going, and moving are desirable. The sun moves across the sky, the moon follows. The birds come, and they go. Fish come, and they go, and then they come again. So there is a universe here, that the Gais begins to see it could be a part of, if it knew how, but it doesn’t even know where to start; how to begin.

It is the Geist which provide the horse the Gais can ride from its grove, out of its canyon, away from its sacrificial mountain peak. The Geist, are focused, bright, raging. In the stream of floating candles across the spiritual heavens, the Geist are white hot flames, burning all that come near them. Intensely focused energies, struggling against the stream pulling it on to the other world. The Geist struggle and flay and reach out, with all of their madness and rage, and sexual energy.

Reaching for something to hold on to, struggling for one more moment!

These are different souls to the Gais. The human sacrifices are normally drugged, the animal souls too unaware, the battles that fill the Gais fields with blood, are fought with too much acceptance, and understanding. The Geists are rare, very few in the stream, these hot burning torches of raw primordial intention, reaching out for something to hold on to — these primordial intentions the Gais understands…

The Bargain of the Geist

The Geist, probably has no idea that it has made a bargain, or that it owes anything to the Gais it grabbed a hold of, to pull itself from the river of death. After all, a person doesn’t feel they’ve made a bargain with the park, or the river or the beach, just because you played ball, went fishing or surfed. We don’t owe the park or stream anything, except perhaps to pack out our trash, and leave the area a bit better than when we arrived. We aren’t bonding our souls to the land. And, if you happen to be struggling and drowning, and bashed about in the fast currents of a river of death, and you are able to reach out and grab a hold of a rock, and pull yourself out of the river — you don’t owe the rock your life…

Right?

For the Geist, this is exactly what she has done, though again, she probably has no idea that this has happened. The Geist finds a handhold, grips it, and pulls herself from the river of death. Laying there on the rock, and dirt of the Gais, she recovers her strength and ponders. Starring up at the sky and stars above, she watches eons of time pass by, and the Geist is renewed, and feels more alive than she felt when she was alive.

With this new energy, however, she doesn’t want to hang around starring at the stars, and the eons of time; she didn’t pull herself out of the river of death to turn into a poet — the Geist wants to get back into a body, and get moving again; and this is exactly what the Gais has been hoping for…the bargain is made — power for movement.

With the Geist, it all seems so easy, though in its core it knows that it could not do all of this movement alone, or even come up with the idea. The Gais has a massive core of energy, so just about anything the Geist comes up with, it can power her intention. Thus, when the Geist comes up with the idea of flashing to intercept a spirit that is leaving its body, and making a bargain, the Gais is there in the background providing these intentions of hers with raw chthonic power, hurtling the Geist across space, down into the instant, the exact moment of death, before the other human is about to leave its earth, and make the bargain.

At first the Gais is hesitant about this new bargain, after all, it has only just been able to leave its earth, it doesn’t want to be bound to a new earth, not when it is right here on the edge of being, but it remembers that the man gais (the human spirits) leave their earth regularly, and some even come back to it after leaving, so for these man gais, coming and going isn’t a problem, it is like walking — neither of which the Gais can do, so it allows the bargain, and accepts its part, even though neither of the other two parties are aware of the entire line of thought or feeling which has transpired while the Gais made its commitment. Neither are aware, that it is the will of the third party, the Gais, which brings the required power needed to make the bond.

The Geist, never questions this ability. She learns about death, and the power of it, and how to recognize it, and then learns she can push death away, if she focuses at the wave energy of death’s finger, with her rage and energy and life, if she brings her thoughts down past words and desires, to a primordial level – death is pushed away. Joy of joys, she laughs and dances, and knows now how she is going to get back into a body.

How did the Geist get the power to do this? The Geist feels that she has always had the power, she has always been more than others; stronger, more intense, more alive than anyone else she has ever met. And, didn’t she pull herself from the river of death, escape on to the shore, fly across the heavens of Overworld faster than death itself to get to this man before he left his body, in order to make this bargain? Of course she has the power to make the bond, how could you question such a minor detail! She just stopped Death! You are questioning a bonding? Seriously?

The Gais doesn’t care about ego, or bragging rights or self-delusion, the Gais do not have these concepts to ponder on — the rantings and ravings of the Geist are like wind in the trees, or howls through the canyons. What the Gais understands, and responds to at this stage, are intentions. Fierce, blazing primordial intentions communicate — in ways the Gais can understand — where power is being asked to go, and if the Gais sees that this request is for movement, and newness, and becoming, then it supplies the power.

The Gais doesn’t understand healing at this stage. What is healing? What is wounding? What is death? What is fear? None of these are concepts which the Gais understands, they are colors to a blind man. They are love to a rock. The Gais doesn’t offer power for these intentions, or gives very little power if it the Geist is adamant about the need — just enough to pacify her, but no more, because it doesn’t feel the request as an intention of the bargain.

Since the Geist doesn’t realize that she is asking for this power, she isn’t aware that she could rephrase the request, to make it meaningful to the Gais. With the Geist being the types of personalities they are, they never will understand that they are asking for power. It is there, it is theirs, and they can use it, and if they can’t, it is only because they haven’t tried hard enough, or it isn’t important.

The Sin-Eater

The bargain with the Sin-Eater brings something completely new to the awareness of the Gais. The Sin-Eater brings to the Gais’ awareness, a Living Mind.

The Geist is a broken record player skipping through a short list of needs and desires. She is so honed, so focused, so primordial about her desires, she thinks of little else, which is perfect for the Gais at first, because it doesn’t really understand what she is talking about most of the time, but now, with a body to walk around in, the Gais is able to juxtapose these repeating desires with the actions and movements of the Sin-Eater — and to listen, feel, taste the responses of the Sin-Eater to the Geist’s requests for action. Now it can digest this set of repeating desires, to gain an understanding of them, and, through the body of the Sin-Eater, understand their appeal.

Rum…is good. She’s been howling about wanting rum for the last three hundred years, and now that they have had some, the Gais can understand what all the fuss was about. The new bargain with the Sin-Eater brings a whole dimension of becoming into the awareness of the Gais, and it is ecstatic about this newness and … Life.

Thus, the Gais could be a little more open to new ideas about where power is needed, and how to request it, if anyone would ask, but no one knows that the Gais is there, or part of the bargain, or that their lives and existence are running on Gais’ power.

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This is as far as I have gotten with the formal development. I have a ton of ideas which I’m getting down into a coherent form, that develop this possible direction for the second stage of a player character in the Geist : Sin-Eater series; how connection is made, what kind of communication is possible, what the Gais can offer, what it can’t, how far the Sin-Eater can take the relationship, what the Geist is doing durring all of this, and how she is reacting to being “possessed”.

Notes on the direction of development :

1. You could call these Kame from the Shinto idea that everything has a spirit, or you could call these Gais as the earth spirt Gia, which I kind of like the sound of, Gais and Gesit. They are earth spirits, not spirits of just anything. That’s what makes this work, really, is that the Gais has been around so long, dawn of time really, building up power from universal energies, and the recent (to them) interactions with human activity: the Gais is now aware and filled with primordial chthonic power.

2. Once the Sin-Eater discovers that there is something else back there in the passenger seat, many variations of progress can be imagined.

3. The Gais would also have personalities. For example, the canyon of the raging wind, would have a different energy and power than the top of a mountain. If the both places were places of sacrifice, then they would have different energies again. If we were tossing human’s off the edge of that raging canyon, or taking the hearts of sacrificial virgins from the top of that mountain, we have a whole new energy.

4. These energies and the changes of them listed above, however, are not changes from a human perspective. Just because a Gais has been the cliff that babies are thrown from, down into a pit of hungry wolves, doesn’t mean that it has any need for sacrifice, that it understands sacrifice, or has any clue what death is for human beings. The Gais do not have any concept of death(which is how the Geist are able to use this power to ward off death — Death, quite literally, is running into a stone wall).

A hill top of sacrifice may have more solar desire than anything else.

A cliff may have more wind, or hammering desires.

Think tectonic, think primordial.

5. Under no circumstance will the Gais be talked into aborting the Geist from the deal. She is there to stay. (see Mother Goddess, Gaia, Terra Mater, ideals). Oaths sworn in the name of Gaia, in ancient Greece, were considered the most binding of all. As far as the Gais is concerned, she made the bargain with the Geist, and it is only because of her that the Gais has been able to go much farther than it ever imagined was possible. So, trying to talk the Gais into chucking her out, will likely cause some tremors deep inside the tectonic understanding of the Gais.

Once this concept is understood the Sin-Eater would be able to takes steps moving forward, bring the synergy of these three beings into the state of Living Loa. The Lo are, in many cases, thought to have been humans, who through gathering massive spiritual power, brought themselves up to the level of Loa after death… only, the Sin-Eater strives, by accepting the darkness of his Geist, and developing a communication of intention, desire and becoming with his Gais, becomes a Living Loa… I think you will find that the personalities of the Loa, will fit very nicely with a spiritual being created by the bonding of three spirits.

Glenn Hefley

www.scarn.com