Occultist

The occultist will be responsible for religious, spiritual and generally spooky research. This’ll include methods of interacting with spirits, luring spirits, warding them off, which are helpful/hurtful, talisman, incense, and so forth.
A big part of the occultist will be specializing in rituals along with making incense, talisman and such for those rituals.

Perception

Purpose

The purpose of an Occultist is to understand the esoteric, otherworldy, creepy things that most people don't want to know or don't realize exist in the world. They're capable of communicating with or understanding spectral forces and using the vast amounts of information they've studied to help others understand what's going on.
Most occultists on Taranel will act as exorcists, psychics, paranormal investigators, or as merchants selling their spooky wares.
In the Spirit World, occultists are particularly valuable as their knowledge can help guide tourists or expedition members through social interactions, rituals, and can help harvest or determine how to use the remains of slain spirits, animals or fae if necessary. Their ability to create certain types of talisman or incense can also assist in warding off or locating desired spirits.

Operations

Tools

Occultists have a collection of tools necessary to retrieve their ingredients, process their incense, craft talisman, and perform certain rituals.
These tools include the following:
A small knife, mortar and pestle, salt, paper, needle and thread, blessed ink, holy water, and some prayer beads.

Materials

When crafting incense an occultist is assumed to have gathered enough supply to make one basic incense and one talisman each day.
These supplies for incense include:
Base - fuel, controls burn intensity, usually a wood powder like sandalwood but could also be the thicker stems of some plants like Lavender. The base can affect the smell, however, they can also be neutral.
Aromatic - The true scent of the incense, usually a powdered herb, tea, resin, or other smelly, energy filled things.
Binding - Something to bind it all together so that it can be shaped and dried later on and not lose its shape. Wood bindings are weaker than gum bindings. I imagine the Occultist will just have bindings with their kit.
Water - activates the binding so that the mixture can be worked together into the desired shape. Water is required to activate the binding, but you can replace it with some other water-heavy liquid like tea, wine, coffee, certain liquors that are low proof, and so on.

Note on Water:

While changing the water doesn’t usually change the scent a great deal it oes provide a new energy. Some waters gathered from “sacred or powerful places” can increase the “energy” of incense greatly which modifies how it might behave during a religious or spiritual ritual.
Boiling and reboiling plants to create a strong decoction or infusion can affect the smell, just be careful not to reduce it too much as if you lose too much water it might not activate the binding as well.
Usually you only need a small amount of water, adding too much at a time can ruin the incense. It is called "water" and not "liquid" because it literally needs the water to activate the binding.

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Resins - Resins are gathered by tapping certain trees. Some resins are great for aromatics! Preparing these resins into a powder involves a bit more care as too much heat will damage the essential oils and could melt the resin.
Chilling/freezing the resin somehow after it has had some time to dry can speed up the process of processing it into a powder. After collecting the resin, drying it (we’ll say this takes a full 24 hours) you can begin to break it apart and powder it using a knife to shave the resin, a hammer and cloth bag to shatter the resin, or any other method you can think of...you’ll have a powdered resin that can be used as an aromatic in your recipes.

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Note on Drying:

Drying times can be reduced drastically using Create or Destroy Water. However, there is a 25% chance that if it is used on finished incense it will cause it to crack/break due to drying too quickly which will reduce the usable amount and how long it will burn for. Using this method, you can still only make one basic incense a day as it accounts for collecting material and such.

Provided Services

Occultists provide spiritual rituals, knowledge of the esoteric, and they are capable of crafting incense and talisman.

Talisman

Crafting a Talisman is something easily done by an occultist as it is largely just writing and spiritual energy being channeled into the parchment. This can be accomplished as part of a long rest and the occultist can make either one Warding or one Luring Talisman each day. Time can be spent making more Talisman though this will take at least 10 minutes of downtime, sometimes more depending on the Talisman in mind.
If you have the resources available you can specify what type of spirit you would like to lure/ward off, this could be a description like “I was hoping to lure something to help give us some information.” or “I was hoping to keep that Whydigo away from us/this dungeon.”
Crafting a specific talisman like this relies on having knowledge of the creature if it is a specific creature, or particular ingredients if it is for a general desire such as luring “something with information”.
After your long rest you can roll a Survival Check to look for the particular ingredients needed in the Talisman.

Incense

To make the incense the Occultist will need to gather their aromatic as the most important piece of the puzzle. The base, binding and liquid can always be super basic, but some recipes might call for more specific ingredients. The binding will always be a freebie from the occultist tools.
After gathering ingredients make sure that they have completely dried before working them into a powder.
After the ingredients have been powdered they can then be made into incense. Start by combining the dry ingredients until they are all one consistent color. You’ll want a ratio of ingredients that largely favors the base, then the aromatic, and then the binding. Next, slowly add water until it is the desired consistency to be kneaded into clay. Adding water slowly ensures you don’t overhydrate the mixture which can hinder progress. After the clay is made, shape it into a cone, stick, coil, or whatever so that it can be burned in your censer. The thickness and shape determines how the smoke will be released which can affect different religious/spiritual ceremonies. Too much/too little smoke can change the energy of the incense. Allow the incense time to dry.
Depending on the shape/thickness this usually means at least a week of drying before the incense can be burned.
A full list of created incense can be found on the Incense document.

Rituals

The Occultist also performs rituals. These are largely situational and will depend on the situation.

Esoteric Knowledge

At any time that the occultist feels they are knowledgable about something involving spirits, fae, undead, otherworldly creatures and the like they can bring it up and determine what is retained with an arcana (WIS) check or a religion (WIS) check.

Related Document:
Incense

Alternative Names

exorcist, spiritualist, medium

Type

Religious

Famous in the Field

• Namina