Death Branch

Life and death have always been at the heart of human concerns. Many are preoccupied with the thought of their own mortality. Some fear it more than anything else and have given up their sanity and their soul in attempts to gain immortality. Others want to bring about death in others.

Two sides of the same coin

From one perspective, Life is just a lack of death, and Death is merely the absence of life. When an arcanist pulls on this branch, they carve away at this balance with the aid of Thorns. Having somewhere to shift it to might help, but every manipulation is delicate.
When a living thing has died, its soul might move on somewhere while its body will decay. In both cases, life moves on in a different form. The soul might reach some other world, reincarnate, or disappear into something unknown. All of which are possible paths for this Branch to manipulate. The corpse feeds bacteria, insects, plants, and more as nature takes over. The Death Branch can halt or reverse this, even granting the corpse some ability to move again.

Thorns

The delicate balance can all too easily shift in undesired ways. Thorns might rip the life out of the practitioner or someone around them. Or they might grant aggressive temporary life to something that should be dead. Even when not outright killing someone involved, the Thorns might tear through them and cause a condition that will slowly but surely pull them towards their death, possibly with the ability to spread to their loved ones. Or they might need to kill to survive.
Many demands might be placed on someone trying to cheat death.

Common Traditions
Voodoo

Type

Metaphysical, Arcane