Gift of Lazarus

Level-Four Theban Sorcery Ritual

A successful invocation of this ritual brings the dead back to a semblance of life, though it is a pale echo at best. While the rite certainly reanimates the dead, it does not return a being’s soul, nor does it halt the body’s slow decline into rot and putrescence. The power effectively creates a painfully self-aware zombie, who most likely just wishes to be allowed to rest in peace. Initially, all of the former person’s faculties may be intact (it still has access to its former Skills, but has no Willpower). The pathetic wretch can neither heal damage nor feel physical sensations in any true sense, however, so it suffers no wound penalties. The length of time in nights that the creature remains animate equals the number of successes on the Theban Sorcery roll made to create it. For every day that the creature was dead prior to the invocation, subtract one dot of the Storyteller’s choosing from an Attribute in each of its Physical, Mental and Social categories, and also do the same for every day it is animated by this ritual. When any Attribute is reduced to zero, assume that any rolls involving that trait fail automatically. Multiple animations of the same corpse are possible but sequentially more disturbing and less useful. A walking corpse of this sort that loses all of its Health dots to lethal damage is too wounded to move, but still aware and possibly even capable of communication (depending on the type of damage sustained and to what portions of its body).
The vampire who enacts this ritual is the only one who can command the zombie. That vampire may, however, instruct the corpse to accept direction from other individuals. A corpsecreature left to its own devices takes no actions of its own volition; it must be given direction, and undoubtedly laments being forced to carry them out.
A corpse suffers damage — lethal, bashing and aggravated — as it did in life. It remains active until its rightmost Health box is occupied with aggravated damage. A zombie does not bleed to death upon suffering lethal damage in its rightmost Health box, and must be attacked repeatedly until utterly destroyed.

Material Components

Offering: A Communion wafer placed under the dead person’s tongue.

Related Discipline

Theban Sorcery

Level

4