Living and Dying

Miracles

What are Miracles used for? Well, if your character is dead or suffering from a Divine Wrath at the end of a game (at check-out), you cannot normally play that character again. But if your character has a Miracle left, it's automatically used to allow you to play your character again, alive and whole (as if resurrected), if you so choose.

All characters get a number of Miracles at character creation. Normal (non-FPC) characters get three Miracleswhen they first start. If they haven't used a Miracle up by the time they reach 15 points, they automatically lose one then. This happens again at 25 points. If a character dies without having any Miracles left, additional Miracles can be purchased for 3 character points. These points can be shifted out of existing skills, or paid for by taking new disadvantages. Points spent towards buying Miracles count as spent XP, and as such apply towards a character's point cap.

Miracles can also be used between games to fix other problems, but only with the permission of the Game World Committee. Used in this way, they fix only the one problem in question.

Additionally, if a GM gives you permission, you can use a Miracle in the middle of a game, and resume playing your dead character. Your other choices are to bring in another character, join the event staff, or sit around and hope that your original character will be resurrected.

Roleplaying a Miracle

A Miracle is named that for a reason. Restoration to life should not be role-played lightly, and nobody should assume that a dead companion will spring back after a day or two.

You are free to make up your own story as to what the Miracle was: a common tale is that you were found and restored to life by Fendel, a mysterious and possibly divine being who shows mercy to adventurers whose missions go uncompleted. Perhaps your patron deity granted you a boon and returned you to Earth. Perhaps you just woke up, confused but fully healed, and you don't know what happened. Maybe a kind and powerful priest took pity on your dead form and brought you back himself. A player who saved the life of the Duke of Fnord but is killed in the process might decide that the Duke would use his considerable resources to have resurrection magic (an unbelievably rare and expensive spell to the average Joe) cast upon the character.

Healing

CG characters do get healed between events, within limits. If at check-out your character is wounded but not critically bleeding (including if your wounds were being tended with First Aid when game action ended), it is assumed that your character spends part of the time between that event and the next finding a remedy.

However, limbs that are lost altogether are not healed automatically; neither are Curses or other enduring spell effects. These all require the character to go into Healing Debt (see "Purchasing Magical Services," below).

Characters who are dead, critically bleeding, poisoned, or who have active Divine Wrath spells at the end of a game may only be brought back as PCs through the use of a Miracle (see above).

Resurrection Trauma

If your character dies without being returned to life within 30 minutes, or dies and then has a Spirit Speed cast on your ghost, the character has moved on to the afterlife. A return to the mortal realm, whether by Miracle or Resurrect spell, will inflict severe psychological (or physical) trauma on the character.

After returning to life, you must choose 1 point worth of disadvantages (except for Stigma) to reflect this trauma. You may not take a disadvantage that you already have, and you do not gain any points for taking the disadvantage(s). You must then role-play this trauma and keep the disadvantage(s) for the remainder of the current game and for the next 3 XP worth of games. (Note: only time spent playing that character counts for the "trauma clock." Attending games as an NPC or another character does not count.)

If there are more than eight hours of game time left when you are resurrected or use a Miracle, you may consider the current game to be 1 XP worth of games toward your trauma clock. Similarly, if you have only 1 XP worth of trauma clock left while you are attending a long game, you may role-play "getting over your trauma" after 8 hours of game time.

If you die and are sent to the afterlife again before having finished your trauma, select an additional 1/2 point of disadvantages, and "reset" the trauma clock back to 3 XP of games. Thus, each time you return from the afterlife before fully playing out your trauma, you must select an additional 1/2 point of disadvantages and reset the clock. You must play this (increasingly) larger set of disadvantages until you have gone 3 XP worth of games without a round trip through the afterlife.

Each time you suffer Resurrection Trauma, you can pick different disadvantages, so by all means, adjust your character's reaction to death each time. When selecting disadvantages, consider how your character would react to a return from the afterlife without any memory of what it was like. You could choose to play this as something that temporarily "breaks" your character until you get over it, or you could choose to make this a radical change of personality. In either case, once you get over the trauma, you are welcome to keep the disadvantages (and now get points from them) if they make sense for your character. (This is an exception from the normal rules that you cannot re-take a disadvantage that you have already bought off.) You may not, however, receive points for more than the maximum number of disadvantages, even if Resurrection Trauma caused you to exceed that threshold.

Some suggestions (with appropriate disadvantages in parenthesis):

Healing

Characters do get healed between events, within limits. If at check-out your character is wounded but not critically bleeding (including if your wounds were being tended with First Aid when game action ended), it is assumed that your character spends part of the time between that event and the next finding a remedy.

However, limbs that are lost altogether are not healed automatically; neither are Curses or other enduring spell effects. These all require the character to go into Healing Debt.

Characters who are dead, critically bleeding, poisoned, or who have active Divine Wrath spells at the end of a game may only be played again through the use of a Miracle (see above).