Zitat
Death-Touched?
Geist Preview for June 16
Posted: 2009-06-16
On a frozen lake, the ice suddenly cracks with the sound of a gunshot. A young man falls in, and by the time rescue workers pull him out, his body temperature has dropped to 86 degrees Fahrenheit and he’s not breathing.
A crackhead corners a woman on a deserted street. He wants her money, but he needs a fix more than anything. His hands are twitchy; as she’s handing over her purse, the gun discharges. The candy-apple red on the woman’s lips isn’t make-up. The junkie runs, leaving her to bleed out on the filthy pavement.
In a hospital ward, a man hisses his last breaths through a machine that ticks and bleeps at regular intervals. The cancer has practically liquefied his organs, but he fights for every single breath. He’s not done living yet.
All of these people should have died—in point of fact, all of them did. At least, for a moment. But where most people would just pass on quietly, or perhaps linger as a restless ghost, something very different happens to them. As their souls loose their bonds and make ready to shuffle off the mortal coil, a combination of the burning desire to not go gentle into that good night and the peculiar death-touched nature of the Sin-Eater’s soul sends up a kind of call — a call answered by a geist. More than ghost, less than god, geists occupy a peculiar place within the realms of the dead. Though each geist was once a living mortal man or woman, they have taken on a mantle greater than any individual identity. The geist catches the soul before it departs forever, and makes an offer: A second chance at life in exchange for giving the geist an earthly, physical body once more. Sin-Eaters refer to this as “the Bargain,” or sometimes in typically dry fashion “the Event,” and it is the pivotal moment of their creation.
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And that’s why we call it “A Storytelling game of Second Chances.”
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