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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sigurd" data-source="post: 1614211" data-attributes="member: 19412">dillusional deadI created this for my own use.Dillusional Dead are spirits that have taken on new form & features in response to outside forces. Proximity to great need or emotions twists the incorporeal image, and motives of undead spirits or energies. The process is similar to a poltergeist that warps and reshapes undead entities.A village may maintain that "Everyone knows a mineshaft is haunted." Misguided souls on their way to the after life encounter or remember this belief and repattern their actions to make it a reality, giving up their afterlife.. Eventually their initial self image may change so much that they will be unrecognizable. This Dillusion becomes permanent.The process is often not intended as an evil one but the nature of the deception and pains of a lost afterlife often corrupt the deceased. Sometimes, where a region's faith in a particular gaurdian spirit encourages an sustains a figure of this type.eg....Jenny grew up believing that the forest watch ghosts would protect innocent creatures alone in the Darkling Wood. Unfortunately for her this was not her experience and violence claimed her life in a most terrible and unjust way. Her spirit, romantic and unbowed, has blotted out her death in its memory and now haunts the woods. 'She' haunts the wood as a male darkhaired, black masked bandit who rides into battle on a silver steed -- precisely the hero jenny wished for. Given time appreciation and the beliefs of others in the wood the hero might gather abilities & henchmen from the wish fulfillment of powerful personalities surrounding the wood.Most haunts have an element of dillusion and feed off the ambient energies of a place or event. Most often a creature killed in a terrible place takes on the horrors of his/her fellow sufferers. They drive the haunt to reinact the most terrible events or suffer them for others to see.Sometimes a malevolent spirit will be drawn to a place and taken up in its evil. This is usually dangerous for the spirit as it largely gives up its own identity to feed and be tranformed by the ambient horror of a location. Only the strongest willed and most domineering spirits can control this process and bend it to their will.Sages who investigate matters of faith and the dead conjecture that the reworking of soulstuff by faith and emotion may play a role in the creation\maintenance of devine beings. This is of course not very  popular among the devout.Only a very talented shaman can unravel the myth and deception of a dillusional spirit. Confronted with the truth most spirits are dispelled. Shamen have been known to protect & foster instances of dillusion. They speak of them as the converted or transcendent of this plane.In one case a (In my campaign) a shaman led a small troup of departed soldiers to the walls of a famous fortress. At the fortress they found peace guarding against incursions from the races that killed their small number. In short order they had assumed the histories, even the memories, of other soldiers who had fell at that site.Sigurd</blockquote>

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