The Bone Path (VtM 3rd)
The Bone Path is concerned primarily with corpses and the methods by which dead souls can be restored to the living world temporarily or otherwise.
1 • Tremens
Tremens allows a necromancer to make the flesh of a corpse shift once. An arm might suddenly flop forward, a cadaver might situp, or dead eyes might abruptly open. To use Tremens, the necromancer spends a single blood point. One turn allows for an instantaneous movement, such as a twitch, while five allow the vampire to set up specific conditions under which the body animates (“The next time someone enters the room, I want the corpse to sit up and open its eyes.”). Under no circumstances can Tremens cause a dead body to attack or cause damage.
2 • Apprentice's Brooms
With Apprentice’s Brooms, the necromancer can make a dead body rise and perform a simple function. For example, the corpse could be set to carrying heavy objects, digging, or just shambling from place to place. The cadavers thus animated do not attack or defend themselves if interfered with, but instead attempt to carry out their given instructions until such time as they’ve been rendered inanimate. Generally it takes dismemberment, flame or something similar to destroy a corpse animated in this way. Bodies energized by this power continue to decay, albeit at a much slower rate than normal.
3 • Shambling Hordes
Shambling Hordes creates exactly what you think it might: reanimated corpses with the ability to attack, albeit neither very well nor very quickly. Once primed by this power, the corpses wait — for years, if necessary — to fulfill the command given them. Each zombie (for lack of a better term) can follow one simple instruction, such as “Stay here and guard this graveyard against any intruders,” or “Kill them!”
4 • Soul Stealing
This power affects the living, not the dead. It does, however, temporarily turn a living soul into a sort of wraith, as it allows a necromancer to strip a soul from a living — or vampiric body. A mortal exiled from his body by this power becomes
a wraith with a single tie to the real world: his now-empty body. The body itself remains autonomically alive but catatonic. This power can be used to create suitable hosts for Daemonic Possession. Every turn gives one hour.
5 • Daemonic Possession
Daemonic Possession lets a vampire insert a soul into a freshly dead body and inhabit it for the duration. This does not turn the reanimated corpse into anything other than a reanimated corpse, and one that will irrevocably decay after a week, but it does give either a wraith or a free-floating soul (say, that of a vampire using Psychic Projection) a temporary home in the physical world.The body in questio must be no more than 30 minutes dead, and the new tenant must agree to inhabit it. Should the vampire, for whatever reason, wish to insert a soul into another vampire’s corpse (before it crumbles to ash), this takes 5 turns. The soul can use whatever physical abilities (Dodge, Brawl, Potence) his new home possesses, and whatever mental abilities (Computer, Law, Presence) he possesses in his current existence. He cannot use the physical abilities of his old form, or the mental abilities of his new one.