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Ghost Concept
kjames91
Posts: 186 Arc User
Hey there!
Wanted some thoughts and opinions on a series I wanna work on about a guy who is a ghost in MC. The hook is that he doesn't remember how he died and wanted to see what directions I could go. I also was thinking of adding some CO lore supernatural characters to the mix. Little about this guy: he was an ER nurse at Mercy, shy, doesn't believe in possession of others unless he has to, and single. What are ya'lls thoughts on the concept?
Wanted some thoughts and opinions on a series I wanna work on about a guy who is a ghost in MC. The hook is that he doesn't remember how he died and wanted to see what directions I could go. I also was thinking of adding some CO lore supernatural characters to the mix. Little about this guy: he was an ER nurse at Mercy, shy, doesn't believe in possession of others unless he has to, and single. What are ya'lls thoughts on the concept?
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Are you wanting a costume idea? Perhaps you could say he doesn’t know he is deal and appear human except when fighting. Then he becomes a ghost (play with some auras)...and that he is so convinced he isn’t dead, he doesn’t recall fighting crime.
Like he could be Superman if Superman didn’t know he was also Clark Kent...sort of split personality
Ghosts exist on the Astral Plane, and are normally imperceptible to people in the physical world who lack psychic or mystical abilities (astral spirits can perceive Earth dimly), and unable to affect the physical world. However, experienced ghosts, or those of strong will, may learn to become visible to people (not necessarily as they looked in life), move physical objects, affect people's minds (up to and including possession), and/or other abilities. Many ghosts are tied to the area where they perished, but some are mobile.
The official setting has a few named ghosts. Police Lieutenant Mark Gentry died when his partner accidentally shot him in the line of duty. Gentry now provides investigative services for mystics who can perceive him in exchange for favors for some of the city's less mobile ghosts. Erichtho McFarlane belongs to the extended Sylvestri clan of black magicians. A skilled necromancer, she died over a century ago, but remains an active ghost with considerable power.
There's also precedent for a spirit actually returning in a physical form. The Constable, a member of the Canadian superhero team StarForce, is a revenant, the spirit of a murdered police detective reincarnated in a fleshly-seeming body. Revenants remain on Earth until they take vengeance on their murderers, but the Constable has avoided seeking his own killer so that he can continue to do good on Earth.
(Mark Gentry is described in The Mystic World, and Erichtho McFarlane in Champions Villains Vol. 2: Villain Teams. The Constable receives a detailed write-up , including tabletop Champions game stats, in Champions Of The North, the source book for Champs Canada.)
Doctor Teneber (Champions Villains Vol. 3: Solo Villains) was Charles Tenover, a transplant surgeon who lost his family to a drunk driver, and turned to the study of necromancy to try to restore them to life. He has so far failed at that goal, but consoles himself by using his formidable magic as a sort of vigilante, to try to bring what he sees as order to the vagaries of life and death. If God does not decree that good people live and bad people die, then Dr. Teneber will.
Teneber finds the unquiet ghosts of people who died before their time, and living people who bring only harm to those around them. He kills the latter to drive the spirit out of their bodies (which also counts as a sacrifice to the death gods he propitiates), then places a ghost of the former into the body and uses his medical skills to revive it, resulting in a kind of reincarnation. He considers these choices of who lives or dies fundamentally the same as what he did as a surgeon, i.e. a type of "preëmptive triage" to preserve the greatest number and quality of lives. Other mystics, he believes, are not tough-minded enough to cope with the evils that threaten the world, so he must make the hard choices for them.
Doctor Teneber generally keeps a low profile, but has helped good-aligned mystics in the past against various supernatural menaces. Few of them approve of his tactics or trust him, but his help has won him some tolerance, so for the time being they just keep an eye on him while focusing on greater threats. Teneber's PnP write-up also notes that his local police are also watching him, so they must have some suspicions about his activities, but likely have no proof of anything criminal. Charles Tenover supports himself by running a botanica -- a voodoo/santeria supply shop -- and providing mundane health care to his neighbors (despite having lost his medical license).
Note that Teneber sacrifices to gods of death as a straightforward exchange for power -- a very common convention of the Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions he studied. He doesn't worship those gods, and he follows his own agenda, not theirs.