Resurrection

When your character dies (once your Death Countdown is finished, after which a Life spell will no longer work), you must become a spirit. You must put on a white headband and head immediately and directly to your campaign’s resurrection point (usually the Healers’ Guild) to register your death.

A spirit is completely invisible to the world around it and may not interact in any manner with other characters. Spirits travel only as fast as the player walks; you cannot run while moving around as a spirit. After entering a Greater Earth Circle of Power, while the spirit remains unable to interact with characters, anyone else inside the Greater Circle of Power and Invested in the Circle will “sense” a presence and will know the identity of that presence if it is someone they know. They may then resurrect that spirit, and after ten minutes, the body will be restored to the spirit.

A character does not need to know the identity of the spirit to resurrect it. You must be Invested in the Circle to be able to start the resurrection, but once it is begun, anyone with the skill of Healing Arts can complete it. If no one is available with Healing Arts, then the spirit can resurrect on its own once the Invested member has begun the resurrection. However, in-game, this is emotionally painful to the recipient. This method is often referred to in-game as “Battle Resurrection.”

Example: Darlissa is in a quandary. It seems the entire town is fighting a huge battle against Destructo the Chaos Elemental, and she has been left alone in the Healers’ Guild. Over ten spirits have arrived and are waiting to be resurrected. If she tried to resurrect them all personally, it would take over an hour! Instead, she does the best she can under trying circumstances and goes to the first spirit (a poor human named Terin), starts the resurrection, moves onto the next one, starts that one, and so on down the line. Ten minutes after she started Terin’s resurrection, he will awaken. His mind is confused and angry as if he had just risen from the most hideous nightmare he had ever experienced.

Whenever a spirit appears at the Circle, it appears intact and whole, even if the body had been hacked to bits and separated. All body parts remaining will disappear when the resurrection is completed - that’s why many monsters don’t like to eat adventurers; ten minutes later and they’re hungry again. However, none of the body’s possessions appear with the character, including clothing. This can provide some amusing role-playing possibilities, but please, don’t really take off your clothes; we don’t need that much realism. Usually, your fellow adventuring companions will bring your clothes and items back from where they lay on the battlefield; every Circle has some spare clothing laying around in-game for your character to throw over themselves.

It is impossible to tell how someone died by looking at his or her spirit. When looking at a body that has just died, a person with the skill Healing Arts can tell if the person probably died from weapon wounds and whether the weapon was edged or blunt, but cannot tell if the person was killed by other means like spells or poisons. Once a resurrection begins, though, there is only a spirit, and all of this evidence is no longer discernible. Determining the method of death at that point is no longer possible.

Role-playing out a resurrection usually involves the healer telling a calming story to the person being resurrected. This is usually tailored toward the character’s race. Each and every story should abide by all rules and any problems should be reported to a Marshal.

Example: Terin’s spirit heads to the Healers’ Guild Circle once again. Upon entering the Guild, Darlissa, an invested healer, senses that a spirit is present. She has met Terin before, so she knows the identity of the spirit and begins the resurrection. While doing the resurrection, she tells Terin a story, describing the feeling of a ship traveling through a storm and then safely into a harbor. The player playing Terin may then choose whether Terin recalls the experience of her story or not.

Once a character is resurrected, a character will have his or her maximum Body Points. All remaining effects that were present on the character will be gone (excluding Euphoria, Curse of Transformation and Infection). Note that the lost memories from Amnesia poisons are not restored by resurrection. Finally, any skills or spells the character could currently Meditate back are restored.