Shadow Contacts

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Allowed Retainer

Book of Spirits 110
Level(s)	●●● (12XP) ●●●● (20XP) ●●●●● (30XP)
Venue	All
Possessed By
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Your character knows a place where she can ask questions and get information. She has reasonably free access to this place — which may be the urinal in a cathedral, a dank cave in a national park, the manhole that a murderer used to dispose of bodies or nearly anything else — and can occasionally go there to get answers. She does not know what entity she asks.

For each answer the Shadow Contact provides, it asks a price. This price often has some tangential relation to the nature of the question, but may well not. The more urgent or esoteric the question, the stranger and more disturbing the price. Frivolous questions are discouraged by incommensurately outrageous demands. If the character asks whether and why her creepy neighbor is stealing locks of her hair, the voice may request a Barbie doll hanged in a noose made from a young girl’s hair. Asking whether she should change her hairstyle, the entity may demand all the hair shaved from three young girls.

The character only pays the price if the Shadow Contact has the answer. The Storyteller (who likely knows just who or what the Shadow Contact is) may simply decide, or he may roll the character’s rating in the Merit to determine either way.

Drawback

If the character receives an answer from the Shadow Contact, she must pay the price or make the contact reluctant to speak with her. Each time the character fails to give the Shadow Contact its dues, her rating in the Merit drops by one dot. She may purchase greater trust with proper roleplaying and experience points. This will often involve meeting the reneged upon deal, with interest. If the rating drops below three dots, the contact refuses to speak with her any longer. She must purchase the Merit anew from zero dots, which represents finding a new mysterious font of information — no easy task. Note that the Merit degrades only if the Shadow Contact decides that her payment is officially past due. Clever characters may be able to delay the entity for some time.