Graveyard Chronicles

Graveyard Chronicles – Seth Grey, career gambler, hustler and grave robber, can commune with the dead, and hunts Spirit Artifacts. The Azoth Syndicate is trading life in human bodies for Spirit Artifacts, creating spirit junkies and ultimately slaves.

A plain man in a long grey coat walks through an old cemetery. He approaches a particular gravestone and waits. An old, frail man appears from behind a nearby crypt. The old man asks if he found it. The younger man holds out a simple gold wedding band. The frail old man takes it graciously. We see the younger man smile. The older man looks several years younger and healthier now. He thanks the younger man for bringing it back and hands him a small leather pouch. The young man nods and leaves.

Seth Grey, 30's, travels through the Gloaming, an area between the realms of life and death, of dream and waking, of spirit and flesh. In these places he finds artifacts of lost worlds. He trades these for other artifacts, money, or even magic.

Lucille Faust, late 20's, is his oddly dressed companion. They watch out for each other and help each other make sense of the tangle of mysteries they come across.

They become aware that spirits in Rift seem to be fading, almost as if they are becoming extremely ill. Seth has known this to happen with age or the madness that comes from loneliness, but this is happening more quickly and more often. After a series of encounters with other spirits and shady looking people in cemeteries and on his turf, he discovers a cartel called the Azoth Syndicate that is providing host bodies for dead spirits to feel life again; at a price.

This price is artifacts. Wealthier spirits spend the artifacts they have accumulated for centuries. Poorer spirits spend the artifacts that sustain their essence, becoming dependent on the living host. Some go on the run. Some fade away or become insane wraiths, haunting and destroying. Others become pitiful junkies that obey every whim of the Syndicate for another fix, or to sustain their meager existences.

The Syndicate is quickly becoming powerful and wealthy. They are also invading Seth's turf and hurting his friends. Seth comes into open conflict when the Syndicate want him off what they now consider their turf. He roughs up a couple Syndicate goons only to find vampires in their midst. Nearly being killed by one, he decides to take this information to his vampire friends, letting them know that another group of vampires is gaining lots of power and wealth behind their backs.

This begins a feud between the Old Guard of Silver and Stone (two powerful vampire organizations) and the Azoth Syndicate. Meanwhile he learns that the Syndicate has larger plans than just ensaring spirits. The Azoth Syndicate plans to weaken the veil between spirits and living, giving them ultimate power with their spirit magic. Their leader hopes to capture a Loa and become a god.

Seth is forced to his old haunts to gather allies and protect the entire Rift from being torn apart. He finds a tome at a Syndicate lodge that talks about a spell called The Fading, that will trade Life for Death, creating a purgatory on Earth, allowing the dead to live again and turning all humanity into spirits.

Seth fails to completely stop the ritual. Old man Raphael Azoth consumes a Loa. The Fading is half cast, creating a 'Gray Realm', drawing forth Spirit Leeches from the Deep Gloaming, that drain essence from people or ghosts to charge their own energy. Some humans and ghosts end up catching this illness. Seth tries to find a way to counter act this.

Most Spirit Leeches go insane and Seth merely has to destroy them. Others he figures out how to bind in enchanted bands to hold their essence together. Meanwhile, from the awakening of the Deep Gloaming comes the Lost Spirits of the Ancient Dreaming, the beings of the Tarot, and the Silent Ones.

These creatures seek to find their new fiefs and places in this world, coming into conflict with the sorcerers, vampires, demons, Loa, Voudoun, ghosts, spirit leeches and everything else that is fighting for a claim.

New alliances are forged and new Spirit Kingdoms established. Seth and his friends find themselves adrift in this new landscape of Spirit Kings vying for territories as the regular human population is driven to despair or unease or restlessness that they simply cannot explain from the pressures of the spirit world pressing on this world.

An Ancient One awakes, and Seth knows he has to find a way to close the Deep Gloaming and start sealing off the Gates.

The show ends as he locks away each Gate, cutting off a part of that magic from the world. He is about to seal the last gate when Lucy stops him, asking what kind of world he's going to leave behind. He explains that it will be a world that won't be thrown off kilter by spiritual whirl winds anymore. Lucy argues that that is boring, that the world needs this. Seth breaks the final key, knowing this could all start again. They walk off hand in hand.

The Ancient One exists as a Spirit Element. (Mix of Level 10 Obfuscate, Presence, Dementation and Auspex. This Ancient One simply is.)

Sequel:

Seth and Lucille gather their allies and start a school/lodge, knowing that it can all spring back up again.

The Lodges have had a taste of the good life, and they want more. They want to rule as kings and dukes. That start developing 'real estate' and empires within the spirit lands, fae world. Dreaming and other places.

This leads to a new war as the Fae go to war for their territories and magics that are being drained. Artists and performers are drawn into the fray, recruited by the Fae Lords and given magical powers to fight against the Lodges.

Seth tries to talk peace. Some listen, but nothing comes of it.

Meanwhile an Ancient Gate, eerie, cracked and worn, begins to break. Black and green ooze runs forth. The Madness is unleashed once before. This time much more eerie and sinister. The effects much darker. The Elder Ones are coming.

Their Acolytes smash the Gates and slay many magical creatures, bathing in their blood.

A group of angels lead by Maelstrom, fall to Earth, infected with the Chittering Madness and unleash a small Armageddon. Seth is figuring out how to stop them while the Acolytes run amuck.

Seth realizes he has to slay Maelstrom himself. Killing Maelstrom infuses the Madness into Seth. Seth goes on a killing spree. He wakes up days later in a city that looks like a warzone. He feels like he's working off a horrific hang over. He looks for Lucy. Lucy is barred inside a safe house and won't let him in.

Several people try to murder Seth. Seth goes into hiding, trying to figure out why everyone wants him dead. He eventually sees a video clip of himself, with Maelstrom's violence, killing and destroying half the city.

He goes back to talk to Lucy and explain it all. He changes his hair and facial hair to hide. He wears a hat. Disguised, they head back out to stop the Acolytes, with the Sword of Maelstrom in hand.

Because Seth is fighting the Madness of Maelstrom within him, he is the only one immune to the sanity warping magic of the Acolytes. An Elder one is unleashed on downtown. Seth is forced to slay it like a great dragon.

As always, Lucy is there to help carry him home.