Haunt

AX.GHW.06.03 - Haunt

"I know what death feels like. I know what it smells like in the room, what it sounds like when it's close. Most people only find out once. I've had time to get used to it."

Haunts died. That is the beginning of the story, not the end of it. They died suddenly, violently, or with enough left unresolved that something in them refused the transition, and then they came back. Not as ghosts. Not as undead. As themselves, alive, breathing, with a heartbeat that occasionally skips in ways a cardiologist couldn't explain. The body returned. Most of the person returned with it. What didn't come back is difficult to describe and varies by individual. What came back instead is harder to describe still.

The return is never clean. Haunts carry the mark of having crossed a threshold and come back through it, not as a visible scar, though some have those too, but as a quality that other things sense before their conscious minds catch up. Dogs go quiet around Haunts. Children stare. Restless dead recognize them on sight with an attention that is somewhere between kinship and hunger. Things that feed on the dying find Haunts confusing in a way that tends to make them leave the room, which is the most useful effect and the one Haunts learn to lean on early.

The mechanism of return is not consistent across Haunts and is rarely fully understood even by the individuals involved. Some were resuscitated and came back wrong-right. Some died in spaces with enough residual spiritual pressure that the death didn't hold. Some made a choice in the moment of crossing that they can't fully articulate afterward, reached for something and got pulled back, and have spent the intervening years trying to understand what they reached for. The Genre Catalog can define specific mechanisms, or can leave them deliberately varied; both approaches work.

What all Haunts share is the residue: the heightened relationship to mortality, the sensory awareness that bleeds into the territory of the dead, and the body's stubborn, almost perverse refusal to finish what was started.

In the World

Haunts are among the rarest of the known lineages, for the obvious reason that the condition requires dying first. There is no community to speak of, no families who pass the experience down, no institutions built around shared identity, no informal network with a membership roster. What exists are individuals who found each other by accident or necessity, and the occasional organization, spiritual, academic, or more pragmatic; that takes an interest in what Haunts represent and what they can do.

Most Haunts spend significant time in the aftermath of their return trying to understand what happened to them. This investigation tends to pull them toward the hidden world whether they intended to engage with it or not, answers live in spaces that ordinary life doesn't access. A Haunt who goes looking for the truth of their return almost always finds more than they wanted and exactly what they needed.

The relationship between Haunts and the restless dead is the most consequential aspect of their social position in the hidden world. Ghosts, shades, and other remnant entities don't treat Haunts as threats or as prey; they treat them as something adjacent, something almost-familiar. This can be useful. It can also be deeply uncomfortable, especially when the entity in question is someone the Haunt knew before.

Haunts in professional life tend toward work that puts them close to the edges, emergency response, hospice care, forensics, investigative journalism, anything that involves the space where things end. Some find this morbid. Most find it clarifying. They already know what's on the other side of certain doors. Working near those doors feels honest.

Lineage Mechanics

Health Modifier: 0 (Applied at character creation and each time Fortitude is increased through XP advancement.)

Design Note: The Haunt's durability is expressed through Redundant Organs rather than a Health Modifier. Their survivability is qualitative, the capacity to absorb a decisive hit that would finish someone else, rather than quantitative. This keeps their Health total in a normal range while giving them a meaningful resilience advantage in high-stakes moments. The 0 modifier is intentional and should not be adjusted without reconsidering the perk profile.

Cultural Talent: Resolve 1D This die is free, it does not come from the Talent generation budget. Haunts have already faced the worst thing. The mental resilience this produces is not bravado or numbness, it is the functional calm of someone who has a reference point for "how bad things can actually get" that most people lack. Fear is still possible. It just has to clear a higher bar.

Inherited Perks

Redundant Organs | Biological Advantage The body that came back from death did not come back unchanged. Whatever the mechanism of return, it left the Haunt's physical systems with a redundancy that shouldn't be there, backup processes, secondary pathways, an architecture that assumes catastrophic failure is survivable if the rest of the system holds. When a hit would be decisive, it sometimes isn't.

Effect: Once per Full Rest, when the Haunt would receive a Major Health Condition
        (−3D to an Attribute from a single source), they may reduce that condition
        to Moderate (−2D to the same Attribute). This must be declared immediately
        when the condition is applied; it cannot be retroactive. The condition
        still requires normal recovery; only its severity is reduced.

        This perk does not apply to: conditions caused by iron weapons or
        iron-based effects, the death-mark in the Haunt's constitution does
        not have the same resistance to iron that the living body has, because
        iron interacts specifically with the boundary between living and dead
        space and the Haunt crossed that boundary. Iron-inflicted Major
        Conditions apply at full severity, without reduction. Instant-death
        effects that bypass conditions entirely, or conditions applied while
        the Haunt is already at 0 Health, also bypass this perk.
Activation: Passive (declare use immediately when triggering condition is applied)
Scope: Self
Recovery: Full Rest
Genre Note: The once-per-Full-Rest limit is critical. Without it, this perk
            functionally eliminates Major Conditions from the Haunt's experience,
            which undermines the setting's threat framework. The GM should not
            remind the player to use it; it's the player's resource to manage.

Psychic Sensitivity | Sensory Enhancement The Haunt's passage through death and back left them with attunement to the edge where consciousness meets its absence. At Close range they sense the emotional states of the living, the presence of sapient minds, and, distinctly from the living, they sense the dead: residual presences, restless entities, the spiritual weight of locations where significant deaths occurred.

Effect: At Close range (0–5 ft), the Haunt passively detects the emotional state
        and general intent of living sapient creatures (as standard Psychic
        Sensitivity). Additionally, the Haunt detects the presence of restless
        dead, spiritual remnants, and haunted locations within Near range (6–30 ft)
        without a roll; they know something is present, not what it is or where
        exactly. Identifying specifics (type, number, location) requires Wit +
        Attunement vs. Threshold 2.

        Haunts are also passively detectable by entities with supernatural
        awareness, spirits, ghosts, and similar entities sense the Haunt as
        distinct from ordinary living creatures. This is a two-way sensitivity.
Activation: Passive
Scope: Close range (living); Near range (dead/spiritual)
Recovery: N/A
Genre Note: The two-way detection is the most significant aspect of this perk
            for horror play. Haunts are visible to things that hunt by spiritual
            signature. GMs should use this to create pressure, not to punish,
            being noticed by a ghost is interesting, not a death sentence.
            The Near range on dead detection is intentionally wider than the
            Close range on living detection; Haunts are more attuned to the dead
            than they are to the living.

Power Access

Haunts have strong natural alignment with Resonance traditions, the category that governs probability, consciousness, hidden information, and the spaces between. Their passage through death is not a trained power, but it creates a permeability that Resonance traditions can work with.

Haunts who receive Power Access through a Profession or Progression Track Stage almost always access Resonance. A Haunt with Force access is unusual and should be accounted for in the fiction of the Genre Catalog (what does it mean for someone returned from death to direct energy outward rather than perceive inward?). Form access for Haunts is extremely rare and typically represents a condition of their return rather than a chosen path.

Genre Catalog Note: If your catalog includes traditions specifically tied to communication with the dead, death-adjacent perception, or traversal of the boundary between living and dead space (Mediumship, Shade-Walking, Liminal Arts), these are natural Resonance traditions with Haunt affinity. Profession entries that grant these traditions to Haunts should note the affinity explicitly, consider granting 2D in the tradition at access rather than 1D if the Profession is specifically built around a Haunt's death-crossing experience.

Attribute and Talent Caps

Haunts use standard maximums unless otherwise noted.

Context	Maximum Value
Attribute (standard)	5D
Attribute (with qualifying perk)	6D
Talents	5D
Foci	3D
No cap increases are granted by this Lineage.

Roleplaying the Haunt

The Thing That Changed

Every Haunt has something that is different now. Not worse, necessarily, different. A sense that has been expanded into territory it wasn't designed for. An absence where something used to be, or a presence where there didn't used to be one. Players should identify this early, because it shapes everything else: the Haunt's relationship to sleep, to silence, to crowded rooms, to the particular quality of stillness in a space where someone died.

This doesn't need to be dramatic. It can be as quiet as always knowing which direction is toward the nearest cemetery, or never dreaming, or always waking at 3 AM and knowing why. The detail should be specific and personal, not a general atmospheric note.

The Dead

Haunts have a relationship with the restless dead that other lineages don't share. This can be a source of information, of complicated emotional weight, or of outright danger depending on what the dead in question want. GMs and players should establish early what the Haunt's personal history with this is, have they spoken to the dead before? Do they seek it out or avoid it? Have they encountered something dead that they knew when it was alive?

The answer to that last question, if it exists, is almost certainly a story worth telling at the table.

The Resolve

The Cultural Talent here is Resolve, not Courage or Stoicism. Resolve in AxiomRPG governs mental resilience, resistance to fear, manipulation, mental influence, concentration under pressure. For Haunts, this is experiential rather than trained. They are not unafraid. They simply have a reference point that recalibrates the scale. Players who lean into this will find their Haunt most useful in scenes where other characters are rattled, not because the Haunt is invulnerable to horror, but because they've already met the bottom and know it isn't the end.

GM Notes

Psychic Sensitivity and the two-way detection: This is the perk's most important horror tool and the one that requires the most deliberate GMing. Haunts are visible to supernatural entities. This means that in settings where spiritual entities have agendas, and in urban horror, they should, a Haunt in the party creates a different encounter texture than a party without one. Spirits notice them. Some will approach. Some will avoid. Some will send something else. Play this as a source of atmosphere and complication, not as a punishment for the lineage choice.

Redundant Organs timing: The declaration requirement is important. The perk fires when the condition is applied, not after the player has seen how the session plays out. GMs should be clear about when a Major Condition is being applied so the player has the opportunity to declare use. If a player forgets to declare and the moment has passed, the perk is spent for the session regardless, the body caught the blow whether the player was paying attention or not.

The return mechanism, recognized types: Five conditions are recognized in the hidden world as capable of producing a Haunt. Most Haunts fit one primarily, with elements of others present. The type matters because it determines what questions have answers and what is meant to stay open.

Residual pressure (location-based): The Haunt died in a space already saturated with spiritual weight, a site of concentrated death, a thinned boundary, an active liminal space. The location couldn't process another departure cleanly and rejected the transition. Answerable: the location is real, findable, and still carries the signature of the return. Open: whether the location registered them specifically or simply failed structurally.

Supernatural intervention (third-party): Something outside the Haunt interrupted the death, a practitioner, an entity, a ritual happening nearby that had unintended consequences. The Haunt didn't choose the return; it was chosen for them. Answerable: the responsible party can potentially be identified and found. Open: whether the obligation created by the intervention is still active, and whether the Haunt was the intended target.

Will at the threshold (agency-based): The Haunt made a choice in the crossing moment, held on to something, refused something, and the transition didn't complete. They can't fully articulate what happened, but they know something occurred that wasn't passive. Answerable: the specific thing held onto almost always connects to something unfinished that can be found and examined. Open: whether the choice was free, whether it changes what happens the next time.

Extended resuscitation (medical): The Haunt was clinically dead and resuscitated, but the window was long enough, or the circumstances wrong enough, that they came back carrying something they didn't take with them. The return was technically medical. Answerable: the timeline and circumstances are documentable; the practitioners involved often remember an unusual case. Open: whether the resuscitation triggered the return or just provided the vehicle for it.

Incomplete claim (entity-based): Something was feeding on the Haunt's dying and didn't finish, an entity that feeds on death, a practitioner drawing on the life force, a ritual that used the death without fully closing the consumption. The return happened because the claim didn't complete. Answerable: the entity or practitioner responsible may be identifiable. Open: whether the claim is still active, and whether the Haunt's death-mark registers as a completed or incomplete death to things that can tell the difference.

For each Haunt PC, the player and GM should agree on the primary type before play. This doesn't require full documentation of the return, the gaps are often more useful than full accounts, but it should establish what questions are in scope for the character's investigation thread and what is genuinely unknowable.

Iron as bane material: Iron is this catalog's Haunt bane, consistent with the broader catalog framework where iron is the effective material against entities at or adjacent to the living/dead boundary (spirit wounds, incorporeal undead). The Haunt is not undead, but the death-mark makes them perceptible in the same register, and iron interacts with what they carry. The effect is targeted: iron-inflicted Major Conditions cannot be reduced by Redundant Organs. No separate suppression mechanic is needed, the perk's existing exception handles it. Ensure iron appears in the Haunt's antagonist landscape at appropriate moments: entities that prey on the dying may carry iron-edged tools, practitioners with undead-adjacent knowledge will recognize what the Haunt is and prepare accordingly.

Quick Reference

Lineage Element	Value / Details
Health Modifier	0
Cultural Talent	Resolve 1D (free)
Inherited Perk 1	Redundant Organs (reduce one Major Condition to Moderate, once per Full Rest)
Inherited Perk 2	Psychic Sensitivity (living at Close; dead/spiritual at Near; two-way detection applies)
Power Access	Resonance strongly preferred (via Profession or Progression Track)
Cap Increases	None
Stat Caps	Standard (5D Attribute, 5D Talent, 3D Focus)