Risen

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Risen are long-term minions created by Necromancers. Nothing forces a Necromancer to create a Risen, but they are the guild's big thing. They will generate the most Outrage of anything you can do.

Controlling Risen

Controlling Risen requires a fetish that is tied to that particular creation. If you lose your fetish, you lose that Risen.

Risen can in some circumstances break their leash, attacking/killing you when you attempt to awaken them.

Combat Power

Risen are not meant to be direct combatants and are quite squishy relative to their creator. Their role in combat is combat-support, using special abilities to debuff or buff the room in various ways. In a pinch, a Risen should be defending itself in combat, but it's not anything to rely on and not remotely a substitute for a zombie.

Functionally, the CFB zombie is (and always has been) intended to be your go-to combat companion. Something that's literally hacked to pieces and then stitched together just isn't going to be as sturdy as something that was just killed and raised intact.

Creating Risen

To learn how to make Risen, you'll need to visit one of the cold laboratories in a guild. There are cold laboratories in each province, though there is no teacher in P5.

Risen are assembled out of body parts. How well you do this is based on thanatology and first aid. Butchery is also governed by a hidden skill that you need to work up. (There is some grandfathering for this.)

Once you are satisfied with your Work, it needs to be bound to a fetish with a ritual, which should be performed in front of the corpse.

Process

1. Choose a specimen for the torso and PUT it on the table.
2. Choose a head and PUT it on the table, then STITCH the body to connect them.
3. Continue STITCHing specimens to the body to build the Risen.
4. Get some material and PERFORM FETISH to create your Risen's fetish.
5. PERFORM CREATION to finish creating the Risen. (Must be done multiple times.)
6. PERFORM AWAKEN to awaken the Risen.

Notes

• You can STUDY BODY to see how you can customize your creation.
• LOOK at the body or at the table to gauge your status.
• You can CLEAR or FLIP the table to start a project over.
• You can PUSH your fetish to change its color.

Risen Abilities

Abilities are taught in the various guildhalls, and each location will (eventually) have a few unique ones.

The idea is there shouldn't be one perfect Risen that has every ability and is perfectly suitable for every situation. Sometimes you want an agent that can blend in, sometimes you want a five-headed spawn from Aldebaran.

There's Humanity-driven abilities that focus on stealth, city interaction, and otherwise being a fairly normal proxy for the Necromancer. Then there are inhumanity (low Humanity) driven abilities that are more magical/combat support.

Commands

All Risen can perform the same basic actions.

• COMMAND RISEN TO <COMMAND>
• COMMAND ZOMBIE <COMMAND>

The syntax for Risen and CFB zombies is different. Additionally, the command list below is for Risen. There is some overlap, but Risen can do more.

Basic Commands

Command	Purpose
Sleep	Returns the Risen to its rest.
Learn	Teach the Risen a special command, if you have an appropriate item for it.
Give	Give the Risen an item.
Drop	Drop an item it's holding.
Cancel	Cancels the Risen's current task.
Follow	Follow you or another person.
Stay	Stop following and stay where it is.
Come	Come to your location.
Wear	Wear whatever it is carrying.
Remove	Remove an item it is wearing.
Retrieve	Retrieve any items that a Risen stashed away.
Hush	Stop fidgeting.
Sit	Perform the action.
Stand	Perform the action.
Lie	Perform the action.
Kneel	Perform the action.
Bow	Perform the action.
Dance	Perform the action.

Special Skills

Special skills are activated by purchasing the correct item and feeding it to your creation. A Risen may be taught up to five different abilities from the list below, some of which have skill/circle requirements.

Command	Purpose
Say	Say a phrase.
Move	Move around.
Look	Look at the surroundings.
Find	Find a person.
Watch	Watch an area.
Attack	Attack a person or creature.
Safeguard	Drag the summoner when they are in trouble.
Bleed	Helps regenerate vitality, fatigue, and mana.
Chorus	The Chorus Discordant. Disrupts natural mana streams.
Butcher	Assist with butchering.
Hide
Sell	Sells gem pouches or bundles.

STARE FETISH to see what commands the Risen has learned.

Quality and Training

What a Risen can learn how to do will depend heavily on how much humanity it has, how skilled it was when put together, and the quality of the specimens used to make it. You will buy scrolls to teach your Risen different things.

Risen who are trained in stealth can use stealth. Risen can participate in combat, but will pretty much never be as combat-worthy as your CFB zombie.

Sight and Communication

Yes, a PC can see and speak through the Risen if you have trained it to do so. However, unlike familiars, Risen can be killed. (Re-killed? But they get better!)

Movement

The Risen can be set to follow you, or you can manually move it around via COMMAND when it's not doing a specific task for you. It will not be able to go into certain areas, and will get twitchy both in town or in safe areas

Miscellaneous

Duration

Risen are effectively immortal, though if they are damaged enough they have to rest and regenerate for a time before they are usable again. Once summoned, a Risen will only stay active for a limited period until it requires additional rest.

How They Can Look

Risen can look like NPCs, but not PCs.

Creations can be assembled in various configurations. As an example, it is possible for a Risen to have no head, or to have multiple heads.

Multiple Risen

You can make as many Risen as you want, so you can have different ones designed/trained for different tasks. The main costs to making multiple Risen is the time it takes to gather body parts, and the price of the scrolls you use to teach them.

You can only have one Risen active at a time.

Justice

Risen can be arrested in town, so be careful.

COMMAND RISEN TO BAIL bails them out of jail. You need to have enough money in your pockets to do so.

Killing humanoid Risen, while in a justice area, will generate a murder charge.

Equipment

Risen who are designed to do in-town tasks can wear clothing, and hooded cloaks will provide bonuses to them. Combat-trained Risen can make use of weapons.

Risk of Equipment Loss

This is similar to CFB zombies; If you're equipping one, don't give a Risen anything you'd be devastated to lose. Specific tasks (like sending your Risen to go repair your stuff) are safe, but equipping them directly has a chance to lead to item loss. Following a "death" a Risen will not have any of its items.

Chorus Discordant

• The chorus cannot be used in silenced rooms.
• The ability pulls Risen out of hiding if applicable (this will be relevant soon).
• The chorus will reduce the available mana in the area. Necromatic mana is not affected.
• It is modified by the number of heads the Risen has. It takes a penalty at 0 heads, plus messaging acknowledging that it doesn't have a dang head. More heads produces a bonus based on the number of said heads. So many heads.

GM-NPC Risen

Stuff about how various GMNPC Risen have acted or been able to function in the past, and questioning if the Risen players make being (or not being) like those GM-run Risen is a retcon or not:

Nothing currently being developed for PC-created Risen would be a retcon of the IC understanding of Risen as they've been portrayed in game so far.

Keeping in mind that the particular Risen that PCs have encountered are all in the Very Special Risen category for one reason or another, I wouldn't be banking on any particular thing/ability/talking style/power set/way of functioning of those GMNPCs to necessarily show up the same in the Risen that players can make. These GMNPC Risen have all been repeatedly stated to be abnormal as far as Risen go, with Lyras' Risen generals being at least semi-autonomous and retaining pieces of their living personalities, a certain crafty someone being created how he is in part due to the use of a powerful necromantic artifact, another certain someone also being created with help from that same artifact, and most of the rest being made by Book -- the single most skilled creator of Risen out of all known Necromancers to date.

That said, some of the things GM-run Risen characters have been shown to do (or at least some abilities thematically similar to them) are almost certainly going to show up, if not at release, then as we expand upon Risen ability options.

—Persida

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Additional Information

• Outrage
• Call from Beyond
• Undead