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.
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.
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.
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.
| 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 commands are activated by purchasing the correct item and feeding it to your creation. There are a limited number of slots per Risen, and some of the special commands 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. |
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
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.
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.