A quick little ghost story for this time. This poem mentions “Nodier” and he’s one of the authors we will be dabbling with next year. Charles Nodier’s Infernaliana was one of the earliest French collections of vampire stories. The poem below was released through Librviox. Thanks to Alan Mapstone, and the production team.
In Spain, as Nodier’s pen has told,
Three officers in night’s mid hours
Came on a castle dark and old,
With sunken eaves and mouldering towers,
A true Anne Radcliffe type it was,
With ruined halls and crumbling rooms
And windows graven by the claws
Of Goya’s bats that ranged the glooms.
Now while they feasted, gazed upon
By ancient portraits standing guard
In their ancestral frames, anon
A sudden cry rang thitherward.
Forth from a distant corridor
That many a moonbeam’s pallid hue
Fretted fantastically o’er,
A wondrous phantom sped in view.
With bodice high and hair comb-tipped,
A woman, running, dancing, hied.
Adown the dappled gloom she dipped,—
An iridescent form descried.
A languid, dead, voluptuous mood
Filled every act’s abandon brief,
Till at the door she stopped, and stood
Sinister, lovely past belief.
Her raiment crumpled in the tomb
Showed here and there a spangle’s foil.
At every start a faded bloom
Dropped petals in her hair’s black coil.
A dull scar crossed her bloodless throat,
As of a knife. Like rattle chill
Of teeth, her castanets she smote
Full in their faces awed and still.
Ah, poor bacchante, sad of grace!
So wild the sweetness of her spell,
The curvèd lips in her white face
Had lured a saint from heaven to hell!
Like darkling birds her eyelashes
Upon her cheek lay fluttering light.
Her kirtle’s swinging cadences
Displayed her limbs of lustrous white.
She bowed amid a mist of gyres,
And with her hand, as dancers may,
Like flowers she gathered up desires,
And grouped them in a bright bouquet.
Was it a wraith or woman seen,
A thing of dreams, or blood and flesh,
The flame that burst from out the sheen
Of beauty’s undulating mesh?
It was a phantom of the past,
It was the Spain of olden keep,
Who, at the sound of cheer at last,
Upbounded from her icy sleep,
In one bolero mad, supreme,
Rough-resurrected, powerful,
Showing beneath her kirtle’s gleam
The ribbon wrested from the bull.
About her throat the scar of red
The deathblow was, dealt silently
Unto a generation dead
By every new-born century.
I saw this self-same phantom fleet,
All Paris ringing with her praise,
When soft, diaphanous, mystic, sweet,
La Petra Camara held its gaze,—
Closing her eyes with languor rare,
Impassive, passionate of art,
And, like the murdered Ines fair,
Dancing, a dagger in her heart.
Ines de la Sierras
Magic Might: 10 (Mentem)
Characteristics: Int 0, Per +1, Pre +2, Com +1, Str 0, Sta +1, Dex +1, Qik +5*
* I’ve assumed Qik is the characteristic for her sort of dance. You might prefer Dex. Since she’s a Noncombatant it doesn’t alter her combat statistics, with the exception of Dodge.
Size: 0
Confidence: 1 (3)
Season: Technically Ines should be Summer, but I’ve used her actual Abilities from life and I don’t want to cut her down to 360 experience or swell her all the way up to Autumn. She has 425 experience, plus 50 from Improved Abilities, plus 62 from Affinity with Profession (Dancer).
Virtues and Flaws: Magical Spirit, Entrancement, No Fatigue, Affinty with Professon (Dancer), Magical Monster (death wounds visible), Obsessed (Major Personality), Noncombatant.
Qualities and Inferiorities: Focus Power (Mistress of Sound), Greater Power (Grant Minor Flaw – Obsession), Improved Abilities, Improved Quickness x2, Minor Virtue (Improved Characteristics x2),
Personality Traits: Obsessed with dancing the story of her death +4, Wants proper burial +2.
Reputation: Subject of famous poem +1
Combat: Noncombatant. Incorporeal.
Soak: +1, but incorporeal.
Fatigue Levels: No Fatigue
Wound Penalties: -1 (1-5), -3 (6-10), -5 (11-15), Incapacitated (16-20), Dead (21+). Note, incorporeal.
Powers:
Entrancement: This is a Supernatural Ability Ines had in life. It has no cost and is not used in combat so it has no Init score. Has the power to control another’s will. By staring deeply into someone’s eyes for several seconds — generally impossible in combat — she can verbally command the person to perform a certain task. Roll Presence + Entrancement against the target’s Stamina roll. The person being controlled may get a bonus to resist at the option of the storyguide, according to the table below. Hermetic magi get their normal Mentem Magic Resistance, and get the normal Stamina roll if the effect penetrates Calculate Penetration using an Ease Factor of 6 + the victim’s bonus. The blind, and people with their eyes closed, are immune…However, it is not possible to look away while being Entranced unless the victim wins the opposed roll.
Command Example Victim Bonus
Innocuous Talk to me +3
Questionable Meet me alone at night +6
Dangerous Put your weapons away +9
Heinous Kill you fellows +12
Suicidal Jump off a cliff +15
Grant Obsession (Minor Flaw)
4 points, Init –5, Vim
R: Eye, D: Mom, T: Ind, Ritual
Imposes the Obsession Flaw upon a victim. Ines can decide to bestow the Flaw permanently or temporarily. If permanent, the power is a ritual-like power and costs points from her Might score as well as Might pool. If temporary, the Might points spent on this power are only recovered when its effects are withdrawn.
No Hermetic equivalent: Ritual Power. 1 spare mastery point from Mistress of sound reduces cost.
Mistress of Sound
0 points, Init +1, Imaginem
Ines can duplicate any non-Ritual spell involving sound up to Level 10.
CrIm10. 15 levels converted to 3 mastery points. 2 points reduce cost. Focus Power
Abilities: (Area) Lore (site of her death) 2, Area Lore (nearest city), Athletics (endurance) 2, Awareness (crowd) 2, Bargain (for her services as a dancer) 2, Carouse (her fans) 5, Castillian 5 (slightly archaic), Charm 2 (customers), Etiquette 2 (customers), Entrancement 5 (while dancing), Folk Ken 2 (local), Guile 2 (fans), Music 1 (castanets), Profession (Dancer) 9 (bolero).
Vis: 2 pawns Mentem, ghostly dagger becomes material.
Appearance: Attractive, female, Iberian dancer with murder wounds on her neck and chest.
Statistical Source: Uses the ghost rules from Realms of Power: Magic. Entrancement rules from Ars Magica : Definitive Edition p.165.
Textual Source: Ines de la Sierras. A poem by Théophile Gautier
Games From Folktales 