Wushu Skidoo

Ujigami

A dark-haired girl stands at the eye of the hurricane as it tears through the couple's penthouse apartment. They cling to each other as a whirlwind of broken glass shreds their arms and legs, slashes their backs, slings their blood into the air. Death by a thousand cuts.

"She acts like she's the only one who was ever murdered." The dead boy rolls his eyes. "These people had nothing to do with it. You know; you were here the first time." The wooden blinds are unmoved by his argument, or rather, the kami inside the wood is unmoved. "Look, if you could just make sure she doesn't toss this couple out the window, I'd really appreciate it." No response.

"Um, and I'll take you back the forest? Maybe plant you in the ground?" The blinds snap shut like a bear trap. "Arigato."

Now, to take care of the Aragami. He closes his eyes and focuses on what it felt like to drown, to struggle against his brother's arms as they held him below the surface. Slowly, the walls begin to drip. Dark water pools around the dead girl's ankles while she cackles, oblivious. After a few seconds, it solidifies, grips her feet like a pair of concrete shoes and drags her, screaming, through the floor.

He opens his eyes. "I hope you enjoy that as much as I did."

The original idea for this month's article was to play as the vengeful spirit in a Japanese horror movie, but there's a certain level of homicidal derangement that makes roleplaying just a little bit harder than it's worth. Instead, Ujigami players will take on the roles of more-or-less well adjusted dead people who use their terrifying powers to protect their communities from well-dwelling little girls and pale children in heavy mascara.

After Life

When a member of their community dies, Shinto priests record that person's name at the local shrine. They do this whether or not the deceased was a Shintoist. From then on, the dead person's living relatives can visit the shrine to seek their ancestor's aid and guidance. They have become one of the "ujigami," a guardian spirit.

Ujigami are just one of the many kami that populate Shinto folklore. There are spirits for celestial bodies, mountains and rivers, objects and occupations, and on and on. Some wander from place to place, bringing boons or plagues with them. Others seek revenge for sins committed against them in life. Many of Shinto's rituals and holy days were designed to placate malevolent kami or send them on their way. Its practitioners seek to live in balance with the unseen world.

That's how it's supposed to work, but the newly-dead residents of one Shinto temple find it utterly abandoned: no ancestors wait to share their wisdom, no gods offer them assistance. It's just them and the living... and the living want many things.

Shinto temples sell wooden tablets with pictures of traditional offerings on them, often a horse. The living write their requests on these tablets and leave them at the Shrine. Think of it as your PCs' To Do list. Need them to get involved in a child's life? Have the little one ask for help on a test or with a love interest. Want them to take out a vengeful spirit? Have its victims pray to the ujigami for aid. It's like a plot hook vending machine.

Your ujigami will also have their own fish to fry. They need to find out what happened to their predecessors, before the same fate befalls them.

Post-Mortem

The dead cannot communicate directly with the living and they can only influence the physical world in limited ways. Obviously, their former physical attributes and most of their skills are pretty obsolete. When creating ujigami, use the 5/4/4/3 setup:

• One Trait rated 5: Unfinished Business. This is a motivation related to the character's life (protecting loved ones, preserving a legacy, fighting for a cause) or their death (killing a killer, torturing a traitor, ruining a rival).
• Two Traits rated 4: Icons. These are objects, places, or forces related to the character's life or death; it is only through your Icons that you can influence the physical world. For example, someone who was thrown out a window may be able to control broken glass. Someone who was a skilled artist might be able to control paintings or sculptures.
• One Trait rated 3: Old Habits. This is all that remains of the skills and abilities the character had in life. Now, they're mostly a source of knowledge, though social skills may still be applicable for dealing with other kami.

All kami have the same Weakness: The Living. They must roll against 1 whenever they try to communicate with the living, affect the physical without their Icons, or resist the influence of necromancy (regardless of religion). Magic, however, is a double-edged sword. Japan has a tradition of word magic that might be fun to explore, and the ujigami can always make deals with the lesser kami who inhabit physical places and objects.

Kami share the Shinto spirit world with a wide variety of other beings, some living and some not. As always, wikipedia's got your back with this long list of Japanese mythological creatures. These are just a few of my favorites...

Aragami - Anyone who dies a wrongful death may become one of these bloodthirsty spirits, but revenge rarely sates them. In time, they become a plague upon the living, driving innocent people mad and even killing those who cross them. (You can stat them any way you like, but they'll need some Icons and the 5/4/4/3 thing is tailor-made.)

Kitsune - Every 1,000 years, a fox gets two things: an additional tale and some magic powers. Kitsune can assume human form, turn invisible, create illusions, possess people, breath lightning, and otherwise run amok as tricksters often do. If they live long enough to gain 9 tails, they become omniscient.

Tsukumogami - Inanimate objects that survive 100 years sometimes develop sentience, not to mention limbs and faces. They're alive, not dead, but they can perceive the spirit world (for the sake of this article, anyway). Note that Tsukumogami are almost never modern devices; it's hard to make it 100 years when your warranty expires after 30 days.

Inugami - It seems like dogs always get the short end of the stick (see also, Church Grim). Inugami-mochi create their demon dogs by starving or beheading their poor pets and enslaving their spirits. Needless to say, this pisses the inugami off something fierce, so it's a Faustian bargain. Give the creature an opening, and it'll possess or destroy its master.

Fates Worse than Death

What really happened to the missing ancestors? I'll give you three possibilities, each of which can be used as the Truth or as a red herring...

Enslavement - The local inugami-mochi isn't content to have a spectral hound and a collection of sentient objects. No, she just has to bind the ujigami, too. She keeps them in her garden, bound to statues, and she uses them the same way she uses her other minions: to spy on her enemies and extort things from innocent townsfolk.

Enlightenment - A Raihosin (wandering kami) visited the Shrine and offered to lead the ancestors on the path to enlightenment. They agreed and have since transcended the cycle of death and rebirth. At least, that's how the Raihosin tells it, but can he be trusted? Maybe he's a Bodhisattva, like he says, or maybe he's an aragami who can kill the dead.

Deliverance - Speaking of which, Shintoists aren't the only ones with authority over the dead. A group of Christian evangelicals has moved into the area and they aim to send every "demon" they find back to hell. The kami they cast out may or may not end up in Perdition, or maybe they're just exiled from the area, or maybe they're annihilated. There's only one way to find out.

Pick Me Ups

A young boy asks for help winning the heart of a girl, but there's something strange about his paramour. For one thing, she can see the dead. For another, she has three tails. Should the ujigami help hook up a human boy with a shapeshifted kitsune? Can they believe the trickster when it tells them that the ancestors achieved enlightenment?

A shopkeeper asks the ujigami to do something about an old woman who's been "casting spells" on him and scaring away his business. Turns out, it's the inugami-mochi and her spells are the work of either her hellhound or her Tsukumogami. Either will tell the ujigami about their master's garden full of ancestor spirits, but are they telling the truth... or do they just want the old woman put in a vulnerable position?

A local family begs the ujigami to rid their new home of a malevolent spirit, but they're equal opportunity employers. They've also recruited the Deliverance Ministry, who make no distinctions between aragami and any other kind of spirit. The situation soon becomes a three-way turf war. Should the PCs team up with the aragami or try to reason with the living?

Next Up: Faking UFOs to protect America's secrets!