Sister Nina, Haunted Nun

Sister Nina leads primarily a solitary life at a church. Ever since she was young, she's been a spiritual nexus, something that the spirits of the dead are attracted to. Sister Nina can't see them, but she can hear them, and it's worse when she sleeps. Sometimes she hears the voices of angels or demons, but mostly it's the unhappy dead. Living on hallowed ground helps, but not by that much. To counter the effects of her curse, Sister Nina was taught two of the Seven Bells of Pharasma: the Bell of Disruption and the Bell of Compulsion, to dismiss and control spirits. Her skills have caught the eye of The Order of the Broken Bell (coincidence?), an organization that deals in putting down hauntings, curses and monster infestations, who use her on a freelance basis. Sister Nina is a meek soul and is generally no good in the situations that require force of personality or combat, but that's what Katya, Bogdan and Dr Henkelberger are good for.

Nina's the character I'm playing in Ben's latest campaign. It takes place in the same world as the campaign where I played Renata in. That particular campaign was played using the Pathfinder system, but for this campaign we're experimenting with Fate, which is a good deal more streamlined. I'm always interested in trying new systems, though I always found it a bit odd looking through the Fate book because where are the pages and pages of lists I need those lists. It's a system where your character is defined by a group of simple sentences which are quite open to interpretation. I like it in some ways, how much faster and looser it is than the other RPGs I've made and how it doesn't punish failure -- and that failure can be a reward sometimes. The looseness can be problematic sometimes though, since in more rule-heavy systems it's easier to look up what you can and can't do.

Nina ended up being a little like the kid from The Sixth Sense if he could use the bells from Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series. If we'd been playing Pathfinder she probably would've been an Oracle, or maybe a Spiritualist from the Occult Adventures rulebook.

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Wereshark

The curse of the wereshark is most often seen in coastal or island nations. The shark form of this curse means that the afflicted has so keep close eye on the lunar cycle, since transforming away from water leaves the shark in a helpless, painful situation. In water, of course, the wereshark is deadlyand difficult to outswim.

Like the werecrocodile, this is another creature that makes you scoff because it seems like a silly idea. But like the werecrocodile, it has a basis in myth and man's fear of his area's apex predators. The Hawaiian legend of Nanaue tells of a man born to Kalei and Kamohoalii, human woman and shark king. Before Nanaue was born, the shark god told the Kalei to never let the child eat meat. But as a coming of age rite, the men of Kalei's village took him away and gave him meat, not knowing what his mother knew. That sparked a hunger for human flesh in Nanaue and at night he would turn into a shark and hunt for human victims. Nanaue was forced to flee and make a new home several times, but the local villagers would always chase away the vicious man-eating shark.

Also Nanaue had a big ol' shark mouth on his back even when in human form.

Sorry about the several months of silence between posts! I just got really burnt out on work and hadn't been happy with my attempts to design interesting new D&D creatures. I hope this wereshark is a sign of inspiration returning.


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