Ghost
"The ghosts of people not yet moved on," and the window is physical. "On the edge of the Caelyrean, near one of the moons, the Tantillian, a swan shaped opal ship, rests, and as long as a soul has not began its venture on the vessel, you may be summoned back."
A soul pulled back is, in the star gods' own word, "Stolen" from their auction, and there is a collector. "Xikon, the Grand Soul Catcher, will come for you and for a thousand and one days find you out until he shall claim your soul." A returned Ghost is "split between this world and the Realm of Dreams, experiencing a duality to their existence, one at which is maddening to most."
Frailty
The thousand and one days cannot be stopped. They cannot be bought off, and they cannot be hidden from. There is no rite, no price, no ward, no distance and no patron that alters the count. A Void Prince cannot buy the days; a Lich King cannot intercede; a Remoulded that promises otherwise is lying, and several have.
Xikon comes, and on the thousand and first day he collects, and the only thing a Ghost decides is what it does with the time.
Life
The count is known to the Ghost from the first hour and known exactly, and it is not learned and cannot be lost. It is felt, at the hour of return each day, as a small cold decrement somewhere behind the sternum, the way a person feels a change in the weather in an old break. Ghosts say the number aloud without meaning to, in the middle of other conversations, and the surest way to know what is sitting at a table is to ask it what day it is and hear it answer with a figure.
This is the cruelty of the rank. A Shade does not know it is a forgery, a Ghast knows nothing at all, and a Ghost knows the date. Those called back by people who loved them spend the days being loved. Those who called themselves back spend the days working. The ones who go mad are the ones who try to hide, and the world has enough stories of Ghosts walled up in cellars, sunk in barrels, carried across oceans, and found on schedule, that the attempt is considered a symptom rather than a plan.
Body
A Ghost is not tissue at all. It is a soul standing in the shape it remembers, exact in most places and vague at the edges in a way nobody can put a finger on. The reason is simple once it is said: nobody has ever seen the back of their own head, the true set of their own ears, the line of their own shoulders from behind, or their own walk.
A Ghost is perfect wherever it had a mirror and approximate everywhere else. The nape, the spine, the backs of the hands past the knuckle and the gait are all guesses, and in old Ghosts the guesses simplify further with the years. There is a test, practised quietly in four countries, in which the returned loved one is asked to walk away down a hall, and the family watches the back of the neck.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Where the Tantillian rests relative to the two moons
- What Xikon does with a soul once he has claimed it
- Whether any Ghost has ever reached the thousand and first day willingly
- What the Realm of Dreams is, that a Ghost stands half in