So, you’ve bit the big one. Kicked the bucket. Punched your ticket. You cashed in your chips. You were ready to play a harp solo or burn for eternity. But you were given a second chance. You crossed the Threshold but something dead pulled you back and gave you life. Now you’re two souls within one body, and any sense of morality that you’ve got is going to fill you with a burning desire to do better than you have before. To fix your wrongs. To find your loved ones. To build a better world, or keep what you created. To get back at the system. Everyone has their Burdens, and so do their geists. They drive you on, pushing you.
Not every dead body brought back with a geist is a Sin-eater. No, that takes a conscious choice. It’s just as possible for one of the Bound to shackle their geist and become a Tyrant. To be a Sin-eater is to actively choose to do better. To take on the sins and Burdens of others and help carry them. This is your body, it’s going to get broken. This is your blood, a hell of a lot of it is going to get spilled. But you can do it. You can push on and keep fighting. You have to, because no one else is going to, but there will be plenty of people and things that want to break and bleed you.
Geist: The Sin-eaters second edition is a game about the most oppressive and dehumanizing system that there is, and how the brave, the caring, and the guilty can stand up for the people who have the least voice in society. While Sin-eaters are half-dead, death itself is their enemy. As a Sin-eater, you must see the exploitation in the system and step up to it, chest out, and push back. But your krewe will have your back, and so will your geist.
Sin-eaters are never alone, and while the most cynical Bound might look at this as a negative, your geist, no matter how gory or vicious, is there for you through thick and thin in a way that no lover ever will, and as your Synergy rises and you uncover Remembrance, that bond will increase. You aren’t just one life anymore, you’re two.
One of those lives is a lot deader than the other. Having been subject to both death and the Underworld, the geist longs for life. Everything that the living take for granted is fresh for the geist, who will often have a drastically different perspective. The geist went so long without pleasure and touch and love and pain and joy and hate and the simple taste of a crisp apple or a cool pillow. A Sin-eater always has reason to enjoy the feeling of a hot shower or a beer with friends. Their geist’s feelings will spill over to them. Even at low Synergy, it’s hard to miss that bittersweet taste of memory as a Sin-eater listens to their Touchstone song, or hears that recording from their late father. The geist knows those pains, and misses them.
Even the parts of life that seem undesirable are a balm to the geist. The feel of a split lip, and broken ribs, held together by plasm. The thrill of death on the line, even when it won’t stick. A sin-eater can take an incredible amount of abuse, and the spirit inside them will revel in it the whole time, riding the masochist high of adrenaline and endorphins. Some sin-eaters will even feed their geists with action, though it’s easy to lose yourself and become a dark Elysian with that attitude.
Put simply, Geist has two competing and complimentary drives as a game: To enjoy the life that you have now that you’ve been given a second chance, and to make the afterlife a better place and help the dead pass on to something better. How you balance these drives of Life and Death is up to you and your krewe, but they should inform your outlook.
There’s no shortage of death focused media. The corebook had it’s own list, but here’s a few of the things that inspire me. Some of the inspiration actually resulted in Geists or Sin-eaters in Night Horrors: Unquiet Dead.
Gideon the Ninth: While not necessarily featuring the dead themselves all that much, Tamsin Muir’s necromantic universe certainly gives good inspiration for krewe cults. There’s also a really good example of a Kerberos or Cthonian, maybe a Tyrant. And even a Sin-eater using Remembrance Traits. Remember: “We do bones, motherfucker!”
Dresden Files: I’m pretty sure the series is inspired by the old World of Darkness. The politics vis a vis the police get increasingly grating as time goes on, but it’s the benchmark for urban fantasy. A handful of the books are even focused around zombies and ghosts, including Grave Peril, Dead Beat, Ghost Story, and Skin Game. Grave Peril and Dead Beat each inspired a geist in this book’s companion piece, Night Horrors: Unquiet Dead.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: There’s a ton of this manga by now, and all of them are absolutely batshit insane. It doesn’t necessarily have much to do with ghosts, but the series’ trademark magic system, The Stand, is an absolutely great source of inspiration for your geist. Plus if you don’t know what to call your geist, just pick an old dad rock song. There’s an obvious Stand in Unquiet Dead. There are several Netflix seasons by now.
The Cosmere: Okay, okay, I know recommending Sanderson is like recommending water at this point. But hear me out: Mistborn: Secret History. And Shadows for Silence and the Forests of Hell. While thematically it isn’t too similar, the Nahel Bond in the Stormlight Archive is very similar to the Bargain.
Sandman: While Dream is the primary protagonist, Death is a standout for her surprisingly chipper attitude despite being the embodiment of an ending. Façade is absolutely a standout for Geist inspiration, and so is Hob Gadling’s story. Keep in mind that it’s from the 80s/90s and oof, there’s a bit in. The audiodramas from Audible change the worst of it, and the Netflix show does as well simply by updating the setting.
The Lost Room: Mentioned in the main book, it bears repeating simply because more people should watch it. I’m pretty sure it was a backdoor pilot, but it got retooled into Warehouse 13. Either way, it’s a really cool miniseries, and it inspired The House That Hates over in Unquiet Dead.
Silent Hill: I sincerely believe this is a good adaptation. The grotesque monsters are great for ghosts in the Dominions, with the Red Pyramid being a Kerberos maybe. Honestly the transition between realities inspired a story I ran back in 2009. Silent Hill: Revelation is terrible in the best way, and likewise provides some gross monsters.