I would have done so since he mentioned looking for it.
Its still online in the Desire Drive page, in the notes on previous versions. In the spoiler underneath in the other spoiler for temporary maneuver information. Made me remember that discipline existed, along with a bunch of other stuff I already made for years but didn't post yet. Just gotta find the time and will to do the touch ups and finally get them in.
Here it is:
Wicked Spirit "Trance"
Desire Drive (Stance)
Level: Hermit 1
Initiation Action: Swift action
Range: Personal
Duration: Stance
"It appears you took care of my delightful underling back there..."
"Delightful underling? You mean the rotten one?"
"Yes, isn't rotting the cutest?"
If you find a humanoid corpse and place an Ofuda (you can make them freely provided you have paper and some sort of writing material) on its forehead, it will rise as an undead minion under your control.
When not directly following your orders in combat, this undead minion attends to whichever commands were written on the Ofuda. While the Ofuda cannot be destroyed, if it is removed from the undead minion by making a touch attack and winning a strength check against the undead minion, its animation ends and it reverts to an inanimate corpse.
You can only have one undead minion at a time and if one is lost you may not reanimate another until you have meditated for 8 hours on the flow of the universe.
While you are not under this stance, the undead minion remains active but dedicates all its actions to defending itself. It is automatically deanimated if it is more than 30 ft./IL away from you, but you may raise it back up.
The undead minion has an effective HD equal to your initiator level.
It acquires the normal Zombie template, but ignores the clauses on Hit Dice, Base Attack, Abilities, Skills and Feats, using the following instead;
This undead minion has hit points equal to your own, a BAB equal to your initiator level, uses your save modifiers and has the following ability scores.
Str 15, Dex 13, Con Ø, Int Ø, Wis 14, Cha 12
It loses all the Skills ranks and feats it had but instead gains half as many ranks in Listen and Spot as you do (not cross-class). Feats as selected by you.
An undead minion gains additional feats as it gains HD but does not have the intelligence and will to acquire or control minions of its own.
As you enter the Spirit Realm, your connection to the realm of the dead grows stronger.
You emit a red aura similar to a flame that produces light as a torch.
While in Trance mode, you may try to speak with the spirits of the dead no matter their language if you find their corpse (must have at least its head/skull) on the Material Plane or their spirit on the Ethereal Plane. When speaking to a spirit through a corpse, you communicate with their soul despite whatever afterlife they are.
Although you may speak with them, they are under no obligation to speak to you.
It essentially allows to use the corpse (incomplete to use) to speak to the spirit or speak to the spirit directly if it is still there. Mao would think the spirit could still be there for a while at the site of death, or remnants of it, since she died in violence. (Not necessarily angsty enough to become a ghost, though). She wouldn't be all that surprised if she had left, though.
Thanks for the repost. However it says that to get the speak with soul effect, you need at least the head/skull, and all Mao has now is a leg and some pools of blood. So Mao herself should know that the chances of this working were pretty slim.
Since it came up, I do have a few questions on the common knowledge of how things go in the subject.
-Are there actual gods in this setting? I know some items refer to god/devil/stuff but that doesn't mean they aren't just names.
A good question. Dark Force could be considered a god. A dark, cruel, twisted god. It reshapes reality to an extent, it keeps coming back, can possess people and has a variety of followers.
Holy/Devil usually refer to light/dark energy. But whereas Dark Force seems like the living sentient embodiment of dark energy, there is no super unique entity for the side of light.
There are creatures of light here and there, but they seem to have degenerated into a feral state and usually just hang around and will even attack if provoked, although they have a preference for attacking dark creatures if possible.
God items on the other hand simply refer to really high-quality stuff.
-Any Heaven/Hell/Limbo/etc planes of existence known? Or just some Cthulhu-ish dimensions that may remain to be discovered?
There is
this.
-The cloning process seems described in the lore as the common use to return people to life. People died in disasters such as the beasts in Ragol and were returned that way. I sort of recall it being mentioned as an insurance in case we die on Ragol as well. Is it some kind of resurrection through a new body or the clone is copy? Or maybe like the Clone spell and the body remains inert until the soul can enter it? Mostly wondering because if it is just a copy people could make a quick army of the same uber character, modify them for control and get an army. Like, a bunch of Amaterasu clones that you don't have to pay and that obey orders.
A great question and something I've been pondering to myself how to deal with.
What I had in mind is something along the lines of:
-It is a copy.
-However there is some degenrancy/losses like regular ressurection spells.
-For reasons still in study, should two copies of the same being meet, a mental breakdown will occur, they'll instantly hate each other and try to murderize the copy/original by any means necessary. "Army of clones" is something that've been tried multiple times over known history, in particular of ace pilots, but you need to take great care that the clones of the same person never meet directly.
-Ditto for sentient android copies.
-For the reasons above, the Android Administration law is that it's strictly forbidden to copy someone while the original is still functional.
-Luckily, cloning demands a fair amount of body matter to accomplish, so you don't need to worry about someone trying to clone you just out of some strands of hair/drops of blood. A limb is kinda the minimum necessary.