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I know this should be in the GM Forum but I wanted to get more exposure and player input too.

What are good ways to bring an NPC back from the dead?

I am looking for fun, innovative or impressive ways to return a character from the dead that will not make the players moan or seem trite. I have a few ideas of my own but I want to get the community's opinions first.

The character in question was a Crazie who thought he was a Cat and is an Antagonist who the players ran over with a Hoverbike at 220mph rather than face in combat.

He thinks he is a Cat (so there is the 9 lives angle) but he was buried and mourned by his evil master. So it is unlikely he would be returned or rebuilt as a cybernetic horror.

He has been "dead" for several months. Though it is possible that he was rescued from his grave shortly after his death and has been hiding out.

His name is... Mr. Pants and yes, he raps.

Usingh Through a Glass Darkly, a Fleshscuptor can use the Total Replacement Ritual to fully heal someone as long as 67% of the body is there without a permanent expendature of PPE.

Conversion book 1 has a Resurrection spell in the new spells section. Air Elemental magic has Breath of Life. Both can bring someone back from the dead.

Ley Line Storms are capable of just about anything, so resurrection could happen that way.

A doppelganger could be snatched from a parallel dimension.

--flatline

Step 1: get a haunting entity to duplicate the dead crazies personality and memories.

Step 2: Buy a glitter horse.

Step 3: Merge said Haunting Entity with Glitter horse.

Step 4: Enjoy having a robot horse that thinks it's a cat!

Step 5 (Optional): resurrect the real McCoy using any method outlined by other folks to have twice the fun!

Who said he actually has to be "dead"?

You could:
-have the Crazy subconsciously combine the "Death Trance" Physical PSI power w/Crazy Bio-Reg at the time of death, which would mimic death to a high degree (89% for a trained medical doctor). Now the character might not have DT-PPSI, but it could be a subconcious thing he's able to do because of the Cat thing
-grant him the Super Power of Immortality or Multiple Lives that only now are apparent
-they really destroyed an "avatar" of the Crazy, he only has 8 avatars (plus himself). The avatars are something only he knows about as that is how he gets the 9 lives thing (himself, plus the 8 avatars)
-break the OCC by giving him access to psi-powers he doesn't normally have (like Astral Projection, and have him around as an Astral Being on the physical plane, he'd need another power to interact with the physical plane though, might also be able to possess another astral travelers body while they are out, I forget if that's possible w/AP)
-his body got used in a Create Zombie/Mummy ritual, only there is a major hickup because of his M.O.M implants, his insanties, and maybe some other factors that brought him back as an undead
-an Auto-G is what they really killed, one who had taken his form for some reason but the PCs got in the way. Though IIRC the implants could be an issue, make them cosmetic in nature?
-have him come back as a haunting entity to the party
-have "copy cats" waiting to pick up the mantle (like Zoro, the Phantom, or the Sith)

Is there a reason the group has to know how he returned from the dead?

in theory if you do the transfer fast enough, you could remove the brain of the person and install it into a full conversion cyborg. using chemical and electrical triggers to 'jump start' the activity back. you'd probably see some memory loss (which would be worse the longer it takes), but you could get the person back 'alive'.. again, in theory.

you'd pretty much have to hook the brain up to life support right off though.. minutes after the body stops ideally. probably no more than an hour, though again the longer you wait the more memory will be lost. wait too long and the person your 'ressurecting' will a complete blank in need of total retraining. even if you do it fast, they are going ot need a lot of therapy to not only learn how to use the new body, but also likely relearn some things lost.

Make him into a Cold-Blooded....

Yup, not really dead, he just has to wake up

Resurrection Magic Spell (lvl 14)
Breath of Life Air Warlock Spell (lvl 5)
Trancferance of Essence & Intelliect Earth Spell (lvl Tranfer him into a Golem Body, or Robot Body.
Flame of Life Fire Warlock Spell (lvl 6)
Magic Tattoo : Pheonix Rising from the Flames (resurrection)
Resurrection : Deific = brings you back to from the dead, even if the body has been completely destroyed. Full HP/SDC, etc All damage repaired, including old wounds and missing limbs. No time period. You could be dead for years, and brought back.

I'd go with the Deific Resurrection myself. The Crazy may have had known a God and did not know it. The God in question decides to bring him back for whatever reason(s). Maybe to confront the Player Characters again.

glitterboy2098 wrote:in theory if you do the transfer fast enough, you could remove the brain of the person and install it into a full conversion cyborg. using chemical and electrical triggers to 'jump start' the activity back. you'd probably see some memory loss (which would be worse the longer it takes), but you could get the person back 'alive'.. again, in theory.

you'd pretty much have to hook the brain up to life support right off though.. minutes after the body stops ideally. probably no more than an hour, though again the longer you wait the more memory will be lost. wait too long and the person your 'ressurecting' will a complete blank in need of total retraining. even if you do it fast, they are going ot need a lot of therapy to not only learn how to use the new body, but also likely relearn some things lost.

Applying real life science? Or game science? Real life science you remove the blood supply to the brain, you have clinical brain death in less than 2 minutes (IE decapitation). At the moment of clinical brain death, about 30 seconds afterwards you have a break down in the electrical potential between neurons (basically you have no reading/flat line on an EEG for about 30 seconds following clinical brain death, at which time you get a voltage spike for a few hundred miliseconds and then nothing again).

I don't believe there has been any tests to see if you can "restore" a person once clinical brain death occurs, but you deffinitely can't after that final break down in the eletrical potential. The neurons would be completely toast after that.

Now there is something very different between ceasing breathing, or having a heart attack though and what removing the blood supply to the brain is. With ceasing breathing after about 2-3 minutes you'll lose unconciousness and it'll probably take another couple of minutes for your heart to stop beating. For a heart attack, you generally do not have stoppage of your heart, what you have is an irregular, either too fast, too slow or mistimed heart beat. In all 3 cases, SOME blood is getting pumped around. Just insufficient amounts.

If you removed the oxygen supply completely, for instances stepping out in to a vaccum, or decapitation or actual stoppage of the heart, you would lose conciousness in a few seconds and brain death would occur within that minute or two.

So based on modern science, your "conciousness", "memories" and all that makes you you, would be gone basically at the moment of brain death up to around 30 seconds or so later. To late, no chance of being turned in to a borg (the brain is a hunk of dead meat at that point...think kind of like a completely fused computer).

Now if you were actually brain dead yet, you could get on life support or something similar and transplant the brain in to a borg.

In the context of the game...well almost anything goes, especially when you bring magic in to the equation.

Here's another few. Some how the Crazy has been subject to the "Transfer Intelligence" method for Robot Intelligences (maybe the brain scan is done on the dead guy, so mental problems abound).

Can M.O.M implants be re-used? Might the implants not work to some how "copy" the brain structure so that they can be revived from even serious brain injury under normal circumstances. If this copy isn't deleated, it can overtake the new host brain maybe?

MULKA ... A Mulka could bring the crazy back with a thought for his own amusement.
FYI ... A Mulka is "Q" for the Palladium Books, found in Rifts Dimension Book MANHUNTER.

I'd go for the Identical twin brother angle. or maybe a Lonestar Clone.. yea that's better, then he can keep re-appearing every time he is killed no matter what the players do to the body. one of his MOM implants can be a memory recorder.

Mallak's Place wrote:I'd go for the Identical twin brother angle. or maybe a Lonestar Clone.. yea that's better, then he can keep re-appearing every time he is killed no matter what the players do to the body. one of his MOM implants can be a memory recorder.

Marvel did something like that with Hitler, had a central brain his mind went to when a clone body was destroyed then popped back out to start up a new one from the racks of waiting bodies. Of course the other players might not be happy if one player gets a perpetually resurrecting PC and they don't but that's a separate issue.

Nightmask wrote:

Mallak's Place wrote:I'd go for the Identical twin brother angle. or maybe a Lonestar Clone.. yea that's better, then he can keep re-appearing every time he is killed no matter what the players do to the body. one of his MOM implants can be a memory recorder.

Marvel did something like that with Hitler, had a central brain his mind went to when a clone body was destroyed then popped back out to start up a new one from the racks of waiting bodies. Of course the other players might not be happy if one player gets a perpetually resurrecting PC and they don't but that's a separate issue.

PLAYER QUEST TIME !!!

Find the God SET's home dimension and where he lives in it.
Steal the legendary magic potion which gave the dragon Apepi Immortality !!
The characters would heal 1d6x100 per minute, and self-resurrection. They can never die !!

TechnoGothic wrote:

Nightmask wrote:

Mallak's Place wrote:I'd go for the Identical twin brother angle. or maybe a Lonestar Clone.. yea that's better, then he can keep re-appearing every time he is killed no matter what the players do to the body. one of his MOM implants can be a memory recorder.

Marvel did something like that with Hitler, had a central brain his mind went to when a clone body was destroyed then popped back out to start up a new one from the racks of waiting bodies. Of course the other players might not be happy if one player gets a perpetually resurrecting PC and they don't but that's a separate issue.

PLAYER QUEST TIME !!!

Find the God SET's home dimension and where he lives in it.
Steal the legendary magic potion which gave the dragon Apepi Immortality !!
The characters would heal 1d6x100 per minute, and self-resurrection. They can never die !!

Didn't that potion have a Sanity-destroying side-effect to it? I seem to remember that unless you didn't care what happened to your mind or body as long as you were immortal that potion wasn't a great idea.

It has not been confired, even by SET himself. But SET is afraid it may be a side-effect of the potion. But he is not sure.

I would reward a group of players who searched for it and found it. Not handslap them with a nasty side-effect.

Instead of being an average Crazy, he could be an extremely advanced Ecto-Traveller who's ecto form looks completely human.
The Crazy himself doesn't even have to realize that he isn't using his actual body.

Why bring him back at all? In an infinite number of parallel universes, there is probably a virtually identical version that's bored enough to take his place.

TechnoGothic wrote:It has not been confired, even by SET himself. But SET is afraid it may be a side-effect of the potion. But he is not sure.

I would reward a group of players who searched for it and found it. Not handslap them with a nasty side-effect.

You'd be a rarity then, it seems like I've mostly seen GM bragging about screwing players over at moments like that. Heck if you look at the Dragon magazines for decades you just about couldn't go an issue without at least one article espousing how to screw over the players in some fashion and GM tossing out ways to stick it to the players. Pretty depressing really, it's a wonder the game survived at all with such a mentality running things.

Always remember to confirm the kill, you don't confirm it, you never know when you will run into him again.

Shinitenshi wrote:As the OP stated that the NPC has been dead and buried for several months none of these spells will work. The only thing listed here that would work is being Resurrection by a God.

I'm telling you, Ley Line Storms are capable of just about any effect the GM requires...

--flatline

Nightmask wrote:

TechnoGothic wrote:

Nightmask wrote:

Mallak's Place wrote:I'd go for the Identical twin brother angle. or maybe a Lonestar Clone.. yea that's better, then he can keep re-appearing every time he is killed no matter what the players do to the body. one of his MOM implants can be a memory recorder.

Marvel did something like that with Hitler, had a central brain his mind went to when a clone body was destroyed then popped back out to start up a new one from the racks of waiting bodies. Of course the other players might not be happy if one player gets a perpetually resurrecting PC and they don't but that's a separate issue.

PLAYER QUEST TIME !!!

Find the God SET's home dimension and where he lives in it.
Steal the legendary magic potion which gave the dragon Apepi Immortality !!
The characters would heal 1d6x100 per minute, and self-resurrection. They can never die !!

Didn't that potion have a Sanity-destroying side-effect to it? I seem to remember that unless you didn't care what happened to your mind or body as long as you were immortal that potion wasn't a great idea.

I doubt a Crazy would have an issue with that side effect.

Here's one: the Crazy's friend owed Crazy a huge debt. This debt (or bond, either way) was so strong and great the boss stole into Crazy's afterlife and retrieved Crazy from his fate. So long as Crazy was not claimed by the Yama Kings (or the older Chinese afterlifes), he is safe from White Lead Leopards coming to collect, as the Yama Kings are possessive and the older hells want to retire, but they can't until a few stubborn souls finally die.

Mythologically speaking, there are plenty of precedents for going to hell to bring a loved one back. It's part of the Ball Cycle, Orpheus and Eurydice are the quintessential descent into hell, Odysseus journeyed into hell to consult with someone there, and Valeria came back from her fate to save Conan's bacon from Rexor.

Or, since he's a crazy, he has the best response if asked about his death. "I'm an X-Man, death has a revolving door for us."

Thank you to everyone who has posted a reply a lot of these are great and I am going to keep thinking on them while I plot out his return. I think that a combination of some of them might be nice. The Ley Line Storm is especially promising but he was buried miles away from any Lay Line so I need to think. I like the returned to life by a God angle too. I am thinking of having him return as the shock-ending of an adventure set in that place in South America where the entire city is ruled by Cats and Cat-People but I need to give it another look over.

Oh and I also am fond of the Death is a Revolving Door suggestion.

I just do not want my players to think I cheaped out by bringing him back but Mike Mummah is doing some poster art for the first season of my game and after seeing his interpretation of Mr. Pants I wanted to reuse him. He looks awesome. Long Live the Kitty Cat Man.

Akashic Soldier wrote: I am thinking of having him return as the shock-ending of an adventure set in that place in South America where the entire city is ruled by Cats and Cat-People but I need to give it another look over.

I was partial to necromantic zombie, but now really prefer the Devotee of Bast idea.

He could've just been reading about cats, come across some mention of a sample ritual to her, carried it out and never thought twice about it. Then later, she comes to speak for him at the Weighing of his Soul, asking for a stay rather than immediate judgment. He could even have Bast or Osiris side-quests in South America, New York, or Egypt.

But as mentioned above, if there's no reason to explain to the players, don't bother until he's not a story element any more. Let them figure it out on their own, in character.

For more WTFing from the players trying to figure it out, combine with the nine lives, with Bast bringing him back as slightly more cat-like each time. If he hits the ninth time, he really is a cat.. with crazy implants.

Armorlord wrote:For more WTFing from the players trying to figure it out, combine with the nine lives, with Bast bringing him back as slightly more cat-like each time. If he hits the ninth time, he really is a cat.. with crazy implants.

There was an old Weird War Tales story where a soldier in Vietnam or WWII (can't remember which) saved a cat only to have a mysterious figure pop up to tell him that the cat has blessed him with nine lives. He doesn't believe so at first until surviving without injury an obviously lethal situation. Being stupid he promptly burns through the extra lives in foolhardy stunts to make himself look great (like rushing into flamethrower attacks), ends up on his last one and starts worrying but gives his last life in a selfless act of heroism at which point Mysterious Stranger pops back up to comment on it and you see that he's gotten one extra life: by being turned into a cat.

Armorlord wrote:For more WTFing from the players trying to figure it out, combine with the nine lives, with Bast bringing him back as slightly more cat-like each time. If he hits the ninth time, he really is a cat.. with crazy implants.

I was going to have Jack Ryder chosen as an avatar for the Parliament of Trees (no free powers it just means they use their Deific powers to burden him with unwanted responsibilities and make him a piece in their comic agenda) so I can just have Bast choose Mr. Pants as her avatar to do her works on the Earth.

azazel1024 wrote:

glitterboy2098 wrote:in theory if you do the transfer fast enough, you could remove the brain of the person and install it into a full conversion cyborg. using chemical and electrical triggers to 'jump start' the activity back. you'd probably see some memory loss (which would be worse the longer it takes), but you could get the person back 'alive'.. again, in theory.

you'd pretty much have to hook the brain up to life support right off though.. minutes after the body stops ideally. probably no more than an hour, though again the longer you wait the more memory will be lost. wait too long and the person your 'ressurecting' will a complete blank in need of total retraining. even if you do it fast, they are going ot need a lot of therapy to not only learn how to use the new body, but also likely relearn some things lost.

Applying real life science? Or game science? Real life science you remove the blood supply to the brain, you have clinical brain death in less than 2 minutes (IE decapitation). At the moment of clinical brain death, about 30 seconds afterwards you have a break down in the electrical potential between neurons (basically you have no reading/flat line on an EEG for about 30 seconds following clinical brain death, at which time you get a voltage spike for a few hundred miliseconds and then nothing again).

you have to seperate out brain death (when the brain stops showing activity), and actual brain death (when the brains cells start to die).

apon the start of clinical death (the ceasing of heatbeat, pulse and resperation),the conciousness continues for about 15-20 seconds. but the brain itself remains intact and functioning for some time. the most fragile cells in the brain (parts of the hippocampus) can last for up to 10 minutes without oxygen, but that can be extended extensively by relatively simple drug treatments post-mortem. the rest of the brain is quite hardy.
most brain damage from resucitation actually occurs from reperfusion injury..damaged caused by the return of oxygen from bloodflow after a prolonged peroid of lack. studies have shown a combination of drug treatment and reduced overall temp can reduce this danger. but they've also found the longer between the persons death and the resucitation attempt, the greater the chance of damage.

the main issue is getting conciousness going again. even if you resucitate the brain inside a cyborg body, and avoid causing too much brain damage in the process, the person would basically be in a coma. but studies into how the brain functions have shown that magnetic feild and electrical signals, if applied to the right areas of the brain, can 'jump start' sections of the brain.. in a functioning person improving their abilities, in areas with reduced function it gets them going again, albeit temporarily at the moment. an interesting sideeffect discovered from research using MRI's and such to probe into the inner workings of the brain. AFAIK it hasn't been followed up on yet regarding possible treatment of the 'brain dead'...probably because getting test subjects, human or otherwise, is very difficult and an ethically iffy issue..


would it be easy? no. could a sufficently educated and capable doctor in RIFTS try it? probably.

Have the Crazy rise from his grave as a Vampire Lord (rifter#49).
Makes nearly unkillable. 1000+hp, vampire invulnerability, access to special vampire powers, psychic powers, and magics...

TechnoGothic wrote:Have the Crazy rise from his grave as a Vampire Lord (rifter#49).
Makes nearly unkillable. 1000+hp, vampire invulnerability, access to special vampire powers, psychic powers, and magics...

Nah. Not for Mr. Pants.

Armorlord wrote:For more WTFing from the players trying to figure it out, combine with the nine lives, with Bast bringing him back as slightly more cat-like each time. If he hits the ninth time, he really is a cat.. with crazy implants.

I was going to suggest almost the same thing. Though I say bring him back just as a cat with MOM implants. Think Puss in boots. Or better yet bring him back as 9 different cats.

nilgravity wrote:

Armorlord wrote:Or better yet bring him back as 9 different cats.

That is trippy. I am going to base an entire NPC off that idea. Thank You!

Akashic Soldier wrote:

nilgravity wrote:

Armorlord wrote:Or better yet bring him back as 9 different cats.

That is trippy. I am going to base an entire NPC off that idea. Thank You!

Make him a Gestalt Superhuman who is made from 5 house-cats Voltron style. A really small, biological Voltron mind you.

Giant2005 wrote:Make him a Gestalt Superhuman who is made from 5 house-cats Voltron style. A really small, biological Voltron mind you.

I already have an actual Voltron parody. "Joltron" he has already appeared twice in my game. Think Voltron Hello Kitty style piloted by women. Except you know, evil.

No, I'll need something better... something.... less predictable... *strokes chin while pacing malevolently*

Dr. Who Time Lord cat? With 9 lives instead of 13? No... *continues to pace*

Akashic Soldier wrote:

Giant2005 wrote:Make him a Gestalt Superhuman who is made from 5 house-cats Voltron style. A really small, biological Voltron mind you.

I already have an actual Voltron parody. "Joltron" he has already appeared twice in my game. Think Voltron Hello Kitty style piloted by women. Except you know, evil.

No, I'll need something better... something.... less predictable... *strokes chin while pacing malevolently*

Dr. Who Time Lord cat? With 9 lives instead of 13? No... *continues to pace*

Or just forgot his first 4 lives

Jedrious wrote:Or just forgot his first 4 lives

*clutches at his head*

Must... think... as Bastardstro would think?!

Pick a number, any two digit number will do. Add the two digits together and then subtract the total from the original number. The result will always be a multiple of nine, so adding the digits of your answer will always result in the number nine.

Nine, nine, nine lives, cat of line tales, pain, painful life, nine times all equating to everything from any point... all things equal nine is subtracted... meaning? ummm...

Come on brain!!!

Pick a number. Add the two parts of the number together... subtract creation of adding the enhancement and then remove it because it cannot be greater than itself and it will always equal one of the nines.

*Twitches*

Come on Crazie Implant don't fail me now I am so close!!!!

Lets try this again!!!!

One; the Base.

Then identify and add the the two parts; Mind (Psionic Potential) and Matter (Biological Function) which = Life.
Remove Life and the result ins nine.

9

Nine.

Nyne.

Come on brain... *punches his M.O.M. impants*

What does that mean!?

Rule of nine, take whats mine, count the children all the time...

There we go.

Bastardstro might not be able to replace Mr. Pants but he can take ANOTHER NINE and shove a M.O.M implant in the squeely little brats head and then download Mr Pant's mind over the top.

But who should he pick... he needs someone close to the PC's that would still be a nine.

Project Cloud Nine.

YAY!

Once again science trumps over death!



W-what do you mean that makes no sense?

Akashic Soldier wrote:

Giant2005 wrote:Make him a Gestalt Superhuman who is made from 5 house-cats Voltron style. A really small, biological Voltron mind you.

I already have an actual Voltron parody. "Joltron" he has already appeared twice in my game. Think Voltron Hello Kitty style piloted by women. Except you know, evil.

No, I'll need something better... something.... less predictable... *strokes chin while pacing malevolently*

Dr. Who Time Lord cat? With 9 lives instead of 13? No... *continues to pace*

Sounds like Apepi.
He is crazy enough to think he is a cat and assume that form permanently.

He thinks he's a cat for a reason - he is actual a brainwashed Raksasha who hasnt died but discorporated to Hades to be reborn and now has his memory back. His "crazy" implants never really worked just jogged his psychology into using his supernatural strength, reflexes and psionics from being a greater demon!

It all works out neatly.

The Dark Elf wrote:He thinks he's a cat for a reason - he is actual a brainwashed Raksasha who hasnt died but discorporated to Hades to be reborn and now has his memory back. His "crazy" implants never really worked just jogged his psychology into using his supernatural strength, reflexes and psionics from being a greater demon!

It all works out neatly.

Not bad!