Monks of the Miserere
Gustavo Bécquer was a Spanish author who wrote stories in the Romantic style during the Nineteenth Century. I’d love to record them for Librivox, but I have a lot of Venice to get through, so can I suggest a recording put out by a different podcast? Please see The Miserere episode from Haunted Places : Ghost Stories.
I don’t want to over-elaborate my explanation here, because the episode I’ve cross-referenced frames it well, but essentially there’s a murderer who believes his sin will be forgiven if he writes a perfect Miserere. The Miserere is the 51st Psalm set to music. It was, in the period we are considering, only sung in the Sistine Chapel, never written down, and performed in the Tenebrae: the days between the anniversary of the death of Jesus and his resurrection. The murderer hears that there’s a ghostly choir at a ruined abbey that sings the miserere, similarly trying to atone for their sins, and he goes to benefit from their work.
Becquer’s theology doesn’t work in Ars Magica: certainly the monks die unshriven, but they are monks performing service killed by enemies of the church, and so they are technically martyrs. This leads me to believe that, in Ars Magica terms, these are demons. There need to be at least nine monks to perform the miserere – it is performed by two choirs, one of four singers and one of five.
Order: Tempters
Infernal Might: 10 (Corpus) Note, they monks live in an Infernal Aura of 3, with a higher regio level of 5.
Characteristics: Int +1, Per +1, Pre +3, Com +3, Str +0, Sta +3, Dex 0, Qik 0
Size: 0
Confidence Score: 3 (3)
Virtues and Flaws: Weak-willed
Personality Traits: Sad +5
Combat: do not engage in physical combat
Soak: +5
Fatigue Levels: OK, 0, –1, –3, –5, Unconscious
Wound Penalties: –1 (1–5), –2 (6–10), –3 (11–15), Inc (16–20), Dead (21+)
Abilities: Many, including Sing 9 (Miserere)
Powers:
Chant of the Monks: 2 points, Init –2, Mentem. The chant of the monks creates a powerful dread in a character, forcing him to make a Personality trait roll of 6 or higher before he can leave the abbey. If the roll succeeds, the curse is broken. If it fails, the character will not attempt to leave the abbey until dawn. If multiple monks are using this power simultaneously it affects everyone who can hear it. Individual monks can only affect a single victim per use of the power. The group variant of the Miserere can cause Warping.
Coagulation, 1 point, Init –1, Corpus.
Envisioning; 1 point, Init +0, Mentem. The monks use the Envisioning power on humans who fall asleep in their regio, to make them think they are spending many days, and even years, working on the Miserere while the monks sing.
Drawn into darkness, 1 point, Init –10, Vim. This is similar to the Faerie Spirit Away power: it draws a human into a higher level of Infernal regio on this site, where they go slowly mad trying to write a perfect Miserere.
Equipment: Monastic cowl
Weakness: Prayers to Saint Veronica, the patron of kindness and charity.
Vis: 1 pawn each of Rego and Imaginem vis sordida in cowl
Appearance: Superficially like blackrobed monks, these demons are skeletal when they first appear, but put on flesh as they sing.
Base creature: Infernal monks in Tales of Power.
Episode: no epsiode.