The third option I was mulling over was a Whisper. Because I like them and they’re fun, but I hesitate because I don’t know how another group will interpret all this supernatural stuff, and I’d hate to crimp the style of one of the most fun types in the game.
Starting special ability MUST be “Compel.” And for a spirit mask, a ninja style lower face mask, only you grip it with your teeth to hold it on, and it has fierce teeth carvings around a bone eye on the other side, and if you flex your throat and think words the mask whispers them for you.
I’d give him a long tangled mass of dark hair, and make him always a little out of breath; his lungs caught in the Ghost Field when he was a baby, and he still has small curls of mist that come out on his panting breath sometimes. He wears an eyepatch just for fun, sometimes switching sides; he thinks it helps him filter the world made of dust and grit shoved together like sloppy particleboard, so he can see the real world beyond and beneath and through; the world of life and death and motion and dream, not tangled in the mess of veins and arteries that keep meat from rotting on the bone.
He grew up with a beautifully painted sign that said “PUPPETS” and he did marionette shows; as a sickly youth, he would bind ghosts to the dolls so they would perform while he held himself as upright as he could, twitching the control sticks randomly while the ghost puppets performed. He also used puppets to steal, and he made enough to live and to stay in medicine.
Now he’s angered someone strong enough to withstand intimidation, so he finally has to accept one of the offers of employment that drift around a man with his talents. He has experienced an odd surge in power lately, and he dreams of a ship on the side of a glassy wave of the Void Sea, sliding down the frictionless surface towards the gulf, surrounded by glassy beauty–water, filled with energy, risen up beyond its limits.
Some habits die hard, and he always has a number of hats with him–to adjust the mood, to collect the coins, and to provide the eye-catching and misleading detail.