A question about electroplasm ammo and vials. Both can injure ghosts, who are “composed of semi-solid electroplasmic vapor.” Does anyone know the reasoning why something made of electroplasm can be injured by electroplasm?
And if the answer is “because that’s the way the world works” I’m fine with it. Thank you!
I’ve always considered ghost like a semi-stable aggregation of electroplasmic vapor: a sudden burst of electroplasmic energy disrupt that stability until the vapor loses its form (and the ghost is destroyed)
Its not something directly stated in the book, so lore wise it is often up to the GM. Personally here is my take.
Electroplasm is, in essence, essence itself; pure, concentrated, life energy. While few oft make the mistake of equating the ghost with electroplasm, it is not quite that simple.
The formation of a ghost takes place in two parts, firstly is the separation of the spirit from the body; it is this part that contains the memories and the drive of the person it once belonged to. The spiritual separation is, contrary to popular belief, surprisingly quick despite the required few hours for a ghost to fully form.
The bulk of the time needed for a ghost to form is actually taken up by the second part, collation and normalization of the electroplasm within the body. It is during this step that the bodies spirit, in layman’s terms, attunes itself to the remaining electroplasm in what was once its body. See, the inherent high energy of electroplasm is capable of dissolving a spirit into little more than component energy, which is oft subsumed by the ambient electoplasm. The normalization process is rather complex, but one may think of it as synchronizing vibrations between two objects. When un-synchronized, the objects collide, over and over, until one or both are destroyed; but once synchronized they move together as one, unimpeded by the other, and more so the low energy spirit is given more force by the high energy elecroplasm pushing with it. For this reason it is electroplasm that is used to destroy a corpse for, without the protection of the body and without enough time to normalize the huge quantities of electroplasm, the spirit has nigh 0 chance of survival. Once this normalization process is complete however, a ghost emerges, fully formed. Yet for all this, the state of a ghost is temporary due to the properties inherent with electroplasm.
The body of the ghost will, rather swiftly, burn itself away if not replenished with a regular supply of electroplasm. Much like how raw electroplasm is dangerous if left un-contained, and prone to discharge, the ghost’s body undergoes similar processes as it goes about its unlife. It is this process that draws ghosts to contained elecroplasm as well as human bodies.
When a ghost attacks a human, they typically drain the body of contained elecroplasm by swiftly normalizing chunks of it, before consuming them. Due to the typically low amounts of elecroplasm in the body, and the ghosts continued practice of normalization speeding the process, this can swiftly lead to the human’s death.
This leads to Elecrotplasmic ammunition as well as lighting barriers. As one might guess, electroplasm once discharged quickly evaporates, it is why the lightning barriers require such large quantities to continue functioning. It is for this same reason that ghosts cannot draw power from a functioning lightning barrier, the elecroplasm dissipates far to quickly and is far to powerful to be normalized.
As stated before, un-normalized elecroplasm is dangerous to a spirit, but it also reacts violently with the Normalized elecroplasm forming the ghost. Much like before the layman’s explanation is that one might think of it as the two moving at different vibrations, bashing against one another; each losing energy from the exchange and dissipating away.
With lighting barriers its a matter of power and scale, while with elecroplasmic ammunition, its a matter of speed. A ghost could normally, with a good minute of effort, normalize the amount of elecroplasm used in a standard elecroplasmic round, however given the nigh instantaneous dispersal of the payload, the round has the expected and demonstrated effect.
Typical ghost death via elecroplasmic ammunition comes from one of two reactions. Either the gunner in question successfully strikes the ghost’s core, where the majority of its spirit resides, thereby destroying that which holds the ghost together; or the gunner dissipates enough normalized elecroplasm that the ghost can no longer protect the spirit core, and it dissipates naturally away.
—————————————————————————————–Now mind you, my explanation does separate some from cannon ghost lore, but similar concepts can be applied within your game, or something completely different.
Hope this helps.