Pale Brother
The Pale Brother, also known as Death-in-Dreams, the Peaceful and Wrathful One, and Thanatos, is a Morphean heavily associated with death.
Overview
This Morphean represents a rather straightforward role — the real death, which can be delayed but never denied altogether. Due to modern people’s lack of real emotional connection with the notion of death, the Pale Brother appears only rarely. He exists as a reminder that death cannot be beaten, and helps the dying to accept their Final Dreams. To the accepting, he is kind; to the willfully ignorant and arrogant, he is wrathful.
Appearance
The Pale Brother can look like anything, but, in the eyes of the Lost, prefers to wear the visage of a corpse that flows constantly between ages, genders, and ethnicities; each form carries a different sign of death. Ordinary people may see deities, loved ones, and other figures from their cultures’ death traditions. Whatever vampires see, they apparently fear greatly, while werewolves do not see him at all; Thanatos claims that they are not of his domain.
Questing for Death
While the Pale Brother does not seek out others to quest on his behalf, he will grant such work to those who sincerely accept their own mortality. These quests generally involve helping others come to that same acceptance or preventing others from attaining true worldly immortality. In exchange, the Death-in-Dreams will grant his agents the Boon of the White Twins: any member of the party granted this boon may call it in to bring back to life one who has just died; circumstances will conspire such that it only seemed that the target was dead. The invoker and the target, from this point, share a linked doom. If one dies, the other will immediately die as well. This boon can only be invoked once.
References
- CTL: Dancers in the Dusk, p. 43-45
