Editing MTH:Social Merits (section)

===ENLIVENING PATHOS (****)===

PREREQUISITES: Fame 3, may not be taken at character creation

EFFECT: Some heroes, they say, can never die, and some villains, they say, can't ever be killed. The Enlivening Pathos represents this.  If enough hearts and minds are bent upon the identity a given person represents, death itself may be rescinded. This effect represents not so much a power as an unusual status within the universal group-consciousness. Technically, one does not have to be superhuman to possess this merit, but it is supernatural in nature.

In order to possess this power the character's exploits themselves must have made them famous (or infamous). Likewise, the fame must be associated with something primal, something which speaks very closely to the fundamental nature of humanity or another sentient population of great number. This is a vague qualification, but it is necessarily so: Anything which gives the character a permanent place in the psyche and culture of most of humanity will qualify. Being on a reality TV show generally won't.

When the character would normally die, or would seem to have died, they loose this merit instead (but may repurchase it). Fate, luck, destiny or what-have-you 'corrects' the event. It wasn't really the character, or the character had planned to fake their death all along, or any other contrived scenario which ends up with the character alive. The storyteller ends up the arbiter of what ultimately happens.  

Storytellers should be very stringent about what it takes to qualify for this merit, and it is not appropriate for all games. STs are within their rights to not allow it into their games and players should not assume it is available without consulting with their Storyteller.