Necromantic Rituals
“Life is nothing but a fleeting moment of pain before inevitable eternity. In death, we are truly born.” — Agaitas, childe of Egothha
Rituals are necromantic formulas that create powerful magical effects. They make use of unusual and rare ingredients, and take significantly more time to cast than the simple spells of a necromantic path. All practitioners of Necromancy have the capacity to perform rituals equivalent to their mastery with that art.
Rituals must be learned and purchased separately from paths; you do not acquire them simply by purchasing a path of Necromancy. Like paths, they are rated from levels 1-5, and a caster can have several rituals corresponding to each level of the progression. A necromancer must purchase one ritual of each level before she is able to purchase a ritual at the next-higher level. So, in order to purchase a level 2 ritual, a necromancer must already possess at least one level 1 ritual; or in order to purchase a level 3 ritual, she must already possess at least one level 2 ritual, and so forth.
No character can learn more necromantic rituals than she possesses dots in all of her Necromancy paths. Total all your dots from all known paths of Necromancy to determine the maximum number of rituals your character can possess.
Unless otherwise stated, all rituals cost 1 Blood to activate. All rituals also require five minutes of casting time per level of the ritual.
Ritual Ingredients and Targeting: If a ritual requires you to have a focus, then it can be used at range. Otherwise, it requires line of sight, unless the ritual specifically says otherwise. Ingredients that are specifically called out in the ritual’s description must be used to cast the ritual, or that ritual fails. A ritual’s ingredients are always consumed in a use of that ritual, unless otherwise specified in the description.
Necromantic rituals use the Necromancy test pool: the Necromancy user’s Social attribute + Occult versus the target’s Social attribute + Willpower.
Contents
Level 1 Necromantic Rituals
Call of the Hungry Dead
The Shadowlands are a dark and empty wasteland, filled with echoes and bitter regrets. By connecting your victim’s psyche to this other world, you can cause her to hear the souls of the dead, weeping for their past crimes.
System: When a necromancer casts Call of the Hungry Dead, she must target a victim that is currently within a one mile radius of the casting of this ritual. If you succeed in an opposed challenge against your target, using the Necromancy test pool, the victim is plagued by the voices of wraiths from across the Shroud. These voices whisper in the night, teasing and confusing the character, distorting her perceptions, and increasing her paranoia. The next time the target gains downtime actions, she gains one less action for that period. This ritual’s effects do not stack.
Circle of Cerberus
A necromancer must always be cautious; her activities on the physical realm and in the Shadowlands can create many enemies. The Circle of Cerberus was created to help protect against such vengeance.
System: The necromancer must draw a circle in salt and silver on the floor. Having such a circle etched into the ground does not create a permanent spell; the components erode away at the next sunrise. All those within the Circle of Cerberus receive a +5 bonus to defensive test pools against wraiths or powers of Necromancy, including similar powers possessed by other supernatural creatures, as long as the protected characters remain within the circle.
Dark Assistant
This ritual animates a severed hand or a human skull, causing the object to become self-aware so that it may serve as the necromancer’s gruesome ally.
System: The necromancer can perform this ritual on a severed hand or a clean human skull, animating the object to create an assistant. Such an assistant is permanent until destroyed. Animating a hand gives it the ability to act as a physical assistant, scrambling about on its fingers at the necromancer’s command. It can fetch small items, turn the pages of a book, or perform simple tasks.
Animating a human skull allows it to serve as a veritable library of information, reciting with perfect memory any book or information read to it and giving detailed accountings of any rituals or alchemical recipes that have been explained in its presence.
Neither the head nor the hand can perform any combat actions. Dark Assistants have only 2 health levels and are animated by dark energies. These creatures have no memory of their former lives and serve only the necromancer who animated them.
Eyes of the Grave
You can concentrate the pallor and decay of death into a pinch of grave soil and grind it into the eyes of a portrait, sketch, or picture of your target. Later, by tearing this picture in half, you inflict visions of horror that blind your opponent for a short period of time.
System: At the zenith of this ritual’s casting, you must destroy a portrait of the target that has been created by someone with at least 2 dots of the Crafts skill. The necromancer must target a victim who is currently within a one-mile radius of the initial casting of this ritual. Using the Necromancy test pool make an opposed challenge against your target. If you succeed, you have imbued a picture of your target with Eyes of the Grave. At some point later that same evening, you can tear the picture in half, causing your victim to suffer the effects of blindness for one full turn. A necromancer can have only one Eyes of the Grave ritual in effect at any time; casting this ritual a second time cancels the effects of the first invocation.
Smoking Mirror
Named for the chief Aztec god Tezcatlipoca, this ritual allows you to use an obsidian mirror to gain dark insight into the world around you. By gazing into the mirror’s ebony depths, the necromancer can discover an object’s flaws, assess the general health of mortals, or even read a being’s aura.
System: You must cast this ritual on an obsidian mirror no smaller than six inches in diameter; such an object can be concealed with a bit of effort, but will not fit easily into a pocket. Until the next sunrise, looking into the mirror allows the necromancer (and only the necromancer who cast this spell) to utilize Death’s Gaze via the mirror’s reflection. Death’s Gaze grants the ability to see wraiths and the surrounding Shadowlands. It also allows the necromancer to see the stain of oblivion on the living. If the necromancer has any dots of the Medicine skill, she may determine from this stain whether or not the living individual has any illnesses, damage, or physical disabilities.
Warping the Morbid Visage
Sometimes it is necessary to falsify one’s death, either to the mortal world or to other vampires. This ritual allows the necromancer a vital tool in such deceptions, altering a corpse to look like her own form.
System: The necromancer invoking this ritual is able to change a true corpse’s facial features, coloration, and general height and weight, causing the corpse’s appearance to correspond with her own for up to three full nights. To enact this ritual, the caster removes the corpse’s tongue and keeps it on her person for as long as she wants the ritual to be in effect.
Clever necromancers also use this ritual to ensure that onlookers cannot identify the corpse’s true identity easily, using it to mislead investigations. The corpse’s native DNA does not change; it is possible that scientific tests could determine the individual’s genetic makeup is incorrect for her physical features or age, but to casual investigation, the body appears in all ways to be a copy of the necromancer who casts this ritual.
Level 2 Necromancy Rituals
Black Blood
This ritual allows the necromancer to enchant her blood, or any amount of cold blood, and through this ritual turn that blood into hideous black ichor.
System: If this ritual is performed on the necromancer herself, this ritual transmutes 3 points of Blood within the caster’s system. The caster cannot utilize this blood for any purpose. Should anyone attempt to drink from the caster, she drinks these 3 points of Black Blood before consuming any of the user’s other Blood points.
If the ritual is cast upon a recently dead true corpse or another amount of cold blood (such as a blood bag or other blood-storage container), all Blood within that corpse or container is transmuted to Black Blood. Those who ingest Black Blood take 2 points of normal damage per point of Black Blood they drink. Further, for the next hour, an individual who has ingested any amount of Black Blood suffers terrible cramping pain, and receives a -1 penalty to all Physical attribute tests.
Din of the Damned
The Shroud shelters the worlds from one another, but through application of the proper magic, a necromancer can allow the sounds of the land of the dead to be heard within the land of the living.
System: This ritual bears some similarities to Call of the Hungry Dead, in that it makes the sounds of the Underworld audible in the physical realm. However, Din of the Damned affects an area or enclosed chamber, rather than a single individual. To ward an area in this manner, the necromancer must draw an unbroken line around its perimeter with a stick of chalk made from crematorium ash.
Until dawn, any attempt to eavesdrop on events inside the room, be it mundane, technologically enhanced or supernatural, receives garbled, static-ridden results. Further, a light wind in the area carries whispers, warnings, curses, screams, and laughter of the dead. All mortals within the area must leave, and they refuse to enter the area again for the rest of the night. Mortals who are forced to remain suffer a -5 penalty to all test pools.
Sepulchral Beacon
This ritual allows the caster to sense when the Shroud is breached within her vicinity. To a necromancer utilizing this power, the location of the rift is a palpable presence, pulsing with the bitter cold tempest of oblivion.
System: Once a necromancer has cast this ritual, she is able to sense nearby breaches of the Shroud, including uses of Shroud Mastery until the next sunrise. This ability manifests as a creeping chill up the necromancer’s arms, guiding the general direction to the breach. Once within sight, the breach appears to be an otherworldly tear, flickering with pale, heatless lightning. Sepulchral Beacon reveals the location of a death (a spirit passing through the Shroud) and the use Necromancy or similar powers, as well as any other effect that may have disturbed the barrier between the living world and the Shadowlands. This power has a range of one mile.
Stained Sight
The world is a transient place, filled with death. By invoking the powers of Necromancy, the caster forces a single victim to see the decay inherent within every living thing.
System: The necromancer must target a victim who is currently within a one-mile radius of the initial casting of this ritual. Further, she must have either a lock of her victim’s hair, a pinch of flesh (or ash, in the case of a vampire) that was once part of the victim’s body, or a point of the victim’s Blood.
Using the Necromancy test pool make an opposed challenge against your target. If you succeed, you afflict your target with Stained Sight. For the duration, the victim sees the world around her as decaying, rotting, and dying. Those affected by this ritual are often repulsed by their surroundings, fearful even of allies, and can become depressed by the images of constant death. The victim gains the flaw Death Sight for a period of one month or two game sessions, whichever is longer.
Scales of Maat
There are wraiths, and then there are Stygian Lords; a skillful necromancer knows how to tell the difference, so that she might properly gauge her enemy — or her slave.
System: This ritual allows a necromancer to gain a sense of a wraith’s power. By casting it, the necromancer learns any powers a wraith possesses, as well as its general power level, reason for death, and how much time has passed since its death. To cast this ritual, the necromancer needs only to have some physical evidence of a wraith’s existence: a fetter, part of a corpse, or an item that has been touched by the wraith in question or affected by that wraith’s powers.
Level 3 Necromancy Rituals
Moldering Presence
By casting this ritual, the vampire’s very aura emanates waves of decay and entropy. Any undead matter that comes in contact with the necromancer falls prey to hastened and premature decay. Wood and paper will rot, metal will rust, and even plastic and glass will slowly taint and then erode.
System: A necromancer under the effect of this ritual can willfully cause decay to any inanimate objects she touches. For the rest of the night, she can spend a standard action to corrode and blight anything she is touching with her flesh, rendering the item immediately useless. In combat, you can destroy an object under your opponent’s control by targeting that opponent with the Grapple combat maneuver. If you succeed, you can instead destroy the object in your target’s possession.
Moldering Presence works immediately on items up to the size of a large book. Larger items may take a few turns or a few minutes to destroy using this power, at the Storyteller’s discretion.
Rise, Cerberus
Cerberus was the guardian dog of Greek myth. By the use of this ritual, the necromancer can protect her haven with a guardian that is reminiscent of the mighty Cerberus.
System: To enact this ritual, the caster must slay three large hounds, affixing two additional heads to a single hound’s corpse before burying it beneath the floor of her haven. Then, she must chant over the grave for three consecutive nights. On the fourth night, the hound rises again as a wraith: a ghostly presence in the physical world, but entirely solid within the Shadowlands. The Cerberus Hound is a 4-point Stock NPC and counts as a wraith for the purpose of targeting powers. It can see through Obfuscate and other such powers of invisibility, counts as an animal, and has the additional ability to utilize Dread Gaze. The Cerberus Hound cannot leave the caster’s haven for any reason. It has animal intelligence and is unfailingly loyal to its creator. The Hound has 10 points of Pathos. It also possesses focuses in Potence, Fortitude, Investigation, and Brawl.
Spirit Beacon
By casting this ritual over a severed human head, you turn it into a supernatural beacon for ghosts. Within the Shadowlands, the head appears to glow with an unearthly radiance, emitting light from its mouth, ears, and eyes. By your will, spirits are either drawn to this beacon — or driven away.
System: The necromancer must have a human skull upon which to cast this ritual. Once cast, the skull is covered with arcane sigils and runes and glows with a soft, eerie green light, both in the physical world and in the Shadowlands. When the skull is created, the necromancer decides if the skull has a positive or a negative charge.
• A positively charged Spirit Beacon acts as a lure for wraiths. All wraiths within a one-mile radius are summoned to the skull’s location, or they follow the skull, if it is moving. To stay away from the skull, a wraith must spend 1 Pathos every 10 minutes to ignore the Spirit Beacon’s call.
• A negatively charged Spirit Beacon acts as a repellent for wraiths. All wraiths in the area are compelled to leave the area and stay at least one mile away from the Spirit Beacon. A wraith must spend 1 Pathos every 10 minutes to be within one mile of the Spirit Beacon.
The skull loses all enchantment at the next sunrise, though it may be enchanted again.
The Servant Undying
Loyalty, to a necromancer, means something entirely different and all-encompassing. Those who serve you cannot escape your orders simply by suffering the inconvenience of death.
System: A necromancer performs this ritual on a Retainer, requiring the Retainer to sign her name on a contract in her own blood. Thereafter, if that Retainer is killed, it automatically rises a short time after death to serve the necromancer as a zombie. The zombie is more intelligent than most of its kind. It remembers the last order it was given by the necromancer and continues to fulfill that command to the best of its ability. Once that task is accomplished, the Retainer once again falls into death, and the zombie becomes ash.
Level 4 Necromancy Rituals
Bastone Diabolico
By enchanting a sturdy leg bone, the necromancer creates a weapon that can injure enemies on either side of the Shroud. Unfortunately, the first use of this weapon is to murder its donor, and thus the fabrication of a devil-stick costs the necromancer more than simply time or blood.
System: To create a Bastone Diabolico, the necromancer must acquire a clean, rune-carved thighbone from a human subject, enchanting that bone in dark rituals. Thereafter, the necromancer has a permanent weapon, which can be used against enemies in the physical world or within the Shadowlands.
The Bastone Diabolico deals 1 normal damage. This weapon is an improvised weapon, possessing the Fast quality. In addition, each successful blow against a vampire removes 1 point of that vampire’s Blood, and a successful blow against a wraith removes 1 point of that wraith’s Pathos.
Unfortunately for the necromancer, ghosts can sense a Bastone Diabolico. They tend to stay away from individuals carrying one, causing such a character to have a -1 penalty to all test pools to summon or control wraiths. A necromancer can have only one Bastone Diabolico in existence at any time. Creating a new one causes the old one to disintegrate.
Lethe’s Waters
A necromancer with Lethe’s Waters at her fingertips has a great deal of control over her enemy’s memories. With but a touch or a flick of her fingers, she can temporarily render an individual amnesiac and susceptible to her powers of suggestion.
System: The necromancer who casts this ritual gains the ability to, once during the course of a night, spend 1 Blood, use her standard action, and flick her fingers at a target in the physical world or within the Shadowlands. The caster must make an opposed challenge using her Physical attribute + Athletics versus the target’s Physical attribute + Dodge. If she succeeds, her target loses all memory and is rendered amnesic for 10 minutes.
While under the effects of Lethe’s Waters, the victim views the necromancer as a friend. The victim won’t necessarily follow the necromancer’s orders, but she is favorably disposed. Once this power wears off, the victim remembers everything that transpired while she was amnesic.
If the body or spirit of an individual affected by this power is attacked, put in danger, or targeted by an offensive power, including Haunting, the effects immediately end.
Ritual of Xipe Totec
In times past, Aztec priests would flay the skin from a victim and wear it as a sacrifice to Xipe Totec, god of suffering and renewal. In a similar vein, necromancers occasionally skin mortals alive, but for a more pragmatic reason — to steal that person’s identity.
System: To perform this ritual, the necromancer removes a mortal’s top layer of skin with an obsidian dagger, taking care to damage the skin as little as possible in the process. The victim must survive the process. The necromancer then dons the skin of her victim, which forms a second layer over her own. Naturally, the victim needs to be of similar stature — otherwise, the features become distorted and the disguise becomes useless.
Under normal scrutiny, the ruse is flawless. However, it imparts none of the victim’s knowledge and mannerisms, and does nothing to mask the vampire’s undead nature, if she is on a path. Conducting this ritual causes a necromancer to automatically gain 3 Beast traits.
Strength of Rotten Flesh
A ritual primarily used by those necromancers who favor the Bone Path, this grisly enchantment increases the capacity of a necromancer’s zombie servants, allowing them to serve more effectively.
System: When this ritual is cast on a necromancer’s zombie, that zombie becomes more intelligent, stronger, and more durable. The zombie gains two skill focuses of your choice, and its health levels double. The effects of this ritual last for one month.
Level 5 Necromancy Rituals
Chill of Oblivion
This potent rite allows a necromancer to infuse her body with the proverbial cold of the grave. While under its effects, the vampire is shielded from the vampiric bane of fire.
System: A necromancer using Chill of Oblivion converts aggravated damage from fire and high temperatures to normal damage. She can also put out an open flame by spending a point of Blood to extinguish a single source, no larger than a bonfire, within one step of her position.
While under the effects of Chill of Oblivion, the character’s aura is laced with writhing black lines, which appear to be the result of diablerie. She also draws in heat from her immediate environment, giving her the flaw Eerie Presence. Finally, the taint of the Underworld makes her an easy target for malevolent wraiths or other users of Necromancy. All wraiths, and all uses of Necromancy, receive a +3 bonus to their test pools when targeting an individual affected by this ritual. This ritual lasts until the next sunrise.
Weight of the Tomb
The fear of death is an ancient terror, a cold, dark dart that strikes to the very core of an individual’s being. By preying on this fear, the necromancer can forbid her target from engaging in one activity, causing her victim’s psyche to liken such an action to suicide.
System: The necromancer must target a victim who is currently within a one-mile radius of the casting of this ritual. Further, she must have either a lock of her victim’s hair, a pinch of flesh (or ash, in the case of a vampire) that was once part of the victim’s body, or a point of the victim’s Blood. Using the Necromancy test pool make an opposed challenge against your target. If you succeed, then you can name one limited, non-combat activity, such as “painting,” “speaking to Prince Elliot,” or “attending a Toreador clan meeting.” Until the next sunset, the target associates that activity with death. She is convinced that if she participates in that activity, she will die — and she is not entirely incorrect. If the individual willingly undertakes that activity, she takes 3 points of aggravated damage, which cannot be reduced or negated. No power can remove – or cause the target to forget – the ingrained fear of Weight of the Tomb, and asking an individual affected by this power to perform the activity (through Dominate or other such powers) is considered to be directly self-destructive. You can only cast Weight of the Tomb once within a lunar cycle, once per month, and no target can be affected by more than one Weight of the Tomb at a time. If a second application targets a character before the first fades, the new application removes the old.
