Thaumaturgic Rituals - Level 4

Level 4 Rituals
4 - Binding the Beast
Roll: Manipulation + Empathy, difficulty 10 - Humanity
This ritual involves drinking a point of the victim’s blood, and pushing an iron spike through one’s own hand. (This ritual inflicts two levels of damage that can not be soaked.) The target will be unable to frenzy, regain willpower, or spend more than one blood point per turn. In addition, she must roll Courage, difficulty 6, to feed, and roll Willpower, difficulty 7, to use any of her disciplines. Lasts one day per success.

4 - Bone of Lies
This one-day ritual involves soaking a bone of a mortal who has been dead for two hundred years, in ten points of kindred blood. The resulting red bone will force anyone who is holding it to tell the truth. Each time that they intended to lie, it forces them to tell the truth, and darkens, until it has absorbed ten lies, at which time it will be pitch black. The spirit of the mortal whose bone was used forces the holder to tell the truth, and is thereby corrupted by each lie. If summoned later, it will be appropriately malevolent.

4 - Bottled Voice
This ritual involves reciting an incantation, and sealing a specially prepared bottle with wax. The vampire may steal a target’s capacity to speak, and put it into a bottle, where it will remain until it is opened or broken.

4 - Drawing upon the Bound
When carrying a vial of the blood of one’s thrall, the vampire may use any disciplines possessed by her thrall, who may not use them if the vampire is using them. The thrall must be bound directly to the vampire; the Vinculum does not count.

4 - Fire Walker
This ritual involves rubbing a prepared salve on one’s bare feet, and gives the vampire twice her normal soak against fire.

4 - Haunting
Roll: Charisma + Spirit Lore, difficulty 7
The vampire may summon a spirit, who will try to scare a mortal. How long the spirit stays, and continues to try to scare the mortal, is determined as follows:
1 suc. one hour.
2 suc. one night.
3 suc. one week.
The spirit will try to scare her victim with effects of Pandemonium, Phantasm, or Outrage, of levels between 3 and 5. Standard rules for Fog are applied as the Storyteller sees fit. If only Vampire rules are available, the spirit rolls Charisma + Intimidation + a few extra dice (Storyteller’s discretion), difficulty Stamina + Courage, with effects determined as follows:
1 suc. The victim is scared.
2 suc. The victim is scared beyond any capacity for action for minutes to hours.
3 suc. The victim faints.
4 suc. The victim goes into shock, and really needs to see a shrink.
5 suc. The victim rolls Stamina + Self-Control, difficulty 8. If the roll is failed, she dies of heart failure. If she survives, having her hair turn white is a distinct possibility.

4 - Heart of Stone
This seven-hour ritual involves laying naked on one’s back in a three-inch high circle of dirt made on a stone surface, lighting a candle directly above one’s heart, and waiting until the candle has gone down all the way, and has extinguished itself in its own wax. (This ritual inflicts one die of aggravated damage.) This ritual turns the vampire’s heart to stone. This spell will last as long as the vampire wishes, as long as she doesn’t use willpower points. The vampire’s Conscience drops to one, or zero if it was already one, and she loses half her dice pool on Empathy rolls, and other rolls where feelings are important.

4 - Innocence of the Child’s Heart
This ritual requires that the vampire who casts it be carrying a child’s toy, and for as long as she is carrying it on her person, her aura will be bright white.

4 - Invisible Chains of Binding
The vampire may, with a few gestures, immobilize up to four victims in invisible restraints (roll Thaumaturgy one victim per success), and these victims may not move unless they roll Strength (difficulty is a base of Thaumaturgy + 1 per success used for strength instead of victims), and get two successes in a turn. If this occurs, the restraints cease to work.

4 - Mirror Walk
This ritual requires a ring with an emerald in it. The vampire may use any sufficiently large mirror as a portal to the nearest other sufficiently large mirror, and may take one person with her. The mirror ripples, and the emerald glows, as this ritual is performed. Once the mirror stops rippling, the vampire can not be followed. If the mirror stops rippling with a pursuer halfway in, she is cut in two, though she may be allowed to escape with a roll of Dexterity + Dodge, difficulty 7 (Portal remains open for 5 segments).

4 - Protean Curse
This ritual involves having the target drink the blood of a rabid vampire bat, and it turns her into a bat. If the target has already been turned into a bat, repeating this ritual will transform her back into her original shape.

4 - Rending Sweet Earth
This ritual involves repeatedly thrashing a section of ground with a leather whip. When it is performed, a 10' × 10' section of earth will disappear. If a vampire happens to be earth-melded in that section of earth, she will be awakened as the earth around her disappears, unless she is in torpor.

4 - Respect of Animals
The vampire will not be considered as a meal, sprayed, mutilated, or otherwise outraged by any animal she meets. Lasts four hours.

4 - Shadowgate
This ritual involves a powder made from coal and human ashes (which can be made ahead of time), with which the vampire draws an X over each of her eyes, and stepping into a shadow. By performing it, the vampire can enter and exit the Shadowlands, and any objects she can carry are taken across the Shroud with her.

4 - Splinter Servant
This two-day ritual involves reciting incantations over a stake from a tree that grew in a graveyard, wrapping it in nightshade twine, and sealing it with wax. The resulting object may be peeled, and commanded to attack a target, at which point it will splinter to make appendages to propel itself toward its target. It will continue pursuit until destroyed, or reduced to so many splinters that they are inanimate. This stake will always go for the heart, and will often continue to splinter once in the heart.

4 - Ward Versus Kindred
This ten-hour ritual requires a point of vampire blood, in addition to the object being made into a ward. This object, when touching a vampire, will do three dice of damage, difficulty Stamina + Fortitude of the vampire, and the vampire must spend a willpower point to touch it again. If this ward is placed on a door or an unbroken circle, the vampire will be unable to pass it. If a bullet is warded, then five successes are required on the appropriate Firearms roll to leave the bullet in the body where it will continue doing damage. (This only works on smaller calibers.)