Necromancy Rituals
The Rossellini revenant ghoul-turned Giovanni necromancer Gwenevieve has learned a great deal in her (relatively) short unlife among the Family of Death. In her studies in the hereafter under the tutelage of Marco Giovanni at the Family’s private island in Boston Harbor, Gwen learned the use of quite a few rituals. She has subsequently learned another ritual from Carlo Giovanni in the Family Battlements beyond the Sudario surrounding Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Here are the rituals that Gwen knows thus far:
Eldritch Beacon
Gwenevieve must set aside fifteen minutes to cast this simple, but effective, ritual. She sets alight a green candle and collects the melted wax. She molds the wax into a sphere and performs the spiritual attunement, using her knowledge of the Underworld. Whoever should so carry the sphere, knowingly or not, is highlighted beyond the Sudario with a sickly-glowing green-white aura. It is easier to use the powers of the wraiths on this individual (for good or ill).
System: The effect lasts for one hour per success on casting roll. Intelligence + Occult (diff. 4).
Knowing Stone
Gwenevieve has the ability to mark a human’s spirit out for future study. She can peer through even the veil of death for the spirit, should the person die. She must cleave her skin with a ritual knife and then paint the True Name of the target on a consecrated stone (itself, a short ritual). After this has been accomplished, if the ritual is successful, Gwen then only needs dance around the stone in a trance state until a spirit will whisper the desired information into her ear. The sone becomes inert one lunar month after the ritual is cast unless fresh blood of the necromancer is spilled upon it.
System:
1) Know the True Name of your target (easy if they are human)
2) Have the implements prepared (stone, ritual knife, necromancer vitae)
3) Consecrate the stone and cast the ritual Intelligence + Occult (diff.4)
4) Cut yourself with the ritual knife and paint on the stone Spend a blood point
5) Work yourself into a trance and dance about the stone. (flavor — the spice of life)
Puppet
Gwenevieve may speak with the recently departed (or torture a poor soul) with this ritual. Over one hour, Gwen must administer grave soil across the subject’s eyes, lips and forehead. The subject might well be unwilling. If so, they will need to be incapacitated for the hour of casting. For the rest of the night, any spirito will find it easier to possess the body of the subject: even if the soil is washed off. In this way, a spirito can easily pass into the material realm in a skin suit for the night.
System:
1) Have the materials (grave soil, a subject, any stabilizing tools needed if the subject is unwilling)
2) Perform the ritual over one hour. Intelligence + Occult (diff. 5)
3) Fend off the vessel from any other spirits than the one you want to enter, and then invite the wanted spirit in.
4) Effect lasts until dawn.
Nightmare Drums
Gwenevieve can direct a haunting of an enemy with this ritual, but could also use it to urge compliance of an intractable spirit. Gwen uses the power of her blood alongside a personal item of the target to cast this ritual. After she has coated the item in her blood, she burns it. This will cause the item to “light up” beyond the sudario to the passing spiriti. Gwen must then have her servants (or . . . ugh . . . do it herself) pound on drums of human skin incessantly for hours. These will make no actual noise in the material plane, but will be thunderous and deeply annoying in the Shadowlands. The passing spirits will then parlay with Gwen to make the drumming stop. For her part, she will demand that the spirits haunt the person she chooses. In return, the spirits might well attempt to negotiate something.
System: With the time to cast the ritual and possessing the items (drums made of human skin, prepared in a specific way) and having someone to beat the drums, it is a simple Intelligence + Occult (diff. 6) roll to complete the ritual. Then, the parlay must be played out in game. This ritual is multi-purpose and can be used just to annoy spirits.
Tempest Prison
Gwenevieve can create a Wraith-capturing and containing device. This rudimentary ritual is the theoretical underpinning for the truly colossal-in-scope rituals that make the Well of Souls possible. On this small scale, however, Gwen takes a glass container and buries it in a graveyard over the grave of a wraith. Gwen then traces lines and symbols in her blood on the ground around the container while chanting for several hours. At the completion of this stage of the ritual, the glass will become filled with a swirling black-purple mist with flecks of lighting inside. When opened in the presence of a wraith, they will be immediately compelled inside of the container for Gwen’s future use. This principle can be used to create other devices, with practice and determination.
System: With the appropriate implements and in the dirt of a grave holding an active wraith (who doesn’t need to participate further in the ritual), the necromancer just needs the time to cast the ritual — at least 4 hours. Casting the ritual requires a roll of Intelligence + Occult (diff. 6).
Draining the Well of Life
Gwenevieve learned this most heinous of rituals after she had begun the dark work of the Path of Bone. No one following the Path of Humanity could long forestall Wassail performing this ritual repeatedly: for it requires a rather grizzly murder each time.
Gwen’s spirits, much like Kindred, must feed to continue their proper functioning and to carry out tasks required. They feed not on vitae like the Kindred, but on Pathos: human emotion. This emotion can include terror. The important thing is that the emotion is strong. This ritual will allow Gwen to “feed” her servants even as she fully feeds from a mortal, painfully exsanguinating completely. The wraiths can feed from the flood of death-terror and pain in the dying victim/subject.
Gwen needs but bind a subject, scrawl the Names of her servants into the flesh of the subject using her ritual knife, and then exsanguinate with the Giovanni’s dark Kiss.
System: Upon successfully casting the rite (Intelligence + Occult, diff. 5), Gwen gains all the blood she would normally obtain from completely exsanguinating the victim, and each of her ghostly companions may replenish each of their Passion Pools by the same amount (ignoring any excess). This automatically degenerates Humanity, but if one is truly on the Path of Bone, it is important to study the effects to stay within the Path and there will be no Path degeneration.
The Rending
Gwenevieve has been taught the rough and dirty way to rip a small tear in the Sudario from the side of the Underworld into the skinlands of moral Earth. Spiriti who pass in this way do not become manifest: they simply remain spirits on the material plane. Other supernaturals and mortals of the prime material plane who have still maintained a corpus in the Underworld, however, will be able to pass back through to the skinlands as material beings once more should they pass through the tear. This small rip in the fabric of the Shroud reseals itself quickly — within one to five minutes — though a scar is left in its wake. This scar is permanently visible to any with Deathsight. The ritual is only possible in a place where the Sudario is already weakened (a graveyard, a battlefield, the site of a mass shooting, et cetera).
System: The necromancer must have a bound wraith or sluah in their grasp. The sacrifice must either be willing or must be incapacitated or mystically bound in some way. The sacrifice must be of the Underworld and not a fellow interloper from the skinlands. The necromancer also requires flaming matter from the skinlands (a candle, most often). The necromancer must spend a blood point. The ritual requires only a few seconds to cast.
The Rending requires two uninterrupted rounds to cast, with the first round a Dexterity + Occult roll to light the candle and hold down the sacrifice in the appropriate spot. In the second round, the caster spends a blood point, coating the body of the sacrificial spirit with vampiric vitae from the material world. The player then rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty range depending upon location attempted). The tear is created, destroying the spirit in the process. If this ritual is resisted at any point before completion by the would-be sacrifice or is interrupted by an outside force, the ritual fails. If the ritual succeeds, the tear between realms remains for 1-5 minutes, but is likely to last longer in places where the Sudario is particularly thin. This ritual can be aided by others in various ways.
