002 - The Ashes of Hate

Ritual: The Ashes of Hate

Cost: 2 minor charges.

Ritual Action: Take the cremains (the ashes of a cremated body) of a particularly hateful person. Hateful in this context is down to GM discretion but anyone with a disorder related to having their Rage passion dinged too many times is a good yardstick candidate. Mix with equal parts of dried kratom leaves and tobacco and either roll into a cigarette or smoke in a pipe. Smoke the mixture within 3 days of creation.

Effect: For as long as the nicotine courses through your veins (roughly 2 hours, give or take) you gain an additional Rage passion, one which belonged to the dead person you just ran through your lungs. It can be used to flip and reroll as normal and does not supplant your existing Rage passion.

The real magick happens when your new Rage passion causes you to suffer a stress check. If you pass you gain a hardened notch as normal and lose the effects of the ritual (stress causes the acidification of urine, which pulls nicotine out of the bloodstream). However if you fail you gain a failed notch as normal but for the next 3 minutes and 33 seconds you are effectively possessed by the dead person. They won’t be happy about being confronted with their Rage passion.

It’s not real possession. It’s more like a recording being played through you, people can interact with it but it won’t remember them if this ritual is used with the same cremains several times in a row for instance. You’re completely conscious while this goes on, stuck as a passenger in your own body. The voice it speaks in is clearly not yours but nothing else changes. It has all the knowledge of the person who has been smoked up until the point of their death. Good luck trying to convince great-grandpa Harlan to tell you where he hid the second will while he’s fixated on spewing racial epithets and ranting about the way women dress.