Cost: 2 significant and 5+ minor charges.
Ritual Action: Gather a group of at least 5 other participants and arrange them sitting in a branching formation of five groups facing you. Everyone participating should consume about a quart of colloidal silver, but those with significant amounts of conductive metal in their bodies may skip this requirement. Lead the group in meditation, your instructions passed down each branch, reciting an apocryphal Buddhist incantation relating to the practice of dark retreat, only found in Douglas Steiner’s Of My Greatest Limitations (a semi-autobiographical theosophy text vanity published circa 1905, it starts out as a traveller’s search for the secrets of transcendence through ego-death before transforming into a lurid tourist’s guide to the brothels of 19th-century South Asia).
At the conclusion of the incantation, the groups must each blind a different one of their five major senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, or hearing. Blindfolds and earmuffs are the easiest ways to deal with sight and hearing, certain medications and poisons can be useful in cutting off the others. If that proves too complicated then brutal maiming is always a permanent option. Spend the charges, the number of minors should be equal to the number of participants. If you’re short on mojo then the effect is commensurately limited.
Effect: Gain a +10% shift to all Knowledge and Notice rolls for every five participants so long as they are still blinding their chosen sense. This positive shift is capped at +10% times your hardened and failed notches in Self. As participation drops, whether because people take off their blindfolds or someone bleeds to death from having their tongue torn out, the shift also declines. In addition, three times per day you may access one non-physical, non-supernatural identity of the remaining participants as though it were your own.
When the last participant either regains their lost sense, dies or the effect is broken by magick then there is a backlash. For an equal duration to the effect you lose all sense of self and the world around you. This manifests as complete catatonia. When (or if) it ends you’re likely to face a number of Isolation, Self and/or Helplessness checks.
Theoretically you could pad out a fading ritual with a fresh casting. If attempted, when the older effect ends the backlash is divided among the participants of the next newest ritual instead of the caster. For grimy cult leader types this is probably a feature instead of a bug.
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