196 - Paved with Good Intentions

Ritual: Paved with Good Intentions

Cost: 4 significant charges.

Ritual Action: Cocoon a dead rabbit in kudzu vines and leave it out in the sun for three days. At the conclusion of this time get a hold of a demon whose Urge revolves around what was its noble passion in life and convince it to agree to occupy your putrefying rabbit burrito and alter your target (which you have to identify somehow). The length of time is up to your negotiating skills and means, the longer you can manage the longer the ritual effect lasts. How you manage this is completely up to you.

Having primed the ritual this way travel to a crossroads the target passes through on a regular basis. Bury the carcass under the road, if it’s dirt just tamp it back in, it it’s asphalt then pave over or patch it. The ritual activates the next time the target (or someone matching the description you gave the demon) passes over the buried rabbit.

Effect: This ritual causes the target’s noble passion to become progressively all consuming. The next time they are coerced or otherwise suffer a stress check related that results in a failed notch it temporarily replaces either their rage passion (if they choose the fight result) or their fear passion (if they choose flight or paralysis). The old passion is still there but is inaccessible beneath the new compulsion. The next time this happens it replaces the remaining passion. Then their obsession, restricting any flip-flopping on the attached identity to actions only relating to their noble passion. Self stress checks are likely but rationalization isn’t unthinkable.

A secondary effect of the ritual is that each faux-passion (or faux-obsession) allows the target to count their hardened notches as one higher for the purposes of determining whether they need to make stress checks for actions undertaken in service of their noble passion.

This effect lasts for as long as you had the bound demon agree to occupy the buried rabbit carcass under the crossroads. The only ways to break it is to dig the rabbit up and scatter it to the wind or for the target to deliberately change their noble passion, short circuiting the ritual and restoring their faculties.