Ritual: Stalemate the Reaper
Cost: 3 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Light up an unfiltered cigarette and use it to burn out the eyes on a king of hearts playing card. Start smoking the cigarette. Stick the card to your forehead (most people who know the ritual use spit but it’s only traditional, not necessary). Keep smoking the cigarette. When you’re finished with it use it to light another and keep smoking. Do this forever.
Effect: You’re immortal. Kind of. So long as you keep smoking your current cigarette nothing can kill you. You can be beaten, injured and maimed beyond all comprehension but so long as you keep puffing away you’re fine. You take no injury penalties, but actions which are impossible such as running with no legs are still off limits. If you ever stop smoking the ritual fails and you die, even if you’d otherwise be fine. The same thing happens if the card falls off your forehead.
Playing poker lets you pass it on to others. Some regional variations of the ritual use different games like Big Two. Play to a showdown with a single other player and as you show hands, stub out the cigarette on the table and slap the king of hearts face down on top of it. If you win the hand your opponent has 24 hours to place the card on their forehead and start smoking as the ritual effect moves to them. If you lose, the ritual fails and you die.
If you refuse a challenge to a game of poker while the ritual effect is active it fails and, you guessed it, you die.
Showing posts with label Ritual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ritual. Show all posts
Monday, 23 March 2020
Saturday, 21 March 2020
323 - Eating for Two
Ritual: Eating for Two
Cost: 1 minor charge.
Ritual Action: No planning or preparation can go into casting the ritual. Go to the nearest place which sells food and prophylactics (probably a supermarket or gas station) and buy six items of food you've never eaten before plus a pack of condoms. Mix all the food together, you'll probably need to blend it, and pour the resulting combination into the condoms. Poke a few holes in each and swallow them. You have to eat all the food.
Effect: You attract the attention of a demon, which takes up residence in your stomach for the duration. You can lopsidedly communicate, it can hear you and poke at your belly to respond. Maybe you'll get one who can do morse code. It can't possess you unless you were already especially vulnerable, but you can sick it on other people. You just need to get them to eat a mixture of the foods you used to cast the ritual.
Otherwise it lasts just over 3 hours. Hopefully you got your money's worth because it won't work again for nine months. Likewise you won't be able to conceive a child for the same length of time (and god help you if you were pregnant at the time of casting, demon babies are no fun to take care of).
Cost: 1 minor charge.
Ritual Action: No planning or preparation can go into casting the ritual. Go to the nearest place which sells food and prophylactics (probably a supermarket or gas station) and buy six items of food you've never eaten before plus a pack of condoms. Mix all the food together, you'll probably need to blend it, and pour the resulting combination into the condoms. Poke a few holes in each and swallow them. You have to eat all the food.
Effect: You attract the attention of a demon, which takes up residence in your stomach for the duration. You can lopsidedly communicate, it can hear you and poke at your belly to respond. Maybe you'll get one who can do morse code. It can't possess you unless you were already especially vulnerable, but you can sick it on other people. You just need to get them to eat a mixture of the foods you used to cast the ritual.
Otherwise it lasts just over 3 hours. Hopefully you got your money's worth because it won't work again for nine months. Likewise you won't be able to conceive a child for the same length of time (and god help you if you were pregnant at the time of casting, demon babies are no fun to take care of).
Monday, 16 March 2020
319 - Kow-tow
Ritual: Kow-tow
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Grill a pair of someone else's shoes and then eat them while prostrating yourself before the flag of a nation which no longer exists. Verbally affirm your obedience to it to the next three people you meet.
Effect: You are emotionally cloaked against interference from the person whose shoes you ate and any groups that form a core component of who they are (those related by identity or relationship are a good indicator of what counts). This lasts for three days or until you commit an act of trespass against that person or one of their groups. So long as you are compliant it gives you a +20% shift on social interactions with them and direct interference on their part prompts a rank 3 Isolation check from intense feelings of alienation.
Saturday, 14 March 2020
317 - Astral Cloaking
Ritual: Astral Cloaking
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Switch to a vegan or peskitarian diet if you're not on one already, no meat except fish. Once you have the stench of dead things out of your system bathe yourself in a tub of water as hot as you can bear and oil extracted from verbena. Once purified give up part of yourself permanently: destroy a career you've spent years building, suffer irrevocable injury, renounce a belief in a way you can't go back on, it must be dramatic enough for you to feel the loss.
On the culmination of your sacrifice, twist your right hand into a prescribed gesture. It's uncomfortable but you have to maintain it as long as you want the effect to continue. Some people hold themselves in position with string, tape and glue.
Effect: Demons can't track you, they might get a glimpse of you for a moment every so often but then you become a grainy, foggy blur that slides out of their mind's eye. They can't surveil you and certainly have no hope of possessing you. It has no effect on other entities.
Animals also have difficulty around you, either behaving aggressively or shying away. It's the surest way to tell whether it's working.
If you ever regain the sacrificed part of yourself the effect is reversed, you stand out like a beacon. Interest and possession attempts are likely to increase. This gets worse if you do it several times, not all versions warn against it with some instead telling the caster to "temporarily relieve themselves" of their sacrifice.
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Switch to a vegan or peskitarian diet if you're not on one already, no meat except fish. Once you have the stench of dead things out of your system bathe yourself in a tub of water as hot as you can bear and oil extracted from verbena. Once purified give up part of yourself permanently: destroy a career you've spent years building, suffer irrevocable injury, renounce a belief in a way you can't go back on, it must be dramatic enough for you to feel the loss.
On the culmination of your sacrifice, twist your right hand into a prescribed gesture. It's uncomfortable but you have to maintain it as long as you want the effect to continue. Some people hold themselves in position with string, tape and glue.
Effect: Demons can't track you, they might get a glimpse of you for a moment every so often but then you become a grainy, foggy blur that slides out of their mind's eye. They can't surveil you and certainly have no hope of possessing you. It has no effect on other entities.
Animals also have difficulty around you, either behaving aggressively or shying away. It's the surest way to tell whether it's working.
If you ever regain the sacrificed part of yourself the effect is reversed, you stand out like a beacon. Interest and possession attempts are likely to increase. This gets worse if you do it several times, not all versions warn against it with some instead telling the caster to "temporarily relieve themselves" of their sacrifice.
Friday, 13 March 2020
316 - Predestined Diversion
Ritual: Predestined Diversion
Cost: 4 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Participate in an anonymous gift exchange, something like a secret santa. Ensure your gift violates at least one of the rules. Wrap it in unpaid traffic tickets (those don't have to be yours) and send it before you receive a gift of your own. Do not consume any animal products until you receive your gift. Don't open it when you do, instead bury it inverted on top of the casket of someone who became a demon.
Effect: You and the target (your gift recipient) briefly swap fates, depending on what's in store for either of you this could be a boon or fatal. Aside from any effects determined by the GM this transfers any gutter magick effects either of you are under to the other. More powerful sorcery is either unaffected or only partially affected. A curse that ensures your death within a week may just badly maim both of you, for example.
You'll run into each other by chance several times, the third time it happens the effect is broken.
Cost: 4 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Participate in an anonymous gift exchange, something like a secret santa. Ensure your gift violates at least one of the rules. Wrap it in unpaid traffic tickets (those don't have to be yours) and send it before you receive a gift of your own. Do not consume any animal products until you receive your gift. Don't open it when you do, instead bury it inverted on top of the casket of someone who became a demon.
Effect: You and the target (your gift recipient) briefly swap fates, depending on what's in store for either of you this could be a boon or fatal. Aside from any effects determined by the GM this transfers any gutter magick effects either of you are under to the other. More powerful sorcery is either unaffected or only partially affected. A curse that ensures your death within a week may just badly maim both of you, for example.
You'll run into each other by chance several times, the third time it happens the effect is broken.
Friday, 28 February 2020
304 - Sick Days
Ritual: Sick Days
Cost: 4 minor charges or 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: You’ll need an accrued number of sick days from employment you are currently working at, a minimum of 10. You’ll also need to be ill.
Take a workplace calendar, the type doesn’t matter so long as it was displayed somewhere on the premises, and map out the expected prognosis. It needs to fit on the amount of time left or the ritual can’t be cast. Go into work sick, play it up as at least one person needs to remark on the fact you shouldn’t be there or should see a doctor. If they don’t, try again tomorrow.
After this happens, fold up the defaced calendar and put it into your employee file. Don’t get caught.
Alternative: Put it in another employee’s file. Don’t get caught. This version costs a significant charge.
Effect: The disease runs its course far more rapidly than usual. You get a positive shift (maximum +30%) to any Fitness rolls to overcome or ignore symptoms equal to the number of sick days you had accrued. You also lose those days, a glitch in the system erases them and magickal-bureaucratic inertia ensures they cannot be restored. You still need to come into work, if you miss a day, are tardy or slack off and leave early at any time in the period you would be ill during the disease comes roaring back with vengeance (the infection starts over from the beginning and you take a negative shift equal to the bonus the ritual provided you with). It’s probably not great if you get fired either.
Alternative Effect: With a successful opposed Fitness roll you dump your illness on the unsuspecting coworker. Both of you gain a positive shift on the roll equal to the number of any sick days you had accrued (maximum +30%) or a negative shift if either of you have taken more than your share. Nobody loses any sick days. As in the normal version, a successful transfer lasts as long as you continue to faultlessly show up for work and don’t get fired.
Cost: 4 minor charges or 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: You’ll need an accrued number of sick days from employment you are currently working at, a minimum of 10. You’ll also need to be ill.
Take a workplace calendar, the type doesn’t matter so long as it was displayed somewhere on the premises, and map out the expected prognosis. It needs to fit on the amount of time left or the ritual can’t be cast. Go into work sick, play it up as at least one person needs to remark on the fact you shouldn’t be there or should see a doctor. If they don’t, try again tomorrow.
After this happens, fold up the defaced calendar and put it into your employee file. Don’t get caught.
Alternative: Put it in another employee’s file. Don’t get caught. This version costs a significant charge.
Effect: The disease runs its course far more rapidly than usual. You get a positive shift (maximum +30%) to any Fitness rolls to overcome or ignore symptoms equal to the number of sick days you had accrued. You also lose those days, a glitch in the system erases them and magickal-bureaucratic inertia ensures they cannot be restored. You still need to come into work, if you miss a day, are tardy or slack off and leave early at any time in the period you would be ill during the disease comes roaring back with vengeance (the infection starts over from the beginning and you take a negative shift equal to the bonus the ritual provided you with). It’s probably not great if you get fired either.
Alternative Effect: With a successful opposed Fitness roll you dump your illness on the unsuspecting coworker. Both of you gain a positive shift on the roll equal to the number of any sick days you had accrued (maximum +30%) or a negative shift if either of you have taken more than your share. Nobody loses any sick days. As in the normal version, a successful transfer lasts as long as you continue to faultlessly show up for work and don’t get fired.
Thursday, 27 February 2020
303 - Inversion
Ritual: Inversion
Cost: 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: Make a effigy of the target out of beeswax and Hagamoro Fulltouch chalk. Dig a hole in front of a misprinted sign for a sizable location, no smaller than a city street. Bury it submerged in the vomit of a person or person's nauseated by an amusement park ride.
Effect: The target's sense of space proprioception is flipped, it feels like the ground is up and they'll instinctively reach behind themselves to manipulate objects in front of them. This disorientation provokes a rank 4 Unnatural check and gives a persistent -20% shift to physical actions after the initial shock has worn off. Over time acclimation will let them shed this penalty, but no faster than 10% per month of dedicated spatial therapy.
If they ever enter the location the effect immediately flips back while they're there. Depending on their condition this can create its own problems. Digging up the effigy ends the effect.
Cost: 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: Make a effigy of the target out of beeswax and Hagamoro Fulltouch chalk. Dig a hole in front of a misprinted sign for a sizable location, no smaller than a city street. Bury it submerged in the vomit of a person or person's nauseated by an amusement park ride.
Effect: The target's sense of space proprioception is flipped, it feels like the ground is up and they'll instinctively reach behind themselves to manipulate objects in front of them. This disorientation provokes a rank 4 Unnatural check and gives a persistent -20% shift to physical actions after the initial shock has worn off. Over time acclimation will let them shed this penalty, but no faster than 10% per month of dedicated spatial therapy.
If they ever enter the location the effect immediately flips back while they're there. Depending on their condition this can create its own problems. Digging up the effigy ends the effect.
Monday, 24 February 2020
300 - En-caul Rebirth
Ritual: En-caul Rebirthing
Cost: 4 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Sew together amniotic sacs to produce a container large enough for the caster to climb inside. Take it to a named body of water recognised by at least 100 people. Ritualistically destroy any connection you have to your life before the age of 10 by fire, burn birth certificates, cauterize birthmarks and juvenile scar into unrecognizable wounds, destroy your relationship with any family from that part of your life. Culminating at dusk fill the sac with a transmutational mixture derived from the coded works of Nicholas Flamel, climb inside and submerge it in the water. Stay inside until dawn, oxygen will probably be a logistical problem. At daybreak pierce the sac and emerge from the water.
Effect: Gain a random (determined by the GM) supernatural identity at 15% (20% on a matched success or 30% on a crit). This replaces any existing supernatural identity including avatar and adept powers. The latter experience will come with some hefty stress checks as the caster adjusts, deliberately erasing something so profound is an earth-shattering experience to all adepts.
Cost: 4 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Sew together amniotic sacs to produce a container large enough for the caster to climb inside. Take it to a named body of water recognised by at least 100 people. Ritualistically destroy any connection you have to your life before the age of 10 by fire, burn birth certificates, cauterize birthmarks and juvenile scar into unrecognizable wounds, destroy your relationship with any family from that part of your life. Culminating at dusk fill the sac with a transmutational mixture derived from the coded works of Nicholas Flamel, climb inside and submerge it in the water. Stay inside until dawn, oxygen will probably be a logistical problem. At daybreak pierce the sac and emerge from the water.
Effect: Gain a random (determined by the GM) supernatural identity at 15% (20% on a matched success or 30% on a crit). This replaces any existing supernatural identity including avatar and adept powers. The latter experience will come with some hefty stress checks as the caster adjusts, deliberately erasing something so profound is an earth-shattering experience to all adepts.
Thursday, 20 February 2020
296 - To Catch a Thief
Ritual: To Catch a Thief
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Commit a copy-cat crime, taking care to incorporate elements that sympathetically link the act to both the previous victim and crime scene. Don't get caught. Take a trophy from the act. Sleep with it under your pillow and have someone exchange it for money while you're unconscious, like the tooth fairy. Keep the money on your person. Do not spend it.
Effect: You gain a temporary supernatural identity that allows you to divine details about the original perpetrator at the value of the ritual roll. It manifests as intrusive thoughts and perspectives which mirror their's and how they see the world. Every successful roll resets the value of this identity at the newly rolled value. At 01 it disappears. If you ever spend or lose the money used in the ritual anyone investigating your crime gains the same benefit toward catching you.
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Commit a copy-cat crime, taking care to incorporate elements that sympathetically link the act to both the previous victim and crime scene. Don't get caught. Take a trophy from the act. Sleep with it under your pillow and have someone exchange it for money while you're unconscious, like the tooth fairy. Keep the money on your person. Do not spend it.
Effect: You gain a temporary supernatural identity that allows you to divine details about the original perpetrator at the value of the ritual roll. It manifests as intrusive thoughts and perspectives which mirror their's and how they see the world. Every successful roll resets the value of this identity at the newly rolled value. At 01 it disappears. If you ever spend or lose the money used in the ritual anyone investigating your crime gains the same benefit toward catching you.
Tuesday, 11 February 2020
287 - Return to Sender
Ritual: Return to Sender
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Steal a piece of mail sent by someone to a third party (with some digital trickery email counts too so long as you print it out, other forms of electronic communication do not). Encase it in clay or mud from the nearest natural body of water, etching in admonishments against delivery (‘Return to Sender’ and ‘Not at this Address’ work fine) and bake it in an oven. Cover the resulting object before you take it out of the oven, if anyone sees it the ritual fails. Place it in a legally compliant residential mailbox (not a mailslot) and leave it alone.
Effect: All mechanisms of indirect communication between the two parties fail. Phone calls drop out, messages and emails disappear into the digital ether, letters never arrive. This does not apply to face-to-face communication, they can talk just fine in person. Routing communications through a human intermediary is an acceptable workaround.
This goes on as long as the baked-clay-letter remains unseen and undisturbed and no mail is delivered or taken from the mailbox it is in. If someone pokes around in there or so much as a flyer ends up inside the ritual backfires and the caster is blocked from indirectly communicating with anybody for as long as the ritual was active. The sole exception is that the caster may remove the object by wrapping it in black satin cloth and, without looking at it, place it in a new mailbox immediately. Be careful, the clay/mud seal breaking also botches the ritual and it may not be placed in the same mailbox twice.
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Steal a piece of mail sent by someone to a third party (with some digital trickery email counts too so long as you print it out, other forms of electronic communication do not). Encase it in clay or mud from the nearest natural body of water, etching in admonishments against delivery (‘Return to Sender’ and ‘Not at this Address’ work fine) and bake it in an oven. Cover the resulting object before you take it out of the oven, if anyone sees it the ritual fails. Place it in a legally compliant residential mailbox (not a mailslot) and leave it alone.
Effect: All mechanisms of indirect communication between the two parties fail. Phone calls drop out, messages and emails disappear into the digital ether, letters never arrive. This does not apply to face-to-face communication, they can talk just fine in person. Routing communications through a human intermediary is an acceptable workaround.
This goes on as long as the baked-clay-letter remains unseen and undisturbed and no mail is delivered or taken from the mailbox it is in. If someone pokes around in there or so much as a flyer ends up inside the ritual backfires and the caster is blocked from indirectly communicating with anybody for as long as the ritual was active. The sole exception is that the caster may remove the object by wrapping it in black satin cloth and, without looking at it, place it in a new mailbox immediately. Be careful, the clay/mud seal breaking also botches the ritual and it may not be placed in the same mailbox twice.
Monday, 10 February 2020
286 - Culinary Dowsing
Ritual: Culinary Dowsing
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Make a tripod out of old wire coat hangers. Skewer fresh bread rolls from three different restaurants through the feet. Using string taken from someone who’ll miss it suspend an object belonging to the target from the center of the tripod. Slash an ‘X’ in the air at the contraption with a squeeze bottle of hot sauce and demand the target’s gastronomy reveal itself. If the ritual fails it cannot be attempted again until you have deliberately ruined something the target has cooked for someone else.
You can target yourself.
Effect: The suspended object will move within the confines of the tripod to hang where the last food the target cooked is relative to the three restaurants. It continues to move with the food until it is digested, spoils, moves outside of the area or the tripod is broken. Cooked means more than throwing a TV dinner in the microwave or spreading jam on toast, a good rule of thumb is at least five minutes of effort. If the bread rolls are stale, the food item has been digested or is outside of the triangle described by the three restaurants the ritual fails.
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Make a tripod out of old wire coat hangers. Skewer fresh bread rolls from three different restaurants through the feet. Using string taken from someone who’ll miss it suspend an object belonging to the target from the center of the tripod. Slash an ‘X’ in the air at the contraption with a squeeze bottle of hot sauce and demand the target’s gastronomy reveal itself. If the ritual fails it cannot be attempted again until you have deliberately ruined something the target has cooked for someone else.
You can target yourself.
Effect: The suspended object will move within the confines of the tripod to hang where the last food the target cooked is relative to the three restaurants. It continues to move with the food until it is digested, spoils, moves outside of the area or the tripod is broken. Cooked means more than throwing a TV dinner in the microwave or spreading jam on toast, a good rule of thumb is at least five minutes of effort. If the bread rolls are stale, the food item has been digested or is outside of the triangle described by the three restaurants the ritual fails.
Thursday, 6 February 2020
282 - A New You In 90 Days!
Ritual: A New You In 90 Days!
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: The ritual is a series of guided meditation and self-actualization exercises on a pair of audio cassettes tapes intended to be performed repeatedly over multiple sessions. Sold by the Hamarati Infomatics corporation, Burt Hamarati (missing, presumed dead since 2006) leads the listener through some standard psychological exercises interspersed with gibberish invocations he calls "prelingual affirmations" and meditation to rapidly shifting tones. Perceptive listeners can make out the word 'camazotz' in the invocations, the name of the Mayan bat-god of death, night and sacrifice.
Effect: Burt Hamarati was a horrifying bat-human hybrid disguised as a man, who could only subsist on specially prepared human brains. The tapes are a disguised preparatory ritual which he propagated through a self-help organisation (a front for the cult he built around himself) that was moderately popular in the new-age rush of the 1990s. Spreading it around ensured he had both an abundant food source and a bevy of brain-damaged obsessives he could craft into an inner circle. Although he is gone now the tapes still do a brisk trade through the occult underground, if only because no one has thought to digitise and share them electronically yet.
Side effects of the ritual include an elevated sense of well-being bordering on euphoria from the intense metabolic demands that altering the brain places on the caster, it's akin to oxygen deprivation. Another is that the changes made by the ritual act as a beacon to unnatural entities. There is a cumulative 5% chance per week of consistent exercises that an entity in the local area is drawn to present itself to the caster. The entity will not be immediately hostile, any actions it takes depend on the caster's actions and its disposition. More than one would-be monster summoner has died mistaking temporary sedation for protection or control.
Several former devotees of Hamarati use the ritual regularly in an attempt to call back their missing master with occasional terrifying results but no success. A schism among them opposes this misuse on the grounds that Burt has "ascended to the profane stars" as he often claimed he would and that his stellar vigil should not be disturbed. They've killed two other cult members and one monster hunter who'd only heard of the ritual's secondary effects.
Long term users can be distinguished by telltale neurological quirks, sensitivity to high pitched noises, problems with pronouncing sibilants and a lazy right eye. Growths in the brain show up clearly on an MRI scan and any doctor would be quick to label them as tumours.
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: The ritual is a series of guided meditation and self-actualization exercises on a pair of audio cassettes tapes intended to be performed repeatedly over multiple sessions. Sold by the Hamarati Infomatics corporation, Burt Hamarati (missing, presumed dead since 2006) leads the listener through some standard psychological exercises interspersed with gibberish invocations he calls "prelingual affirmations" and meditation to rapidly shifting tones. Perceptive listeners can make out the word 'camazotz' in the invocations, the name of the Mayan bat-god of death, night and sacrifice.
Effect: Burt Hamarati was a horrifying bat-human hybrid disguised as a man, who could only subsist on specially prepared human brains. The tapes are a disguised preparatory ritual which he propagated through a self-help organisation (a front for the cult he built around himself) that was moderately popular in the new-age rush of the 1990s. Spreading it around ensured he had both an abundant food source and a bevy of brain-damaged obsessives he could craft into an inner circle. Although he is gone now the tapes still do a brisk trade through the occult underground, if only because no one has thought to digitise and share them electronically yet.
Side effects of the ritual include an elevated sense of well-being bordering on euphoria from the intense metabolic demands that altering the brain places on the caster, it's akin to oxygen deprivation. Another is that the changes made by the ritual act as a beacon to unnatural entities. There is a cumulative 5% chance per week of consistent exercises that an entity in the local area is drawn to present itself to the caster. The entity will not be immediately hostile, any actions it takes depend on the caster's actions and its disposition. More than one would-be monster summoner has died mistaking temporary sedation for protection or control.
Several former devotees of Hamarati use the ritual regularly in an attempt to call back their missing master with occasional terrifying results but no success. A schism among them opposes this misuse on the grounds that Burt has "ascended to the profane stars" as he often claimed he would and that his stellar vigil should not be disturbed. They've killed two other cult members and one monster hunter who'd only heard of the ritual's secondary effects.
Long term users can be distinguished by telltale neurological quirks, sensitivity to high pitched noises, problems with pronouncing sibilants and a lazy right eye. Growths in the brain show up clearly on an MRI scan and any doctor would be quick to label them as tumours.
Tuesday, 4 February 2020
280 - Spitting Venom
Ritual: Spitting Venom
Cost: 4 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Raise a snake by hand from an egg. Never allow it to interact with or see other snakes. Let it bite you once a month, you can take precautions like milking all it's venom first if you like. When it dies dry out the meat and turn it into jerky.
Eat some, bite the tip of your thumb hard enough to draw blood and suck it into your mouth.
Effect: The blood in your mouth turns into snake venom. This imparts no special ability to attack people with it and spitting it at someone won't do anything unless you get it in their eyes, requiring a matched success or crit on a Struggle roll. It won't hurt you either unless you've got open cuts inside your mouth, if it gets into your bloodstream that might be bad so watch what you do with your thumb afterwards.
The exact effects of the venom depend on the snake, some just cause pain and others paralysis and necrosis. If your snake was non-venomous the liquid is a weird, inert serum.
Cost: 4 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Raise a snake by hand from an egg. Never allow it to interact with or see other snakes. Let it bite you once a month, you can take precautions like milking all it's venom first if you like. When it dies dry out the meat and turn it into jerky.
Eat some, bite the tip of your thumb hard enough to draw blood and suck it into your mouth.
Effect: The blood in your mouth turns into snake venom. This imparts no special ability to attack people with it and spitting it at someone won't do anything unless you get it in their eyes, requiring a matched success or crit on a Struggle roll. It won't hurt you either unless you've got open cuts inside your mouth, if it gets into your bloodstream that might be bad so watch what you do with your thumb afterwards.
The exact effects of the venom depend on the snake, some just cause pain and others paralysis and necrosis. If your snake was non-venomous the liquid is a weird, inert serum.
Thursday, 30 January 2020
275 - Celebrity Glamour
Ritual: Celebrity Glamour
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Wear an article of clothing belonging to someone famous who the target knows of but has not met. On an empty stomach eat a handful of cobwebs, soot and clover. Wash it down with a glass of collected morning dew. You can mix them if it makes it easier. Introduce yourself to the target of the ritual as the person whose clothing you're wearing, in Gaelic, and spend the charges.
Effect: The target of the ritual believes you are the person you introduce yourself as no matter how absurd. They still have control of all their faculties otherwise. They cannot shake this certainty on their own but if someone else confronts them with the reality its a rank 4 Unnatural check, failure prompts a breakdown or psychotic denial as they try to process believing two different things before the effect falters.
If not broken by intervention the effect of the ritual lasts until you either: take off the article of clothing, consume real food or drink, or become wet from rain. You may have more than one instance of the effect running at a time but need a different article of clothing for each of them.
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Wear an article of clothing belonging to someone famous who the target knows of but has not met. On an empty stomach eat a handful of cobwebs, soot and clover. Wash it down with a glass of collected morning dew. You can mix them if it makes it easier. Introduce yourself to the target of the ritual as the person whose clothing you're wearing, in Gaelic, and spend the charges.
Effect: The target of the ritual believes you are the person you introduce yourself as no matter how absurd. They still have control of all their faculties otherwise. They cannot shake this certainty on their own but if someone else confronts them with the reality its a rank 4 Unnatural check, failure prompts a breakdown or psychotic denial as they try to process believing two different things before the effect falters.
If not broken by intervention the effect of the ritual lasts until you either: take off the article of clothing, consume real food or drink, or become wet from rain. You may have more than one instance of the effect running at a time but need a different article of clothing for each of them.
Sunday, 26 January 2020
271 - Weakness in the Wi-Fi
Ritual: Weakness in the Wi-Fi
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Ritual Action: You need to be currently carrying an infectious disease and in a symptomatic and contagious state. Build a radio transmitter according to a specific schematic, it’s about $500-600 worth of components (less if you can salvage from scrap), which incorporates a number of electronically non-functional symbols made out of transistors and integrated circuits including a 3 meter antenna shaped like a rod of Asclepius.
Set the device up in an area where the stench of cadaverine is present and use it to broadcast yourself suffering: cough, vomit, mumble feverishly. Ham it up even if you aren't feeling that bad. If it works your symptoms will start to rapidly abate.
Effect: Anyone using a device to receive radio signals (cell phone, television, wireless internet) within a 333 yard range of the transmission risks catching whatever disease you’re carrying as though you did the equivalent of coughing in their face with the flu. This danger persists for as long as the transmitter continues to broadcast without stopping or being moved. Once a person has caught the disease your symptoms cease. Destroying the transmitter cures anyone currently suffering and dumps the equivalent of everyone’s infection back on to you, if multiple people are suffering this could prove fatal. If everyone infected heals by conventional means (or dies) that ceases to be a danger.
Other than the transmission vector the disease that victims of this ritual catch is mundane and may be treated accordingly by medicine.
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Ritual Action: You need to be currently carrying an infectious disease and in a symptomatic and contagious state. Build a radio transmitter according to a specific schematic, it’s about $500-600 worth of components (less if you can salvage from scrap), which incorporates a number of electronically non-functional symbols made out of transistors and integrated circuits including a 3 meter antenna shaped like a rod of Asclepius.
Set the device up in an area where the stench of cadaverine is present and use it to broadcast yourself suffering: cough, vomit, mumble feverishly. Ham it up even if you aren't feeling that bad. If it works your symptoms will start to rapidly abate.
Effect: Anyone using a device to receive radio signals (cell phone, television, wireless internet) within a 333 yard range of the transmission risks catching whatever disease you’re carrying as though you did the equivalent of coughing in their face with the flu. This danger persists for as long as the transmitter continues to broadcast without stopping or being moved. Once a person has caught the disease your symptoms cease. Destroying the transmitter cures anyone currently suffering and dumps the equivalent of everyone’s infection back on to you, if multiple people are suffering this could prove fatal. If everyone infected heals by conventional means (or dies) that ceases to be a danger.
Other than the transmission vector the disease that victims of this ritual catch is mundane and may be treated accordingly by medicine.
Tuesday, 21 January 2020
266 - Bird-tongue & Photographic Memory
Ritual: Bird-tongue
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Eat a crow, feathers and everything, from a formal table setting arranged correctly for an eight-course meal. Save the furcula - wishbone - but make sure you finish the rest. Go outside to a place you can hear birdsong and snap the bone by squeezing it in a hand clenched over your heart.
Effect: For a number of minutes equal to the ritual roll you can understand birdsong and other avian vocalisation as though it were normal speech. This comprehension is one-way, it won’t help them understand you. Some versions of the ritual claim that if you eat the crow alive it lets you circumvent his restriction but that’s just a bullshit rumour spread to make an unpleasant activity more uncomfortable.
It might sound good but the usefulness is limited. Birds typically talk about things like predators, food, their young and mates. It might be possible to provoke specific subjects with the right stimuli. Often details humans wouldn’t realize or would consider trivial are central to the way the bird sees the world and communicates. Parrots and corvids tend to be the smartest, making them the most useful birds to eavesdrop on.
Ritual: Photographic Memory
Cost: 1 minor charge.
Ritual Action: Take a small metallic capsule made from silver-plated copper and filled with mercury. Remove any contacts, glasses or other vision corrective device (too bad if you’ve got implanted lenses). Place the capsule between your back teeth and hold your left hand, balled into a fist, beside your head. Bite through the capsule.
Effect: You gain perfect recall of whatever you’re looking at when you cast this, forever. Anything displayed through a device that would augment your perception, like spectacles or a CCTV monitor, isn’t covered (you remember it normally, a little better than average given that the associated scene is permanently burned into your brain, take a +10% shift on any roll to recall those details). Even particulars that escaped your notice when you were first observing the scene are visible, you can flip, rotate and focus in on tiny details in the mental picture like the most Hollywood depictions of forensic image analysis.
This is the one memory that will be inviolate as long as you live. It won’t change or be recoloured the more you pick at it and the details won’t shift to match new perspectives. No matter what else you forget, be it what you had for breakfast last Monday or the way your wife’s voice sounded when she was still alive, it will always be there. Unchanged.
Cost: 2 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Eat a crow, feathers and everything, from a formal table setting arranged correctly for an eight-course meal. Save the furcula - wishbone - but make sure you finish the rest. Go outside to a place you can hear birdsong and snap the bone by squeezing it in a hand clenched over your heart.
Effect: For a number of minutes equal to the ritual roll you can understand birdsong and other avian vocalisation as though it were normal speech. This comprehension is one-way, it won’t help them understand you. Some versions of the ritual claim that if you eat the crow alive it lets you circumvent his restriction but that’s just a bullshit rumour spread to make an unpleasant activity more uncomfortable.
It might sound good but the usefulness is limited. Birds typically talk about things like predators, food, their young and mates. It might be possible to provoke specific subjects with the right stimuli. Often details humans wouldn’t realize or would consider trivial are central to the way the bird sees the world and communicates. Parrots and corvids tend to be the smartest, making them the most useful birds to eavesdrop on.
Ritual: Photographic Memory
Cost: 1 minor charge.
Ritual Action: Take a small metallic capsule made from silver-plated copper and filled with mercury. Remove any contacts, glasses or other vision corrective device (too bad if you’ve got implanted lenses). Place the capsule between your back teeth and hold your left hand, balled into a fist, beside your head. Bite through the capsule.
Effect: You gain perfect recall of whatever you’re looking at when you cast this, forever. Anything displayed through a device that would augment your perception, like spectacles or a CCTV monitor, isn’t covered (you remember it normally, a little better than average given that the associated scene is permanently burned into your brain, take a +10% shift on any roll to recall those details). Even particulars that escaped your notice when you were first observing the scene are visible, you can flip, rotate and focus in on tiny details in the mental picture like the most Hollywood depictions of forensic image analysis.
This is the one memory that will be inviolate as long as you live. It won’t change or be recoloured the more you pick at it and the details won’t shift to match new perspectives. No matter what else you forget, be it what you had for breakfast last Monday or the way your wife’s voice sounded when she was still alive, it will always be there. Unchanged.
Friday, 17 January 2020
262 - Verminous Rebirth
Ritual: Verminous Rebirth
Cost: 5 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Steal an object that the residents of the city it comes from would think of as its heart and build a nest of refuse gathered from local garbage bins at least 10 feet across around it in a place they shun. Line the nest with the fresh carcasses of up to 100 wild rats from the area. Remove all hair, nails, fillings and any surgical implants or foreign materials from your body before covering yourself in a carefully inked, accurate roadmap of the city.
Flood the nest with effluent. It doesn’t have to be wastewater, it could be rain, but it does have to come from a sewer. Take a large dose of a synthetic psychedelic and submerge yourself completely (you’ll want a tube to breathe through). There are a series of meditative exercises which will keep you from drowning yourself and catalyse the transformation. The process usually takes at least an hour.
A successful ritual ends with a diffusing sense of teeth chattering vibration, a loss of proprioception and nausea. An unsuccessful one probably just gets the nausea and will never work if attempted again.
Effect: You transform into a swarm of rats, permanently.
Your actions are limited to anything a group of rats could perform. Things like heavy lifting, speech and driving a car are probably all off the table unless you’re particularly resourceful or creative. The number of rats in your swarm is equal to the ritual roll capped by the number of rat corpses you used and is your new Wound Threshold. Typical attacks can only harm one of your swarm at a time, unless the GM says otherwise you only take 1 point of damage from most sources. The number of rats in your swarm will fluctuate by 1d10-5 every 24 days as new members are born and old ones die, though specific actions, environmental factors and current swarm size can influence this change. If it ever hits zero you're gone for good.
You may divide your swarm to be in several places at once, however doing so spreads your cognition thin. All abilities or identities are capped at the number of rats you have in an area. This does not apply if your entire swarm is in one place regardless of its size.
Losing your human form doesn’t immediately rob you of your ability to perform magick, but those faculties rapidly decay. Any supernatural, avatar or adept identities you have may no longer improve and begin to decline at a rate of 1d10% per day. Spending a minor charge each day reduces this to the lowest result of 2 dice, spending a significant charge puts it off for 24 hours. This applies to each identity separately and once they are gone it also robs you of your ability to perform rituals or gutter magick.
You are physically incapable of leaving the city in which you were created. Any parts of your swarm taken outside of it die immediately. The boundary is determined by the roadmap inked on your old body.
Cost: 5 significant charges.
Ritual Action: Steal an object that the residents of the city it comes from would think of as its heart and build a nest of refuse gathered from local garbage bins at least 10 feet across around it in a place they shun. Line the nest with the fresh carcasses of up to 100 wild rats from the area. Remove all hair, nails, fillings and any surgical implants or foreign materials from your body before covering yourself in a carefully inked, accurate roadmap of the city.
Flood the nest with effluent. It doesn’t have to be wastewater, it could be rain, but it does have to come from a sewer. Take a large dose of a synthetic psychedelic and submerge yourself completely (you’ll want a tube to breathe through). There are a series of meditative exercises which will keep you from drowning yourself and catalyse the transformation. The process usually takes at least an hour.
A successful ritual ends with a diffusing sense of teeth chattering vibration, a loss of proprioception and nausea. An unsuccessful one probably just gets the nausea and will never work if attempted again.
Effect: You transform into a swarm of rats, permanently.
Your actions are limited to anything a group of rats could perform. Things like heavy lifting, speech and driving a car are probably all off the table unless you’re particularly resourceful or creative. The number of rats in your swarm is equal to the ritual roll capped by the number of rat corpses you used and is your new Wound Threshold. Typical attacks can only harm one of your swarm at a time, unless the GM says otherwise you only take 1 point of damage from most sources. The number of rats in your swarm will fluctuate by 1d10-5 every 24 days as new members are born and old ones die, though specific actions, environmental factors and current swarm size can influence this change. If it ever hits zero you're gone for good.
You may divide your swarm to be in several places at once, however doing so spreads your cognition thin. All abilities or identities are capped at the number of rats you have in an area. This does not apply if your entire swarm is in one place regardless of its size.
Losing your human form doesn’t immediately rob you of your ability to perform magick, but those faculties rapidly decay. Any supernatural, avatar or adept identities you have may no longer improve and begin to decline at a rate of 1d10% per day. Spending a minor charge each day reduces this to the lowest result of 2 dice, spending a significant charge puts it off for 24 hours. This applies to each identity separately and once they are gone it also robs you of your ability to perform rituals or gutter magick.
You are physically incapable of leaving the city in which you were created. Any parts of your swarm taken outside of it die immediately. The boundary is determined by the roadmap inked on your old body.
Tuesday, 7 January 2020
252 - A Streetcar Named Desire & Elysian Fields
Ritual: A Streetcar Named Desire
Cost: 1 minor charge.
Ritual Action: Board a form of public transport at the beginning of its route and, for the duration of the trip, perform an offensive action. Don't stop at any point. While doing so meditate on the target of the ritual, do not allow the image of them out of your mind for a single moment. Identify yourself by their name to anyone who asks.
Effect: You'll be thrown off at some point during the trip. The specific point at which this happens is when you're closest to whatever it is that your target desires most. Multiple castings with different forms of transport and routes can give you points to triangulate its position. So long as you don't mind being a pest and maybe getting arrested.
Ritual: Elysian Fields
Cost: 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: Brew a concoction from ingredients including Tetley-brand tea, the vitreous fluid of a sheep, a paste ground from types of specific poisonous fungi native to three different continents and the blood of someone who has successfully performed this ritual. In the middle of a field, within view of a cemetery but no building higher than three stories sit cross legged facing away from the cemetery and drink the concoction at precisely noon on the fourth day of the month.
Effect: You fall into a coma. For the duration of that coma you're locked in a dream state hallucination consisting of whatever you believe the afterlife is supposed to look like. Unless your physical needs are attended to in the real world you're at risk of dying to exposure. Medical treatment can purge the substance from your system and end the effect but otherwise it is permanent.
An interesting side effect is that any hallucinatory dead person you speak to who has become a demon is aware of the interaction and can talk back. They can't see or experience what you do but otherwise you could hypothetically use this to carry on a conversation.
Cost: 1 minor charge.
Ritual Action: Board a form of public transport at the beginning of its route and, for the duration of the trip, perform an offensive action. Don't stop at any point. While doing so meditate on the target of the ritual, do not allow the image of them out of your mind for a single moment. Identify yourself by their name to anyone who asks.
Effect: You'll be thrown off at some point during the trip. The specific point at which this happens is when you're closest to whatever it is that your target desires most. Multiple castings with different forms of transport and routes can give you points to triangulate its position. So long as you don't mind being a pest and maybe getting arrested.
Ritual: Elysian Fields
Cost: 1 significant charge.
Ritual Action: Brew a concoction from ingredients including Tetley-brand tea, the vitreous fluid of a sheep, a paste ground from types of specific poisonous fungi native to three different continents and the blood of someone who has successfully performed this ritual. In the middle of a field, within view of a cemetery but no building higher than three stories sit cross legged facing away from the cemetery and drink the concoction at precisely noon on the fourth day of the month.
Effect: You fall into a coma. For the duration of that coma you're locked in a dream state hallucination consisting of whatever you believe the afterlife is supposed to look like. Unless your physical needs are attended to in the real world you're at risk of dying to exposure. Medical treatment can purge the substance from your system and end the effect but otherwise it is permanent.
An interesting side effect is that any hallucinatory dead person you speak to who has become a demon is aware of the interaction and can talk back. They can't see or experience what you do but otherwise you could hypothetically use this to carry on a conversation.
Saturday, 4 January 2020
249 - Sanctuary
Ritual: Sanctuary
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Stuff your shoes (you need to be wearing shoes) with feathers from a chicken that has never laid a fertilized egg and drink an entire container of wine. Bottle, cask, can, whatever, so long as it was intended as the wine’s original packaging it’s enough. While still under the alcoholic effect of the wine, cross the border into what people would recognise as a distinct region (it doesn’t necessarily have to be a nation’s border, moving between turf controlled by street gangs or True King avatars would also count). Take the last step over the threshold while facing west and making the fig sign with your off-hand.
Effect: It causes a rank 3 Helplessness check for anyone pursuing you from the original area to continue to give chase, remove you from the new area or harm you. Failure stops them in their tracks. They can do anything else they want, but so long as you’re alive and stay in the area that compulsion remains.
The ritual also ends if whoever holds authority over the area you’re claiming sanctuary in asks/demands/forces you to leave. You don’t need to be allowed to be there, you just need to not be asked to go. Taking off your shoes ends the ritual too. Otherwise it lasts about a week or until the next phase of the moon starts, whichever is sooner.
Cost: 3 minor charges.
Ritual Action: Stuff your shoes (you need to be wearing shoes) with feathers from a chicken that has never laid a fertilized egg and drink an entire container of wine. Bottle, cask, can, whatever, so long as it was intended as the wine’s original packaging it’s enough. While still under the alcoholic effect of the wine, cross the border into what people would recognise as a distinct region (it doesn’t necessarily have to be a nation’s border, moving between turf controlled by street gangs or True King avatars would also count). Take the last step over the threshold while facing west and making the fig sign with your off-hand.
Effect: It causes a rank 3 Helplessness check for anyone pursuing you from the original area to continue to give chase, remove you from the new area or harm you. Failure stops them in their tracks. They can do anything else they want, but so long as you’re alive and stay in the area that compulsion remains.
The ritual also ends if whoever holds authority over the area you’re claiming sanctuary in asks/demands/forces you to leave. You don’t need to be allowed to be there, you just need to not be asked to go. Taking off your shoes ends the ritual too. Otherwise it lasts about a week or until the next phase of the moon starts, whichever is sooner.
Thursday, 2 January 2020
247 - Witches Bottle
Ritual: Witches Bottle
Cost: 3+ minor charges.
Ritual Action: Take an empty bottle of alcoholic spirits which you drank yourself and fill it with a combination of three of the following: sea water, your own urine or blood, lemon juice squeezed from lemons fertilized by an animal carcass, volcanic ash, used motor oil, and balsamic vinegar. Do not use the same combination in any future castings. Add a handful of rosemary and iron nails (if the nails were pulled from a coffin gain a +10% shift to your ritual roll).
Hide it somewhere. Burying it under your house is good as is stuffing it under some floorboards or drywall, since it’ll take 3 nights of sleeping within 3 yards of it for the protection to take hold and you won’t want anyone finding it. On the third night spend the charges and roll to see if the ritual succeeds.
Effect: Until the beginning of the next lunar month you gain limited protection against remote magickal attacks. All curses, blasts and other deleterious hexing suffers a -20% shift if cast beyond the range of conventional eyesight. Further, if any of these attacks would cost an attacker charges on a success those charges are lost on a failure too. This second effect absorbs charges up to the amount originally invested in the ritual. If that amount is exceeded you lose your protection permanently.
The bottle’s protective powers can be refreshed by spending the first 3 nights of a lunar month sleeping within 3 yards of it. You remain unprotected during this period but at its conclusion the ritual is automatically refreshed until the beginning of the next lunar month, as is its charge absorbing capacity (you can’t add to that though, so spend up big the first time). If you miss a month you need to start over with a new bottle.
If anyone gains physical possession of your witches bottle you lose your protection until you get it back. Anyone who has it also gets a +20% shift to fling negative magick your way, if they’re willing to swig a mouthful of it before casting they can also flip-flop the roll. If it is destroyed you cannot create a new one for a year.
Old witches bottles have one other use: if they belonged to someone who has become a demon the contents can be used to control them while in possession of a host. Splashing them provokes an opposed roll Urge vs. Secrecy (or an adept, avatar or supernatural identity). Success compels the demon to follow one verbal instruction for no greater than 3 days. The instruction can be as complicated as you like so long as you can deliver it before the demon fitfully wipes themselves dry.
Cost: 3+ minor charges.
Ritual Action: Take an empty bottle of alcoholic spirits which you drank yourself and fill it with a combination of three of the following: sea water, your own urine or blood, lemon juice squeezed from lemons fertilized by an animal carcass, volcanic ash, used motor oil, and balsamic vinegar. Do not use the same combination in any future castings. Add a handful of rosemary and iron nails (if the nails were pulled from a coffin gain a +10% shift to your ritual roll).
Hide it somewhere. Burying it under your house is good as is stuffing it under some floorboards or drywall, since it’ll take 3 nights of sleeping within 3 yards of it for the protection to take hold and you won’t want anyone finding it. On the third night spend the charges and roll to see if the ritual succeeds.
Effect: Until the beginning of the next lunar month you gain limited protection against remote magickal attacks. All curses, blasts and other deleterious hexing suffers a -20% shift if cast beyond the range of conventional eyesight. Further, if any of these attacks would cost an attacker charges on a success those charges are lost on a failure too. This second effect absorbs charges up to the amount originally invested in the ritual. If that amount is exceeded you lose your protection permanently.
The bottle’s protective powers can be refreshed by spending the first 3 nights of a lunar month sleeping within 3 yards of it. You remain unprotected during this period but at its conclusion the ritual is automatically refreshed until the beginning of the next lunar month, as is its charge absorbing capacity (you can’t add to that though, so spend up big the first time). If you miss a month you need to start over with a new bottle.
If anyone gains physical possession of your witches bottle you lose your protection until you get it back. Anyone who has it also gets a +20% shift to fling negative magick your way, if they’re willing to swig a mouthful of it before casting they can also flip-flop the roll. If it is destroyed you cannot create a new one for a year.
Old witches bottles have one other use: if they belonged to someone who has become a demon the contents can be used to control them while in possession of a host. Splashing them provokes an opposed roll Urge vs. Secrecy (or an adept, avatar or supernatural identity). Success compels the demon to follow one verbal instruction for no greater than 3 days. The instruction can be as complicated as you like so long as you can deliver it before the demon fitfully wipes themselves dry.
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