Rituals

Thaumaturgy Pages


Unless otherwise specified in the text of the ritual, the system for all rituals is Intelligence + Occult, difficulty of 3+ level of the ritual.

Bind the Accusing Tongue

This ancient ritual is said to have been one of the first developed by the Tremere and a primary reason for the lack of cohesive opposition to their expansion. Bind the Accusing Tongue lays a compulsion upon the subject that prevents him from speaking ill of the caster, allowing the thaumaturge to commit literally unspeakable acts without fear of reprisal.

System: The caster must have a picture or other image of effigy of the ritual's target, a lock of the target's hair and a black silken cord. The caster winds the cord around the hair and image while intoning the ritual's vocal component. Once the ritual is complete, the target must score more successes on a Willpower roll (difficulty of the caster's Thaumaturgy rating +3) than the caster scored in order to say anything negative about the thaumaturge. The ritual lasts until the target succeeds at this roll or the silk cord is unwound, at which point the image and the lock of hair crumble to dust.

Brand of the Paramour
Thaumaturges cast this ritual to maintain and active awareness of their ghoul's physical condition. The thaumaturge must first perofmr this ritual over the blood of mortal twins, then share the vitae with his ghoul. After imbiding the blood, the vampire remains aware of any physical harm befalling his ghoul by feeling a phantom pain. Hence should the "paramour" sustain a bulet wound to the chest, the caster is immediately alert to this danger. This alertness also triggers should the paramour trip and fall, bruising his knee. The extent of danger is unknown to the thaumaturge, simply the fact that his ghoul has been harmed somewhere on his body.

System: Both the caster and his ghoul must each drink one of the two blood points of the moral twin. Should any physical peril befall the ghoul, the caster feels a sympathetic pain in the same part of the body. This pain, however, does not translate as damage to the vampire. Brand of the Paramour remains active so long as the ghoul is alive and remains a ghoul; the Embrace will negate this bond, as thaumaturges cannot create a paramour of another vampire.

Communicate with Kindred Sire
This ritual involves possessing an object belonging to the Sire, and takes five minutes. The vampire may speak with her sire, telepathically (this does not facilitate mindreading). Variations of this ritual exist to allow telepathic communication between one’s thralls, progeny, or those who have tasted the caster’s blood.

Defense of the Sacred Haven
This ritual takes an hour to perform, and uses up one blood point. The vampire may put a drop of her blood on each window in an area, up to twenty feet away from the ritual site. All sunlight that would go in through these windows is instead reflected by them. This ritual lasts as long as the vampire is in the area.

Deflection of Wooden Doom
This ritual involves standing in a circle of wood, and putting a splinter in one’s mouth. One wooden melee weapon that is about to penetrate the vampire’s heart will instead disintegrate. A weapon that is only held threateningly, without the intent to stab the vampire, will not be affected. Lasts until sunset, or until it affects a weapon.

Devil’s Touch
This ritual must be cast in the presence of its victim, and involves putting a coin on her person. The vampire can make all other mortals react to a mortal victim with hostility. Lasts one night.

Dominoe of Life
The vampire may simulate one human trait. Any trait, from the warmth of human flesh, to tears, can be assumed. Lasts one night.

Encrypt Missive
The thaumaturge writes the message in blood over the course of a night and speaks the name of the person he wishes to read it. Only the writer and the person to whom the message is addressed can read it. To any others who observe the letter, the writing simply appears as gibberish.

Engaging the Vessel of Transference
This ritual enchants a container to fill itself with blood from any living or unliving being who holds it, replacing the volume of blood taken with an equal amount previously held inside the container. When the ritual is enacted, the vessel (which must be between the size of a small cup and a gallon jug) is sealed full of the caster's blood and inscribed with the Hermetic sigil which empowers the ritual. Whenever an individual touches the container with his bare skin, he feels a slight chill against his flesh but no further discomfort. The container continues to exchange the blood it contains until it is opened. The two most common uses of this ritual are to covertly create a blood bond and to obtain a sample of a subject's blood for ritual or experimental purposes.

System: This ritual takes three hours to enact (reduced by 15 minutes for each success on the casting roll) and requires one blood point (although not necessarily the caster's blood), which is sealed inside the container. The ritual only switches blood between itself and a subject if it is touched bare-handed - even thin cotton gloves keep it from activating.

Individuals with at least four dots in Occult or three in Expert Knowledge: Mage Lore recognize the Hermetic sigil with two successes on an Intelligence + the appropriate Knowledge roll (difficulty 8).

Enslaving Hermes' Whispers (ASM Custom)
Using a piece of chalk, the Tremere may inscribe a small, intricate circular rune at a location or on an object, and imbue it with mystic formulae that turns the chalk a deep, sanguinary red. At the time of casting, the Tremere may designate a particular person(s) or, more abstractly, a group (a named coterie, the servants of a particular Vampire, any members of the Camarilla who happen to find it, et cetera). The message contained in the rune will only appear for the designated recipients, and after the message is delivered, the ritual will consume itself and disappear, leaving no mystic residue or trace behind.

System: Roll as normal for rituals. It takes 15 minutes to cast, instead of 5. One success allows a static visual image that lasts for up to thirty seconds. Two successes allows for the addition of audio. Three successes allows for moving pictures and an extended duration of up to one minute. Four successes allows for the creation of multiple images and sounds, and a duration of one minute thirty seconds. Five successes allows for the addition of tactile sensation to the images, increasing the maximum duration to two minutes. Each success above five adds another thirty seconds to the possible maximum duration.

Expedient Paperwork
This beneficial ritual expedites paperwork through the bureaucratic systems of government or other hierarchies. By preventing the ensorcelled documents from being misplaced, the paperwork goes through the swiftest channels, even bypassing normal daytime agencies that would the Kindred's nocturnal lifestyle.

System: This ritual enchants the expedited paperwork, which shows up as an aura to anyone who looks for such. Normal handling time of a given document is reduced to roughly one-third and it will not get lost. The ritual ends when the material is finished being processed.

Illuminate Trail of the Prey
The vampire may make the trail of a specific victim glow in such a way that only she can see it. All paths, from an airplane’s vapor trails to footprints, will be shown. A starting point is required, as is an initial sighting of the victim, and the spell is nullified if the vampire wades in or is immersed in water.

Impressive Visage
A thaumaturge may enhance his sexual appeal and charm when interacting with other individuals after casting this ritual. When this ritual is cast, the thaumaturge gains a degree of animal attractiveness; he's simply more desirable than everyone else and commands attention as if he were a top model. for this ritual to take effect, the caster places a sprig of fried mint in a pocket or in his shoe.

System: The caster gains two dice on all Appearance-related rolls for the duration of this ritual. This power lasts for a number of hours equal to the success scored on the activation roll. Storytellers may opt to narrow the use of this ritual by having a player dedicate one of the character's characteristics as being more appealing beyond his other attributes. Hence, the character might gain a bonus when staring into a person's eyes, speaking in a deep bratone voice, fleshing a pearl-white smile, etc.

The Imp's Affliction
A disgusting ritual, the Imp's Affliction curses the subject by aggravating his ears, throat, and nose. Mucus membranes inflame, ears fill with liquid, the throat becomes raspy and dry, and the subject's eyes brim with tears. This ritual requires merely that the thaumaturge write his victim's name on a scrap of paper.

System: The Imp's Affliction lasts for one scene, during which the victim becomes winded after five minus Stamina turns. Subjects so exhausted suffer a temporary level of unsoakable bashing damage, which vanishes at the end of the scene as the symptoms disperse. This ritual is often used to torment people in social situations, as their unpleasant maladies make them odious, to say the least—the difficulties of Social rolls for a character stricken with the Imp's Affliction increase by one. This ritual has no effect on Kindred.

Incantation of the Shepherd
This ritual enables the thaumaturge to mystically locate all members of his herd. While intoning the ritual's vocal component, he spins in a slow circle with a glass object of some sort held to each of his eyes. At the end of the ritual, he has a subliminal sense of the direction and distance to each of his regular vessels.

System: This ritual gives the character the location relative to him of every member of his herd. If he does not have the Herd Background, Incantation of the Shepherd locates the closest three mortals from whom the thaumaturge has fed at least three times each. This ritual has a maximum range of 10 miles times the character's Herd Background, or five miles if he has no points in that background.

Learning the Mind Enslumbered
This ritual is used to determine the cause of torpor in a vampiric body or the cause of destruction in a Kindred's ashen remains. To conduct this ritual, the vampire places a penny or other small coin over the eye of the torpid Kindred, and she hears in the vampire's voice the cause of her cold rest. If the Kindred is ash, the thaumaturge need only lay the penny in the ashes.

System: This ritual requires one half'four at the end of which the thaumaturge hears the message. This power has no effect on creatures other than Kindred.

Preserve Blood
This ritual involves burying an earthenware container for three nights. Blood may be preserved in such a container by putting in a little burdock, reciting a few incantations, and sealing it with wax. This blood will be preserved until the container is broken or opened. This continer can not be used twice with the same blood.

Purge the Inner Demon
All Kindred have a raging monster within their souls. A thaumaturge invoking this ritual can silence the Beast in a vampire for a time, even removing the vampire from the Beast's control. The caster must push a sturdy pin through his own hand to begin the ritual. This causes the subject to become strangely submissive, even pulling her out of frenzy. In actuality, her beastial nature has been temporarily separated from her psyche. According to legend, some Kindred have willingly starved themselves into torpor after having been subjected to this ritual.

System: This ritual lasts for a number of nights equal to the number of successes the caster scores on a Manipulation + Empathy roll (difficulty minus the subject's Humanity, but never less than 1). During this time, the subject cannot frenzy. The thaumaturge may not use this ritual on himself.

Purity of Flesh
The caster cleanses her body of all foreign material with this ritual. To perform it, she meditates on bare earth or stone while surrounded by a circle of 13 sharp stones. Over the course of the ritual, the caster is slowly purged of all physical impurities: dirt, alcohol, drugs, poison, bullets lodged in the flesh and tattoo ink are all equally affected, slowly rising to the surface of the caster's skin and flaking away as a gritty gray film that settles within the circle. Any jewelry, makeup or clothes that the caster is wearing are also dissolved.

System: The player spends one blood point before rolling. Purity of Flesh removes all physical items from the caster's body, but does not remove enchantments, mind control or diseases of the blood.

Rebirth of Mortal Vanity
This ritual requires strands of hair from mortal children, and involves gesturing in front of a mirror for an hour. This ritual causes the vampire’s hair to grow one inch for each child from whom hair was taken and used. This hair will remain until cut. If the vampire wishes to perform this ritual for another, she must also be in front of the mirror.

Rite of Introduction
This ritual involves reciting a half-hour incantation, and then speaking into water vapor. The vampire may contact the Regent of the nearest Tremere Chantry first, and then others, descending the hierarchy. By tradition, only the Regent is bound to answer, and a brief dialogue with each person is possible. Used often to announce one’s presence, or to call for help.

Sanguineous Phial
This ritual allows a vampire to enchant a vessel so that it may hold a quantity of blood and keep it from spoiling. It is useful for Kindred who do not have the medical knowledge of technology required to preserve blood in a more mundane fashion. The caster takes a convered earthenware jar and buries it in the earth for two nights, then digs it up the following evening. He crumbles a dried ash leaf into the empty canister and pours the blood in, closing the container and sealing the lid with tallow melted from a candle. The blood will remain fresh until the seal is broken.

System: After the container is opened, the blood begins to spoul at a normal rate. If the vessel is broken, the blood immediately deteriorates to the state it would have attainted had it not been preserved at all. The canister may be used more than once, but the ritual must be recast or the blood will go bad.

The Scribe
This ritual creates a written document from the spoken words of the caster. The thaumaturge simply speaks, and her words mystically appear on paper before her. Some thaumaturges have observed variants of this ritual that involve moving feather-pens writing the words as they speak them, but the most common form of this ritual makes no such overt display. Further, some young thaumaturges have developed a variant that records their words directly to computer files—which their elders almost universally decry as vulgar. This ritual requires the beak of a bird or the tongue of a lizard to be crushed between the caaster's thumb and forefinger.

System: For the duration of the scene, any words spoken by the thaumaturge are transcribed to whatever surface she wishes. This is most commonly paper (whether loose or bound into a book), but may also be a wall, the heal of a pin, anything. The Scribe automatically fits the thaumaturge's ideas on a given surface, but it makes no provisions for legibility; transcribing all 400 pages of The Seventh Sigil onto a nore card isn't going to make it readable without a microscope. Additionally, the Scribe does not improve a speaker's eloquence—in matters where clarity of quality is crucial, the speaker's Expression Trait may come into play. The scribe may be cast on someone other than the thaumaturge, should the latter so wish. Also, she may voluntarily end the effects of the power before the end of the scene.

Sense the Mystical
This ritual provides the ability to sense the "mystical residue" left by magical objects and effects. This ritual was origianlly developed to seek out non-Tremere who use Thaumaturgy and magical artifacts, and is common among the young Tremere seeking a name for themselves. While this power is in effect, the thaumaturge carries a lit candle, whose light causes the stuff of magic to glitter.

System: After chanting for five minutes, the thaumaturge is able to sense magical effects. Sense the Mystical can detect Thaumaturgy, Necromancy and similar blood-related vampiric magic if used within several yards of the object or person in question. This power does not distinguish between the different types of blood magic, nor does it pick up "normal" disciplines. This ability lasts for one scene.

Wake with Evening’s Freshness
This ritual takes a half-hour to perform, and involves burning feathers, and spreading the ashes over the sleeping area. The vampire who performs this ritual may awaken at the slightest sign of danger, and the rules involving Humanity, regarding the ability to awaken and remain awake, are waived for the first few turns. Lasts until sunset.