Thaumaturgical Rituals (Discipline Rituals)

# Thaumaturgical Rituals

Rituals are Thaumaturgical formulas, meticulously researched and prepared, that create powerful magical effects. Rituals are less versatile than paths, as their effects are singular and straightforward, but they are better suited to specific ends.

All thaumaturges have the ability to use rituals, though each individual ritual must be learned separately. By acquainting herself with the arcane practice of blood magic, the caster gains the capacity to manipulate these focused effects.

Thaumaturgical rituals are rated from 1 to 5, each level corresponding to both the level of mastery of Thaumaturgy the would-be caster must possess and the relative power of the ritual itself. Unless stated otherwise, a ritual requires five minutes per level to cast.

Casting rituals requires a successful Intelligence + Occult roll, for which the difficulty equals 3 + the level of the ritual (maximum 9). Only one success is required for a ritual to work, though certain spells may require more successes or have variable effects based on how well the caster’s roll goes. Should a roll to activate a ritual fail, the Storyteller is encouraged to create strange occurrences or side effects, or even make it appear that the ritual was successful, only to reveal its failure at a later time. A botched ritual roll may even indicate a catastrophic failure or summon an ill-tempered demon

Rituals sometimes require special ingredients or reagents to work — these are noted in each ritual’s description. Common components include herbs, animal bones, ceremonial items, feathers, eye of newt, tongue of toad, etc. Acquiring magical components for a powerful ritual may form the basis for an entire story.

At the first level of Thaumaturgy, the vampire automatically gains a single Level One ritual. To learn further rituals, the thaumaturge must find someone to teach him, or learn the ritual from a scroll, tome, or other archive. Learning a new ritual can take anywhere from a few nights (Level One ritual) to months or years (Level Five ritual). Some mystics have studied individual rituals for decades, or even centuries.

## Optional Rule: Purchasing Rituals through Experience

The default assumption is that all rituals are free for the player but must be obtained through in-game activities, whether through research or horse-trading. However, individual Storytellers may not wish to devote a significant portion of game time to one character’s efforts to learn a new ritual (particularly if the character is the only blood magician in the coterie and his efforts to learn a new ritual monopolize the group’s time). Accordingly, the following optional rules allow for the player (with Storyteller approval) to simply purchase rituals with experience to represent knowledge obtained during downtime.

For loyalist Tremere, learning a new Thaumaturgy ritual costs ritual level x 2. The same rules apply for any character who has Necromancy as an in-Clan discipline and who wishes to learn a new Necromancy ritual. For all characters for whom Thaumaturgy and/or Necromancy are not Clan-favored, the cost is ritual level x 3. If the ritual is completely foreign to the vampire’s blood magic school, the experience cost increases to ritual level x 3 for characters for whom Thaumaturgy and/or Necromancy are Clanfavored and to ritual level x 4 for all other characters, to represent the complications inherent in adapting foreign rituals

The Storyteller may require the player to make some additional rolls before allowing the purchase. For example, she may require him to roll Charisma + Politics to represent his character sucking up to the Regent of the chantry or Intelligence + Investigation to represent research performed during downtime. Alternatively, she may require the player to roll his unmodified Mentor or Contacts rating as an incharacter explanation for how the character obtained the ritual. Assuming these rolls are successful (and remember, these are matters for Storyteller discretion), the player then need only pay the experience cost to gain the ritual’s benefits.

## Level One Rituals

### 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 or 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 caster. 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.

### Blood Rush

This ritual allows the vampire to create the sensation of drinking blood in himself without actually feeding. The ritual can be used for pleasure, but it is more often used to prevent frenzy when confronted with fresh blood. The vampire must carry the fang of a predatory animal on his person for this ritual to work.

**System:** Performance of the ritual results in the Beast being kept in check automatically. Blood Rush allows the vampire to resist hunger-based frenzy for up to one hour, at which point the Cainite feels hungry again (assuming he did before). This ritual takes only one turn to enact.

### Brand

An enterprising Tremere neonate from Boston once overheard a powerful Brujah named Alighieri wish she could acquire a new tattoo that wouldn’t fade away on the following evening. Curious, he made several trips to the local chantry archives and came across references to a ritual used in France to brand criminals. Considering the dark reputation of the Warlocks, this ritual is surprisingly popular amongst neonates of all Clans, especially Anarchs. The Tremere merely smile and collect the boons.

Brand allows the thaumaturge to transmute temporary tattoos and other body modifications received postEmbrace into a permanent state on the vampire’s body. The thaumaturge does not need to be present at the creation of the tattoo, but the ink must have been imprinted within an hour of the casting of the ritual. After reciting the proper incantations, the caster must slowly spread an ounce of molten silver over the area of skin tattooed.

Brand was designed to be a punishment, and thus is exceptionally painful. Some Kindred view this ritual as a rite of passage for neonates and a demonstration of their courage.

**System:** This painful process burns an aggravated level of damage to the area of skin branded. This tattoo may be placed anywhere on the subject’s body. Once the damage has healed, the tattoo remains upon the skin, unblemished. Due to the pain, the Storyteller may force the target to make a Self-Control roll to hold still during the procedure.

### Brand of the Paramour

Thaumaturges cast this ritual to maintain an active awareness of their ghoul’s physical condition. The thaumaturge must fi rst perform this ritual over the blood of mortal twins, then share the vitae with his ghoul. After imbibing the blood, the vampire remains aware of any physical harm befalling his ghoul by feeling a phantom pain. Hence, should the “paramour” ghoul sustain a bullet 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 he desires to create as a paramour must each drink one of the two blood points of the mortal twin. Afterward, should any physical peril befall the ghoul, the caster feels a sympathetic pain in the same part of the body. Hence, if the vampire’s ghoul is hit in the shoulder by a stray bullet, the caster feels an acute pain in his shoulder.

This pain, however, does not translate as damage to the vampire should his ghoul sustain extreme bodily harm. If the ghoul sustains any health levels of damage, the thaumaturge will still only feel pain centered on the location where his ghoul suffers his damage.

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.

### Chime of Unseen

Spirits During the nascent Camarilla’s conflicts with the Giovanni, the greatest danger to the Ivory Tower was the Necromancers’ ability to spy upon their enemies with impunity. Clan Tremere created a ritual that would allow them to detect ghost, spirits, and demonic entities.

The thaumaturge must collect the wedding rings of three dead women and melt them to cast a metallic chime. She must chant over the chime over the course of the evening, naming each of the brides once per hour. Once the chime has cooled, it imprints the memory of the ritual in the metal.

Once it is hung in a room, the chime will harmoniously ring a soft warning when in the presence of an unseen spirit, ghost, or devil. Anyone that understands the mystical nature of the chime and is within earshot may benefit from this warning. This thaumaturgical device will work for a year before the ritual must be recast.

**System:** Once the chime has been enchanted, it will ring once every time an unseen spirit, ghost, or devil is within thirty feet/ten meters of its physical presence. Otherwise, the chime has been charmed to not ring, even in heavy wind or by manual manipulation. Some powers may block the ability of the chime to detect a specific entity, per the discretion of the Storyteller.

### Communicate with Kindred Sire

By enacting this ritual, the caster may join minds with her sire, speaking telepathically with him over any distance. The communication may continue until the ritual expires or until either party ends the conversation. The caster must possess an item once owned by her sire for the ritual to work.

**System:** The caster must meditate for 30 minutes to create the connection. Conversation may be maintained for 10 minutes per success on the activation roll.

### Dedicate the Chantry

Tremere chantries typically house arcane books, special resources, servants and other major assets. It’s no wonder they’re so closely guarded. One common practice includes the casting of various wards over a chantry site, to prevent unauthorized entry and to make the place difficult to locate. Dedicate the Chantry expedites this process, making it easier to place subsequent enchantments over the area. To Dedicate the Chantry, the caster must walk a counterclockwise circle around the entire grounds and sprinkle stagnant water as he travels. Once the ring is complete, the thaumaturge must return to the (rough) center and anoint his hands with the stale water, then the lowest level of the floor.

**System:** A dedication functions over a single building, so a complex of homes or an estate and grounds may require several castings. Once dedicated, the chantry is open to more defenses; any site ritual cast over the chantry, from a ward to potent magics like Deny the Intruder (below), has its casting difficulty lowered by one.

### Defense of the Sacred Haven

This ritual prevents sunlight from entering an area within 20 feet (six meters) of this ritual’s casting. A mystical darkness blankets the area, keeping the baleful light at bay. Sunlight reflects off windows or magically fails to pass through doors or other portals. To invoke this ritual’s protection, the caster draws sigils in her own blood on all the affected windows and doors. The ritual lasts as long as the thaumaturge stays within the 20-foot (6-meter) radius.

**System:** This ritual requires one hour to perform, during which the caster recites incantations and inscribes glyphs. One blood point is required for this ritual to work.

### Deflection of Wooden Doom

This ritual protects the caster from being staked, whether she is resting or active. While this ritual is in effect, the first stake that would pierce the vampire’s heart disintegrates in the attacker’s hand. A stake merely held near the caster is unaffected; for this ritual to work, the stake must actively be used in an attempt to impale the vampire.

**System:** The caster must surround herself with a circle of wood for a full hour. Any wood will work: furniture, sawdust, raw timber, 2’ x 4’s, whatever. The circle must remain unbroken, however. At the end of the hour, the vampire places a wooden splinter under her tongue. If this splinter is removed, the ritual is nullified. This ritual lasts until the following dawn or dusk.

### Devil’s Touch

Thaumaturges use this ritual to place curses upon mortals who earn their ire. Using this ritual marks an individual invisibly, causing all those who come in contact with him to receive him poorly. The mortal is treated as the most loathsome individual conceivable, and all who deal with him do everything in their power to make him miserable. Even bums spit at an afflicted individual, and children taunt him and barrage him with vulgarities.

**System:** The effects of this ritual last one night, disappearing as the sun rises. The mortal (it doesn’t work on vampires) must be present when the ritual is invoked, and a penny must be placed somewhere on his person (in a pocket, shoe, etc.).

### Domino of Life

A vampire wanting or needing to simulate a human characteristic can do so once Domino of Life is cast. For one entire night, the vampire can eat, breathe, maintain a normal body temperature, assume a human flesh tone, or display some other single trait of humankind she desires. Note that only one trait can be replicated in this fashion. The vampire must have a vial of fresh human blood on his person to maintain this ritual.

**System:** Using this ritual adds one die to the caster’s dice pools when attempting to pass as human. Unless onlookers are especially wary, the Domino of Life should fool them into thinking the caster is mortal — not that they should have any reason to suspect otherwise.

### 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 one-gallon/four-liter 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 with bare skin — even thin cotton gloves keep it from activating.

Individuals with at least four dots in Occult recognize the Hermetic sigil with two successes on an Intelligence + Occult roll (difficulty 8).

### Encrypt Missive

To insure that messages remain secure against prying eyes, the Tremere sometimes use this ritual to encode documents magically. Created during nights long past to send messages across battle lines or hostile borders, this ritual is not used as often in the age of electronic communications, but is occasionally used to communicate between chantries. Also, this is a fairly common ritual — many anarchs of the Anarch Free State seem to have learned it, and use it to encrypt graffi ti messages to others of their kind.

System: 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 letter is addressed can read the document, but numerous “counter-rituals” exist that can be used to confound the magic of this ritual. To any others who observe the letter, the writing simply appears as gibberish.

### Expediant Paperwork

This beneficial ritual expedites paperwork through the bureaucratic systems of governments 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 hinder the Kindred’s nocturnal lifestyle. Although extremely useful in modern society, this ritual was developed to handle the Church bureaucracies of earlier nights and allay any suspicion toward the caster. The ritual requires the hairs of a dog, known for protection and loyalty, to protect and guide the paperwork.

**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 the Trail of Prey

This ritual causes the path of the subject’s passing to glow in a manner that only the vampire can see. The tracks shine distinctly, but only to the eyes of the caster. Even airplane trajectories and animal tracks shine with unhealthy light. The ritual is nullified if the target wades through or immerses himself in water, or if he reaches the destination of his journey. The caster must burn a length of white satin ribbon that has been in her possession for at least 24 hours for this ritual to take effect.

**System:** The thaumaturge must have a mental picture of or know the name of her prey. The individual’s wake glows with a level of brightness dependent on how long it has been since he passed that way — old tracks burn less brightly, while fresh tracks blaze.

### 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 dried mint in a pocket or in his shoe.

**System:** The caster gains two dice on all Appearancerelated rolls for the duration of this ritual. This power lasts for a number of hours equal to the successes 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 above and beyond his other attributes. Hence, the character might gain a bonus when staring into a person’s eyes, speaking in a deep baritone voice, flashing 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 her victim’s name on a scrap of paper.

System: The Imp’s Affl iction 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 most 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 caster 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 caster has fed at least three times each. This ritual has a maximum range of 10 miles or 15 kilometers times the character’s Herd Background, or five miles (eight kilometers) 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-hour, at the end of which the thaumaturge hears the message. This power has no effect on creatures other than Kindred.

### Now Its Sight Is Ours

This ritual creates a scrying device which can be used to observe enemies and events from safety; Paul Cordwood devised it for his use and that of his spies. The ritual requires a three-inch, golden pin, a length of wire, a small golden claw cast in the shape of a rooster’s foot, some of the caster’s vitae, and a human victim with at least one healthy eye. As the ritual begins, the victim is on her knees, bound, gagged and blindfolded. The ritualist (or an assistant; usually two helpers are required to restrain the victim during the stage to follow) removes the victim’s blindfold and shines a bright light into his face. Using a caliper, the vampire plucks out the desired eye, taking care not to unduly damage it. While assistants remove the victim, the ritualist speaks a series of incantations and pierces the eye with the pin. He attaches the pin to the wire and the wire to the claw, draws the eye through the smoke of several censers as a preservative measure and then dips it in a pool of his own vitae that rests in a golden bowl inscribed with the image of Thoth, Egyptian god of knowledge. The vitae is then drawn off, placed in a solution of preservative salts and essences and saved.

The device can now be placed in any location the vampire wishes to survey from a distance. The claw is used to secure it to a surface. Needless to say, it must be well-hidden from observant targets.

To see through the eye of the device, the user (who must be a vampire, but needn’t be the original ritualist) ingests the vitae potion. The device takes over his visual perceptions; instead of what stands before him, he sees what the device sees.

**System:** The ritualist must spend at least 3 blood points in making the vitae potion but is not limited to that quantity. Each point yields four doses of the potion.

Using the device requires no roll, unless the user is fed the prepared blood unwillingly. In that case she may roll Willpower against a difficulty of 9 to resist the vision. The image flooding the user’s vision is flat; a single eye yields no perception of depth. It is purely visual, conveying no sounds, smells or other sensory information. The user may vary the duration of the vision by altering the quantity of the vitae potion she drinks. It lasts for ten minutes for every dose consumed. The potion does not also nourish the drinker; it can’t be used to increase her blood pool.

The eye remains potent until destroyed but is useless without the correct potion of blood. The original thaumaturge, and only the original thaumaturge, can perform a new ritual using an existing eye (and no new victims) to gain further doses of blood. Each time this is done to a single eye, the ritual difficulty rises by 2.

### 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 bestial 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 (diffi culty 10 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 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 allows a vampire to grow her hair again. For every inch of hair the thaumaturge wishes to grow, she must pluck one hair from the head of a human child. She places them on a mirror and looks down into the mirror while mutely gesturing over it, inscribing glyphs into the air. As her hair begins to grow, the mirror absorbs the hairs on its surface. Once the ritual is complete, the vampire’s hair follicles die again, but the hair remains at the new length until cut. This ritual may be cast on another Kindred, but the recipient must pluck the hairs himself, and both caster and recipient must stand over the mirror during the ceremony.

**System:** The number of successes determines how rapidly the vampire’s hair grows. With one success, it takes 10 minutes for each inch of hair, whereas at five successes, the hair seems to pour forth from the subject’s scalp, growing up to a foot in under a minute. If the hair is ever cut shorter than it was at the time of the vampire’s Embrace, it will return to its original length the next night. A vampire who was bald in life will remain so in undeath; his hair simply does not grow, though some speculate a more powerful version of this ritual exists for the truly vain among the undead touched by baldness.

### 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 fi les — 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 caster’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 head 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 note 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 or 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.

### Serenading the Kami

Through invocations and smudging with incense, the ritualist gains the temporary support of spirits known as kami, “highly placed beings” that are found in all things. Developed by a traditional Japanese Kindred to aid in a duel, this ritual is used prior to a major feat of strength. The thaumaturge must burn a stick of incense to invoke this ritual.

**System:** This half-hour ritual allows the thaumaturge to reduce the diffi culty of any single physical action by two immediately following the completion of the ritual. This may be an extended action such as digging a ditch, or it may be as brief as guiding a deadly blow.

### Sense the Mystical

This ritual provides the ability to sense the “mystical residue” left by magical objects and effects. This ritual was originally developed to seek out non-Tremere who use Thaumaturgy and magical artifacts, and is common among the younger 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.

### Sigil of Authority

Sigil of Authority utilizes the principle of sympathetic magic to create a link between the known authority of an office and the enforcer of said office, via a mystical sigil. When the Sigil of Authority is revealed to a vampire beholden to the specific office, she immediately knows that the possessor of the Sigil represents and carries the word of said office.

Initially, this ritual was designed by a Tremere Justicar to mark his agents traveling across the globe in his service. Popularity of this ritual spread, and many Princes now issue Sigils of Authority to officers of their court to ensure that new arrivals immediately know and understand who the court officers are of a domain.

**System:** The thaumaturge methodically cuts a design into the flesh of the willing subject with a silver-tipped blade. This sigil must be at least three inches in diameter and may be placed anywhere on the body of the subject. The design should metaphorically present the authority of the office represented and the meaning easily understood by those that see it. For example, the sigil of a domain’s Sheriff might be a star shaped badge or police shield.

The thaumaturge must spend an evening in the willing presence of the Sigil Investor (the vampire that holds the office from which the authority arrives) and the Sigil Bearer (the vampire that will carry the voice of said office) to attune the sigil to the resonance of the office. At the end of the evening, the Sigil Bearer must swear an oath to the office. Once activated, everyone present instinctively knows that the Sigil Bearer lawfully represents the office of the Sigil Investor.

The Sigil Bearer must expose the sigil and expend a temporary point of Willpower to project the weight of authority of the Sigil Investor. Any vampire in her presence must make a Self-Control roll (difficulty 8) or be down three dice on all Social rolls against the Sigil Bearer for the next fifteen minutes. For example, while working undercover, Alice the Archon is surrounded by a pack of troublesome neonates looking for a rumble. She doesn’t have time for a long fight, so she flashes the Sigil of Authority on her arm and expends a point of Willpower. The Anarchs must make a Self-Control (difficulty 8) lest they fall under the sway of the power of the Sigil of Authority. If the neonates fail, they are down three dice on any social rolls for the next fifteen minutes.

The Sigil of Authority lasts one year per success on the activation roll, and the Bearer is aware of when it fades. This ritual may be renewed by the Sigil Bearer re-swearing the oath of office.

The authority of the sigil may be revoked immediately if the Sigil Investor expends a point of Willpower. Should this happen, the Sigil Bearer learns this immediately as the symbol cut into her flesh is burned until the symbol is no longer visible. This rejection is painful, and burns an aggravated level of damage into the former Sigil Bearer’s flesh.

### The Carrion Fly Delayed

This ritual allows for the preservation of body parts from living (or unliving) beings so that they can be used in rituals demanding fresh fleshy components long after being hewn from their original owners. The caster must make a series of incantations before vivisecting the living victim. He conducts the vivisection and then passes the desired parts through smoke from a censer burning alchemical salts.

Creative vampires may devise other uses for the ritual. For example, it is more disheartening to the kin of one’s enemy to drop a fresh-looking head in his lap than to deliver a mere skull. It is also useful in the formation of alibis; by the time discoverers find a body treated in this way, the caster may have traveled many leagues away, leaving a corpse that looks fresh-killed. This ritual can also preserve blood for later consumption.

**System:** Simple success preserves five blood points or 100 pounds of meat from a single specimen for up to a week. Players can spend additional successes to extend the preservation time (one week per success) or the amount preserved (five blood point/100 pounds per success).

**Historical Note:** The advent of refrigeration makes this ritual a relic of the past.

### Wake with Evening’s Freshness

This ritual allows a vampire to awaken at any sign of danger, especially during the day. If any potentially harmful circumstances arise, the caster immediately rises, ready to face the problem. This ritual requires the ashes of burned feathers to be spread over the area in which the Kindred wishes to sleep.

**System:** This ritual must be performed immediately before the vampire goes to sleep for the day. Any interruption to the ceremonial casting renders the ritual ineffective. If danger arises, the caster awakens and may ignore the Humanity/Path dice pool limit rule for the first two turns of consciousness. Thereafter, the penalty takes effect, but the thaumaturge will have already risen and will be able to address problematic situations.

### Widow’s Spite

This ritual causes a pain, itch, or other significant (but not deadly) sensation in the subject. Similar in effect to legendary “voodoo doll” effects, this ritual is used more out of scorn or malice than actual enmity. In fact, it requires a wax or cloth doll that resembles the target, which bleeds when the power takes effect.

**System:** The ceremonial doll must resemble, however rudely, the victim of the ritual. It produces no mechanical effect, other than a simple physical stimulus. The caster may determine where on the subject’s body the pain or itch appears.

## Level Two Rituals

### Blood Mead

It was thought by the cults of Dionysus that supernatural powers could procured while under the effects of oinos, or any intoxication for that matter. During the Dionysian rites, a special drink combining vitae and mead (a fermented honey drink) might be prepared for favored supplicants. The drink was thought to pass on a powerful resilience, though only under intoxication. Similarly, a thaumaturge casting this ritual will be able to withstand a greater amount of damage than he would normally tolerate.

**System:** The thaumaturge must ingest this concoction to trigger its effect. By mingling two points of his own vitae with a honey brew, the magus creates a potent anesthetic and intoxicant. While under this effect, the caster gains an extra Bruised health level. However, he suffers the effects of intoxication and, as such, loses one die to all Dexterity and Intelligence dice pools. The effects from Blood Mead last a number of hours equal to the successes scored after the blood mead is imbibed. At night’s end, the vitae within the Blood Mead dilutes and loses its mystical properties and, as a result, cannot refi ll a vampire’s blood pool. The mead may, however, continue to act as an intoxicant, depending on how much the vampire consumed.

### Blood Walk

A thaumaturge casts this ritual on a blood sample from another vampire. Blood Walk is used to trace the subject’s Kindred lineage and the blood bonds in which the subject is involved.

**System:** This ritual requires three hours to cast, reduced by 15 minutes for each success on the roll. It requires one blood point from the subject. Each success allows the caster to “see back” one Generation (to a limit of the Fourth Generation — the Third Generation do not give up their secrets so easily), giving the caster both the true name of the ancestor and an image of his face. The caster also learns the Generation and Clan or bloodline from which the subject is descended. With three successes, the caster also learns the identities of all parties with whom the subject shares a blood bond, either as regnant or thrall.

### Bureaucratic Condemnation

Developed as the antithesis of Expedient Paperwork, this ritual causes forms, letters or other paperwork tendered by the target to become lost in red tape. Use of this ritual has created many apocryphal tales among the Tremere, who boast of rivals’ havens foreclosed upon, cars repossessed and building permits revoked. The earliest recorded use of this rituals seems to have been during the Renaissance, when a Tremere had a Lasombra rival excommunicated for failing to submit a writ to the Inquisition. A thaumaturge must sketch an effigy (however crude) of her subject in squid ink when casting this ritual.

System: The time any single bureaucratic action takes to complete is tripled, including mailing documents, applying for licenses, etc. Characters with sufficient Influence or the like should still be able to “push things through,” however, though they are likely to experience additional difficulty.

### Burning Blade

Developed during Clan Tremere’s troubled inception, Burning Blade allows a caster to temporarily enchant a melee weapon to inflict unhealable wounds on supernatural creatures. While this ritual is in effect, the weapon flickers with an unholy greenish flame.

**System:** This ritual can only be cast on melee weapons. The caster must cut the palm of her weapon hand during the ritual — with the weapon if it is edged, otherwise with a sharp stone. This inflicts a single health level of lethal damage, which cannot be soaked but may be healed normally. The player spends three blood points, which are absorbed by the weapon. Once the ritual is cast, the weapon inflicts aggravated damage on all supernatural creatures for the next few successful attacks, one per success rolled. Multiple castings of Burning Blade cannot be “stacked” for longer durations.

Furthermore, the wielder of the weapon cannot choose to do normal damage and “save up” aggravated strikes — each successful attack uses one aggravated strike until there are none left, at which point the weapon reverts to inflicting normal damage.

### Craft Bloodstone

This ritual creates a small stone used as a tracking device. The caster must place a small pebble into a vial fi lled with three points of blood from any source. This blood need not be human. Every night for three nights, the thaumaturge recites an invocation over the vial. The bloodstone absorbs a single point of blood each night, and the liquid becomes slightly clearer, until on the third night it becomes as transparent as water. The vampire then has a mystical connection to the stone, and knows its relative position at all times.

**System:** A thaumaturge who creates a bloodstone instinctively knows where it is at all times. This is not so much knowledge of its precise location as it is an understanding of its direction and distance from the caster.

### Donning the Mask of Shadows

This ritual renders its subject translucent; her form appears dark and smoky, and the sounds of her footsteps are muffled. While it does not create true invisibility, the Mask of Shadows makes the subject much less likely to be detected by sight or hearing.

**System:** This ritual may be simultaneously cast on a number of subjects equal to the caster’s Occult rating; each individual past the first adds five minutes to the base casting time. Individuals under the Mask of Shadows can only be detected if the observer possesses a power (such as Auspex) sufficient to penetrate Obfuscate 3. The Mask of Shadows lasts a number of hours equal to the number of successes rolled when it is cast or until the caster voluntarily lowers it.

### Dust of Remembrance

Curaferrum devised this ritual to alert him to signs of disorder in his chantry. To perform it, the thaumaturge severs one of her fingers, allowing it to crumble to corpsedust as he grows a new one. She combines the dust with myrrh, wine dregs, silver powder and salt extracted from the tears of a child, allows the mixture to dry and then performs a series of incantations. The result is several drams of whitish powder. The thaumaturge sprinkles the powder on an object of interest to her. If the object is moved while she is not in its presence, the thaumaturge feels a sharp pain in her regrown finger.

The castellan uses this strategically by placing dust on certain doors to know when unwanted intrusions occur. He also sometimes makes petty use of it. He might place the dust in linen closets to catch out the mortal servants, or on a tapestry depicting Etrius, to see who has been splattering it with paint.

**System:** The ritualist may sprinkle the dust on up to twenty objects during the ritual. She can tell which of them is being interfered if the player passes an Intelligence + Occult roll. The connection with prepared objects lasts for one lunar month per success on the ritual roll.

Enhancing the Curse

Ghouls can survive almost indefi nitely, with the stipulation that they have vampiric blood within their bodies. A thaumaturge casting this ritual on a ghoul enhances the strength of the vampiric vitae in his body but causes him to suffer similar adverse effects to sunlight exposure as vampires would suffer. Every moment the subject spends exposed to daylight will generate third-degree burns over the ghoul’s body. This proves fatal if the ghoul is unable to fi nd shelter from the sun’s rays. The vampire must scratch the subject and draw blood, though some variants of this ritual require the thaumaturge to strike the ghoul. Obviously, this is not a pleasant ritual, and is used by thaumaturges to discipline or test their ghouls.

**System:** This ritual requires physical contact between thaumaturge and ghoul for it to take effect. So long as the victim retains vampiric blood in his body, he will suffer one health level of aggravated damage per two turns while in direct exposure to sunlight. Once the vampiric blood is spent from his system, the victim will cease to suffer damage from sunlight. For the next month, anytime the ghoul ingests and retains vampiric blood in his body, he will suffer damage in direct sunlight.

### Extinguish

This ritual eliminates the threat that fi re poses to Kindred. The caster is able to douse dangerous flames, leaving vampire hunters quite surprised when their torches and brands are no longer effective tools. To enact this ritual, the caster pinches out a candle’s fl ame while spitting on the floor.

**System:** The ritual is set up in advance, but for the entire night the vampire has but to speak a single magical syllable to extinguish one fire up to the size of a bonfire. For the duration of one night, the thaumaturge can use this power a number of times equal to the number of successes on the initial ritual roll. Pinching a candle’s fl ame in preparation is likely to require a Rötschreck check, as well.

### Eyes of Babel

It is said that after the Great Flood, all of humanity spoke a single language in the shadow of the Tower of Babel, but that the Lord struck down the tower, scattered the people of the world, and divided them with different languages. This ritual leverages the symbolism of that story to grant a thaumaturge the ability to read and speak a language she does not know. She must find someone (Kindred or kine) that knows the language and bind them in chains. During the casting of the ritual, the thaumaturge must pluck out the tongue and an eye of the victim (it must be both) and then consume them. While the ritual lasts, the caster may now speak, read, and write the language in question. Once the ritual is finished, the thaumaturge purges the foreign materials from her system by vomiting the flesh.

**System:** The duration of the ritual is one week per success on the activation roll. This is a horrific ritual that will permanently maim a mortal (and isn’t too pleasant for Kindred, either), and all but the most inhumane Kindred are likely to have to make a Degeneration roll for attempting this ritual.

### Eyes of the Night Hawk

This ritual allows the vampire to see through the eyes of a bird, and to hear through its ears. The bird chosen must be a predatory bird, and the vampire must touch it when initiating this ritual. At the end of this ritual, the caster must put out the bird’s eyes, or suffer blindness herself.

System: The vampire is able to mentally control where the bird travels for the duration of the ritual. The bird will not necessarily perform any other action than flight — the caster cannot command it to fight, pick up and return an object, or scratch a target. The bird returns to the vampire after finishing its flight. If the vampire does not put out the bird’s eyes, she suffers a three-night period of blindness. This ritual ceases effect at sunrise.

### Impassable Trail

The vampire can travel through even the densest woods without leaving any sign of his passing. He will still leave a trail for creatures with powerful olfactory senses, but that will be all. The thaumaturge must carry an owl’s feather steeped in Kindred vitae or burn the legs of a dead toad and carry the ashes with him while this ritual is in effect.

**System:** The vampire will leave no evidence behind, save for a faint odor that takes three successes on a Perception + Alertness roll (difficulty 8) to detect. The ritual lasts for one night.

### It Steals Your Whispers

The ritualist creates a device with which he can hear sounds over a great distance. Also designed by Paul Cordwood, it is similar to the ritual Now Its Sight Is Ours, with the following exceptions: The body part taken from the human victim is an ear; the ritualist must saw it off with a small, silver saw, on the handle of which appears an image of Hades, Greek god of the underworld. The ear is dipped in the vampire’s vitae, which is then drawn off into an elixir. The ritualist coats the surface of a copper horn with the vapor.

**System:** Assuming a successful ritual, the vampire has created an item which can then be secretly placed in a location of interest. It captures any sound within human earshot of it, sending it to the copper horn. Anyone drinking a portion of the elixir hears the captured sounds. The ritualist player must spend at least three blood points, but may spend more. For every point spent, the ritual creates one dose of elixir.

The duration of the remote hearing depends on the amount of elixir the user takes: the effect spans 10 minutes for every dose consumed. During this time he is unable to hear sounds emanating from the area around him. The elixir is not nourishing; the drinker’s blood pool does not increase. The magic disregards distance or obstacles between ear and horn. The device does not clarify muffled sounds or translate languages unknown to the listener.

Like an eye in Cordwood’s other ritual, the ear remains potent until destroyed, but is useless without the correct potion of blood. The original thaumaturge, and only the original thaumaturge, can perform a new ritual using an existing ear (and no new victims) to gain further does of blood. Each time this is done with a single ear raises the ritual difficulty by 2.

### Jinx

This ritual concerns itself with using the blood of other Kindred to affl ict them with various minor banes at the thaumaturge’s whim. Relying largely on the Principle of Identity (see Chapter Two), this ritual consumes the blood of the subject instead of the blood of the caster. The thaumaturge must have in his possession one point of his victim’s blood, which vanishes once a sending is attempted. The horrors visited upon subjects as a result of this path have given the Tremere quite a reputation. Indeed, many Kindred have reasonable fears of allowing the Warlocks to harvest any of their precious vitae, as the powers of this ritual can attest. Most fearsome of all, a thaumaturge need not even be in her victim’s company, so strong is the connection of Identity. All the thaumaturge needs to do is sacrifi ce the subject’s blood.…

The thaumaturge briefl y vexes his victim with bad luck, causing her to fail in a mundane task. This can cause everything from minor typographical errors to automobile accidents and everything in between, depending upon how the magus jinxes his mark.

**System:** The next roll a jinxed character makes automatically fails, regardless of the outcome. This does not cause a botch, just a simple failure. If applied to a contested or extended action, the roll simply yields no successes for the current turn — the victim may garner other successes on subsequent turns (provided the failure doesn’t make the all the difference…).

### Machine Blitz

Machines go haywire when this ritual is cast. It takes effect instantly and lasts as long as the vampire concentrates on it. This ritual may be used to kill car engines, erase flash drives, drain the battery of a cellphone, stop life-support machines, et cetera. Essentially, Machine Blitz stops any machine more complex than a rope-and-pulley. The thaumaturge must have a scrap of rusted metal in her possession for this ritual to work, though some vampires use a variant that requires a knot steeped in human saliva to be untied.

**System:** This ritual only stops machines; it does not grant any control over them. The effects of this ritual are invisible and appear to be coincidental.

### Membranous Appropriation

The raw material for this ritual is the reconstituted skin that appears in the ritualist’s alchemical apparatus after a Cainite is attacked by skin eaters. Unlike other rituals using this material, the thaumaturge must take care that the skin derives only from a single individual. The ritualist kneads the skin like bread dough, then cooks it in an oven heated not by flame, but by distillate of creo vis. She removes it from the alchemical oven partway through the cooking process and then sculpts it into either a right hand or a mask-like visage. She returns it to the oven, periodically basting it with alum, pine resin and powdered serpent scales.

**System:** When the ritual is complete, the thaumaturge possesses an object with a link to the individual whose skin she used. It may be a disembodied hand or a mask. If the victim is conscious, either item will begin to pulse and twitch and within moments begin to reproduce the subject’s movements as he makes them. Distance between victim and item proves no impediment.

The item must be properly displayed to allow the movements of the hand or face to be clearly seen. A hand is placed on the end of a series of copper rods, constructed to provide an arm’s range of movement, a mask in a rounded metal frame. The viewer may then deduce the current activities of the victim from the articulations of the hand or the expressions of the face. If the victim writes something, a pen may be placed in the hand to provide an indistinguishable facsimile of the document. The mask boasts a well-formed mouth, lips and tongue, and reproduces all sounds made by the victim. (A touch of an agate-tipped wand induces it to silence, if the user so desires. Two quick touches gets it talking again.) Once created, the ritualist may give it to someone else with instructions for care.

The ritualist may at any time sever the connection between victim and item. In the case of the mask it is sometimes useful to do this. The mask retains its articulation, and can be worn on the face to disguise oneself as the victim. When used in this way, the mask moves to conform to the wearer’s facial manipulations. Although the false face seems real and is difficult to distinguish from that of the victim, it confers to the user no additional ability to mimic his characteristic expressions. The ritualist cannot reestablish a severed connection.

The skin that makes up the item is in some sense alive and must be kept that way. The user nourishes the hand by bathing it in a blood and water solution once a week. The solution requires 3 blood points to make.

Mourning Life Curse

Although this ritual causes no physical damage to its subject, it can be psychologically traumatizing. It allows the caster to coax blood from a mortal without injuring her. The Tremere must drink a dram of thrice-distilled crocodile blood and make a paste from copal oil, ground eyebright and dates. He carries this paste until he fi nds a suitable victim. He then dabs the paste onto her eyes and whispers a two-line invocation into the mortal’s ear. The mortal then begins weeping uncontrollably, and bloody tears slowly ooze down her cheeks. The effect continues until the caster stops staring at the victim. The only after-effect is a slight swelling of the capillaries around the subject’s eyes, along with the normal effects of blood loss.

**System:** The victim will bleed slowly. It takes about fi ve minutes to collect a single blood point. There is no active defense against this ritual, but the mortal must be able to hear the invocation that the caster whispers. Some thaumaturges use this power on sleeping victims, to spare them the unpleasantness of seeing the act.

### Preserve

Clan Tremere has collected wisdom and lore from the dawn of antiquity that had been previously protected and preserved by their mortal magic. However, that magic started to fail. A thousand years of collected occult knowledge was in danger of being lost within a few decades if a solution was not discovered. A devoted Tremere apprentice leveraged preservation techniques learned from monks along with knowledge stolen from the Assamites to create a ritual that chantries could use to preserve their research.

Once their precious libraries were protected, the Tremere realized that this ritual could be turned to political advantage. Ventrue were willing to pay boons to ensure that their own secret documents and treaties were preserved for the future. When it became clear that this ritual could be used for other purposes, Toreador clamored for the opportunity to protect their precious paintings, sculpture, and rare first drafts of a perfect poem or symphony.

Rumors abound that the famous Shroud of Turin and a number of other hidden church relics were preserved via this ritual. A number of the faithful amongst the Followers of Set claim that the Tutankhamen sarcophagus has been preserved via the will of Set, but many suspect that an older (and potentially more potent) form of this ritual has been cast over it.

**System:** Preserve allows the thaumaturge to mystically shield an item from the effects of time and usage. The thaumaturge must lightly coat the item with a point of her blood over the course of a night while chanting the proper incantations. Each success of the activation roll mystically preserves the item for an additional decade. The preserved item remains protected until the ritual expires. This ritual does not create a sympathetic link to the thaumaturge, as the blood used to power the ritual is absorbed completely by the object.

This ritual was designed primarily to preserve documents and texts, but a clever thaumaturge can utilize it for almost any item that can be held in the hand. The targeted item must be made of worked minerals and other natural materials, as artificial compounds (such as plastic) disrupt the ritual. Items that can be preserved include, but are not limited to, artwork, ancient weapons, jewelry, or clothing. This ritual does not make the targeted item invulnerable or even resistant to someone purposely harming it. For example, an ancient roman gladius will remain sharp and in good condition, but will still shatter if used improperly or if someone of sufficient strength attempts to snap the blade.

### Principal Focus of Vitae Infusion

This ritual imbues a quantity of blood within an object small enough for the vampire to carry in both hands. (The object may not be any larger than this, though it may be as small as a dime.) After the ritual is conducted, the object takes on a reddish hue and becomes slick to the touch. At a mental command, the caster may release the object from its enchantment, causing it to break down into a pool of blood. This blood may serve whatever purpose the vampire desires; many thaumaturges wear enchanted baubles to ensure they have emergency supplies of vitae.

**System:** An object may store only one blood point of vitae. If a Kindred wishes to make an infused focus for an ally, she may do so, but the blood contained within must be her own. (If the ally then drinks the blood, he is one step closer to the blood bond). The ally must be present at the creation of the focus.

### Recure of the Homeland

The vampire calls on the power of the earth to heal grave wounds she may have received. The thaumaturge must use at least a handful of dirt from the city or town of her mortal birth and recite a litany of her mortal family tree as she casts this ritual.

**System:** The Cainite must mix the earth with two points of her own blood to make a healing paste. One handful will heal one aggravated wound, and only one handful can be used per night. This ritual can only be used on the vampire who knows it.

### Seal Egress

Thaumaturges jealously guard their research. Sometimes preserving a secret is as simple as keeping trespassers out of their libraries and workshops. Legend has it that the Followers of Set created the original version of this ritual to safeguard their hidden tombs and the sacred depths of their pyramids where their eldest sleep. Some secret excursions in Cairo gave the Tremere key components to develop their own version.

Seal Egress allows the thaumaturge to mystically seal a room closed to prevent unwanted trespassers from entering or leaving it until the proper passcode chosen by the caster is spoken aloud near the entrance. Some Tremere trap an enemy in a small room and allow him to go mad from hunger.

**System:** To cast Seal Egress, the thaumaturge must spread a point of her blood upon the four walls of the room she wishes to seal and then chant the proper incantation (which can be done outside the room). This ritual is a lengthy process requiring an hour to cast. Each success achieved on the activation roll extends the duration of the ritual by a decade. Seal Egress mystically seals every entrance to the room. Materials from the surrounding walls physically close over any openings into or out of the room, creating a perfect air-tight seal. Trespassers with mystical rituals such as Incorporeal Passage or Disciplines such as Spectral Body find that this room is mystically protected against their abilities. However, this ritual does not strengthen or protect the walls of said room, and thus it is possible for someone of sufficient strength to simply break through the walls of the room. Ghosts, spirits, and other creatures naturally immaterial may enter the room at will.

### Steps of the Terrified

This power lets the caster put the brake on a fleeing enemy. The harder the subject tries to run, the slower he becomes. Eventually, he slows to the point that he can barely move at all. The vampire is often able to take her time and still catch up with her target. The vampire must cast a handful of poplar buds at the target and then douse her hands in oil while repeating a short incantation seven times. She then wrings the oil from her hands before following the target.

**System:** The first turn after the ritual is completed, the subject moves at half his normal speed. If he tries to speed up, he slows to one-quarter his normal speed. Each time he tries to go faster, his speed is halved. The ritual lasts until the following sunrise.

### Trima

This type of oinos is made with spices and herbs, serving to heat up the blood in a body and, therefore, cause drowsiness in a victim. A magus will sometimes serve this drink to many mortals, possibly at a party or other social gathering. This serves to better protect the Masquerade before Kindred guests drink their share from drowsy mortals. Kindred taking vitae from mortals under the effects of trima feel a slight buzz of the aftereffects, though not strong enough to be considered intoxicated.

System: The caster mixes at least one point of his vitae with the desired wine and spices. Once completed, the trima must be ingested to take effect. After imbibing trima, a victim must make a successful Willpower roll (diffi culty 8) to take any action, as he is overcome by an artifi cially induced lethargy. This effect lasts a number of hours equal to the number of blood points the caster uses to create the ritual. Subjects may resist this effect by scoring at least three successes on a Stamina roll (difficulty 8). Cainites and other supernatural creatures are unaffected by trima as their blood is too potent to be overpowered by this concoction.

### Ward Versus Ghouls

Wary Tremere created this ritual to protect themselves from the minions of vengeful rivals. By invoking this ritual, the caster creates a glyph that causes great pain to any ghouls who come in contact with it. The Kindred pours a point’s worth of blood over the object he wishes to ward (a piece of parchment, a coin, a doorknob, etc.), and recites the incantation, which takes 10 minutes. In 10 hours, the magical ward is complete, and will inflict excruciating pain on any ghoul unfortunate enough to touch the warded object.

**System:** Ghouls who touch warded objects suffer three dice of lethal damage. This damage occurs again if the ghoul touches the object further; indeed, a ghoul who consciously wishes to touch a warded object must spend a point of Willpower to do so.

This ritual wards only one object — if inscribed on the side of a car, the ward affects only that door or fender, not the whole car. Wards may be placed on weapons, even bullets, though this usually works best on small-caliber weapons. Bullets often warp upon firing, however, and for a ward to remain intact on a fired round, the player needs five successes on the Firearms roll.

### Warding Circle versus Ghouls

This ritual is enacted in a manner similar to that of Ward versus Ghouls, but creates a circle centered on the caster into which a ghoul cannot pass without being burned. The circle can be made as large and as permanent as the caster desires, as long as she is willing to pay the necessary price. Many Tremere chantries and havens are protected by this and other Warding Circle rituals.

System: The ritual requires three blood points of mortal blood. The caster determines the size of the warding circle when it is cast; the default radius is 10 feet/3 meters, and every 10-foot/3-meter increase raises the difficulty by one, to a maximum of 9 (one additional success is required for every increase past the number necessary to raise the difficulty to 9). The player spends one blood point for every 10 feet/3 meters of radius and rolls. The ritual takes the normal casting time if it is to be short-term (lasting for the rest of the night) or one night if it is to be long-term (lasting a year and a day).

Once the warding circle is established, any ghoul who attempts to cross its boundary feels a tingle on his skin and a slight breeze on his face — a successful Intelligence + Occult roll (difficulty 8) identifies this as a warding circle. If the ghoul attempts to press on, he must roll more successes on a Willpower roll (difficulty of the caster’s Thaumaturgy rating + 3) than the caster rolled when establishing the ward. Failure indicates that the ward blocks his passage and inflicts three dice of bashing damage, and his next roll to attempt to enter the circle is at +1 difficulty. If the ghoul leaves the circle and attempts to enter it again, he must repeat the roll. Attempts to leave the circle are not blocked.

### Other Warding Circle Rituals

The Tremere have access to several other Warding Circle rituals: Warding Circle versus Lupines (Level Three), Warding Circle versus Kindred (Level Four), and Warding Circles versus Spirits, Ghosts, and Demons (Level Five). Each Warding Circle ritual must be learned separately. The material components required for each warding circle are the same as those needed for the corresponding ward, but in larger amounts. The effects against the targeted beings are the same as for Warding Circle versus Ghouls.

### Whispers of the Ghost

Using this strange ritual, the vampire may communicate from his Psychic Projection form into the material world. While employing this ritual, the Kindred can speak with anyone he encounters, but his words come as ghostly whisperings. People who hear these whisperings often mistake them for the words of ghosts or spirits. When this ritual is performed, the thaumaturge must have the ear of a still-living creature in his left hand.

**System:** This ritual applies only to vampires using the Auspex power of Psychic Projection. After weaving the spell, the Cainite can speak for one scene or until sunrise, whichever comes fi rst. The thaumaturge may only speak to the physical world; he may not be seen, touched, etc.

### Your Fate Shall Be Known

The thaumaturge exchanges blood with a willing participant who may be either a Cainite or ghoul. The thaumaturge then uses a small golden needle to penetrate one of the subject’s eyes and withdraw a small amount of vitreous humor, the jelly-like substance that fills the eyeball. She takes an agate or other semi-precious stone and rubs the humor onto it. Over the course of a week, the gem is passed through a series of alchemical vapors. A human-like skin forms around the gem during this process. When it is complete, the skin splits in two, revealing that the gem has become an eye.

Paul Cordwood designed the ritual to keep track of his spy network. He keeps the eyes on a pendant which he wears beneath his tunic. Virstania also uses the ritual to know the fates of favored Gargoyles. She’s attached the eyes to a silver crown, which she sometimes wears in her laboratories.

**System:** Performing the ritual (whether successful or not) causes one level of lethal damage to the concerned vampire or ghoul. A botch may result in additional levels of damage or blindness at the Storyteller’s discretion, although the regenerative abilities of vampires mean such an affliction is often temporary.

Assuming a successful ritual, the eye stays open so long as the subject avoids Final Death. If the subject goes into torpor, the lids of the eyes close shut. They open again when he awakens. If the subject meets Final Death, the eye crumbles into dust. The eye therefore serves as an indicator of the user’s general fate.

## Level Three Rituals

### Amulet of Mnemosyne

Careful lies and half-truths are amongst the most common and potent weapons a vampire has in her arsenal in the arena of politics. The right secret whispered at the wrong moment can shatter a sterling reputation and topple plans crafted over centuries. Locking away such secrets takes a good deal of will and a mastery of the art of deception. However, there are Disciplines and rituals that have the ability to pick thoughts from the head of an unsuspecting victim, force her to reveal secrets, or prevent her from lying at all.

A small chantry during the Regency era decided to devote their research to tackling this problem. Truth was a concept too powerful to completely remove from a subject’s mind. They could obfuscate or rewrite the memories, but there was always an element of the truth in the vessel. Once the thaumaturges realized that truth could be measured, a solution became obvious. The Amulet of Mnemosyne allows a subject to whisper a secret into the amulet and thus transfer the energy of the truth into the mystical shell.

**System:** The thaumaturge creates an amulet forged from brass and soaked in a pool of her blood. Next, she must recite the proper incantations over the amulet while it is resting on an object that symbolizes the truth to the thaumaturge. Finally, the subject (who does not need to be the thaumaturge) must prick her lips, kiss the amulet, and then whisper her secret.

Once activated, this secret is completely removed from the mind of the subject until she reverses the ritual by again kissing the amulet. Memories are completely rewritten to account for the missing information. These new memories are generated by the power of the magic; neither the thaumaturge nor the subject has any control over the specific details.

Should the amulet be destroyed, the secret will return to the mind of the owner.

If a rival thaumaturge discovers the amulet, and knows or researches this ritual, he may attempt to learn the secret it contains. Holding the amulet to his ear, the rival thaumaturge engages the original caster in a contested Willpower roll. Should the rival thaumaturge win, the secret is implanted in his mind. The caster will feel uneasy as though something is wrong, but will not know the root cause as she has forgotten the secret.

The downside of this ritual is that the subject has no idea that the secret exists or that she has hidden it within the amulet. She will act as per her typical personality would suggest, which could cause a number of complications. Ironically, by hiding the secret, the subject leaves herself vulnerable. For example, if the subject murdered the Prince’s childe, she won’t know to be careful at court or to be watchful that others might have learned her secret.

A crafty thaumaturge will ensure that the amulet is placed in her hands after the danger in passed by mailing it to herself or hiding it away with a trusted retainer with a note written in her own hands. Because of this, any thaumaturge who knows the ritual will flinch anytime she finds an Amulet of Mnemosyne, dreading the secret she might unlock.

### Blood Allergy

Reminded of their lost mortality, of illness and unhappiness, Kindred suffering from an allergy of the blood cannot keep vitae within their bodies. Attempts to hold down any blood after ingesting this unlife-sustaining fl uid will result in moments of severe nausea followed by episodes of vomit-induced heaves that only abate when all of the blood is expelled from the system. After spilling his blood onto the dead petals of a red rose, a magus may infect a target with this allergy.

**System:** This ritual requires only 10 minutes of preparation before casting, during which a thaumaturge must spend a blood point and mingle it with dead rose petals. A target suffering a blood allergy is affected for one night per success scored by the caster. Victims are unable to keep blood within their bodies, and, therefore, unable to do much that concerns their vampiric powers. Vampires will not expunge blood if they have three or less blood points remaining, and this power does not work on Kindred older than the caster. While the loss of blood is not enough to cause a Kindred to enter torpor, he will be on the threshold of hunger, and may need to roll for frenzy if he encounters blood.

### Cleansing the Flesh

Vampires must drink the blood of mortals in order to survive and, accompanying this bane is the risk of becoming addicted to mortal vices: illegal narcotics and alcohol. In some cases, Kindred lead their unlives as hosts to a number of sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS. The Warlock casting this ritual must spend one full night in a bathtub fi lled with purified water. Throughout the night, the thaumaturge must expunge all but the smallest drop of his blood from his body, a little at a time over the course of one night. As the blood is released from the body, all addictions and diseases the vampire formerly housed will no longer burden him.

**System:** The caster lies in a vessel of purifi ed water and bleeds out all but one of his blood points, roughly two points an hour. All addictions to drugs and all diseases that are not supernatural in nature will no longer hinder the thaumaturge beginning at night’s end, though he will likely be quite ravenous after performing the ritual. This ritual may be performed on another, who must open his own veins, with the Warlock chanting beside the tub.

### Clinging of the Insect

This ritual allows the caster to cling to walls or ceilings, as would a spider. She may even crawl along these surfaces (as long as they can support her). Use of this power seriously discomfits mortal onlookers. The character must place a live spider under her tongue for the duration of the ritual (though the spider may die while in the thaumaturge’s mouth without canceling the power).

**System:** The character may move at half her normal rate while climbing walls or ceilings. This power lasts for one scene, or until the vampire spits out the spider.

### Craft Dream Catcher

By combining the knowledge of the Spirit Lands and this ritual magic, the caster is able to create a minor artifact that helps protect a sleeping person. Used mainly in Native American culture, the Dream Catcher has a powerful talisman to ward against hostile spirits. A Dream Catcher is a personal item, crafted for an individual and only working for that person. The caster takes bits of hair, blood and spittle from the owner, mixing them into the creation of the Dream Catcher.

**System:** The Dream Catcher provides two protections to the owner. First, spirits trying to affect the character have an increased diffi culty of two. Second, any of the Thaumaturgy powers of Oneiromancy may either add one or subtract one from the difficulty, based upon the desire of the owner. These benefi ts apply only when the character is in possession of the Dream Catcher.

### Crucible of Sympathetic Agony

Mendacamina, Ceoris’s chief torturer, performs much of her ministrations using perfectly mundane and effective techniques. She has, however, bent her thaumaturgic talents to pushing back the frontiers of pain and persuasion. Crucible of Sympathetic Agony disassociates the torture victim’s body from his pain, hence getting around many mental strongholds. It is ideally suited to creating obedience but does have other uses.

Two victims are placed together on a long iron-shod bed so that their feet touch. The ritualist sews the soles of their feet together. If the victims are capable of orgasm, assistants work to stimulate each, with the object of bringing them to ecstasy at the same moment. If the ritualist has a Cainite collaborator, the two of them simultaneously feed from the subjects when climax comes, so as to intensify the effect. Then the thaumaturge begins to torture one subject with implements that have been bathed in alchemical salts and vapors.

The second subject feels all of the agony suffered by the first, but remains physically unharmed. The suffering of the first subject batters down any resistance he could otherwise muster against cracking under torture. If the first victim is slain, the second feels what it is like to die.

**System:** If the thaumaturge is using the ritual as a simple aid to torture, successes on the player’s ritual roll add to his dice pool for a subsequent torture or interrogation roll. If the ritual is used to create simple obedience, however, the ritual roll itself is opposed by a Willpower roll from the victim’s player. If the ritualist obtains any net successes, the victim agrees to carry out whatever instructions the thaumaturge issues to him, short of killing himself outright. If the thaumaturge’s successes exceed the victim’s by two or more, she can, at will, re-evoke the pain experienced by the victim during the height of the ritual, provided she can make eye contact with him.

If the thaumaturge’s orders place the victim in immediate mortal danger, the Storyteller may allow a second Willpower roll (difficulty 8) to resist the commands until the danger passes. A victim under orders has a broken will and although not in a trance per se, appears listless and spent.

### Dante’s Urban Legend

People love to share urban legends. These dubious stories of modern folklore have limited veracity, but something powering the stories pushes the communities to preserve and propagate them through the generations. Tapping into the power of these stories, the thaumaturge can create a psychically-charged urban legend that discourages visitors to a specified house or location.

The caster recreates a popular urban legend upon the grounds that she wishes to protect. Tales shall arise in the community of something that happened to a friend of a friend recounting the horror of that location, such as a legend about a group of teenagers ambushed by the hook-man and then anesthetized only to find a kidney missing. Overly excessive uses of this may attract the attention of hunters or malicious supernatural creatures, so this ritual is used with care.

Some believe that this is a minor breach of the Masquerade, as it encourages a belief of the supernatural. However, those that practice this ritual argue that Dante’s Urban Legend preserves the Masquerade by pushing away mortals from places they should not be, and upholds the tradition of Domain. A few Princes that have discovered this ritual have limited its use within their domains.

**System:** The caster must recreate the exact urban legend she wishes to propagate at the location. For example, she might need to steal some kidneys from a drunken mortal or kill a group of teenagers with a hook. Afterwards, she must sacrifice a point of blood to each entrance of the house or location.

Typically thaumaturges are careful to select an urban legend that does not remind others of vampires. Some will cast this ritual on the property of their rivals to make a point. Once the ritual is enacted, rumors will soon circulate among the mortals that the house is haunted or cursed, and therefore should be avoided by anyone with sense. Property values around the “haunted” house will plummet as neighbors move to avoid living next to the house that causes them nightmares.

These mortals rationally disbelieve in the supernatural, but they will feel disturbed by the thought of the location protected by the ritual and attempt to avoid it. Strong-willed mortals may feel curious enough to make a Willpower check (difficulty 8) to attempt to enter the building or area – failure means that they create some excuse to avoid entering. The duration of this ritual is one decade plus an additional year for every additional success achieved on the activation roll.

### Displacement of the Pneuma

A prisoner is suspended inside a frame of copper tubing, secured to it by an elaborate system of leather belts and iron chains. Clamps are placed on the victim’s eyelids, forcing them open. Copper clips are clamped onto incisions in the victim’s neck, over his heart, kidney and stomach, on his genitals and inside his rectum. Alchemical vapors are wafted onto him, with the aid of a bellows. If the victim passes out from pain or terror, the ritual must be suspended until he recovers consciousness.

An animal, such as a goat or ewe, is led into the room. It is placed in a cage and also incised at various critical points of its anatomy, and clips attached. The clips connect to cat-gut strings, which all lead to a simmering vat. The thaumaturge performs incantations to draw the energies of extra-worldly beings into the vat. She ritually “slays” the prisoner by drawing a dull blade across his throat. The blade is hollow and contains a quantity of her own blood; a lever on the trick blade releases the blood, which gushes down onto the victim’s chest. The ritual works best if the victim is unaware of the trickery and momentarily believes he’s seeing his own throat being slashed.

At this moment, the thaumaturge shouts a word of power into the victim’s ear, as loudly as she can. If successful, she shocks the victim’s soul out of his body. It travels through the clips, along the cat-gut, into the vat and then out into the body of the animal.

**System:** One success means that the victim’s soul has been separated from the body, but has not traveled into the animal. The victim might as well have been murdered by mundane means. There is no known way to return the soul to the body, although it may linger as a ghost at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Two successes indicate that the soul has indeed traveled into the animal, but cannot be returned. The victim lives the rest of the animal’s lifespan trapped in its body. It lacks the animal’s instincts and may be ill-equipped to survive. A semblance of the victim’s intellect, shorn of memory, desire or willpower, remains in the human body. The soulless being is suggestible and follows instructions given by the thaumaturge, but only if they do not require interpretation. It continues to follow the instructions when out of the ritualist’s presence, but only for a few minutes. After it realizes that the thaumaturge is no longer present, it simply stops. It either remains standing or curls up on the ground in the fetal position. Without volition, it doesn’t even seek its own basic survival and will die of thirst if not ordered to drink.

Three successes allows the thaumaturge to return the victim’s soul to his body at the ritual’s conclusion. The victim retains no memory of the time his soul spent outside his body. Four successes not only allow the soul’s return to its body, but permit the victim to report sensations he experienced both in the animal’s body and during the transmigration. In each of the latter two cases, the soul remains transgressed for approximately two hours, less ten minutes for each point of the victim’s Willpower. The victim’s player can nullify the effect entirely by spending Willpower points in excess of the ritualist’s dots in Thaumaturgy.

**Note:** This ritual is a work in progress, the most coherent expression so far of Epistatia’s researches into soul migration. She considers it successful if she is able to glean memories and impressions from the victim afterward. She keeps careful notes of these extra-bodily sensations, hoping she will one day be able to use them to design a more complete ritual. Her ultimate aim is to be able to possess a victim’s body at will, with no permanent harm to either soul. She continues these investigations out of curiosity, even though the house has found a different replacement for Hermetic immortality. She does not know where they will lead, but is sure that there is power in them.

### Flesh of Fiery Touch

This defensive ritual inflicts painful burns on anyone who deliberately touches the subject’s skin. It requires the subject to swallow a small glowing ember, which does put off some vampires with low pain thresholds. Some vain thaumaturges use this ritual purely for its subsidiary effect of darkening the subject’s skin to a healthy sun-bronzed hue.

**System:** Flesh of Fiery Touch takes two hours to cast (reduced by 10 minutes per success). It requires a small piece of wood, coal, or other common fuel source, which ignites and is swallowed at the end of the ritual. The subject who swallows the red-hot ember receives a single aggravated health level of damage (difficulty 6 to soak with Fortitude). Until the next sunset, anyone who touches the subject’s flesh receives a burn that inflicts a single aggravated health level of damage (again, difficulty 6 to soak with Fortitude). The victim must voluntarily touch the subject; this damage is not inflicted if the victim is touched or accidentally comes in contact with the subject.

This ritual darkens the subject’s skin to that which would be obtained by long-term exposure to the sun in a mortal. The tone is slightly unnatural and metallic, and is clearly artificial to any observer who succeeds in a Perception + Medicine roll (difficulty 8).

### Ichor of the Hexaped

The hexaped is an unusual form of Gargoyle that tracks its victims and, when it confronts them, coats them in a substance establishing a psychic link between victim and hexaped. In order to make use of the link, the vampire uses this ritual to crush the juice from the hexaped’s body for distillation. The hexaped, which must be conscious during the ritual, is lowered into a gigantic, man-sized press. Although less intelligent than other Gargoyles, the hexaped generally realizes what is about to happen and fights to free itself from whatever restraints its captors have put on it. If it does escape, it certainly attacks its tormentors. If it does not, the bearers lower it into the press and then struggle to place heavy planks over its top, preventing the hexaped from springing out. Then, as the vampire chants and draws a series of arcane sigils in the air, the assistants begin to turn the large wheel that controls the vise-like press. The hexaped squirms on the wire mesh flooring of the press. As the two halves of the vise squeeze the life out of it, its blood and other juices drip down through the mesh and collect in a copper trough below. The sludgy mass drips from there into a silver bucket. When no more ichor can be pressed from the beast, the vampire takes the full pail back to his laboratory, where he mixes it with myrrh, copper powder, wine dregs and some of his own vitae. He then pours it into a shallow silver bowl about three feet in diameter. After another round of chanting, accompanied by the burning of six kinds of incense, an image appears in the greenish-red liquid in the bowl. When looking into the bowl, the thaumaturge can now see a blurry representation of what the hexaped’s victim sees. If he leans forward and concentrates a bit, he can hear the victim’s surface thoughts like a quiet voice in the back of his own head.

Epistatia is responsible for the creation of the hexaped. She made it for Paul Cordwood, to show the inefficacy of his own petty rituals. Though at first both annoyed and appalled by her gesture, he has since had occasion to usefully employ them. Like the simulacra, he finds them as useful for their demoralizing effect on those unlucky enough to behold them as for any information they might gather for him

**System:** One success allows watchers to see what the victim sees; two are required to hear his thoughts. Unless the vampire got three or more successes, the victim experiences a haunting sense of surveillance whenever the thaumaturge looks into the bowl. The liquid must be refreshed with a point of the thaumaturge’s blood every week. If not, it congeals into a clotted mass and no longer receives images.

**Historical Note:** The Tremere’s use of hexapeds largely comes to an end when they join the Camarilla and accept the terms of the Masquerade.

### Incorporeal Passage

Use of this ritual allows the thaumaturge to make herself insubstantial. The caster becomes completely immaterial and thus is able to walk through walls, pass through closed doors, escape manacles, etc. The caster also becomes invulnerable to physical attacks for the duration of the ritual. The caster must follow a straight path through any physical objects, and may not draw back. Thus, a Kindred may walk through a solid wall, but may not walk down through the earth (as it would be impossible to reach the other side before the ritual lapsed). This ritual requires that the caster carry a shard from a shattered mirror to hold her image.

**System:** This ritual lasts a number of hours equal to the number of successes scored on a Wits + Survival roll (difficulty 6). The caster may prematurely end the ritual (and, thus, her incorporeality) by turning the mirror shard away so that it no longer reflects her image.

### Major Creation

Normally the Path of Conjuring is restricted to items the size of the thaumaturge, both in size and weight. However, by the application of this ritual, the conjurer is able to create items that exceed this normal limit. Tremere magi can surprise enemies by creating a motorcycle “out of thin air” for an escape or anything else they can think up. This ritual requires the caster to sever his own thumb, which disappears during any conjuration. Many thaumaturges suspect that the thumb provides the additional mass for large conjured objects, even though the object may be several times the caster’s size.

**System:** After preparing this ritual, the number of successes on the activation roll determines the multiplier that the conjurer can exceed his normal weight and size limit. Example, if the conjurer’s player earned three successes on the ritual roll, he could create something that was three times his size. Use of this ritual costs an additional three blood points, in addition to the normal costs of conjuring an item. What the thaumaturge creates is still limited by the Path of Conjuring power being activated. Additionally, severing one’s own thumb requires a successful Willpower roll or the expenditure of a Willpower point.

### Mirror of Second Sight

This object is an oval mirror no less than four inches (10 cm) wide and no more than 18 inches (45 cm) in length. It looks like a normal mirror, but once created, the vampire can use it to see the supernatural: It reflects the true form of Lupines and faeries, and enables the owner to see ghosts as they move though the Underworld. The caster creates the mirror by bathing an ordinary mirror in a quantity of her own blood while reciting a ritual incantation.

**System:** The ritual requires one point of the vampire’s blood. Thereafter, the mirror reflects images of other supernatural creatures’ true forms — werewolves appear in their hulking man-wolf shapes, magi glow in a scintillating nimbus, ghosts become visible (in the mirror), and so on. Sometimes, the mirror also reveals those possessed of True Faith in clouds of golden light.

### Pavis of Foul Presence

The Tremere joke privately that this is their “ritual for the Ventrue.” Kindred who invoke the Presence Discipline on the subject of this ritual find the effects of their Discipline reversed, as if they had used the power on themselves. For example, a vampire using Presence to instill fear in a Kindred under the influence of this ritual feels the fear herself; a vampire summoning the caster is instead drawn to the thaumaturge’s location. This ritual is an unbroken secret among the Tremere, and the Warlocks maintain that its use is unknown outside their Clan. The magical component for this ritual is a length of blue silken cord, which must be worn around the caster’s neck.

**System:** This ritual lasts against a number of effects equal to the successes rolled, or until the sunrise after it is enacted. Note that the Presence Discipline power must actually succeed before being reversed by the ritual. As such, only powers that specifically target the caster (and thus, require a roll to succeed) can be reversed — “passive” powers such as Majesty are not affected.

### Populate Night’s Gardens

With this ritual, the vampire creates a hybrid creature from animals of two or more different types. Virstania, Malgorzata and Goratrix established it as a prelude to the Gargoyle project with some assistance supplied by Epistatia. Only Virstania continues as an enthusiastic user of the ritual, the results of which she seems to enjoy for their own sake. The others find her obsession with the hybrids gratuitously morbid and are glad to put behind them their memories of its creation. System: The ritual takes place in stages. The vampire can leave as much time as she wishes between stages. The player must succeed at each stage before the vampire can proceed to the next; failure at any stage does not invalidate previous successes, however.

**• Stage One: Vivisection.** The vampire vivisects at least three living specimens of each animal type to be hybridized. She draws exacting diagrams of the creatures’ anatomies, naming the parts. The process takes two full nights of work, after which the player rolls Dexterity + Medicine (difficulty 5).

**• Stage Two: Finding of Correspondences.** The vampire identifies the qualities she wishes to invest into the new creature. She consults scholarly texts concerning the natural world. She takes preserved parts of the creatures vivisected during the first stage and bathes them in alchemical substances. Through these means, she determines which parts of the creature house the qualities she seeks. For example, she may wish to create a centipede with the tracking instincts of a bloodhound. She may surmise that the instincts are resident in the bloodhound’s snout, but must confirm this by subjecting a snout to alchemical testing. When she is satisfied that she has located the correct body parts, she proceeds. This process takes roughly two nights of research after which the thaumaturge rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 6).

**• Stage Three: Constructing the Fetal Entity.** She then takes a living specimen of each creature to be used and vivisects it. She puts aside the vivisected parts identified during the finding of correspondences, as well as any required to give the animal its desired anatomy. (If she wants a centipede with the head of an owl, she must have an owl’s head and centipede’s body.) She places these in a sac made from the uterus of a cow, sheep or other large animal. She then places them in a gestation chamber. This may be a barrel filled with a uterine solution created by alchemy. More powerfully, it might be the womb of creature created by a previous casting of this ritual to serve as a birthing device for further horrors. This takes a few hours of work, after which the player rolls Dexterity + Medicine (difficulty 6).

**• Stage Four: Donning the Creator’s Mantle.** Using an astrological ephemeris, the vampire calculates the amount of time required for gestation. When the creature is ready to be born, she opens the gestation barrel or makes an incision in the birthing beast’s belly. She pulls the newborn creature loose and breathes the smoke of burned blood salts on it with a bellows. The vampire must now exercise great caution, as the new creature may immediately attack, especially if it was bred for viciousness. The minimum duration of gestation is at the Storyteller’s discretion, and the player rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 7). The use of a living womb during stage three lowers the difficulty of stage four to 5.

The amount of blood used during the final stage depends on the new creature’s desired game statistics. The player must spend 3 blood points for each dot of Strength, Dexterity, Stamina or Perception and 9 blood points for each dot of Charisma, Manipulation, Intelligence or Wits, which animals generally do not possess. Alertness, Brawl, Dodge, Intimidation, Stealth and Survival also cost 3 points per dot. Animals imbued with Intelligence may, at the Storyteller’s discretion, use other Abilities, at a cost of 5 per point. Every point of damage done by creature when it attacks costs 1 blood point. Infrequently-used attacks may cost only half a blood point per point of damage. The Storyteller may levy additional blood costs for special attacks or abilities, such as poisonous bites, petrifying gazes, unusual senses or exotic methods of locomotion.

The final stage of the ritual may take place over a long period of time, allowing the ritualist to store up the needed blood. It is also possible to collaborate with others, drawing blood from apprentices. Virstania’s Gargoyles are worshipfully ready to assist her whenever she calls on them for blood.

The ritual creates short-lived creatures; they die after a number of days equal to the blood spent on the final stage. Neither does the ritual grant the caster any control over the creature. However, both problems can be solved if the vampire chooses to ghoul its creation, which grants the standard advantages of longevity and obedience.

The creatures are infertile, but the caster can attempt an additional Intellect + Occult roll (difficulty 8) at the conclusion of Donning the Creator’s Mantle. If successful, the creature is fertile and may be bred with another specimen of its exact type. (Ghoul creatures lose whatever fertility they once had.) Breeding the creatures requires an Intelligence + Animal Ken (difficulty 7) roll. It takes up to five days before the success of the attempt is determined. One specimen is born for each success. Bred specimens are of a random sex, usually fertile and enjoy lifespans about thirty times longer than their created parents. Subsequent generations maintain the fertility and longevity of their parents.

**Historical Note:** When Virstania leaves the Tremere, the ritual is forgotten. Although copies of it still exist in Vienna chantry and a few other chantries, modern Cainites would hesitate before risking the Masquerade with largescale production of hideous hybrid beasts.

### Quicksilver Eel

By mixing various alchemical substances in his laboratory, the thaumaturge creates a device which can burrow into the flesh of a mage and steal his will. The ritual produces a writhing ball of quicksilver about the size of a man’s fist. It must be placed in a non-porous container for transport. A glass flask with a stopper works best.

When the user (who need not be its creator) finds himself in the presence of a mortal mage, he releases the device from its container. (In a combat situation, he might lob the glass flask to smash at his enemy’s feet.) When released, the device comes to a semblance of life, resembling a silvery liquid tadpole with a face full of dagger-like teeth. The device launches itself at the closest magician, burrowing through clothes or shoe leather into his flesh. It then works its way up the victim’s skeletal structure from within, riding up the spinal column into the brain. From there it begins to devour the victim’s will and with it his ability to wield magic.

This ritual was devised by Epistatia for use in weakening or even destroying the mortal mages she must sometimes hunt down. She finds this manifestation of her creativity endlessly fascinating. She sometimes sits by a victim’s side as the device takes its toll on him, verbally taunting him as his willpower flickers away like the wick of a dying candle.

**System:** If there are no magicians (characters with dots in any path of hedge wizardry or other supernatural powers) within a hundred feet of the quicksilver eel when freed, it beelines in a random direction until it finds one or loses its potency. The device remains potent for a number of days equal to twice the successes of the player’s role to invoke the ritual. The eel harms the magician by devouring his individual will, thought by hermetic magi to be the seat of all magical power. The victim suffers no wounds when the eel burrows into him, although he can certainly feel it swimming up through his flesh and sinew. For each day it remains installed in the target’s brain, it permanently lowers the magician’s Willpower by one. Any path, numina or other mortal supernatural Trait rated equal or higher than the character’s Willpower is also reduced by one at the time.

If the victim ‘s Willpower drops to 0 while the quicksilver eel is still active, he rolls Stamina. Failure means instantaneous death, as the tissues of his brain dry up and crumble to dust. One or more success allows him to linger as a mindless, drooling husk of his former self.

If the eel survives its victim, it may be extracted from the body. If distilled down, it provides 2 points of vis for every point of Willpower it devoured. The type of vis matches that most often used by the victim.

### Sanguine Assistant

Thaumaturges often need laboratory assistants whom they can trust implicitly. This ritual allows the intrepid vampire to conjure a temporary servant. To cast the ritual, the thaumaturge slices open his arm and bleeds into a specially prepared earthen bowl. The ritual sucks in and animates whatever random unimportant items the wizard happens to have lying around his workshop — glass beakers, dissection tools, pencils, crumpled papers, semiprecious stones — and binds the materials together into a small humanoid form animated by the power of the ritual and the blood. Oddly enough, this ritual almost never takes in any tool that the caster finds himself needing during the assistant’s lifespan, nor does it take the physical components of any other ritual nor any living thing. The servant has no personality to speak of at first, but gradually adopts the mannerisms and thought processes that the thaumaturge desires in an ideal servant. Sanguine Assistants are temporary creations, but some vampires become fond of their tiny accomplices and create the same one whenever the need arises.

**System:** The player spends five blood points and rolls. The servant created by the ritual stands a foot (30 cm) high and appears as a roughly humanoid shape composed of whatever the ritual sucked in for its own use. It lasts for one night per success rolled. At the end of the last night, the assistant crawls into the bowl used for its creation and falls apart. The assistant can be reanimated through another application of this ritual; if the caster so desires, it re-forms from the same materials with the same memories and personality.

A Sanguine Assistant has Strength and Stamina of 1, and Dexterity and Mental Attributes equal to those of the caster. It begins with no Social Attributes to speak of, but gains one dot per night in Charisma and Manipulation until its ratings are equal to those of the caster. It has all of the caster’s Abilities at one dot lower than his own. A Sanguine Assistant is a naturally timid creature and flees if attacked, though it will try to defend its master’s life at the cost of its own. It has no Disciplines of its own, but has a full understanding of all of its master’s Thaumaturgical knowledge and can instruct others if so commanded. A Sanguine Assistant is impervious to any mind-controlling Disciplines or magic, so completely is it bound to its creator’s will.

### Shaft of Belated Quiescence

This ritual turns an ordinary stake of rowan wood into a particularly vicious weapon. When the stake penetrates a vampire’s body, the tip breaks off and begins working its way through the victim’s flesh to his heart. The trip may take several minutes or several nights, depending on where the stake struck. The stake eludes attempts to dig it out, burrowing farther into the victim’s body to escape surgery. The only Kindred who are immune to this internal attack are those who have had their hearts removed by Serpentis.

**System:** The ritual takes five hours to enact, minus 30 minutes per success. The stake must be carved of rowan wood, coated with three blood points of the caster’s blood, and blackened in an oak-wood fire. When the ritual is complete, the stake is enchanted to act as described above.

An attack with a Shaft of Belated Quiescence is performed as with a normal stake: a Dexterity + Melee roll (difficulty 6, modified as per the normal combat rules; the attack does not need to specifically target the heart) with a lethal damage rating of Strength + 1. If at least one health level of damage is inflicted after the target rolls to soak, the tip of the stake breaks off and begins burrowing. If not, the stake may be used to make subsequent attacks until it strikes deep enough to activate.

Once the tip of the stake is in the victim’s body, the Storyteller begins an extended roll of the caster’s Thaumaturgy rating (difficulty 9), rolling once per hour of game time. Successes on this roll are added to the successes scored in the initial attack. This represents the tip’s progress toward the victim’s heart. A botch indicates that the tip has struck a bone and all accumulated successes are lost (including those from the initial attack roll). Removing the part of the body where the tip impacted (such as a Tzimisce turning into blood or a vampire cutting off their arm) may stop the tip’s progress, depending on the number of successes acquired and the Storyteller’s discretion. When the shaft accumulates a total of 15 successes, it reaches the victim’s heart. This paralyzes Kindred and is instantly fatal to mortals and ghouls.

Attempts to surgically remove the tip of the shaft can be made with an extended Dexterity + Medicine roll made once per hour (difficulty 7 for Kindred and 8 for mortals). The surgeon must accumulate a number of successes equal to those currently held by the shaft in order to remove the tip. Once surgery begins, however, the shaft begins actively evading the surgeon’s probes, and its rolls are made once every 30 minutes for the duration of the surgery attempt. Each individual surgery roll that scores less than three successes inflicts an additional unsoakable level of lethal damage on the patient.

Shaft of Belated Quiescence may be performed on other wooden impaling weapons, such as spears, arrows, practice swords, and pool cues, provided that they are made of rowan wood. It may not, however, create a Bullet of Belated Quiescence.

### Telecommunication

This modern magic allows the caster to infl uence what is displayed on a television set. The caster can create a picture to communicate with people near the set or create fi ctional stories for broadcast: “We interrupt our regularly scheduled program....” Since the thaumaturge can view images from the set itself, this ritual also serves as an effective surveillance device.

**System:** Any television the thaumaturge has touched within the last week is subject to the effects of this ritual. Each success allows the caster to view and communicate through the television for five minutes, during which time the thaumaturge drops into a meditative state. He can observe everything from the television and can regulate everything that appears on the set, whether he chooses to use broadcast signals or the fruits of his own imagination.

### A Touch of Nightshade

This ritual allows the thaumaturge to poison a single victim by her slightest touch. The caster must anoint his hands with the bitter extract of nightshade before conducting this ritual.

**System:** The victim rolls Stamina + Fortitude (diffi culty 8). With three or more successes, the target is unaffected. With two successes, the victim feels nauseous and queasy for three nights and increases his diffi culties by one.

### Track Transgressor

Following the recent destruction of the Tremere antitribu, a subsect of Clan Tremere has undertaken hunting what they call transgressors, non-clan Kindred who wield the secrets of Thaumaturgy. This crackdown on those violating the most sacred of Tremere laws has not been widespread, but this is expected to change soon with the recent addition of this ritual. This ritual finds and tracks down these transgressors, presumably to be dealt with at the Tremere’s discretion. The thaumaturge spills her own blood on the ground, which briefly reveals the footprints of the transgressor.

**System:** The thaumaturge must conduct this ritual at a site where Thaumaturgy has been used within the past 24 hours. After casting this ritual, the Tremere is able to flawlessly track down the other magus for the rest of the night. This tracking follows the exact path that the magus took after leaving the area where the magic was used. This ritual may track down only Thaumaturgy and not Necromancy or other types of magic. The caster must spend at least one blood point to activate the ritual.

### Translocation of the Vessel

Legends abound of mighty wizards summoning forth items of great power with an incantation and a sweeping gesture. Rumored to have been created by Etrius during the siege of Ceoris when the entire Clan needed to be armed at a moment’s notice, this ritual allows a thaumaturge to mystically link herself to a specially prepared vessel via the power of her vitae. By speaking the name of the object in question, the caster may teleport this vessel directly into her hand with a burst of shimmering black light.

**System:** Translocation of the Vessel requires that the thaumaturge select a vessel to attune to her vitae. This item must be small enough that she can easily lift it with one hand. Examples might include a scalpel, a walking stick, a handbag, a pouch, or a wand. Next, she must soak the vessel in a point of her blood over the course of an evening. The object will slowly absorb the vitae, creating a sympathetic bond between the vessel and the thaumaturge. The caster may sever the link at any time by spending a point of Willpower or if the vessel is broken.

When the caster wishes to have the vessel ready for translocation, she draws a circle of protection onto the ground with purified salt and a point of her blood. This circle must be large enough to completely surround the vessel. Once the vessel is placed into the circle of protection, it can be summoned to the thaumaturge by name, anywhere in the world. The caster must extend her hand, chant the incantation involving the name of the object, and it appears in her hand.

### Ward Versus Fae

During the nights of ages long past, peasants and nobles took superstitious precautions to avoid an untimely visit from the Fair Folk. The Tremere created this ward to protect themselves and their mortal and ghoul thralls from any interactions with the Wild Ones. As the Middle Ages came to a close and the Industrial Revolution set in, most individuals no longer believed in faeries, and, as a result, this ritual ward was cast with less frequency. In tonight’s society, only people tied to the occult and supernatural might possibly have some knowledge as to the existence of changelings, but nothing concrete. Although this ritual is not cast very often, it remains unforgotten, recorded for a later time when it is needed.

**System:** The thaumaturge casts this ritual in a similar fashion as he would the ritual Ward Versus Ghouls, but it affects changelings rather than ghouls. The ritual requires a handful of cold iron fi lings rather than a point of blood.

### Ward versus Lupines

This wards an object in a manner identical to that of the Level Two ritual Ward Versus Ghouls, except that it affects werewolves.

**System:** Ward versus Lupines behaves exactly as does Ward versus Ghouls, but it affects werewolves rather than ghouls. The ritual requires a handful of silver dust rather than a blood point.

## Level Four Rituals

### Bone of Lies

This ritual enchants a mortal bone so that anyone who holds it must tell the truth. The bone in question is often a skull, though any part of the skeleton will do — some casters use strings of teeth, necklaces of finger joints, or wands fashioned from ribs or arms. The bone grows blacker as it compels its holder to tell the truth, until it has turned completely ebony and has no magic left.

This ritual binds the spirit of the individual to whom the bone belonged in life; it is this spirit who wrests the truth from the potential liar. The spirit absorbs the lies intended to be told by the bone’s holder, and as it compels more truth, it becomes more and more corrupt. If summoned forth, this spirit reflects the sins it has siphoned from the defeated liar (in addition to anger over its unwilling servitude). For this reason, anonymous bones are often used in the ritual, and the bone is commonly buried after it has been used to its full extent. A specific bone may never be used twice for this ritual, though different bones from the same corpse can.

**System:** The bone imbued with this magical power must be at least 200 years old and must absorb 10 blood points on the night that the ritual is cast. Each lie the holder wishes to tell consumes one of these blood points, and the holder must speak the truth immediately thereafter. When all 10 blood points have been consumed, the bone’s magic ceases to work.

### The Bronze Head Speaks

Mendacamina devised this ritual to counteract a vexing limitation of the Auspex Discipline. While the Steal Secrets power makes it possible to experience the surface thoughts of a victim, the results are often a series of annoying visual images. When seeking the plans and secrets of the enemy, the Tremere require precision. When they ask a prisoner where the nearest Tzimisce haven is, they want an exact description, not a cloudy vision of a babbling brook and a moonlit bridge. This ritual permits the desired exactitude, at least when the subject is a bound and helpless prisoner headed for vivisection on Virstania’s lab tables.

As assistants chant an elegy to lost souls, warning them that another doomed one is about to join them, the ritualist rubs the victim’s head in an alchemical salve that saps the will, melts off interfering hair, and softens the skull. She then takes a flexible bronze tube (a cannula) with a sharpened end (a trocar) and jabs it through the prisoner’s right temple and on into his brain. The tube is attached to a manually-operated pump. Assistants turn the pump’s crank wheel throughout the rest of the process, drawing the victim’s pulped brain matter through the tubing to a large bronze head. The head is expensive to produce and must be made by master craftsmen. It stands about two feet high and has an articulated jaw for speech. Its eyes are balls of ivory suspended in small, liquid-filled crystals; these bobble around whenever the victim suffers a jolt of pain or pang of regret from the secrets it hears revealed.

Once the head sputters to its semblance of life, the ritualist may ask it questions. The head’s knowledge is restricted to the memories of the victim, but the unwillingness or failing memory of the prisoner poses no impediment to the head. The head can dredge down into his mind to free up long-buried remembrances of his pre-Cainite life or even memories suppressed by magical means. The further a memory from the victim’s conscious understanding, the longer the head must take to scoop it out.

The head does not speak with the voice of the victim; instead it has a rudimentary persona of its own. The head at Ceoris, dubbed Paracelsus, behaves obsequiously, asking after Mendacamina’s health and taking every opportunity to praise the perspicacity that led her to construct him. He may also make grim jokes at the victim’s expense or volunteer humiliating information about him. (“This one was very sinful with his sister when he was ordinary flesh, I’m sad to say.”) When having a hard time finding an answer to a question, it might exhort the assistants to pump harder or warn Mendacamina that the victim’s now-spongy brain is unlikely to hold out much longer. Mendacamina is not always amused by his banter and may order him to silence himself, which he does.

No two heads have exactly the same personality, though all are in some way chillingly disregardful of the victim’s suffering.

**System:** The thaumaturge’s player rolls Intelligence + Occult (as normal), opposed by the victim’s Stamina + Fortitude (difficulty 9). Each net success provides the thaumaturge with one immediately useful piece of information. The exact content is up to the Storyteller.

A mortal, or a ghoul without Fortitude, cannot survive the process of having her brain pulped. Vampires, especially those with Fortitude (and ghouls with that Discipline), have a chance of surviving because of their inhuman regenerative abilities. The player rolls Stamina + Fortitude (difficulty 9) and requires three successes for the character to survive and end the torture session in torpor. Five successes leave the character Incapacitated instead. Ghouls cannot enter torpor and so need five successes even to survive.

A vampire killed by the ritual can be vivisected for the purpose of using him as raw material for a Gargoyle, provided that his pieces can be used right away or magically preserved.

**Historical Note:** Although Paracelsus is destroyed with Ceoris in 1476, the ritual survived, and several major Tremere chantries built new bronze heads when they found themselves at war with enemies. The ritual is still in use today, its intrusive capabilities hardly eclipsed by lie detectors or truth serums.

### The Curse Belated

Warlocks normally reserve the casting of this ritual for a ghoul who is prized above all others, or one near and dear to a thaumaturge’s unbeating heart. By performing this ritual on a ghoul, the thaumaturge can all but guarantee his thrall’s chance of survival, for the moment the ghoul dies, the vampiric blood inside his body courses through his system and thereafter resurrects him as a full-fledged vampire. The thaumaturge brands the ghoul with his sigil, which vanishes once the ghoul becomes one of the undead.

System: The thaumaturge, as part of the requirement of the ritual, will temporarily lose one permanent point from his blood pool. This is invested, instead, in the ghoul he wishes to safeguard. A second point of the thaumaturge’s blood must be fed to the ghoul, which remains in the ghoul’s body until he dies (the ghoul may not use it to power Disciplines, heal, etc.). Upon death, the inaccessible point of vitae will save the ghoul from Final Death and bring him back as a vampire of the same clan as the caster, usually after a short delay to allow the ghoul’s killers to depart. The temporary blood pool point returns to the thaumaturge after the ghoul becomes Kindred.

### Firewalker

This ritual imbues the vampire with an unnatural resistance to fire. Only a foolish vampire would actually attempt to walk on or through fire, but this ritual does grant an advanced tolerance to flame. Some Sabbat use this ritual to show off, while other thaumaturges use it only for martial concerns. To enact the ritual, the caster must cut off the end of one of his fingers and burn it in a Thaumaturgical circle.

**System:** Cutting off one’s finger does not do any health levels of damage, but it hurts like hell and requires a Willpower roll to perform. This ritual may be cast on other vampires (at the expense of the caster’s fingertips...). If the subject has no Fortitude, he may soak fire with his Stamina for the duration of this ritual. If the vampire has Fortitude, he may soak fire with his Stamina + Fortitude for the duration of the ritual. This ritual lasts one hour.

Furtive Integument

The thaumaturge creates one specimen of a quasi-Gargoyle called a velluma. The ritual takes place in two steps. First, the magician consecrates a series of glass flasks and beakers by seeking the blessing of a flesh elemental. Then she sends a swarm of the tiny, manufactured insects called skin eaters out to dine on a victim. When they do, much of the victim’s skin appears in the glass apparatus. The thaumaturge now has the raw materials to create a velluma. She flattens the skin with a hot iron, taking care not to scorch it. Then she stretches it out onto a wire frame whose shape mimics the outline of the human body. She summons spirits of illusion called phantasms and induces one to enter the flattened sheet of skin, which it then animates.

This ritual was devised by Virstania in a convoluted attempt to make further use of a previous creation, the skin eaters. She presented the first velluma as a gift to Paul Cordwood in a gesture of peace required when one of her favored Gargoyles broke the neck of one of his apprentices. Though at first skeptical of the things’ utility, Cordwood now encourages her to create them for him. She doles them out generously, hoping to secure Cordwood’s support when she one day petitions Etrius and Tremere to extend greater rights to her Gargoyles.

**System:** The player rolls Dexterity + Occult (difficulty 6) for the ritualist to make a form suitable for animation, and then Charisma + Occult (difficulty 6) for her to lure a phantasm. The velluma lives for six months per success in the latter roll. Because much blood is spilled by the victim of the skin eaters, the ritualist need not supply any of her own.

**Historical Note:** Virstania takes her notes on the manufacture of vellumae with her when she leaves Ceoris. Modern Tremere do not know the ritual.

### Heart of Stone

A vampire under the effect of this ritual experiences the transformation suggested by the ritual’s name: his heart is completely transmuted to solid rock, rendering him virtually impervious to staking. The subsidiary effects of the transformation, however, seem to follow the Hermetic laws of sympathetic magic: The vampire’s emotional capacity becomes almost nonexistent, and his ability to relate to others suffers as well.

**System:** This ritual requires nine hours (reduced by one hour for every success). It can only be cast on oneself. The caster lies naked on a flat stone surface and places a bare candle over his heart. The candle burns down to nothing over the course of the ritual, causing one aggravated health level of damage (difficulty 5 to soak with Fortitude).

At the end of the ritual, the caster’s heart hardens to stone. The caster gains a number of additional dice equal to twice his Thaumaturgy rating to soak any attack that aims for his heart and is completely impervious to the effects of a Shaft of Belated Quiescence. Additionally, the difficulty to use all Presence or other emotionally manipulative powers on him is increased by three due to his emotional isolation. The drawbacks are as follows: the caster’s Conscience/Conviction and Empathy scores drop to 1 (or to 0 if they already were at 1) and all dice pools for Social rolls except those involving Intimidation are halved (including those required to use Disciplines). All Merits that the character has pertaining to positive social interaction are neutralized. Heart of Stone lasts as long as the caster wishes it to.

### Infirm Inert

One of the mystical powers of vitae possessed by Kindred is the supernatural ability of healing. With blood fueling the mending of their injuries, everything from stab wounds to the loss of appendages may knit and heal. When a thaumaturge drips some of his blood onto a target and casts this ritual, the victim loses the ability to use his vitae for healing. Before casting this ritual, the thaumaturge must imbibe a small quantity of blood laced with laudanum.

**System:** For every success the magus scores in casting this ritual, a target lacks his healing ability for one night. This ritual requires 20 minutes of concentration, during which time the caster spends one blood point. With its successful completion, Thin Blood causes an affl icted to immediately lose the ability to heal, though he may not be aware of this until he actively attempts to use his blood to do so. Victims may spend a point of Willpower to ignore this effect for one turn. When this ritual expires, all wounds may be healed according to the type of damage suffered, as normal.

### Preservation of the Sanguine Heart

Loyalty is an exceptionally rare commodity, and perhaps that is why so many are willing to rob others of their free will to secure it. Blood bonds are one of the oldest means of control and ensuring loyalty by the elders in vampire society. The Anarchs now utilize many of the same tactics that were once the tools of their oppression. The Sabbat have embraced what once terrified them in their own communal Vaulderie. Agents of the Camarilla often must disguise their allegiances while working undercover for the Ivory Tower in Anarch or Sabbat territory where proving loyalty is often as simple as sharing blood.

Clan Tremere developed this ritual to protect Archons and Sheriffs from blood bonds and the Vaulderie, even if only temporarily.

**System:** The thaumaturge must anoint the forehead of the target with a point of the caster’s vitae and then pass to her a prepared chalice with a drop of mercury. She must drink the metal and suffer one aggravated wound to her internal organs as the mercury covers her insides with a mystical barrier. Afterward, the target is magically protected against being blood bound or the effects of the Vaulderie (including getting the Mark of the Betrayer for some Tremere antitribu) for one day per success achieved on the activation roll. This protection comes at a steep price. In addition to the aggravated wound, the target may not receive sustenance from blood without the target willingly canceling the ritual.

### Rend the Mind

House Tremere, masters of Thaumaturgy and Auspex, developed this attack as a form of assassination. Being able to infi ltrate the minds and directly attack the psyche of an opponent is vastly superior to a physical attack upon enemies and near impossible to detect. The thaumaturge consumes the brain of a rabid animal when preparing this ritual.

**System:** Casting this one-hour ritual allows the caster to use one telepathic assault before the next sunrise. The attack can affect anyone the thaumaturge can see, and the telepathic attack uses an Intelligence + Empathy roll (diffi culty of the target’s Willpower) to determine its effectiveness. Each success is translated into a health level of unsoakable bashing damage to the target (though Kindred halve the damage suffered).

### Return of the Heart

This ritual is a severe curse to the less humane Kindred. Cainites that are the target of this power have the portion of their soul that has been slowly dying returned to them. Murderers become racked with remorse over their actions and lament their deeds. For more debased members of the Sabbat this power is particularly crippling and may well result in their destruction at the hands of their packmates. Invoking this power requires either knowledge of the subject’s True Name or a quantity of her blood.

**System:** The subject becomes temporarily governed by the Hierarchy of Sin for Humanity as if she had a Humanity rating of 9. Note that this does not actually impart a Humanity of 9 to the character — she is simply overwhelmed by a sense of her own damnation. The subject still has the Path rating that they normally would have, but they are no longer inured to the cruelties of the world. This will have the Cainite performing Degeneration tests for the most minor of deeds. This power lasts for one hour per success on the ritual roll.

### Scry

The thaumaturge causes a body of water to becoming a scrying pool, able to center on a person or location. The caster is able to see and hear as if he was personally there. Natural pools and bowls of water are often the means of viewing through this magic. Smaller (no larger than a child’s pool), still (better for viewing) bodies of water are considered best for this. This ritual requires a bit of owl’s blood to be mixed in with the water.

**System:** Although this magic is similar to the Auspex power of Clairvoyance, it does have its differences. First, the caster cannot use additional Auspex powers through the Scry magic. Second, if used to center on a person, the magus must have a personal item of the individual’s in his possession, or he must know the subject’s True Name. Third, if a location is the center of the Scry, this location cannot be changed throughout the duration of the ritual. This ritual lasts for a number of hours equal to the number of successes for the casting. The thaumaturge only has to concentrate during this duration to view scenes through the water.

### Splinter Servant

Another ritual designed to enchant a stake, Splinter Servant is a progressive development of Shaft of Belated Quiescence. (The two rituals, however, are mutually exclusive.) A Splinter Servant consists of a stake carved from a tree which has nourished itself on the dead. The stake must be bound in wax-sealed nightshade twine. When the binding is torn off, the Splinter Servant leaps to life, animating itself and attacking whomever the wielder commands — or the wielder, if she is too slow in assigning a target. The servant splits itself into a roughly humanoid form and begins singlemindedly trying to impale the target’s heart. Its exertions tear it apart within a few minutes, but if it pierces its victim’s heart before it destroys itself, it is remarkably difficult to remove, as pieces tend to remain behind if the main portion is yanked out.

**System:** The ritual requires 12 hours to cast, minus one per success, and the servant must be created as described above. When the binding is torn off, the character who holds it must point the servant at its target and verbally command it to attack during the same turn. If this command is not given, the servant attacks the closest living or unliving being, usually the unfortunate individual who currently carries it.

A Splinter Servant always aims for the heart. It has an attack dice pool of the caster’s Wits + Occult, a damage dice pool of the caster’s Thaumaturgy rating, and a maximum movement rate of 30 yards or meters per turn. Note that these values are those of the caster who created the servant, not the individual who activates it. A Splinter Servant cannot fly, but can leap its full movement rating every turn. Every action it takes is to attack or move toward its target; it cannot dodge or split its dice pool to perform multiple attacks. The servant makes normal stake attacks that aim for the heart (difficulty 9), and its success is judged as per the rules for a normal staking (see p. 280). A Splinter Servant has three health levels, and attacks directed against it are made at +3 difficulty due to its small size and erratic movement patterns.

A Splinter Servant has an effective life of five combat turns per success rolled in its creation. If it has not impaled its victim by the last turn of its life, the servant collapses into a pile of ordinary, inanimate splinters. Three successes on a Dexterity roll (difficulty 8) are required to remove a Splinter Servant from a victim’s heart without leaving behind shards of the stake.

### Stolen Kisses

Thaumaturges cast this ritual when they do not wish to feed by mouth. Instead, Stolen Kisses allows them to drain small portions of vitae through other parts of a vessel’s body. Some vampires prefer the strong handshake. Others enjoy choking vessels, a double pleasure of asphyxia and the flush of new vitae coursing through cold veins. Others “get off” by draining blood from a vessel during sex. In any case, a vessel is usually not immediately aware that blood is sucked out of his body, though he will experience a slight sensation of dizziness and light-headedness. This ritual requires the caster to carry a “witch’s kiss” — a thistle steeped in the blood of a vampire — somewhere on her person

**System:** The magus must first make a small incision on his body where he intends to make physical contact with a vessel. The ritual is then cast; once complete, the wound knits itself closed. However, it opens to create a lip-and-mouth-type orifice when continually pressed against a vessel’s flesh, which mystically sucks out one blood point every other turn as long as contact persists. After the second point of vitae is consumed, a vessel is likely to feel woozy, while taking fi ve blood points probably causes the victim to black out from the substantial lack of blood in his body. Stolen Kisses remains active for one night.

A Warlock does not cause ecstasy or rapture when taking blood in this manner, as he would were he to feed upon a vessel by mouth.

### Summon the Blood Imp

Mastery of blood magic requires dedication and time away from the politics and socialization of vampire society. Trust is a rare commodity, especially to a fellow vampire and predator, and certain tasks require a certain delicate touch. This creature was created by a Tremere elder to serve as a clever thief and saboteur. He discovered in his experiments on some Tzimisce subjects that there was a very minute trace of the mutability inherent in vitae, and in that moment received the inspiration for the creation of the blood imp.

The thaumaturge must stitch together the form of the blood imp from the dead parts of animals, inanimate objects, and even human cadavers. This is a personal, individualized process, and rarely will two blood imps look exactly the same even if made by the same caster. (The flesh of a former supernatural creature doesn’t work, and attempts to use it with this ritual will automatically fail.)

Once the blood imp has been given the spark of life, it forms its own personality based on that of its creator. The blood imp was created to love the thaumaturge, and will go out of its way to do things that it believes will make her happy. A cruel caster will find that her blood imp delights in tormenting lesser creatures to make its master laugh, while a solemn thaumaturge will find a quiet, thoughtful servant that works subtly and efficiently.

Homunculi are created to be useful and devoted laboratory assistants and so gain their creators’ knowledge of Thaumaturgy. Blood imps, however, are made for mayhem.

**System:** Summon the Blood Imp requires that the thaumaturge stitch together fresh (within three days) corpses of animals and humans into a frightening humanoid creation. The blood imp has an animal cunning and empathic link to its master that allows it to innately understand the needs and desires of its master. Next, the caster must add six points of Tremere blood into the mix and allow it to simmer over the course of three nights.

Such devoted service is not without a cost. The blood imp requires a certain amount of attention lest it turn spiteful. Nothing is more frustrating than an angry blood imp disrupting important rituals or breaking priceless artifacts in a temper tantrum. Blood imps must be fed regularly with vitae and flesh.

A blood imp can fight, but not with tremendous effectiveness; it will nevertheless destroy itself if necessary to protect its creator. It can also push or carry small objects, and makes an effective spy (though it detests being away from its master for long periods of time). Blood imps are damaged by sunlight and fire like Kindred, and can also be destroyed utterly by immersion in sanctified water.

### Unweave Ritual

With the preponderance of cursing rituals among the jealous Warlocks, it’s only a matter of time until a Tremere labors under the effects of an enemy’s magic. Whether it’s another Tremere eager to discomfit a political adversary, or some non-Tremere thaumaturge looking for retribution, having Thaumaturgy turned around against its supposed masters makes for a bitter aftertaste indeed.

Once a Tremere manages to identify the enemy ritual under which he labors, it’s possible to build a counter-sorcery to unweave it. Thaumaturges skilled in this magic learn general principles to confound other rituals, shrug off their effects or collapse them prematurely.

**System:** First, the caster must figure out what ritual currently afflicts him. This is probably automatic if he knows the ritual (unless the caster has been very subtle or the subject is daft), but may require some research (and Intelligence + Occult rolls, at the Storyteller’s discretion) otherwise. Next, the unweaving takes place. The caster must secure a component that would be used in the casting of the offending ritual, then destroy it in some fashion. His successes subtract from the successes scored by the original caster; if he manages to wipe away all of the successes, the offending ritual immediately ends, with all concomitant effects. Thus, a quick end to Bind the Accusing Tongue would allow the Tremere to speak ill of his enemies again, but a premature end to a Blood Contract would painfully shove him into torpor, and a premature end to Night of the Red Heart would result in Final Death

Only rituals that have a duration can be unwoven. For instance, a Tremere who has thrown off a blood bond through Abandon the Fetters (below) is not constantly under the effects of that ritual — once the ritual is complete, the bond is gone and the ritual is done. However, a Tremere suffering from Steps of the Terrified would be considered under the duration of the ritual as long as it slowed his movement, so it could be unwoven. Note that a thaumaturge can only unweave a ritual on himself, not one on someone else. Also, a thaumaturge suffering from multiple rituals must unweave each one separately. Multiple unweavings can be accumulated against a ritual so long as the appropriate time and components can be acquired.

### Vigil of the Stone Guardian

Clan Tremere has long utilized mystical servants to protect their havens and laboratories. Vigil of the Stone Guardian allows the thaumaturge to create a mystical sentry to protect a door or gate, in the form of a stone gargoyle door-knocker.

The stone guardian watches over the entry and mystically alerts its master when there is a visitor or trespasser. The thaumaturge may remotely possess the guardian by expending a point of blood. She can observe what is happening through the guardian’s eye and speak through its horrific stone face. This ritual does not technically violate the Tremere oath against the creation of new Gargoyles, but some quietly feel that it skirts the spirit of said promise, or at least insults the Clans the Tremere once hunted.

**System:** To create a Stone Guardian, the thaumaturge must find or create an appropriate door-knocker (with both eyes and a mouth) and then soak it in her blood over the course of three nights. She must then hang it upon the door or gate that will become the new home for the guardian and enact the ritual. If successful, the stone guardian bonds with the door or gate and cannot be removed without being destroyed.

The thaumaturge may remotely possess the guardian by expending a point of blood. Once it is possessed, the caster can observe what is happening through the guardian’s eye and speak through its mouth. By expending a point of Willpower, the thaumaturge may attempt (if she possesses the ability) to utilize the first two levels of Dominate, Presence, or Dementation to chase away intruders. The stone guardian may not physically attack or block entry to trespassers otherwise, but it can open the door or gate upon command from the thaumaturge.

Such protection comes at a cost to the thaumaturge. The Stone Guardian requires a point of blood per night to continue its vigilance. If the stone guardian is not fed, it will sleep until reactivated by the thaumaturge with a point of blood.

### Ward versus Kindred

This warding ritual functions exactly as do Ward versus Ghouls and Ward versus Lupines, but it inflicts injury upon Cainites.

System: Ward versus Kindred behaves exactly as does Ward versus Ghouls, but it affects vampires rather than ghouls. The ritual requires a blood point of the caster’s own blood and does not affect the caster.

## Level Five Rituals

### Abandon the Fetters

As closely guarded as any secret within the clan, Abandon the Fetters seems to depart from normal conventions of Thaumaturgy. Occult theorists note that it has more in common with primal, passionate sorcery than with the cerebral, systematic approach to Hermetic blood magic. A few even darkly hint at its similarities to the Vaulderie — for the ritual to Abandon the Fetters shatters the blood bond.

Breaking a blood bond is a grueling process. The thaumaturge must have unrestricted access to the subject, as well as a sample of blood from the master. The ritual requires an entire night; its execution is excruciating for both caster and subject. The thaumaturge forms a bond to the subject and master with a mixture of blood from all three, placed in a glass container. Next, the caster must exsanguinate and excoriate the subject — the manner is up to the ritualist’s individual style; some might mortify the flesh with lashes, while others might apply brands. Once the subject hangs on the thread of demise, the caster shatters the glass container, spilling the blood to the ground and snapping the thread of the bond. The mixture of blood evaporates in a hissing, scalding steam, and the subject is freed.

Of course, Abandon the Fetters remains one of the rarest of Tremere secrets. Few Warlocks could be trusted with such potent knowledge. Indeed, the merest hint that a Tremere can perform this ritual is enough to cause other Kindred to eye her with renewed suspicion — the Tremere have sorcerous ways to steal blood, so who’s to say that a thaumaturge couldn’t release someone’s thralls and bond them to herself instead? Even those Kindred who suffer under the bond’s lash would rarely trust a Tremere enough to risk going through this process.

**System:** The thaumaturge must have one point of blood from himself, the subject and the subject’s regnant. (If the caster happens to be the subject or regnant, no additional blood is needed.) The excoriation causes three levels of unsoakable aggravated damage to the subject, as flesh is flayed or burned away. The final venomous steam inflicts an additional level of unsoakable aggravated damage upon both the caster and the subject. The subject loses a permanent point of Willpower, but if the ritual succeeds, the blood bond atrophies immediately. However, this offers no protection against the formation of another, later bond.

### At Our Command It Breathes

This ritual permits the creation of a Gargoyle from the dismembered parts of slain Cainites and is the process through which the first of that line came into being. The vampire (with assistants, if desired) takes fresh-cut portions from the bodies of various victims and sews them together into a single humanoid form. She then sews a sac made from an animal’s womb (usually from a cow but sometimes sheep or deer) around her creation. The sac is then suspended in a cask containing an alchemical equivalent of the womb’s waters or placed inside an oversized, specially prepared female Gargoyle for gestation. During a period ranging from one to three months, the thaumaturge must periodically visit the gestating Gargoyle and perform various incantations and blessings. If she is away from the gestation chamber for more than a week at a time, the fetal Gargoyle dies and cannot be revived. Finally the Gargoyle either forces its way down the living mother’s birth canal or bursts forth from its cask. The ritualist must be present to waft purifying smoke onto the newborn Gargoyle. Any other Gargoyles within half a mile instinctively sense the impending birth of a new brother. They feel a powerful urge to flock to its side when it is born and lick the bodily fluids off its skin. Although this custom helps bond the Gargoyle to its new community, it is not a requisite of the ritual. A Gargoyle can be born in isolation.

**System:** The thaumaturge sews together pieces of Cainites in order to form a full humanoid shape and to grant various capabilities to the new Gargoyle. The correspondence of parts to capabilities is laid out in a variety of ancient and arcane medical texts (for example, the heart provides courage and resolve, the eyes perception and wisdom) but also depends on specific alchemical preparations. Physical beauty is beyond the ritual’s capabilities, though. All Gargoyles appear stony and twisted.

The thaumaturge makes the ritual roll as the fetal sac is put into gestation. The roll is Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 9 + one for each donor after the first). An unliving womb reduces the difficulty by 4. A single success allows the creation of a Gargoyle character built according to the standard character creation rules. The basic blood cost of the ritual is 5 points for each Cainite used in the Gargoyle’s manufacture. Add an extra 5 points if the caster wants the Gargoyle to be fertile.

By devoting further years of research to the Gargoyle arts, the thaumaturge may devise and construct variant types like the hexaped, iecur or womb-bearers like Alvusia.

**Historical Note:** The Tremere cease making Gargoyles after the Slaves revolt, and, as part of the Camarilla negotiations, promise never to revive the technique. The instructions for the ritual have been hidden, but not destroyed. Some suspect that the Gargoyle Fidus occasionally makes use of them.

### Blood Contract

This ritual creates an unbreakable agreement between the two parties who sign it. The contract must be written in the caster’s blood and signed in the blood of whoever applies their name to the document. This ritual takes three nights to enact fully, after which both parties are compelled to fulfill the terms of the contract.

**System:** This ritual is best handled by the Storyteller, who may bring those who sign the blood contract into compliance by whatever means necessary (it is not unknown for demons to materialize and enforce adherence to certain blood contracts). The only way to terminate the ritual is to complete the terms of the contract or to burn the document itself — attempts to add a clause forbidding burning the contract have resulted in the contract spontaneously combusting upon completion of the ritual. One blood point is consumed in the creation of the document, and an additional blood point is consumed by those who sign it.

### Cobra's Favor

As a precaution from having their blood stolen against their will, the Tremere manipulated their vitae via this ritual to burn with a toxin that causes it to damage anything it touches. It requires an herbal poultice and the venom of a snake to be mixed with some of the thaumaturge’s blood.

System: After spilling one point of vitae into a container and combining them with the necessary herbs and poison, the thaumaturge recites an incantation and the concoction turns jet black. The caster must ingest the elixir for the ritual to take effect, suffering one level of unsoakable aggravated damage in the process. For one full month, anything consuming the blood of the caster suffers a level of aggravated damage per point ingested.

### Court of Hallowed Truth

Although this ritual was developed to be used in Tremere tribunals, recent nights have seen princes call upon Tremere to use it within their political halls in exchange for favors. Unbiased testimony and blatant truth become standard within the court, and many connivers and liars have betrayed their own plans with their unwittingly veracious words. A pair of crossed bones must be laid before every entry to the room, including windows.

System: The magic weaves its spell upon one room, and all within abide by the truth-telling edict it creates. No falsehood may be spoken, and direct questions from the presiding judge or power are answered candidly with no omissions or deceit. The magic persists within the room for the length of one full month. Several princes have come to rely on this, much to their undoing, as either the prince becomes preposterously indebted to the Tremere or other Kindred resent his heavy-handed tactics and refuse to attend meetings. This power invariably erodes the power of princes who rely on it, though some are too short-sighted to understand it.

### Enchant Talisman

This ritual is the first taught to most Tremere once they have attained mastery of their first path. Create Talisman allows the caster to enchant a personal magical item (the fabled wizard’s staff) to act as an amplifier for her will and thaumaturgical might. Many talismans are laden with additional rituals (such as every ward known to the caster). The physical appearance of a talisman varies, but it must be a rigid object close to a yard or a meter long. Swords and walking sticks are the most common talismans, but some innovative or eccentric thaumaturges have enchanted violins, shotguns, pool cues, and classroom pointers.

**System:** This ritual requires six hours per night for one complete cycle of the moon, beginning and ending on the new moon. Over this time, the vampire carefully prepares her talisman, carving it with Hermetic runes that signify her true name and the sum total of her thaumaturgical knowledge. The player spends one blood point per night and makes an extended roll of Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 8), one roll per week. If a night’s work is missed or if the four rolls do not accumulate at least 20 net successes, the talisman is ruined and the process must be begun again.

A completed talisman gives the caster several advantages. When the character is holding the talisman, the difficulty of all magic that targets her is increased by one. The player receives two extra dice when rolling for uses of the character’s primary path and one extra die when rolling for the character’s ritual castings. If the talisman is used as a weapon, it gives the player an additional die to roll to hit. If the thaumaturge is separated from her talisman, a successful Perception + Occult roll (difficulty 7) gives her its location.

If a talisman is in the possession of another individual, it gives that individual three additional dice to roll when using any form of magic against the talisman’s owner. At the Storyteller’s discretion, rituals that target the caster and use her talisman as a physical component may have greatly increased effects.

A thaumaturge may only have one talisman at a time. Ownership of a talisman may not be transferred — each individual must create her own.

### Escape to a True Friend

Escape to a True Friend allows the caster to travel to the person whose friendship and trust she most values. The ritual has a physical component of a yard-wide/ meter-wide circle charred into the bare ground or floor. The caster may step into the circle at any time and speak the true name of her friend. She is instantly transported to that individual, wherever he may be at the moment. She does not appear directly in front of him, but materializes in a location within a few minutes’ walk that is out of sight of any observer. The circle may be reused indefinitely, as long as it is unmarred.

**System:** This ritual takes six hours a night for six nights to cast, reduced by one night for every two successes. Each night requires the sacrifice of three of the caster’s own blood points, which are poured into the circle. Once the circle is complete, the transport may be attempted at any time. The caster may take one other individual with her when she travels, or a maximum amount of “cargo” equal to her own weight.

### Ghost in the System

With society becoming more dependant upon information and computer files, archaic elders needed something to maintain their places in society. In earlier nights, a Kindred could easily fake his death or move on to a different part of the country, but tonight identities are kept on ubiquitous fi le through the electronic data and paper trails. This ritual bypasses the normal channels for these identities, causing old computer and hardcopy files to disappear and new files to spring up. Like a ghost, the thaumaturge disappears and comes back in a new form. This ritual is technomantic in nature, and many vampires thoroughly disapprove of it, preferring to remain anonymous than change to conform with the rules of the modern nights. Invoking this ritual requires the caster to melt a pile of sand into glass and suspend an ant within the cooling silicon.

System: This ritual takes an entire week to perform, with breaks from the chanting and ceremony only in the form of sleep each day. A botch on the activation results in a complete corruption of all fi les dealing with the Cainite, to the point that a major government agency takes active interest in the anomalous activities. A failure results in problems for a few months before everything is arranged correctly — “We’re sorry, sir, but the files says that you are dead; we’ll take care of this mistake right away.” It effectively creates a series of false records that allow the vampire to observe modern citizenship, including driver’s license numbers for licenses that do not exist, false birth certificates, Social Security numbers, etc.

### Mirror Prison

The thaumaturge using this ritual possesses the ability to create a modest prison cell in the astral plane anchored to a specially prepared silver mirror. The caster may then open the mirror portal to the prison cell with a verbal incantation and physically deposit an incapacitated prisoner.

Some thaumaturges use this ritual to create a private space to meditate without distractions.

**System:** The thaumaturge must polish a silver mirror with a point of her blood and the tears of an innocent child. The thaumaturge must expend a point of Willpower that is permanently absorbed by the mirror.

Once created, the thaumaturge may open a portal through the glass by touching it with a point of her blood. The opening to the mirror prison lasts as long as desired by the caster. Incapacitated prisoners may be passed through with no difficulty, but an unwilling target requires an opposed Strength roll to force the victim through the portal.

Escaping the mirror requires the prisoner to defeat the caster in an opposed Willpower roll with a difficulty of 8. A prisoner may only attempt to escape in this fashion once every thirty days. The cell can comfortably contain up to three individuals. A person inside may not be scried for or be the target of Clairvoyance (or similar powers, at Storyteller discretion). The prisoner needs neither sustenance nor sleep, as she remains untouched by the passage of time.

Should the mirror be destroyed or the thaumaturge wish to cancel the ritual, the stored Willpower point will return to her and any prisoners will instantly be released.

If the caster spends a point of blood and touches the mirror, she can increase or decrease the opaqueness of the glass, allowing the prisoner to see outside of her prison as she wills. If the mirror is clear, the prisoner can appear in the mirror as a floating head to communicate.

### Night of the Red Heart

Neonates whisper that Tremere elders can utterly destroy their enemies with but a sample of vitae. Although little is ever that simple, some truth lies behind the dread rumor. With Night of the Red Heart, a thaumaturge can send his enemies shrieking in terror, slay them outright or force a confrontation.

The thaumaturge needs only a quantitative sample of the victim’s blood. Over the course of an entire night, the caster chants the syllables of the ritual continuously. After the first iteration of the ritual (which takes about 10 minutes), the victim suddenly feels a foreboding sense of dread. Whenever the subject faces the caster, he realizes that a ritual is in progress to slay him — and that he must either escape its power, or else find and interrupt the caster by following the preternatural knowledge imparted. Once the ritual ends at sunrise, if the victim is within its range, he spectacularly crumbles to ash in a matter of seconds.

In addition to the victim’s blood, the caster must have an effigy of the victim that he has carved himself from bone, rotten wood harvested at midnight or stone from the grave of a faithful priest’s headstone.

**System:** Although extremely potent, Night of the Red Heart is not an all-powerful ritual. Chances are, as soon as it begins, the victim will either flee the city or else hunt down the caster. Because there are no holds barred — death or failure — this likely means that the victim will not stop until he can destroy the thaumaturge. Should the caster manage to complete the ritual with a full point of the victim’s blood, though, the hapless subject immediately collapses to Final Death.

The player rolls for the ritual’s success as soon as casting begins — if the roll fails, then the ritual will not work and the victim will feel nothing (although the caster doesn’t necessarily know this.) The player must also expend one Willpower point to continue the casting for the duration of the entire night, and if the ritual is stopped or interrupted in any way, it fails.

Night of the Red Heart has a limited range. Popular lore holds that the rite works “for seven leagues beyond the accursed’s haven”; scientific thaumaturges credit the rite with a range of 30 to 35 miles. Regardless, the subject can immediately tell if he has managed to escape the ritual’s range, because the sense of dread vanishes — but if he returns while the ritual remains in progress, he once again comes under its influence. Note that although the subject can tell if he manages to escape the ritual’s range, the caster does not know this; it’s possible to cast Night of the Red Heart upon someone who’s not in range, without knowing that the ritual will fail.

### Paper Flesh

This dreadful ritual enfeebles the subject, making her skin brittle and weak. Humors rise to the surface and flesh tightens around bones and scales away at the slightest touch. Used against physically tough opponents, this ritual strips away the inherent resilience of the vampiric body, leaving it a fragile, dry husk. The thaumaturge must inscribe his subject’s true name (which is much harder to discern for elders than it is for young vampires) on a piece of paper, which he uses to cut himself and then burns to cinders.

**System:** This ritual causes the subject’s Stamina and Fortitude (if any) to drop to 1 each. For every Generation below Eighth, the subject retains one extra point of Stamina or Fortitude (keeping Fortitude first, though she may not exceed her original scores). For example, a vampire of the Fourth Generation with Fortitude targeted by Paper Flesh would drop to a Stamina + Fortitude score of 6 (assuming the score was 6 or more to begin with). This ritual lasts one night.

### Sanctuary

In the 18th century, a religious-minded Tremere developed this ritual, which allowed him to consecrate a protected space and then extend a certain amount of its sanctuary to those that inhabit it with her. The thaumaturge casting this ritual must first find and acquire a building that has not been tainted with violence of any kind (or not in the past fifty years, if it is older than fifty years). Next, she must build a shrine at the metaphoric center of the building that all who visit must be able to see. The exact nature of the shrine depends upon the faith of the caster. Said shrine need not be of a religious faith, but it must represent a concept in which that the thaumaturge places her own faith and belief.

Finally, the thaumaturge must consecrate the building via a sacrifice of her blood and will over three nights.

**System:** To complete this ritual, the thaumaturge must invest a permanent point of Willpower into the consecration of the targeted building at the end of the three-night ritual. Once completed, the shroud of sanctuary completely envelops the boundaries of the targeted building. All souls, living or otherwise, that are not specifically invited by the caster cannot enter the building. Further, those inside the building are protected against all uses of Animalism, Auspex, Dominate, Dementation, and Presence (and related Disciplines, at Storyteller discretion).

However, this protection does not come without a price. The shroud of sanctuary only lasts as long as the grounds remain consecrated. Any acts of violence committed within the building will immediately taint it, making it impossible to benefit again from Sanctuary. Should the ritual be broken, the caster will immediately become aware of this, as the Willpower point invested into the building reverts back to her.

If the building remains consecrated, the magic of this ritual continues for one year per success from the activation roll. Afterward, the caster must either reinvest the Willpower point or allow the sanctuary to dissipate.

### Sculpting the Perfect Servant

Intrigued by the manner in which the Fiends bred their revenant servants and, improvising on those methods, a powerful European thaumaturge ritualized the ability to enroll an individual’s service even before the child had been born. By manipulating an unborn fetus in the womb of a pregnant woman, a magus has the ability to grant exceptional aptitudes and attributes that develop in the child. These Warlocks may also be exceedingly cruel, cursing these innocents with scars and defects. This technique of creating ghouls was founded to increase the abilities of their ghouls, as well as the service of the mother. Children affected by Sculpting of the Perfect Servant, though possibly growing up normally, always feel a supernatural connection to the magus. To use this ritual, the caster must rend a stillborn baby in half and allow its blood to fl ow over the belly of the pregnant mother.

**System:** While it takes only a moment to curse or damage a child, a caster who expends the time and energy in blessing (which requires five hours every week until the pregnant mother comes to term, starting in the first three months of the pregnancy) will reap the benefi ts. This results in the baby possessing exceptional Attributes (three or sometimes four points per Trait, rather than the usual two points most mortals have) and gaining an extended life span (usually living for about 100-120 years). Unfortunately despite being strong, handsome and healthy, these mortals are also cursed by a lack of moral development; their Humanity can never be raised above 6. For every curse infl icted on the unborn child, one common deformity may be created as well, to bind the child to the magus.

Note: The full effects of this ritual are solely up to the Storyteller, as such manipulation of humanity can have a drastic effect on game balance.

### Severed Hand

Used during the Dark Ages, this ritual was used as a punishment for Cainites who did not deserve destruction. In Muslim countries, crimes of theft would be addressed by cutting off the offender’s hand. Because of the great healing ability of vampires, threat of this punishment did not carry the grave penalty it had for mortals. This ritual prevents a severed body part from healing normally. Although a severed hand was the most common appendage removed, this ritual can affect eyes, fingers, tongues and other body parts. The most important component is the severed anatomy of the subject, which is why this ritual is almost always performed at the maiming.

System: This ritual takes an entire night to perform, during which time the wound is treated with different alchemical compounds to prevent the regeneration process. Although the health levels can heal in the normal way, the severed body part is unable to be restored to its former condition without magical healing.

### Stone of the True Form

This ritual banishes the false form of an individual and causes him to return to his original, natural form. This ritual will also expose, say, an Obfuscated Nosferatu who lurks unseen in the shadows. The flesh of a grotesque zulo-formed Tzimisce will crawl around its body and reform to its original guise. Even enraged Lupines have been known to lose their lives after shifting into mortal or wolf form, unable to shift back to their warrior-form before being drained of blood and torn to pieces by a thaumaturge. This ritual requires a small, round stone, which changes the subject’s shape after coming in contact with her.

**System:** The thaumaturge must cast this ritual on a small round stone the size of a marble. After completing the ritual incantation, the thaumaturge coats the ball with a point of his vitae. The marble must touch a victim in order to force a transformation to natural form. After the stone makes physical contact with a victim, both he and the magus enter into a contested Willpower roll (difficulty of each other’s Stamina). If the caster wins by even one success, the subject will immediately shift to his natural form for a single turn. Every success above and beyond the first success extends the number of turns a target is unable to assume a shape other than his original form.

### Stone of Slumber

This ritual protects a sleeping vampire by turning her into solid stone. The caster must smear her entire body with the blood from a 12-hour-old corpse and stand completely still in an open area facing east. When the fi rst rays of the rising sun strike her, the vampire’s body turns to stone. In this form, the Kindred is completely protected from all forms of physical damage and most types of flame (including sunlight) and heat, unless the heat would be strong enough to melt rock (as with a lava fl ow or other disaster). Telepathy and other mental Disciplines are also useless, as the thaumaturge’s mind is dormant.

System: The caster must begin this ritual exactly one hour before sunrise. If the timing is not exactly right, the ritual will not work and the caster suffers aggravated damage from the light of the sun, as normal. The ritual lasts until 10 minutes after the following sunset. During this period, the Kindred is completely oblivious to her surroundings and cannot wake up. In addition, waking up the next evening costs an additional blood point.

### Umbra Walk

The Tremere powers of Auspex allow them to search sublime planes of consciousness, but there are still other levels of existence to the infinite cosmos. Through the power of this ritual, which requires the sacrifice of an intelligent being (almost certainly costing you a Humanity Trait), you enter the Umbra, a spirit reflection of the physical world. You arrive naked, though certain magical items may come with you at the Storyteller’s discretion. You can even bring other people, though each additional traveler requires another sacrifice. The Umbra is a dangerous place, traveled by werewolves and unfriendly spirits. Umbra Walk lasts until you choose to step back into the material plane.

### The Unquenchable Flame of Mars

This ritual is a higher level versions of the Level 2 Ritual Burning Blade.

**System:** This ritual requires six hours per night for one complete moon cycle, beginning and ending on a new moon. The player spends one blood point per night and make an extended roll of Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 8), rolling once per week of game time. If a night of work is missed or the thaumaturge fails to obtain 20 successes the ritual fails and process must begin anew. If the ritual succeeds the player spends one permanent point of Willpower to imbue the blade with a part of his soul.

### The Verdant Blade

Archons sometimes have to take Kindred either for judgment or (more likely) for questioning. Carrying a heavy wooden stake is fairly conspicuous, though, and it lets your target know that you don’t want him dead. Several Quaesitors developed the Verdant Blade in the 1800s. Its use is limited largely to that group, though a few other archons have learned it. The ritual temporarily enchants any sharp object — a sword or large knife, a bone, a piton or tent spike — to paralyze Kindred staked with it as though it were wooden. The weapon or item must be placed in a vat or tub along with a freshly cut tree branch, several ounces of sap and a gallon of water. When the ritual is complete, the weapon will paralyze a vampire when driven into its heart. This effect works only once; once the weapon is removed, it must be enchanted again if the caster wishes to use it to stake another Kindred.

**System:** The caster must expend a blood point when making his Intelligence + Occult roll, and must spill a second blood point into the vat with the items described above. The chanting that follows takes 25 minutes. If the roll is botched, the weapon is not enchanted and will shatter on impact. The item or weapon must still be large enough to use as a stake (a large knife or a sword will work, but a pen will not). The ritual does not make the actual staking process any easier, and the weapon is not considered enchanted in any other respect.

### Vires Acquirit Eundo

This is simply a way of extending the effect of another ritual. The caster recites an elaborate incantation, then breaks an hourglass and casts the sand over a green fl ame while performing the other ritual. The only disadvantage to using this ritual is that it has different effects depending on what the caster uses it with.

**System:** The Storyteller has the fi nal decision on the effects of this ritual. Generally, it adds time or potency to another ritual in order to extend its duration or prolong its effect. The effi ciency with which it does so depends on the number of successes on the caster’s roll.

### Ward versus Spirits

This warding ritual functions exactly as Ward versus Ghouls, but it inflicts injury upon spirits. Several other versions of this ward exist, each geared toward a particular type of non-physical being.

**System:** Ward versus Spirits behaves exactly as does Ward versus Ghouls, but it affects spirits (including those summoned or given physical form by Thaumaturgy Paths such as Elemental Mastery). The material component for Ward versus Spirits is a handful of pure sea salt.

The other versions of this ward, also Level Five rituals, are Ward versus Ghosts and Ward versus Demons. Each of these three Level Five wards affects its respective target on both the physical and spiritual planes. Ward versus Ghosts requires a handful of powdered marble from a tombstone, while Ward versus Demons requires a vial of holy water.

### Way of the Wendigo

The Wendigo is a malevolent flesh-eating spirit believed to possess humans that violate the taboo against cannibalism. Once tethered to a human form, the spirit is believed to corrupt the soul until its victim is little more than a beast.

This forbidden ritual was developed by an apprentice Tremere that survived an assault on her chantry shortly before the American Revolution. Badly wounded and depleted to the point of exhaustion, she slipped away to the Great Lakes where she drank from the people that fished and lived there until she began to ritually consume the flesh of her victims. The unknown apprentice noticed that the practice healed her wounds and soothed her will.

The Way of the Wendigo encourages the thaumaturge to sacrifice not only her own blood, but living flesh to recharge herself from the life essence of her victim. Dark magic such as this always comes at a price to the soul. The Beast grows stronger when fed, and those that follow the Way of the Wendigo are no exception. It is said that the original Tremere that created this ritual fell to her Beast.

**System:** The thaumaturge seeks out a victim that she believes is an example of a virtue that she admires, such as intelligence, purity, or reverence. She must anoint the sacrifice with oil, sage, and ash during an hour long ritual. At the climax of the ritual, the caster murders the victim with the thigh bone of a hanged man and then consumes his flesh.

Consumption of the flesh allows the thaumaturge to absorb the victim’s essence to replenish the needs of her undead body and will. She will feel a rush of drowsiness and will be at -1 to all dice pools for the next hour. However, every ten minutes that the thaumaturge rests, she will regain a point of Willpower and one health level. At the end of the night, if the thaumaturge does not possess the merit Eat Food, she is forced to vomit up the excess flesh.

This is a horrific ritual where the sacrifice must knowingly endure the knowledge that he is going to die and then be consumed. Such a heinous action takes a toll on the humanity of the thaumaturge, as her mind is flooded with flashes of the victim’s life and experiences the agony of her death. The use of this ritual automatically strips a minimum of one Humanity dot from the character’s Humanity rating (to a minimum of 2). Additionally, the Storyteller might require a Conscience roll (difficulty 8). Failure means the loss of an additional Humanity point (which can fall below 2), while a botch could well mean the loss of even more

The use of this ritual requires a Self-Control roll (difficulty 8). Failure means that the thaumaturge has gained the permanent Flaw Addiction: Human Flesh.

## Level Six Rituals

### Bone of Contention

Weak princes sometimes rely on a Bone of Lies to “interview” new arrivals in their domains. While the Bone of Lies is useful in weeding out Sabbat infiltrators, diablerists and other problem cases, it’s also a good way to earn the ire of the city’s respected Kindred — few Kindred enjoy being accused of lying. Still, paranoid princes rely on the bone to keep an iron hold over their domains, so the Tremere recently devised this ritual variant.

Like a Bone of Lies, a Bone of Contention comes from a hundred-year-old fingerbone steeped in blood over several nights. Unlike a Bone of Lies, though, the Bone of Contention doesn’t compel truth; rather, it aids the Tremere in deception.

Naturally, this ritual’s very existence is a viciously guarded secret. If princes discovered that their Bones of Lies actually just gave whatever answers the Tremere wanted… well, it wouldn’t be more than they’d expect, but it wouldn’t be pretty, either.

System: A Bone of Contention looks like a Bone of Lies: an aged fingerbone with ritual magic placed upon it. While a Bone of Lies darkens and forces truth whenever the holder lies, a Bone of Contention acts in this fashion only when its creator so wills. The Tremere can cause the bone to darken and then force the holder to speak a lie that the speaker is forced to believe, so long as the thaumaturge can see the bone. Like a Bone of Lies, a Bone of Contention only functions 10 times. In the creator’s absence, a Bone of Contention functions like a normal Bone of Lies, simply to avoid possible complications (“This Bone of Lies failed to work when you were missing from the last convocation. Is there something you want to tell us?”).

### Refined Digestion

Rumors tell of elder vampires requiring the blood of Cainites to sustain their unlives. Even the great fear of Gehenna is based upon the belief that the Antediluvians will one night rise up and consume the blood of all Kindred. This powerful magic makes this Kindred vitae a necessity for a Cainite target; even thin-blooded neonates can be affected. Unable to draw true sustenance from mortals, the Kindred turns to hunting his own kind. Such an effect is almost certainly a death sentence for most vampires.

**System:** Preparation for this ritual takes three nights and requires fi ve blood points worth of blood from both the victim and from the thaumaturge. NonKindred blood is worth only one-third its normal amount (round down) to those infl icted with this curse. This ritual is normally permanent, but the thaumaturge can cancel its power by a reverse incantation requiring an additional fi ve blood from the victim and the sacrifi ce of a normal mortal.

## Level Seven Rituals

### Bone of Eternal Thirst

This three-night ritual creates an ensorcelled weapon made of bone or ivory. The thaumaturge must carve the weapon himself and then bathe it in the lifeblood of a year-old fledgling each night. All of the blood is absorbed into the weapon and cannot be used for any other purposes. The third “contributor” must be the caster’s own childe. The enchanted weapon becomes a powerful tool, able to sever flesh and even bone with ease, draining the strength of those it injures. It is nearly impossible to destroy this weapon.

**System:** All damage done by this bone-weapon is aggravated. In addition, for each level of damage it does, the weapon “drinks” a point of the victim’s blood. The weapon can be destroyed only if it absorbs 20 points of blood from a single victim and is immediately incinerated. Any weapon that can be carved from ivory or bone may be used in this ritual, and does damage per that weapon type — Storytellers, beware of players who would carve bone claymores.

### Eyes of the Ever Vigilant

This extremely powerful ritual is used in the most important Tremere chantries and strongholds. Few outside House Tremere even are remotely aware of its existence, let alone its power. After the Convention of Tyre, where Nosferatu infi ltrated the Assamite stronghold of Alamut, the Council of Seven quickly decided that the safety of the chantry in Vienna must never be compromised. This ritual was the result of that endeavor. At the locations that this ritual has been invoked, the powers that deceive the mind are almost negated. For in the halls of these places, all that reside within have the unearthly power to pierce these illusions. It requires the eyes of seven vampires who have lied to any of the Kindred invoking the ritual to be steeped in a special alchemical preparation, which is boiled away during the ritual’s performance.

**System:** Successful casting of this five-night ritual requires three thaumaturges concurrently to perform its incantations. Upon the completion, the ritual enchants one structure (one building, one haven, or one compound) and will last for a decade. Renewing the ritual requires a dedication by only one of the thaumaturges who cast the original ritual. While in effect, all Kindred within the structure are unaffected by Obfuscate, Chimerstry and similar powers of misdirection, including some permutations of Dominate.

### Impede the Gifts of Caine

Developed for use by Quaesitors facing superior numbers of Kindred, Impede the Gifts of Caine allows the thaumaturge to temporarily dampen the use of Disciplines in her immediate area. The focus of the ritual can be any item between the size of a baseball and that of a small suitcase, though it must be of relatively sturdy construction. The item must be bathed in six points worth of vitae that must come from at least two different thaumaturges (though only one need know the ritual). Discipline use in this area is substantially more difficult. The effect lasts for as long as the device is active.

**System:** Casting the ritual costs a blood point in addition to those in which the focus must be submerged, and requires a full hour of casting. The item is set briefly aflame (if the ritual succeeds, the damage to the item fades), and must be extinguished by the bare hand of the thaumaturge (causing one level of aggravated damage, as well as a Courage roll to avoid Rötschreck). When activated, the device creates an area of power one hundred feet in diameter, centered on the item. Once active, the difficulty of all rolls to invoke or use Disciplines in the area of the device is increased by the number of successes the caster achieved on her casting roll. Disciplines that do not require rolls to activate are unaffected. This power cannot raise difficulties higher than 10. Kindred of a lower generation than the caster remain unaffected, but the caster herself is affected if she steps inside the area. The item functions until “turned off” or until dawn. In either case, once deactivated it becomes nonmagical and cannot be reused.

## Level Eight Rituals

Blade of the Forbidden Flower

The Tremere guard the knowledge of this ritual closely, and with good reason. If even a whisper of its existence reached the ears of the Camarilla it would likely cause accusations of diablerie. The ritual requires the body of a vampire skilled in the use of the weapon to be enchanted. The body should be completely drained of blood, though the thaumaturge should set aside a small quantity of the subject’s blood for later use. The weapon must be cast and forged seven times as the thaumaturge recites an incantation. The magus then drinks the final point of the victim’s blood and then drives the blade of the weapon in its chest. The body immediately crumbles into cloud of ash, which is absorbed into the blade, leaving nothing behind but a black scorched mark. The weapon then becomes the vessel for the soul of the slain Kindred, imparting the wielder with strange powers and knowledge.

**System:** The creator of the weapon, or anyone she freely gives it to, are the only ones who may use it without harm; anyone else who attempts to do so suffers one health level of aggravated damage for every turn he continues to touch it. The blade retains all of the dead vampire’s Abilities and Disciplines, which can be used by anyone wielding the weapon as if they were his own. Additionally, the weapon inflicts aggravated damage upon those attacked with it. The spirit inside is unable to speak to others via any means, unless the weapon is destroyed, releasing the spirit.