Some thaumaturges are right bastards.
Power: Significant
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: This is an evil bastard of a ritual, and one of the reasons most adepts keep a wary eye out for thaumaturges. In essence a charging ritual, this one lets you gain all the charges that the adept you ate was carrying at the time you killed him. If you’re an adept using this ritual, you break taboo, and lose all charges you’re carrying, except for the ones you just gained.
Ritual Action: Kill an adept. Before his corpse succumbs to rigor mortis, eat all his flesh. Grind his bones into a powder, boil the powder along with the meat of three black roosters, and drink down the resulting broth.
Power: Significant
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: This ritual creates exactly one cup of an extremely potent wine, literally made from moonlight–hence the ritual’s name, German for moondrunk. Anyone who drinks the wine thinks it is the best they’ve ever had, and a Dipsomancer that drinks it scores a significant charge off of it. However, there are consequences–from then on, whenever the drinker sees the moon, he goes crazy. Until the moon sets, he gets a +20% shift to all Strength and Speed skills, and a -20% to all Mind and Soul skills. He is treated as a psychopath for the duration, meaning he can’t act on his passions. He is compelled to kill anyone he sees by the light of the moon–if he sees someone inside, they’re safe, but if he sees them under the sky, it’s stabby time. Once the moon sets, the drinker comes back to their senses. Realizing what they’ve done is probably going to call for some Violence, Supernatural, or Self checks, possibly all three. This curse can only be broken permanently if the drinker blinds himself, preventing him from ever seeing the moon again. As a side note, a couple copies of this ritual floating around make it seem like drinking the wine gives you a nice boost to your mojo; which typically leaves a couple of gullible thaumaturges with a nasty curse.
Ritual Action: On the night of the full moon, set out a silver goblet where the moonlight can fall on it. Milk a pure white heifer, and pour its milk into the goblet, and stir in a tablespoon of honey with a spoon made from ash wood. Once the mixture is complete, you must start singing an atonal chant in German until moonfall without interruption. If you pull it off right, you’re left with a cup of seriously bad business.
Power: Significant
Cost: 4 significant charges
Effect: For one night, sundown to sunup, you are invisible. Human sight, cameras, videos–they just can’t see you. You can still, however, be heard–with a successful Notice roll, made at a -20% shift, someone can hear your movements, allowing them to roughly pin down your location to within 10 ft. In addition, your aura is not masked by this ritual, so anyone with an aura sight skill or similar can still make out your aura.
Ritual Action: First off, only female dukes can use this ritual–sorry, boys. The ritual must begin at dawn. You must sequester yourself in a totally dark room; the slightest hint of natural or artificial light will ruin the ritual. You must take the hide of a wolf, which you must have skinned by yourself in advance, and wrap it around yourself, nailing it to your wrists and ankles, which deals four points of damage to you. Next, grind the roots of a foxglove plant with a wooden mortar and pestle, and mix the powder with red wine in a goblet made of silver, polished to a mirror-sheen. Pour the resulting mixture on the wounds you inflicted on yourself. Then comes the tricky part. Just as the sun sets, you must exit wherever you sequestered yourself, such that you come out under the sky immediately after the sun is gone. If you got it right, the wolf hide sloughs off of you and crumbles to dust–and now, you’re invisible until the sun rises.
Power: Significant
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: Think of a personal closely connected to you–one of your parents, one of your children, or someone you’ve slept with. This ritual creates a nasty mystic link between you and them. The link remains inactive, until you choose to break it. Whenever you are harmed–damaged, hit with a nasty spell, or similar–you may permanently break this link to send all the harm you would’ve taken to the loved one you chose, leaving you completely unaffected. Typically, doing this calls for a rank-6 or higher Self stress check; the exact level depending on the amount of hurt you sent their way.
Ritual Action: Put a picture of the loved one you’re using this ritual on in a solid electrum locket, along with three drops of blood. Swing it around your head and chant the phrase “Denuncio tutto quelli amore di” thirty three times. Once this is done, grind the locket to dust beneath your left foot. Bingo, you and your ill-fated loved one are linked.
Nice. I think I could get some use out of Mondestrunken as a way to produce some rumours about werewolves.
Sweet. I am definitely gonna have to steal some of these.
I see no real reason why spellbreaker shouldn’t work on Mondestrunken. It works on everything else…