Necromancy Rituals

The rituals connected with Necromancy are a hodgepodge lot. Some have direct relations to the paths; others seem to have been taught by wraiths themselves, for whatever twisted reason. All beginning necromancers gain one Level One ritual, but any others learned must be gained through in-game play. Necromantic rituals are otherwise identical to Thaumaturgy rituals and are learned in similar fashion, though the two are by no means compatible. Some rituals were developed by the Sabbat or independent practitioners of Necromancy, but are not exclusive to their creators. However, they may prove difficult to learn (or even locate), and Storytellers may wish to grant others versions of these rituals that operate at higher difficulties and / or lessened effectiveness, or to deny them altogether. System: Casting times for necromantic rituals vary widely; see the description for particulars. The player rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 3 + the level of the ritual, maximum 9); success indicates the ritual proceeds smoothly, failure produces no effect, and a botch often indicates that certain "powers" notice the caster, usually to her detriment.

Level One Rituals

Call of the Hungry Dead (Vampire: the Masquerade, Revised Edition)

Call of the Hungry Dead takes only 10 minutes to cast and requires a hair from the target's head. The ritual climaxes with the burning of that hair in the flame of a black candle, after which the victim becomes able to hear snatches of conversation from across the Shroud. If the target is not prepared, the voices come as a confusing welter of howls and unearthly demands; he is unable to make out anything intelligible, and might well go briefly mad.

Circle of Cerberus (Blood Magic)
The necromancer bathes, fasts and abstains from all physical comforts and pleasures, most especially sensual ones, for a night. Then she dons well-maintained, high-quality robes or other clothing. She draws a circle on the floor in a place of safety. She may then proceed to use other necromantic powers, confident that her protection against ghosts and spirits has been enhanced.

Each success subtracts two from the difficulty of all rolls the player must make to resist any attempted harm or influence on the part of a ghost, Spectre or spirit, so long as the necromancer remains inside the circle. Treat any botches scored while attempting to use necromantic paths as failures instead.

Eldritch Beacon (Guide to the Sabbat)

Eldritch Beacon takes 15 minutes to cast. The material component is a green candle, the melted wax from which must be collected and molded into a half-inch sphere. Whoever carries this sphere, whether in his hand or in a pocket, is highlighted in the Shadowlands with a sickly-glowing green-white aura. All wraithly powers affect this individual with greater ease and severity (generally a –1 difficulty to wraiths using powers on the bearer of the beacon). The sphere retains its power for one hour per success on the casting roll.

Minestra di Morte (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)
The Necromancer obtains a piece of a dead body and simmers it in a pot with half a quart of vampiric vitae. To this stew, he adds rosemary (for rememberance), basil (the funerary herb), and salt (the alchemic principle of clarification). After bringing it to a boil, he eats it.

If the ritual is successful, the caster can learn whether (or if) an individual became a spirito or spettro after death. Unfortunately, this information can be learned only about the person from whose body the 'stew meat' was taken.

The blood component is spent progressively through the ritual: If the Necromancer takes the blood from another Kindred, she doesn't become partially bound from drinking it, nor does she add a point to her blood pool. Similarly, if she uses her own blood, her pool decreases by a point but does not increase when she consumes the soup.

Necromantic vampires without the Eat Food merit can't keep the soup down, but can still use the ritual to gain information.

Rape of Persephone (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)
A team of surgeons trained in the unpleasant ways of Necromancy performs an elaborate operation on a freshly dead or well-preserved corpse. From the cadaver's dead tissues, they create up to seven new penises, vaginas or other sexual apparatuses.

The necromancer engages in intercourse with the corpse's new genitalia. He may then subtract two from the difficulty of all necromantic magic, except those targeting ghosts, spectres or spirits, for the remainder of the night.

If a number of necromancers perform the ritual together, they may freely trade Willpower points between one another for the rest of the night. During this time, one participant may experience the tactile sensations of another by concentrating for a few seconds and spending a point of Willpower, regardless of the distance separating them. No more than seven necromancers can perform the ritual together.

Ritual of the Smoking Mirror (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)

Named for the chief Aztec god, Tezcatlipoca, this ritual allows the Necromancer to see as ghosts do. By gazing into the mirror’s ebony depths, the Pisanob may discover an object’s flaws, assess the general health of mortals or even read an aura.

At the start of the ritual, the Kindred decides which of the rituals two aspects she will use – she may not use both at the same time. With Lifesight, the Necromancer may read auras as if she had the level two Auspex power, Aura Perception. Deathsight, on the other hand, grants the Necromancer the ability to see wraiths and the Shadowlands. It also shows the stain of oblivion on the living, which a knowledgeable Necromancer may use to diagnose and study illnesses, damage or disabilities with a successful Perception + Medicine roll (difficulty 4 to 8, depending on the ailment’s nature). At the Storyteller’s discretion, the Kindred may make a similar study of an inanimate object’s flaws and how to repair them, if that object has a strong link to either life-energies or death-energies (such as a murderer’s knife or a window box used to grow healing herbs.

To perform the ritual, the Necromancer grasps an obsidian mirror that has had its edge sharpened so that it cuts into the flesh of whoever takes hold of it. As the vitae flows onto the mirror’s surface, it allows the mirror’s reflective power to bridge the worlds of the living and the dead, much as it allows the Necromancer herself to do. If the Kindred wants Lifesight, she calls upon the power of Tonatiuh, He Who Goes Forth Shining. If she wishes Deathsight, she calls upon Mictanteotl, Aztec god of the Underworld. The player then rolls to activate the ritual as normal (Intelligence + Occult, difficulty 4). If successful, the Necromancer may view the world as a wraith does via the reflective surface of the mirror for a scene. On a botch, the vampire may well invoke the ire of the deities upon whom she calls, with disastrous results.

Level Two Rituals

Eyes of the Grave (Vampire: the Masquerade, Revised Edition)

This ritual, which takes two hours to cast, causes the target to experience intermittent visions of her death over the period of a week. The visions come without warning and can last up to a minute. The caster of the ritual has no idea what the visions contain - only the victim sees them, after all. Each time a vision manifests, the target must roll Courage (difficulty 7) or be reduced to quivering panic. The visions, which come randomly, can also interfere with activities such as driving, shooting and so on.

Eyes of the Grave requires a pinch of soil from a fresh grave.

The Hand of Glory (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)

The Hand of Glory is a mummified hand used by the Giovanni to anesthetize a home's residents and, thereby, allow the Necromancer free rein to do what he will in the residence. It was originally developed by thieves dabbling in the Dark Arts and was adapted for similiar nefarious purposes.

The creation of the Hand is a ritual dating back hundreds of years. The Necromancer wraps the severed hand of a condemned murder in a shroud, draws it tight to squeeze out any remaining blood and preserves it in an earthenware jar with salt, saltpeter, and long peppers. After a fortnight, the Giovanni removes the hand and dries it in an oven with vervain and fern. At the end of this process, if the roll to activate the ritual is successful, the creation is viable.

To use the Hand, the vampire first coats the fingertips of the mummified hand with a flammable substance derived from the fat of a hanged man and sets teh fingers alight. The Necromancer then recites the phrase, "Let all those who are asleep be asleep, and let those who are awake be awake." All mortals within a household who are affected fall into a deep sleep and cannot be roused (the hand has no effect on supernatural creatures and some hunters). For each unaffected occupant of a home, one finger of the hand will refuse to light. Of course, botches may result in all of the fingers being lit but no one in the house being asleep. The hand may be extinguished at any time by the Necromancer who created it. Anyone else wishing to douse the hand must use milk to do it. Nothing else works. Once made, the Hand may be reused indefinitely. Effects last one scene.

Judgment of Rhadamanthus (Blood Magic)

The necromancer chooses a wraith she will later summon, using the Summon Soul power of the Sepulchre Path. In a cleansed bronze brazier, she burns several pages of a law book and a religious text matching the faith the wraith held in life. She mixes ithe ashes of the books with silver powder and uses the mixture to make her Circle of Cerberus. When the wraith appears, the necromancer tells him that she has the power to send him to the real afterlife, the one he believed in when he was alive. If the ritual works, the wraith believes her. If the wraith fears judgment and hellfire, she can induce him to do what she wants by threatening to use her power. If he yearns for Heaven and escape from the existence of the underworld, she can secure his cooperation by promising to use it. Since she can't make good on this promise, Judgment of Rhadamanthus won't work twice on the same Heaven-seeking wraith.

Wraiths who were atheists while alive, or didn't believe in life after death, automatically resist this ritual.

Occhio d’Uomo Morto (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)

To cast this ritual, the Necromancer needs an eye from a corpse whose absent soul became a wraith or a spectre. The eye is ritually prepared when the Necromancer removes one of her own eyes and replaces it with the one from the corpse (fresher is better). Kindred healing takes over at that point, sealing the eye within the socket. If the ritual succeeds, the Necromancer permanently gains the Shoudsight ability (see page 164 of Vampire: The Masquerade). This ability does not require a roll.

Furthermore, if it was a spettro corpse, the vampire can hear the vague murmuring of any spectre in the area. This ability isn’t very precise, rather than mind reading it’s more like trying to overhear a low-voiced conversation in the next room. With a Perception + Occult roll, the Necromancer can glean a very vague impression of what the area spectres are up to. Botching this roll may well earn the Necromancer a new derangement (at the Storyteller’s discretion), as listening in on the evil dead is not a habit conducive to mental health.

This ritual has some major drawbacks, the first being that its proper result is hideously ugly. Unless the vampire wears sunglasses or finds some other way to conceal her eye, her Appearance is reduced by one dot. Also, dead or rotted tissue is not the best for normal perception. Any mundane visual Perception rolls are at +1 difficulty (possibly more if the corpse had bad eyesight in life). On the other hand, this very blurring offers some protection against Dominate and Eyes of the Serpent: These Disciplines are used against the dead-eyed Necromancer at a +1 Difficulty.

More importantly, however, the wraith or spectre whose body was desecrated knows it and very likely hates it. The ghost can find the Necromancer possessing his eye anywhere and all wraithly powers used again the Necromancer by that particular ghost or spectre are at -1 difficulty.

Puppet (Guide to the Sabbat)

Use primarily to facilitate conversations with the recently departed, though also applied as a method of psychological torture, Puppet prepares a subject (willing or unwilling) as a suitable receptacle for ghostly possession. Over the course of one hour, the necromancer smears grave soil across the subject’s eyes, lips, and forehead. For the remainder of the night, any wraith attempting to take control of the subject gains two automatic successes. The ritual’s effects remain even if the soil is washed off.

The Ritual of Pochtli (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)
The actions of this ritual were actually developed in concert with several Ghiberti vampires who have been residing in Pochtli’s temple for almost two decades. Because both families had a lengthy history of elaborate ceremonies, they felt more comfortable researching with one another than with mainstream Giovanni. What they have developed is something of a metaritual. It cannot be used by itself, but only in conjunction with another Necromantic ritual or with the heavily ritualized use of a Necromantic path.

The action of the ritual is this: Two or more Kindred necromancers restrain a mortal vessel and inflict incision in the shape of blasphemous Egyptian hieroglyphs or Aztec symbols. They then drink from these injuries. Each participating Necromancer must make his own cut and drink from no other cut. Thereafter, the Necromantic power the Kindred seek to employ gains the benefits of all the participants’ knowledge. This ritual makes it possible for Necromancers to create truly fearsome feats of death-magic.

System: The player rolls to activate this ritual as normal – Intelligence + Occult, difficulty 5 (because it’s a Level Two ritual). If the roll succeeds, the Kindred who have participated in the ritual may work together on the path or ritual the Ritual of Pochtli is intended to assist and the players share successes. Note that the primary application of Necromancy requires its own roll and that successes (and failures) garnered by the group are pooled.

If a Giovanni tries to use the Ritual of Pochtli with a path or ritual, she must have the know-how to use Necromancy in the Ghiberti or Pisanob style. Additionally, all Kindred participating in the ritual must know the Ritual of Pochtli as well as the ritual or path power the group seeks to activate. The downside of this power is that a single player’s botch negates the successes of the entire group, resulting in a horrific failure for the ritual workers.

Example: Three Pisanob attempt to use the Ritual of Pochtli to flay the soul from a Sabbat ghoul who has invaded their haven. Each player succeeds on her roll to use the Ritual of Pochtli and then they collectively attempt to use the Level Four Bone Path power, Soul Stealing. The first player gains three successes, the second gets two and the last gets only one. These combine for a total of six successes, reaping the ghoul’s soul from his body for a total of six hours.

Spirit Beacon (Original Clanbook Giovanni)
This ritual is designed to draw wraiths to a particular area. It requires the head of a man forsaken by God; this ghastly object acts as a beacon to all wraiths within the region. Giovanni who have seen these dreadful items in the Shadowlands say that an unholy radiance pours forth from the eyes, mouth and ears of the head, drawing wraiths like moths to a flame.

System: Obviously, this ritual requires a severed human head (though it is the Storyteller's discretion as to what constitutes 'forsaken by God'). After the ritual is successfully conducted, any wraiths who view the hideous thing are almost irresistibly compelled to move toward it. Wraiths who wish to avoid the spirit beacon must make a Willpower roll against a difficulty equal to the Willpower of the Giovanni who enacted the ritual. A wraith who succeeds is free to leave (though she may be entranced once more if she looks upon the head again); a wraith who fails must attend the head and will refuse to leave. Wraiths under the sway of this ritual may try to break free of its power; Willpower checks may be attempted once per hour.

The ritual ceases to be effective at sunrise of the day following its invocation, though the head may be the focus of further uses of the ritual. Giovanni who use this power repeatedly are rumored to possess heads that have decomposed to mere skulls over their long periods of service.

Level Three Rituals

Din of the Damned (Guide to the Sabbat)

This ritual is similar to the Level One Ritual Call of the Hungry Dead in that it makes the sounds of the underworld audible in the physical realm. However, Din of the Damned is an area-effect ritual used to ward a room against eavesdropping. Over the course of half an hour, the necromancer draws an unbroken line of ash from a crematorium along the room’s walls (this line may pass over doorframes to allow entrance and egress). For the rest of the night, any attempt to listen in on events inside the room, be it simple (a glass to the wall), electronic (a laser microphone), or mystic (Heightened Senses), requires the eavesdropper to score more successes in a Perception + Occult roll (difficulty 7) than the caster of the ritual scored. Failure to beat this mark gives the listener an earful of ghostly wailing and moaning and the sound of howling winds; a botch deafens him for the rest of the night.

Divine Sign (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)
With this ritual, the Pisanob Necromancer may use the principles of Aztec astrology to divine a person’s day sign. Used upon the living, this information allows the Necromancer to divine the target’s future actions. In the dead this knowledge forges a more intimate connection with the target, making it easier to cast other necromantic effects on her.

Upon learning a person’s birth date, the Pisanob’s player may roll to activate this ritual in order to cross-reference it with the Tonalamatl, the Book of Destinies, and thereby learn that person’s day sign. If successful the Kindred may use this to predict the target’s next course of action, allowing him to deal with it accordingly. The effect on wraiths is quite different. As they have already died, the Tonalamatl can offer no insight into the spirits’ destinies which have already run their course. Instead, the ritual imparts upon the Necromancer so intimate an understanding of the wrath in question that it acts as a connection to the ghost, making it easier to invoke other Necromancy on that spirit. For story purposes it’s equivalent to holding one of that wraith’s fetters (see the Level Three ritual, Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter, for details).

Drink of Styx's Waters (Blood Magic)
The necromancer robs a grave and steals the corpse's skull. he saws off the top of the skull; the sawn-off piece, flipped over, forms a cup-shaped piece of bone. He covers this piece with clay, making a bowl, which he proceeds to fire in a kiln. If any blood descendant of the corpse eats from the bowl during a meal with the necromancer, any promises the subject makes to the necromancer gains otherworldly enforcement. If the subject fails to live up to them, he is visited by a Spectre, which torments him relentlessly until he makes good on them or offers the necromancer acceptable compensation.

In addition to the time it takes to rob the grave, the modeling and firing of the bowl takes at least four hours, depending on how fancy the necromancer wants it to look. It may be reused until destroyed.

Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter (Vampire: the Masquerade, Revised Edition)

This ritual requires that a necromancer have a fingerbone from the skeleton of the particular wraith he's interested in. When the ritual is cast, the fingerbone becomes attuned to something vitally important to the wraith, the possession of which by the necromancer makes the casting of Sepulchre Path powers much easier. Most necromancers take the attuned fingerbone and suspend it from a thread, allowing it to act as a sort of supernatural compass and following it to the special item in question. Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter takes three hours to cast properly. It requires both the name of the wraith targeted and the fingerbone already mentioned, as well as a chip knocked off a gravestone or other marker (not necessarily the marker of the bone's former owner). During the course of the ritual the stone crumbles to dust, which is then sprinkled over the fingerbone.

Tempesta Scudo (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)
Unlike most rituals, this one can be cast speedily. The Necromancer performs a short and awkward dance that ends with her biting through her lip and spitting blood in a circle around her. All spirits' actions within the circle of blood are made at a +2 difficulty. All Risen within the circle have a penalty to their actions of +1 difficulty.

To cast this ritual successfully, the Necromancer must spend one combat turn performing the dance. At the end of the turn, she makes a Dexterity + Performance roll against difficulty 7 (if done outside combat, the difficulty is only 6). During the next combat turn, she bites through her lip (taking a level of bashing), and spits (spending one blood point). Then the normal roll is made to see if she was successful.

Level Four Rituals

Bastone Diabolico (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)

Casting this ritual is a bit tricky because it requires the removal of a leg bone from a living person. The donor must survive the removal (at least for a little while). The bone is then submerged in molten lead. Once it cools, the thin lead coating is inscribed with various runes.

The Necromancer then uses this bone to beat its donor to death while repeating a droning Greek chant.

With a successfull roll, this ritual produces a bastone diabolico, or "Devil Stick". The stick can be activated by anyone who holds it and expends a point of Willpower. Activation lasts for a scene, and during that time any ghost hit with the stick loses a point from its Passion Pool. In addition to its normal effects, this club does an additional die of damage when used against the walking dead (not vampires), and such damage is aggravated.

Unfortunately for the Necromancer, ghosts can sense that the devil stick is bad news, even if they don't know exactly what the thing does. Thy tend to stay away from anyone carrying one, which means that all rolls for such a character to use powers that summon or attract spirits occur at +1 difficulty.

The Giovanni clan stores many of these cudgels in their Venice vaults, and are actually more likely to lend one out to a neonate than to teach the ritual (after all, kidnapping somebody, mangling him and killing him was a lot easier to get away with a few hundred years ago). Most older devil sticks are made from tibias (for individuals who prefer thinner, fast clubs), or femurs (for the type who like a big bludgeon with a knot on the end). Modern sticks use the patella to create a ghost-punishing weapon that's easier to conceal.

Cadaver's Touch (Vampire: the Masquerade, Revised Edition)

By chanting for three hours and melting a wax doll in the shape of the target, the necromancer turns a mortal target into a corpselike mockery of himself. As the doll loses the last of its form, the target becomes cold and clammy. His pulse becomes weak and thready, his flesh pale and chalky. For all intents and purposes, he becomes a reasonable facsimile of the walking dead. Needless to say, this can have some adverse effects in social situations (+2 difficulty on all Social rolls). The effects of the ritual wear off only when the wax of the doll is permitted to resolidify. If the wax is allowed to boil off, the spell is broken.

Call Upon the Shadow's Grace (Original Clanbook Giovanni)
Use of this invasive ritual allows the Giovanni to peer into the aura of death that surrounds all living beings. those who are familiar with the subtleties of wraithly existence speak of the Shadow, the "dark side" of the wraith's personality. This ritual temporarily opens a channel for discourse with the nascent Shadow of its subject (which will fully emerge if teh subject in question later becomes a wraith). Though not quite so powerful or malignant as the Shadow of a wraith, the Shadow of one who still walks the physical world can nonetheless reveal damning aspects of the person's actions, and may often drive the person to acts of desperation.

System: By enacting this rtiual, the Giovanni brings the self-destructive aspects of her subject's psyche to the fore. If used successfully, this ritual causes its subject to reveal her darker secrets. The subject will reveal any plots in which she is involved, treacheries she has committed and lies she has told. The subject may resist with Willpower roll against a difficulty equal to the caster's Intelligence + Occult. A botch may result in tremendous feelings of remorse and despair in the subject, which rresult in the subject's attempted suicide. Naturally, nothing may be learned in this situation.

Drink of Lethe's Waters (Blood Magic)

The necromancer acquires an object once owned by, or symbolic of, a particular wraith. The object must be able to be damaged by water; the necromancer destroys it by leaving it to soak in water. During the soaking, he periodically spits into the water. After the object has been destroyed, the necromancer conjures the wraith or otherwise arranges to be in her presence. The wraith loses all memory of her identity, becoming highly susceptible to suggestion on the part of the necromancer. Obviously this ritual is of no use if the necromancer wants the summoned ghost to answer questions.

The wraith's memory loss continues for one night per success scored. It may not use Pathos points to counter any action on the necromancer's part. Its Willpower drops by the number of successes scored; it may not replenish its Willpower pool while the effect lingers.

Peek Past the Shroud (Guide to the Sabbat)

This hour-long ritual enchants a handful of ergot (a mold that grows on grains prior to harvest in cold, damp weather) to act as a catalyst for second sight. By eating a pinch of magical mold, a subject gains the benefits of Shroudsight (Ash Path Necromancy Level One) for a number of hours equal to the necromancer’s Stamina score. Three doses of the enchanted ergot are created for every success on the roll. Ergot is normally poisonous to some degree; this ritual removes its toxic properties. However, a botch renders the ergot highly and instantaneously toxic, inflicting eight dice of lethal damage on any subject who ingests it – including vampires.

Ritual of Xipe Totect (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)
In times past Aztec priests would flay the skin from a victim and wear it as a sacrifice to Xipe Totec, god of suffering and renewal. In a similar vein, the Giovanni of the Pisanob branch of the clan may skin their prey alive, but for a more pragmatic reason – to steal that person’s identity.

To perform the ritual, the Kindred removes his victim’s top layer of skin with an obsidian dagger, taking care to damage the skin as little as possible in the process. The victim must survive the process (though she may well die of blood loss shortly after the ritual if not seen to properly). He then drains the victim’s blood into a large ceremonial golden bowl. There the blood is mixed with octli, amaranth and other ingredients. When imbibed by the Necromancer, this mixture causes him to sweat a glistening sheen of blood (equal to one blood point). The Kindred then dons the skin of his victim, which on a successful roll absorbs the Kindred vitae and begins to heal, forming a second skin over the Pisanob’s own. Naturally, the victim needs to be a similar stature – otherwise the features become distorted and the disguise is rendered useless. The power also has no effect on Kindred or Lupines.

Under normal visual scrutiny the ruse is flawless. Of course, it imparts none of the victim’s knowledge or mannerisms (and does nothing to mask the Kindred’s undead nature). It therefore works best for situations in which contact with friends and family of the victim may be minimized. To preserve the skin’s condition, the Kindred must bathe it in a blood point’s worth of vitae nightly. When the Pisanob removes the skin (which causes one level of unsoakable lethal damage to the user and must be done with the same knife used to flay the victim in the first place), it is ruined in the process. Needless to say, conducting this ritual will almost certainly require Humanity checks for characters of suitable moral stature.

Level Five Rituals

Chair of Hades (Blood Magic)

The necromancer acquires a corpse's femur and tibia bones, decreasing the difficulty of the casting by one if he does so by personally robbing a grave. He wraps the bones in a coarse cloth and then encases them in wood or metal so that their lengths match and they become capable of bearing weight. He then builds a chair; each encased bone forms one of its legs. If a blood descendant of the corpse sits in the chair, she loses all desire to do anything but sit in the chair. She leaves the chair only to quickly fulfill basic bodily needs.

Whenever a qualified victim sits in the chair, the necromancer's player rolls Intelligence + Occult against her Willpower. If successful, the effect lasts until the chair is destroyed. Otherwise, even if the victim is forcibly moved from the chair, she does everything she can to sit in it once more. In addition to the time it takes to obtain the bones, the construction of the chair takes at least eight hours. The necromancer may spend additional time on the chair to make it look fancy or to mimic an existing piece of furniture.

Chill of Oblivion (Guide to the Sabbat)

Performed over the course of 12 hours (reduced by one hour per success on the casting roll), this ritual infuses the Necromancer or a willing subject with the very cold of the grave. The ritual’s material component is a one-foot cube of ice, which is slowly melted on the subject’s chest (inflicting three health levels of bashing damage on mortal subjects). The subject must like naked on bare earth for the entire duration of the ritual. Once the ritual is completed, its effects remain for a number of nights equal to the caster’s Occult rating.

An individual affected by the Chill of Oblivion treats aggravated damage from fire and high temperatures as if it were lethal damage. Furthermore, he may attempt to extinguish any fire by rolling Willpower (difficulty 9); each success reduces the fire’s soak difficulty by 1, and a fire with a soak difficulty of 2 dwindles to glowing embers. However, this ritual has several drawbacks. First and foremost, the subject’s aura is laced with writhing black veins that resemble those left by diablerie and may well be mistaken for such by any observer who is not familiar with this ritual. The subject also radiates a palpable aura of cold that extends to about arm’s length from him; this can be extremely disconcerting to mortals, though it causes no damage, and its game effects mirror those of the Flaws: Touch of Frost and Eerie Presence. Finally, the mystical nimbus of the ritual draws hostile ghosts to the subject, who may plague him with unwholesome acts. For Storyteller’s using Wraith: The Oblivion, the difficulties of all Dark Arcanoi used against the character are reduced by 3 for the duration.

Esilio (Clanbook Giovanni Revised)
Like Tempesta Scudo, Esilio is a quick and dirty ritual. The Necromancer simply speaks five syllables. No one can identify the language (or at least, no one is telling if he has). According to the ritual's history, this power came from the bloodline that preceded the Giovanni, and that the language is what God gave humankind before the confusion of Babel. The legend further states that while the particular meaning of the words is lost, they are what Caine's father said to him while exiling him to Nod.

Regardless of the truth of the matter, the Words of Exile are not spoken lightly. When the ritual is cast successfully, it opens a hole within reality itself, a rip between the lands of the living and the dead. This tear is invisible to normal vision, but to Shroudsight it looks like a pitch black vortex opening within the vampire's own body (the very few unfortunate enough to look into the gap with high levels of Auspex are generally unwilling or unable to discuss what they beheld). Any wraith clutched to the Kindred's chest is instantly torn to shreds. Grabbing a ghost in this fashion requires a Clinch or Tackle maneuver. As usual with destroyed spirits, they don't come back for at least a month, if ever. A spirito destroyed in this fashion tends to return as a septtro, if it returns at all.

The Necromancer may clutch and destroy a number of spirits equal to the number of successes she rolled. After that, the vortex closes. It closes at the end of the scene if it hasn't already.

Of course, using one's body as a portal between our world and what a reasonably intelligent person might call Hell is neither simple nor healty. For starters, it costs a blood point and a Willpower point (which doesn't give an automatic success on the ritual roll). More importantly, each success rolled inflicts a level of unsoakable lethal damage on the Necromancer. Most importantly, ever use of Esilio permanently reduces the Necromancer's humanity (if she has any) by one point.

Grasp the Ghostly (Vampire: the Masquerade, Revised Edition)

Requiring a full six hours of chanting, this ritual allows a necromancer to bring an object from the Underworld into the real world. It's not as simple as all that, however - a wraith might well object to having his possessions stolen and fight back. Furthermore, the object taken must be replaced by a material item of roughly equal mass, otherwise the target of the ritual snaps back to its previous, ghostly existence. Objects taken from the Underworld tend to fade away after about a year. Only items recently destroyed in the real world (called "relics" by wraiths) may be recaptured in this manner. Artifacts created by wraiths themselves were never meant to exist outside the Underworld, and vanish on contact with the living world.