Custom Blood Magic: Ritual

Ubi Vel Umbris

 

Prereqs- Any Path of Necromancy at Intermediate and the Caster of this ritual must have at least Craft: Cartographyx3 and access to the needed material components.

Components- 

1)The soul of one spectre 

2)A quill pen crafted from the femur of a corpse at least a century old.

3)A mortar and pestle crafted of granite taken from two different places at least three hundred miles apart.

4)The blood of a a resident of the area to be mapped

 

Description: The caster of the ritual must first have the soul of the spectre moliated into a cube no larger then 2 inches cubed by another wraith. The soul of this spectre is then crushed into an ink with the blood of the resident of the area to be mapped. Over the course of several hours (Suggested estimate being at least 1 hour per level of crafts desired), the caster must commit his or herself fully to the task of drawing the map, by hand. 

 

The caster of the ritual does not need to intimately know the topography of the land he seeks to map as the blood of the resident guides the hand of the artist. When the time spent crafting the map has been spent, the caster must win a static mental challenge whose difficulty is determined by the size of the area mapped (3 for a standard household, 5 for a city block, 8 for a neighborhood, 12 for an entire city). Should the caster be successful the ink on the map disappears, only ever reappearing at the request of either the creator and the next person besides the creator that touches it.

 

What is shown on the map is not actually a map of the common world but a living map of the shadowlands that can expand or contract in scope at the request of the user up to but not exceeding the limits set at the time of the maps creation. The map will not indicate the presence of any living or unliving creatures present in the Shadowlands but it does, with startling detail, depict the ever shifting and ephemeral landscape including any and all structures and objects.

 

If the map is inspected closely with auspex or similar powers it glows with the faint signature of necromantic energies.

 

The map is as easily destroyed as any piece of paper (Or whatever medium was used to create the map). If this is to happen, the magic of the map is lost and cannot be repaired.

 

As the power of the magic workings used to create the map exist primarily in the artistic process of the ritual, all attempts to reverse engineer the ritual using a finished map as reference will fail... spectacularly (Severity of failure is subject to ST discretion). Said map is also completely immune to any attempt to exorcize it as it is a standing magical item unto itself and not powered by a spirit or wraith directly.