Custom Blood Magic: Ritual

St Crispin's Dance

XP Cost: 6XP

MET Mechanics:

St Crispin’s Dance

Advanced Ritual

 

The Pied Piper story has been known for ages - the story of a musician capable of mesmerising and drawing to himself creatures of a certain type en masse. That is what this power is intended to do. It requires quite a bit of skills and knowledge concerning the audience to pull off successfully. It requires a complicated, multi-step process.

 

System: 

First, the caster must affiliate herself with her audience. She chooses a particular type of creature and learns its biological and mental rhythms. This is represented by a simple mental challenge which retests with Science: Biology or appropriate Lore. The traits the challenge is against varies depending on how common such information is at ST discretion; suggested levels are as follows: specific animals (must choose a subtype) or standard humans would be 5 traits, common supernaturals (vampires, werewolves, wraiths, etc.) would be against 10 traits, uncommon supernaturals (spirits, fae, mummies, etc.) would be against 13 traits. Categories and how specific you can get are up to individual STs. Loss of this challenge indicates a misunderstanding of the creature’s natural rhythm and the ritual does not succeed. Tying the challenge indicates a sufficient knowledge of the creatures’ bio-rhythms and allows the caster to continue to the next step. A win on this challenge level indicates an in-depth understanding of the creatures’ biological rhythms and multiplies the number of creatures of the chosen type that can be drawn in by two.

 

The second step involves the actual musical performance. The performance is required to be successful for at least Performance 3. A lower performance-level is automatically unsuccessful. The second step can be re-attempted an hour later without losing the results from the first step. If the performance must be delayed to a different night, then the first step must be repeated. As with a standard performance challenge, the retest is appropriate Performance skill.

 

The third step is the actual ritual portion. The caster must participate in an extended challenge with a story-teller until she has lost three times, retest is Mathematics. For each win or tie the caster has, she attracts the attention (to the point of drawing in) 10 of the desired creature provided they are within 1 mile of the performance. (The caster cannot attract the desired creature if there are none within the locale, obviously.)

 

Those drawn in by the power are now prone to certain effects if the caster so wishes. They are treated as more interested in the performance than other events happening around them; although an earthquake, gunfire, or a direct threat to their lives would not go unnoticed, less threatening events may very well bypass their recognition. The caster may opt to use a Psychology chop to sway the emotions of those so enthralled, although not to the point of actually inflicting any negative traits. If the performance is portable and can be maintained while moving, the caster may also move and those affected will attempt to follow as long as said attempt does not risk their lives. Those under the effects of this power will not do anything they wouldn’t normally do and their free-will is unaffected, so suggestions are not any more likely to be followed under the effects of this than they would normally be. The power is one of holding the crowd’s attention, not swaying their preferences. As a result, while the performance is ongoing the thralls are unlikely to attack the caster because they do not want to interrupt it, but if the creatures are antagonistic towards the caster all bets are off once the ritual is complete.

 

The number of people affected equal the crowd drawn and fascinated, but more non-enthralled creatures may potentially come as well. These are not affected by the secondary effects - they are not compelled to attend to the performance or refrain from interrupting it. The effects of one performance will affect only one grouping of creatures as defined by the ST.