Custom Blood Magic: Ritual

Intermediate Ritual

Looking for a more humane version of Sculpting the Perfect Servant, and one that he can use to thwart local Nosferatu and others who work with animals, Tom began researching a variant that works on animals.  He started small, with Rats, Bats, Cats and other smaller animals, but eventually started trying dogs and other larger animals to see how it would work.  The research was long, but far less than human gestation, considering how fast many of the animals breed.  The common denominator of regular stillborn births even among domesticated animals made the process of providing the catalyst easier as well.  The technique began to yield fruit with animals being born larger and more physically impressive, and sometimes even smarter, than their non-ritual counterparts.  As a bonus, the ritual worked on an entire litter of 2-3 dogs, or up to five cats.  Much like the more impressive human version, the animals felt a special kinship with the magus casting the ritual, in this case, Tom. 

System: Cursing the litter is possible, but not the main focus of the ritual.  Should someone be breeding dogs, Tom could in theory curse them, but it is not the main goal of the ritual.  By manipulating the unborn animals while still in the womb, a magus using this ritual is able to increase the attributes of the coming offspring, and bind them to him supernaturally.  The offspring of animals this ritual is used on are connected to the caster like the original ritual, and take orders and training from the caster more easily.  Such animals train in half the time, learn twice the normal amount of tricks, and will never attack the caster, even if supernaturally compelled to through Animalism.  Such animals have increased attributes, usually three or four extra physical traits, one or two social traits, and one or two mental traits.  The caster must rend a stillborn animal in half and allow its blood to flow over the belly of the pregnant mother animal.  Blessing the offspring requires five hours a week until the pregnant mother comes to term, starting in the first three months of pregnancy.  Any animal's affected by this ritual gain 2 points of flaws, agreed upon by the storytellers.  Recommended flaws include: erie presence, glowing eyes, derangement, disfigured, vulnerability to silver (or similar, like gold or wood), or any other combination of flaws totalling at least 2 points.