Custom Blood Magic: Ritual
Some chronicles allow for their players to develop customized powers for their characters. The following is a compilation of player created custom content in OWBN. At this time, custom content that is created and/or used by vampire PC's is required to be listed.
By sacrificing a human under a new moon and performing this ritual over their severed head, the caster is able to craft a talisman in the form of a shrunken head, tzantza, from the ritual victim. The crafter of this talisman can use it to ward off the blood magics of other cainites.
When the crafter of this talisman is the target of a blood magic path or ritual, they can spend a willpower to activate the talisman before any challenges are made. The crafter may make a single retest on any challenge to resist the magical effect. Once you invoke this retest, it is the last test of the challenge; no further retests are allowed. Additionally, if the crafter of this talisman successfully resists the magical effect they can attempt to store its magical energies within the talisman.
Attempting to store the magical energies requires the crafter spend a second willpower trait. They must then win a simple test, if they succeed the talisman gains an Essence charge. The talisman can hold upto five Essence charges at a time. In the future, the crafter can expend these Essence charges in place of the traits that are otherwise spent to generate effects (e.g. mental traits for Weather Control) when performing their own magic paths or rituals.
Prerequisite: Weirding Stone
By using a piece of natural lodestone the caster may befuddle the fates of the Weirding Stone. This requires the investment of one point of Blood and one temporary Willpower. Anyone or thing in contact with a Lodestone will not be able to be tracked by a Weirding Stone. it will instead begin to spin in place unable to locate the requested direction. The creator may only have a maximum amount of stones equal to his primary Ways known (min of 1). The Lodestones magical effects can be ended by the caster as a free action at any time.
Craft Spirit Bloodstone
This is a small perfectly spherical stone crafted from an opal (tourmalated opal).
System: The opal is left in a crystal bowl of vitae (three points of your own blood), which takes three evenings to absorb. This can only be cast during the full moon, and must be exposed to the moonlight during the evening. This bloodstone may then be tracked across to the umbra, and the shadowlands. Further the caster may track it from three planes interchangeably: the astral plane, the umbra, and the shadowlands.
By harnessing the power of one of the greatest enemies to Kindred, a thaumaturge may create a stone that stores additional will. Semi-precious stones are popular (especially bloodstone or onyx), but high-status thaumaturges may use gilded rubies and the like.
System: The thaumaturge must first find a suitable stone as a carrier. The stone must be made of natural earthen materials. Glass or plastic will not hold the magic. The caster then must use 4 points of their own blood and place this in an open ritual bowl, along with the stone. An incantation is spoken for an hour, and then the blood is left out in the sun while the vampire sleeps. Each night the caster must retrieve the bowl, strain out any impurities, and take another hour to do the incantation. This step is repeated until a week has passed. After the seventh day, the caster finds the bowl magically empty save for the imbued stone. If the ritual is interrupted, such as the caster forgetting for a day, or someone stealing the bowl, the ritual fails and the caster must start again. The stone must also get 4 hours of sunlight during the day. Overcast conditions do not affect the stone, but magical darkness, prolonged eclipses, or other phenomena may disrupt the ritual at ST discretion.
This creates the following item, found on pg 194 of the 2nd Ed Vampire Players Guide:
Blood Magic Item: Inner Stone
An Inner Stone is usually no bigger than a pebble, and a vampire must swallow it to activate its powers. It provides a character with two extra Willpower points, usable for all purposes. If the character spends this Willpower, however, she will have to recharge the stone by removing it from her stomach and then leaving it in the sunlight for a week. If the character does not spend this Willpower, then she has the extra points for as long as the stone remains in her stomach.
Description: First developed as a way of testing the suitability of potential recruit families for the Tzimisce nobility, this Koldunic ritual creates over a period of 3 generations a Revenant line, but one with less power but also less mental defects than that created by the Elder level version of the Ritual.
Rumors persists that multiple Zadruga families were created using this ritual, and that when the families proved their worth, the Elder version of this ritual was cast on the families to strengthen their power and their ties to clan Tzimisce.
System: This ritual is cast identically to the Elder Create Revenant Family ritual. When used on a pair of mating adult humans, the offspring of the union will have one “in-clan” Discipline known to the caster and a blood pool of 6. When used on two first-generation mating revenants, the offspring of the union will have two “in-clan” Disciplines (either the combination of the two disciplines known to the parents, or a second discipline known to the caster if the parents have the same Discipline) and a blood pool of 8. When used on two second-generation mating revenants, the offspring of the union will have a blood pool of 8 and the same two Disciplines as the parents (if they are the same) or a Discipline from each of them, and will either gain a third Discipline known to the caster of this ritual or will gain an additional 2 blood traits, for a total blood pool of 10.
Only the Common Disciplines (Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Potence, Presence) may be granted through Create Lesser Revenant Family.
The caster of this ritual may only pass on her In-Clan Disciplines (regardless of levels known) or Out-of-Clan Disciplines that she has gained Advanced mastery of. First-generation revenants must receive an in-clan Discipline of the caster.
Description: This ritual amplifies the caster's Thaumaturgy, allowing the creation of more elaborate conjurations. Additionally, the caster can infuse the conjuration with aspects of another Path of Thaumaturgy that they possess for cosmetic effect. This is achieved by adding a few additional phrases, gestures, and components to any use of Path of Conjuring.
Effect: This ritual allows the creation of a conjured object or creature with increased complexity compared to standard Conjuring. The object's size and complexity are governed by their Path of Conjuring rating AND their other Path's rating. If the caster doesn't have level 3 of Path of Flames, they cannot imbue a complex creation (ala Magic of the Smith) with Path of Flames for cosmetic effect. While the Ritual is in effect, the caster can choose any secondary Path of Thaumaturgy to influence the conjuration's appearance and minor properties. This does not grant the conjuration any actual abilities from that Path, only cosmetic changes.
This may be used in conjunction with Ritual: Major Creation as well.
Sample Creations:
Flaming Sword (Same traits as normal, but appears to be made of flame and does not incite frenzy), Icy Armor (same traits as normal, but looks cooler), Lightning Shield (same traits as normal, but looks cooler), Rain Gun (shoots damaging raindrops, stick that in your tailpipe! Works like a regular gun)
This ritual was developed as a means of better tending to those under the protection of the Dakini and Sons of Kali. The Sadhu must spend a night in prayer within the shrine or temple that is to be blessed, invoking the favour of the god to whom it is devoted and swear to visit just vengeance upon those who have truly been wronged.
System: This ritual takes a minimum of 4 hours to perform, and may be cast by multiple sadhu at the same time. Any prayers made at a dedicated temple or shrine by a human who has truly been wronged will reach the ears of the Sadhu. The Sadhu has one lunar cycle to visit vengeance upon the guilty party - it need not be lethal, simply an appropriate punishment for the wrongs they have committed. Should the Sadhu fail in their duty, they may find themselves punished by the god they made the oath before.
By combining the mystical ability of quartz to hold information and the power of their blood, this ritual allows the thaumaturge to exactly copy all data in a storage device. The ritual is performed over a quartz crystal, which must be small enough to fit in the practitioner's hand, yet big enough to scribe symbols on (approximately the size of the thaumaturge’s fist). Once the ritual has been performed, any kindred may activate the crystal by being close enough to see the target device and spending a trait of blood. Once activated, all data inside the target device is copied exactly into the crystal.
To complete the ritual, a similar device that is capable of reading the data stored must be touched at the same time as the crystal. This must be done by the thaumaturge who cast the ritual. Thus, information on a computer’s hard drive can only be transferred to a computer, cell phone information requires a cell phone, a book requires a blank journal. Once this occurs, an exact copy of the original target device is loaded into the new device, assuming at least the same amount of space is present. If the device is a cell phone, then the new cell phone will be wiped of any original data to make room for the mystical data. The recipient hard drive will be wiped as well, though if multiple HD are present, the thaumaturge can select which one. Because an exact clone of the device is made, anything that required a password on the original device still requires a password on the new device, and any viruses are also transferred to the new device. Once the data transfer is complete, the crystal crumbles to dust. The crystal also crumbles if the target device cannot hold the data. Magical texts, formula, rituals, etc. will be copied, but rendered unusable magically. What remains will be accurate enough so that what the magical text would have done can be understood, but not precise enough for the effect to occur or to be recast without sufficient research.
Crystal of Digital Imprint
Created by Jobe Xenu
By combining the mystical ability of quartz to hold information and the power of their blood, this ritual allows the thaumaturge to exactly copy all data in a storage device. The ritual is performed over a quartz crystal, which must be small enough to fit into the practitioner’s hand, yet big enough to scribe symbols on. Once the ritual has been performed, any kindred may activate the crystal by being close enough to see the target device and spending a trait of blood. Once activated, all data inside the target device is copied exactly into the crystal.
To complete the ritual, a similar device that is capable of reading the data stored must be touch at the same time as the crystal. Thus, a computer’s information can only be transferred to a computer, cell phone information requires a cell phone, ect. Once this occurs, an exact copy of the original target device is loaded into the new device. If the devices are computers, the information will be stored under a new user profile in the new computer. If the devices are cell phones, then the new cell phone will be wiped of any original data to make room for the mystical data. Because an exact clone of the device is made, anything that required a password on the original device still requires a password on the new device, and any viruses are also transferred to the new device. Once the data transfer is complete, the crystal crumbles to dust.
(The following went into researching this ritual: Two years of experimentation, learning of the Craft Bloodstone Ritual to better understand blood magic’s effects on stones, and learning of The Scribe Ritual to better understand how information can be transferred through mystical means. The character also possesses the following abilities that may be appropriate: 10 Mental Traits, Path of Blood 5, Occult 3, Computers 5 with a specialization in Hacking, Computer Aptitude, Electrical Engineering 3, Repair 3, and Repair Aptitude.)
This curse affects one of the powers most hated by Anarchs, Dominate. When an Anarch becomes aware, that someone has been using the discipline to hinder the freedom of others, they will seek out the user, and bear this curse upon them. The Anarch points out his target and declares forcefully that they will feel the same fear that they instill in those weaker than they are.
The Anarch Spends a Blood Trait and makes a static Mental challenge with a difficulty equal to the targets current Mental Traits (retest with Occult). If the curse is successful, the target becomes susceptible to the Discipline Dominate regardless of the generation of the attacker. Thus, a 13th generation Anarch could Dominate an 8th generation Prince, or a childer might successfully Dominate her Sire. This curse lasts for three months.
Custom advanced Seidr Rite (6 xp)
The Aesir cursed Loki punishing him for his folly by cursing him for a time. This Seidr ritual brings that myth to reality as until the next morning the Norn's and Fate have forsaken the target hindering their actions against those who are enacting the judgement of fate.
Components: Portrait of target, one blood trait from caster
1 - This requires a portrait using Expression, or Craft abilities, which requires the one who made the portrait to be familiar with the target. The Futhark Runes are cast, calling out their punishment. The runes are then written in the blood of the caster on the portrait cursing the targets actions against those participating in the ritual.
2 - Burning the photo then triggers the effect (Static Physical Challenge against a difficulty of the subject’s permanent Mental Traits, retest with Theology or Occult)
3 - Until the end of the Night, Fate has forsaken them. They must double all expenditure costs involving tempers (Blood, willpower, rage, gnosis, glamour etc). They must also bid an additional trait in all challenges against those who participated in the ritual. If the target has merits that would reduce the expenditure cost of tempers, the doubling of expenditures happens before merit reductions
4 - This ritual cannot be stacked multiple times on a target nor can it be stacked with other doubling effects for the purpose of the expenditure costs for tempers. The bidding of additional traits does stack with powers and effects that cause the target to have to bid additional traits.