Arc of Sküld

Rules

Performing the Ritual

Performing this ritual takes at least 10 minutes of roleplaying. If the ritual is cast using the Imperial Regio it requires at least 5 minutes of roleplaying instead.

During the ritual the casters must be in a strong Winter regio. This ritual targets a territory, and must be performed at a regio in that territory. If the ritual is used to target an Imperial territory, it may instead be performed at the Imperial regio at Anvil.

This effect is a curse. A target may be under more than one curse at a time.

Effects

Over the next ten years, the fertility of plants in the target territory undergoes a marked decline. Plants grow more slowly, and tend to produce fewer fruit and seeds. Cereal crops become sparser, and less fruitful. Fewer animals and people are born there. Over time the population of people and animals in the area are likely to decline.

Every farm in the territory produces half as much money as they normally would. The additional production provided by an enchantment such as Rampant Growth is not affected by this curse.

Vallorn and vallornspawn in the target territory tend to become extremely slothful and quiescent for the duration. They are not harmed, but they will not expand beyond their current borders unless subject to a significant outside force. Once such provocation is removed, they are likely to settle back within their new borders, or may recede if they have not expanded into an area sufficiently.

The effects last for around ten years and then fade over the course of a season.

The effects of the ritual are obvious to anyone living in or passing through the territory. As with any effect that targets an entire territory, there may be unanticipated consequences to this ritual. The nature of the area and the current situation there may prompt additional unpredictable effects, often resulting in an entry into the following season's Winds of Fortune.

Removing the Curse

The curse can be removed by certain powerful creatures or items with powers associated with fertility (most likely the eternal Yaw'nagrah) although such assistance is unlikely to come cheaply. It power could be reduced by an extremely powerful ritual, probably from the Spring realm that restores fertility, including any ritual designed to remove or reduce the effect of the ritual Wither the Seed.

Description

The ritual originates with the Thule, but became part of Imperial lore following the Autumn Equinox 388YE. Yarvi Swiftwind raised and funded the declaration, proposing that it was "effectively a boosted Wither the Seed but only 10 years long and very effective against vallorn."

How effective the ritual actually is against the vallorn, as compared to Wither the Seed, is not clear. The orcs of Otkodov certainly believe it to be potent enough; they have ensured it has remained in effect over Sküld since the fall of Terunael. It certainly has more impact on plants and animals in the territory than the more familiar ritual used by Imperial magicians, causing farms to produce significantly fewer viable crops and reducing the size of herds. Yet the ritual is also apparently very old, and the fact that it is a higher magnitude than Wither the Seed would not automatically mean it is more powerful in its effects against the vallorn. The ritual text also mentions an "arc of mithril" that is somehow connected to the ritual, although there are no further details in the text itself. It is possible this "arc" empowers or otherwise interacts with the curse in a way that is not detailed in the documents the Thule provided.

The original ritual text provided by the Thule is quite baroque, in comparison to Imperial ritual texts, consisting of several individual scrolls. Part of the ritual text concerned a particularly Thule-oriented view of history, but for completeness this was included when the ritual was distributed to centres of Imperial arcane lore.

Common Elements

The original ritual text uses invocations of the Dragons of Otkodov in a fashion that Imperial citizens might find unsettlingly close to idolatry. As such, they are unlikely to be appropriate for Imperial magicians casting the ritual.

As with Wither the Seed, a map of the target territory is a common focus for this ritual, or a collection of items representing the fertility and "life" of the area (bundles of flowers, fur, bones, or depictions of the animals that live there, crafted items symbolic of the inhabitants joie de vivre and so on). These articles are usually destroyed or marred during the performance of the ritual. It is generally accompanied by slow, sonorous music and quiet incantations. Likewise dust and ashes may be scattered over an area, and are often used to obscure or occlude any map or symbols of the target territory. The entire ritual tends to have a feeling of inevitability or slow decline about it; for all its power this is a subtle and insidious curse.

The ritual often involves the evocation of the Yoorn rune, which represents Endings, although Kyrop, the rune of Weakness, might also be appropriate, as might the rune of Hunger. The eternal Kaela is sometimes evoked due to her connection with entropy and slow decline.

Further Reading

• The original ritual text scrolls received from the Thule are available as a pdf - File:Arc of Sküld.pdf. How reliable the claims in this document are is unclear; the scrolls appear to be a copy of an existing scroll but the origin of the historical details here cannot be authenticated.