Quickening Cold Meat
Rules
Winter Magnitude 120
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 an Imperial army. The general responsible for the army (or the egregore if the general is not at Anvil) must be present throughout.
This ritual is an enchantment. A target may only be under one enchantment effect at a time.
Effects
This ritual draws a large number of dangerous spirits from the Winter realm to accompany a campaign army. These spirits inhabit and animate corpses to create flesh-hungry unliving husks that fight alongside the army. The presence of these supernatural horrors raises the strength of the campaign army by the equivalent of 1,000 additional soldiers. As with any enchantment on an army or navy, the additional army strength granted by this enchantment may be reduced by the orders issued by the general. While the effect is expressed as being equivalent to additional soldiers, this enchantment never reduces casualties suffered by the army.
While the enchantment is in place the general of the army experiences a roleplaying effect: You find it easy to see everything in terms of cost and benefit. The lives and needs of others, especially strangers, are meaningless if they get between you and your goals and what you consider to be best. You feel a powerful urge to ensure you and yours are safe, regardless of the cost to others.
The ritual draws on creatures from the Winter realm, which have been known to exert unpredictable influence those fighting alongside them, especially those with the draughir lineage. This might include lingering roleplaying effects or temporary hero points for the captains of military units supporting the enchanted army. Such effects are unpredictable; when they occur they are described in the appropriate Winds of War.
When the enchantment ends, the winter spirits become uncontrolled. Their reaction to being freed in this manner is unpredictable. They may simply return to the Winter realm, or they may run amok, or scatter into the wilds to form lairs from which to prey on the people of a territory. Whatever happens, if any of the spirits choose to remain in the mortal realm they are more likely to create a problem for Imperial heroes to deal with than they are to provide any valuable strategic benefits to the Empire.
The effect of the ritual lasts for a year (until the start of the Profound Decisions Empire event four events from now).
Additional Targets
This ritual can affect additional campaign armies in the same territory. Each additional campaign army increases the magnitude by 90.
Assurance
Given that the ritual calls spirits from the Winter realm, it uses the power of an eternal, in this case Wise Rangara. The assurance connected with the ritual was lost for several centuries but recently rediscovered. Shortly before the Winter Solstice 386YE it was confirmed by the Unfettered Mind that the ritual remains effective until the Archmage of Winter uses the power of plenipotentiary to formally ask for an audience with Wise Rangara during which they are able to explain to her satisfaction what lesson they believe the ritual was intended to teach.
Description
This ghastly ritual prises open a portal between the mortal realm and the Winter Realm and draws through a large number of incorporeal Winter spirits, sending them out to find and inhabit the corpses of the dead. The Winter spirits seek out remains that are intact enough to move and fight. This results in an unliving husk, bound by the magic of the ritual to serve as a soldier in an upcoming conflict.
These husks are under the nominal control of the general of the army they are attached to, but the general should not forget that they are still Winter spirits. No amount of binding can change their essential nature, and in the thick of battle they quickly Fall on their defeated enemies and decour them, or even occasionally attack wounded soldiers on their own side in the throes of overwhelming lust for blood and flesh. A sensible commander can keep the unliving under control provided their will is strong and their orders clear and unambiguous but there is always an element of risk.
The Winter spirits generally seek out nearby corpses, meaning that especially during an ongoing campaign it is common to see husks created from the bodies of Imperial soldiers and barbarian warriors who fell on nearby battlefields. They favour bodies that are intact enough to move and fight, although there is a theory that many other remains, too decayed or broken to attain mobility, are also inhabited for the duration of the enchantment. The spirits have some capability to repair remains when transforming them into a husk, and inhabited corpses stop rotting for the duration of the enchantment. They are hard to destroy; although they can be downed by wounds sufficient to kill a tough mortal they quickly recover and rise again. Unless they are executed or struck with a crippling blow, they will clamber to their feet until they are so badly mutilated the spirit is forced to depart the corpse. Even then, the incorporeal spirit remains bound by the magic of the ritual and will seek out another nearby body, and over the course of a day or so transform it into a new husk.
The unliving use weapons and armour, but they do not seem to be truly sapient. They may moan, but rarely speak and when they do it is invariably to gibber a nonsense phrase (although voice for the dead can grant speech to their host for a short time the results are generally quite horrific). The experience of fighting them can be quite demoralizing - especially where the magic has turned the bodies of former comrades into monstrous ghouls hungry for the flesh of their former allies.
Husks created through this ritual are unable to pass through the Sentinel Gate. As with creatures such as the shadow warriors bound by the Conclave of Trees and Shadow, the magic of the gate cannot transport the bound Winter spirits; the corpse appears, inert, at the other end and the Winter spirit departs whence it came (presumably).
The ritual is very hard to perform because it takes a great deal of energy to draw the spirits forth; once the gate is torn open a host of spirits will pour through, bound by the power of Winter to obey and fight for the chosen commander. Attempts to create a lower magnitude version of this ritual have proved frustratingly ineffective. It appears that even if the ritualists wish to create only a single unliving creature it is impossible to bring the magnitude much below a hundred. While the rite binds spirits quite effectively in great numbers, creating the initial conduit to draw forth Winter spirits is very hard indeed.
When this ritual ends, the winter spirits that animated the husks become uncontrolled. This will sometimes create a threat to the territory where the army was fighting. The scale of the threat will usually be confined and localised, rather than representing an immediately cataclysmic "undead apocalypse" scenario. More often, the spirits will scatter and create threats that might manifest at future events, or they will leave the mortal world in a spasm of short-lived violence. That's not to say that there might be a bigger response, depending on circumstances and the situation in the ongoing campaign. Regardless, the intent of the ritual is not to punish players for casting it, but to create a moral dilemma for the characters discussing whether its dangerous power should be used.
When the enchantment ends, the spirits do not automatically return to the Winter realm. Sometimes the corpses they inhabit drop where they stand, like broken marionettes, and the spirits seek out new hosts. Sometimes the husks shamble off into the wilderness, away from the army they previously supported, looking for easier prey. On rare occasions some of them turn on the soldiers they have been fighting beside, and seek to devour them. Regardless, when the ritual enchantment ends the Winter spirits remain behind until forcefully ejected from the mortal realm, usually by heroic intervention. Once the enchantment expires, the spirits' connection to the mortal realm becomes tenuous and if the bodies they are inhabiting are destroyed they will usually be drawn back to the Winter realm. Usually.
All in all, this ritual is not very popular and has been used extremely rarely, and is treated with a great deal of suspicion by nations that particularly honour the fallen. The prospect of it being performed in Kallavesa, where the heroes of Wintermark sleep, or in the Highborn Necropolis where many beloved champions of the Empire lie, and transforming the honoured dead into shambling, drooling, cannibalistic horrors fills folk of those nations with dread. Leaving aside the general disgust at the idea of mistreating the bodies of Imperial citizens (which is a major obstacle to its use in the Marches for example), there is also the matter of the dread experienced by soldiers serving alongside a legion of flesh-hungry shambling corpses possessed by alien spirits. The ritual also tends to leave large numbers of rotting corpses scattered around a battlefield, and when the enchantment ends the spirits remain behind to bedevil people across the territory.
While the Empire does not make much use of this ritual, its effects have been encountered on several occasions when fighting the Druj and occasionally the Thule, and both the necromantia of Axos and the magicians of the Sarcophan Delves are said to reinforce their own armies with tomb-hordes on the occasions when they skirmish with their neighbours.
History
In Spring of 378YE the Imperial Conclave passed a Declaration of Concord stating that this ritual has been known to contradict the funerary traditions of the deceased. This corrupting of a nation's traditions has led to symptoms manifesting upon the nation's egregore and the revealing of other, darker, entities. What that latter clause refers to is not public knowledge, but contributes to the caution with which the ritual is used.
During a parley that took place at the Summer Solstice 385YE between Wise Rangara and the Archmage Ematius of the Great Library of Ankarien, the eternal confirmed that despite a great deal of speculation, they were the one responsible for helping to create this ritual and provided access to the Winter spirits it calls forth. The Ancient One declined to provide any other details about this agreement. The assurance was finally uncovered by the Unfettered Mind, during their review of rituals drawing on the power of eternals in 386YE. Wise Rangara and her heralds have been approached since by magicians keen to know why she supports such a ritual, but in all cases the answer has been a philosophical shrug and the suggestion that Grandmother Winter intends it to be a teaching tool.
Attempts to convince Sorin, Kaela or the Thrice-cursed Court to provide a more palatable version of this ritual have so far met with no success. An ill-fated approach to a herald of Agramant indicated that Blood-on-the-Snow was more than happy to offer assistance but the creature "grinned in a most malevolent way that made me extremely nervous and so I curtailed our interview" to quote the magician involved who wishes to remain anonymous.
Common Elements
The ritual opens a portal to the Realm of Winter through which spirits pass, and binds them to seek out and inhabit nearby corpses. Resonances include invocations that open a conduit to Winter; exhortations to serve the chosen character; bindings that keep the husks from running amok; girding or crowning the target general, especially giving him or her a rod or staff of command worked from bone; the runes Hirmok and Yoorn, and the constellation The Drowned Man may all be appropriate elements to use in this ritual.