Withering Touch of Frost

Rules

Performing the Ritual

Performing this ritual takes at least 2 minutes of roleplaying. At the end of the ritual one of the contributors is chosen to deliver the curse with a pronouncement of doom.

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

Effects

This ritual creates a curse that is delivered to a target with a pronouncement of doom: one contributor is chosen to deliver the curse, and they must do so within fifteen minutes or it falls on their own head.

While under the curse, the target experiences a roleplaying effect; they feel chilly almost all the time, unless they are actively warming themselves at a flame.

While under the curse the target loses a quarter of any production that would have been provided by a farm, forest, or herb garden resource.

The additional production provided by an enchantment such as Rampant Growth or Gathering the Harvest is not affected by this curse.

The effect of the ritual lasts for a year (until the start of the Profound Decisions Empire event four events from now).

Removing the Curse

The curse can be removed by certain powerful creatures or items.

Description

This curse focuses the withering energies of the Winter realm onto a target, and through them onto their resources. Plants wither and die, or are attacked by parasites. It makes little difference if the target abandons their farm, forest, or herb garden - within a few days the same unnatural decay begins to overwhelm any new resource of that type.

Several eternals of Winter are known to have the power to remove this curse - and to deliver their own variants of it - especially Kaela. Unfortunately, she is much more inclined to encourage the curse than to discourage the supernatural famine it causes; it generally requires a great deal of effort to encourage her to assist. Agramant also has the ability to remove this curse, but generally requires unspeakable acts of blood and slaughter before he is prepared to do so. By contrast, some eternals of Spring (notably Yaw'nagrah) are more than happy to help remove the effect... but this rarely leaves the resource in question any more productive.

Common Elements

As with many curses, this ritual often involves a recitation of the grievances against the target; casting aside food or forest resources, invoking the rune Naeve, or calling on the names of eternals such as Kaela or Llofir.