Unending Cascade of Blood's Fire

Rules

Performing the Ritual

Performing this ritual takes at least 2 minutes of roleplaying. This ritual targets a character, who must be present throughout. The target character must have the magician skill.

This ritual is an enchantment. A target may only be under one enchantment effect at a time.

Effects

The target gains the ability to call venom five times following the rules for a heroic call. The call may be made with any implement with which they are proficient.

While the enchantment lasts, the target experiences a powerful roleplaying effect: they feel a strong desire to use magical venom against anything that startles or threatens them.

The effect lasts until the end of the next battle, skirmish or quest the character participates in; or until the end of the current event, whichever is sooner.

Additional Targets

This ritual can affect additional characters from the same coven. Each additional character increases the magnitude by 25. Additional characters must be present throughout.

Option

The ritualists may consume up to 20 measures of beggar's lye as part of the ritual. Every measure consumed in this way reduces the magnitude of the ritual by 1.

Description

This enchantment allows the target to scourge their enemies with venom. It can have a powerful demoralising effect on opponents, and gives a magician a potent ability to mark and then destroy their enemies. The Spring Eternal Arhallogen is known to offer magicians boons that enhance their ability to perform this ritual, encouraging them to use it to defend themselves and prove their superiority over their opponents through the use of that entity's favoured tool.

Common Elements

When performing this ritual, the coven often invokes poisonous creatures or plants. Some magicians, especially Suaq icewalkers and Navarr vates, anoint the skin or weapons of the target. using blood mixed with poisonous plants or the venom of spiders, scorpions or serpents to create a thick paste reminiscent of oil of blackthorn. Other magicians invoke forces of plague, sickness and fever as they work their magic, viewing the ritual as being more concerned with turning the body of the target against itself.

The performance of this ritual is often subdued. Few magicians can deny that the powers it deals with are insidious, and potentially fatal. There are few uses to which venom can be put that do not result in death, and while the poison itself may be subtle the end result is anything but.

Other elements might include the runes Rhyv, Naeve or Kyrop (often accompanied by the rune of dominion; the evocation of The Claw or The Drowned Man; a scene in which a potion is used against a rival; or images of serpents, spiders, scorpions, wasps hydra, wyverns. or even chimerae.