Drawing the Penumbral Veil

Rules

Performing the Ritual

Performing this ritual takes at least 10 minutes of roleplaying. During the ritual the casters must be in a strong Night 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 ritual is an enchantment. A target may only be under one enchantment effect at a time.

Effects

The ritual targets a single territory. At the completion of the ritual the target territory is sheltered by a shadowy penumbra that dissipates and blinds attempts to scry the territory or divine information about it with magic. Unless the divination or scyring ritual is performed with a magnitude at least equal to the magnitude of the veil, the only information it can gain is the presence of a Night enchantment and the magnitude of the effect.

Any scrying or divination ritual that attempts to penetrate the veil, or any ritual that attempts to actually remove it, must have a magnitude at least equal to the of the veil

Anyone traveling to the territory will find that the night sky appears strange and unfamiliar - the stars are not where they are expected to be, and the moon often seems closer, or further away. The more mana has been spent to create the veil, the more unfamiliar the night sky becomes. This may cause some consternation among the folk living in that territory.

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

Additional Magnitude

You may increase the magnitude of the ritual to create a more powerful veil.

Description

This ritual is a two-edged sword. It makes it very hard for enemy magicians to scry on events in the target territory, but it also attracts attention. What could the magicians be doing in that territory that is so important? The Freeborn magician Alcin i Guerra used to claim that he spent much of his spare time at Anvil weaving this ritual around random territories in the Empire to confuse and unsettle barbarian shamans. He made such extensive use of the ritual that it is still called Alcin's Celestial Confusion in some parts.

Common Elements

A common focus for this ritual is a map depicting the target territory. It is sometimes obscured during the casting, or even burnt at the completion. Sometimes the map is created from sand or painstakingly drawn with salt or coloured powders, so it can be obscured with a gesture by the ritualists. Another common element involves the use of shuttered or dark lanterns, or flickering candles, or dim lightstones which provide limited illumination and are passed from ritualist to ritualist around the central map focus, symbolizing the shifting of the stars that accompanies the ritual veil.

The rune Wyr is commonly used during this ritual, and the constellation of The Wanderer is often invoked.