Unleash the Beasts Within
While Agramant is subject to the enmity of the Imperial Conclave, it is illegal to perform this ritual.
Rules
Winter Magnitude 13
Urizen Lore
This ritual is part of Urizen lore rather than Imperial Lore. Any Urizen character with the appropriate lore can master or perform this ritual. A character from another nation who mastered the ritual before it became part of Urizen lore may still perform it, but does so under the usual rules for performing a ritual learned from a ritual text.
Performing the Ritual
Performing this ritual takes at least 2 minutes of roleplaying. This ritual targets a military unit. The character who controls the target personal resource must be present throughout. The performance requires the invocation of Agramant by at least three of his commonly-known names.
This ritual is an enchantment. A target may only be under one enchantment effect at a time.
Effects
The military unit gains a significant bonus to its effectiveness when it is assigned to support a campaign army. This temporary bonus increases the effective fighting force of the unit by 60, the equivalent of 3 normal upgrades.
While it is under this enchantment, the character who controls the target resource experiences a roleplaying effect; You have a strong sense of your own entitlement; you should be free to do whatever you want in pursuit of your goals. Those who allow fear of the law, or the bonds of tradition, to prevent them from achieving their ambitions are fools. Those who actively try to prevent you realising your destiny should be destroyed utterly, and without mercy.
The effect lasts until the start of the next Profound Decisions Empire event. If the owner of the resource does not attend the next event, then the additional production provided by the resource is still added to that character's inventory. If the military unit does not support an army during the next downtime, the ritual has no effect.
Assurance
This ritual permanently losing power if every military unit in the Empire is ever disbanded.
Description
The warriors who are part of a warband enchanted with this ritual find it easy to inflict pain, and experience heightened aggression. The more bloodthirsty they are, the more the magic drawn from Agramant encourages them and strengthens them. It encourages the members of the a warband to deal with problems directly, with violence, and their willingness to fight without any restraint - to "get stuck in" - will take many opponents by surprise. The effect of the magic is very clearly turned outwards; those effected will rarely mourn a comrade who dies fighting but they will not turn on each other. They are united in their desire to kill, to take what they deserve, and to fulfil their destiny at the expense of their enemies.
Unleash the Beasts Within entered Urizen lore shortly before the Winter Solstice 384YE, as part of a book entitled Ceremonies of the Black Drop Society. The attendants of the Great Library were deeply uncomfortable with the rituals in that book and their presence among Urizen lore, more due to their illegal nature than any sentimental concerns about their origin. They were apparently all submitted at the same time as Treacher's Quill, but Phaleron itself intervened to delay their appearance in lore while it pondered how best to respond. In the end it decided to do the only reasonable thing; present the rituals to the Urizen as part of their lore as agreed when the lore was established. The Celestial Library does not enjoy causing trouble for its Urizeni allies, but the Gift of Knowledge is available to every Imperial citizen; it cannot pick and choose who can contribute rituals via the ritual.
The Childer of the Black Drop were a sorcerous cabal of magicians well-versed in Winter lore who were committed to collecting every scrap of lore they could find about the eternal Agramant. While they claimed to be seeking some kind of weakness that could be exploited to protect the Empire completely from his depredations, all thirteen members were - perhaps inevitably - declared sorcerers by the Imperial Conclave in Summer 354YE. In pursuit of their quest they had apparently used magic in very unwise ways - mastering rituals that drew on the power of Blood-on-the-Snow to "better understand his dark temptations". They were unrepentant, and eight of their members were killed in the resulting fracas. Five of them - Johann Perivale von Sarvos, Wilhelm Ecaso di Temeschwar, Padik Tarvin of Tassato Mestra, Tomazi duPain de Holberg, and Jodeya Watiker di Tassato Mestra - were unaccounted for. Shortly before the Summer Solstice 384YE, the bodies of four of the remaining members were discovered in a cottage in the Vardstein Vale. The final surviving Child of the Black Drop - Jodeya Watiker di Tassato Mestra was only recently accounted for, and there is speculation that she may have been responsible for using Gift of Knowledge to place this wicked ritual into Urizen lore.
Common Elements
The ritual fills a fighting force with both cruelty and bloodlust. Ritual performances often include the evocation of the rune of hunger or the constellation of The Claw. Blood is often shed during this ritual, often mixed with a cup or bowl of water or spirits and drunk by the targets. Sometimes the ritual involves the targets cutting themselves with a blade and swearing oaths to kill any who would stand in their way. There are often invocations of wolves or other predatory animals, especially dire beasts and occasionally manticores during the performance of Unleash the Beasts Within.