Crimson Ward of Summer Stars

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 possess the battle mage skill.

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

Effects

The target character gains two additional ranks of endurance, but only while wearing mage armour.

They are also under a roleplaying effect; they feel confident in their personal prowess, and certain that their magic is a match for any challenge they may encounter.

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 5. Additional characters must be present throughout.

Description

This ritual, also known as the Thunder of the Stag's Heart and the Prism of the Glorious Soul empowers a magician to make greater use of their mage armour. The protective ability of the armour is enhanced, but the ritual achieves that by enhancing the aura of the wearer rather than the armour itself. Battle-magicians, especially Dawnish war-witches and Imperial orc warcasters make extensive use of this enchantment, preparing themselves for the dangers of the battlefield. Some mages feel that the ritual can lead to dangerous over-confidence in battle, or speculate it may magnify personality flaws with repeated use.

Common Elements

This ritual usually involves the magician and their mage amour. The armour is often donned as part of the performance, each piece accompanied by an invocation or marked with a rune or symbol. It is common for a coven of battle-magicians who have gained some knowledge of Summer rituals to perform this ritual together on their own coven, the morning before they take the field.

Another common element is marking key points on the body that correspond roughly to the locations where mage armour is worn (the brow, the shoulders, the forearms, the shins, the belly, the chest and the neck), or (especially for a vate) spilling a few drops of blood from those locations before donning the mage armour.

The rune Feresh is often used with this ritual, and evocations of The Stallion, of horses or bears, and especially of gryphons.