Path of Blood
The Path of Conjuring
The Path of Corruption
The Path of Elemental Mastery
The Lure of Flames
The Movement of the Mind
The Path of Technomancy
The Path of Weather Mastery

Thaumaturgy Rituals

Level One
Level Two
Level Three
Level Four
Level Five

Thaumaturgy has certain limitations:

•  Thaumaturgy relies upon a thaumaturge speaking magical phrases and making specific gestures. Use of blood magic is easy to notice, and the methods used to activate such powers are rarely subtle.
• All Thaumaturgy paths and rituals are considered Mental powers, and as such, cannot be used during Celerity rounds.
• Specific Thaumaturgy powers that are resisted with your target’s Physical attribute can be repeatedly used against a target. This is an exception to the rule that prohibits a character from using a Mental power on the same target immediately after failing. Powers that are resisted with the target’s Mental attribute cannot be attempted repeatedly. You must wait 10 minutes before retrying such a power, as per the standard rule.

Thaumaturgy Test Pool:

The Thaumaturgy wielder uses her Mental attribute + Occult versus the target’s Mental attribute + Willpower. Powers that specifically target an individual’s Physical attribute, such as Flame Bolt and Force Bolt, are resisted using the target’s Physical attribute + Dodge.

Thaumaturgy consists of multiple paths of study and expands into several individual rituals. To purchase a path of Thaumaturgy and Thaumaturgic rituals, a character must possess the specific merit that allows her to do so, such as the Thaumaturgic Training merit, or a similar clan-specific merit. For more information on these specific merits, see Chapter Five: Merits and Flaws, page 253.

Primary Path: The first path of Thaumaturgy that a character masters to the 2nd dot is considered her primary path of study. To improve any other path of Thaumaturgy, she must first improve her capabilities in her primary path. A character can never become more skilled in other paths of Thaumaturgy than she is in her primary path of study; she cannot learn the 3rd dot of another path until after she has learned the 3rd dot of her primary path, and so forth.

Characters of clans with a specific in-clan path of Thaumaturgy may choose another path as their primary path, as long as they meet the requirements as stated above.

Thaumaturgical Rituals:
Thaumaturgy does not have elder powers or techniques. Instead, practitioners of this art gain access to mystical rituals. Thaumaturgy rituals are formulaic and require a significant amount of time, as well as specialized implements and ingredients. You cannot buy a specific Thaumaturgy ritual until you have purchased the appropriate dot of Thaumaturgy to support that ritual. Learning a level 4 ritual requires you to possess 4 dots in your primary path of Thaumaturgy.

The cost to purchase a ritual is equal to double the ritual’s level. Therefore, a level 3 ritual costs 6 XP to purchase.

A Thaumaturge cannot learn more thaumaturgical rituals than the dots of Thaumaturgy she currently possesses. For example, Regent Insolens possesses 4 dots in Thaumaturgy: Path of Blood (his primary path), 3 dots in Thaumaturgy: Path of Conjuring, and 2 dots in Thaumaturgy: The Lure of Flames, and thus may learn up to nine Thaumaturgy rituals.

• A Taste for Blood

Initiates in the Path of Blood are taught to quantify and evaluate unique elements present in a drop of vampiric vitae. By tasting a drop of your target’s blood, you can determine important information about her nature.

System: Ingest a drop of your target’s blood and use your simple action to discern information about the target. A Taste for Blood requires you to physically ingest the vitae that you test, and, therefore, consumes the sample of blood. This power can be dangerous if the blood is tainted with disease or other effects. Fortunately, the magical nature of A Taste for Blood shields the thaumaturge from being bound by the blood ingested when activating this power.

A Taste for Blood provides all of the following information:

• Medical information, such as blood type and state of health
• How much blood is currently in the subject’s system
• What type of creature the blood came from. If the creature is not a mortal, ghoul, or vampire, the Storyteller may require a Lore challenge to identify the exact creature type.
• If the subject is a vampire, the thaumaturge may also
  determine:
  •  The subject’s generation
  • Whether the subject has ever committed diablerie
  • How recently the subject has fed

Focus [Perception]:

You can gauge the strength of any blood bonds or partial blood bonds the target has, including the bonds created by participating in the Vaulderie. You do not know to whom the subject is bound, nor whether the bonds are mutual, but you do know the number and severity of the bonds.

•• Blood Rage

You can mystically manipulate another vampire’s blood while it is still within her system. A vampire affected by Blood Rage feels a rush, much like a surge of adrenaline, and automatically realizes she has been affected by a power.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to make an opposed challenge using your Mental attribute + Occult versus the target’s Mental attribute + Willpower. The target must be within one step of you. If you succeed, the target must spend a single point of Blood in any fashion you wish. This expenditure can exceed the limits of Generation. By using this power, you can force a vampire or ghoul to spend Blood in one of the following manners:

• Increase her Physical attribute
• Activate a discipline power, such as Rapidity
• Heal wounds
• Awaken from torpor
• Sweat blood through her pores

Blood Rage cannot be used to force the target to activate a power that requires her to spend an action, unless the target willingly uses that action. For example, you might force your target to spend 1 Blood to activate Tenebrous Form, but the target does not actually transform unless she chooses to spend the required action.

Focus [Perception]:
You must be within 10 steps of your target in order to activate Blood Rage, as opposed to the standard one step.

••• Blood of Potency

You have mastered your vitae to the point that you can command it to temporarily thicken, causing your vampiric form to manifest a more potent generation.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your simple action to activate Blood of Potency. This power lasts for the next hour. While Blood of Potency is active, your Blood pool increases to half again its normal size (rounded up). In addition, you can spend 2 additional points of Blood per turn while the power is active. You are considered to be three generations lower than normal for the purpose of waking another vampire from torpor. You can use Blood of Potency once per night. Once this power ends, any Blood you contain over your natural Blood pool dilutes, leaving you at your regular Blood pool maximum.

If you are diablerised during this time, or if you Embrace childer, your real generation is used to determine the results for those actions, not your virtual generation.

Focus [Intelligence]:
You can utilize Blood of Potency twice in the course of a single evening.

•••• Theft of Vitae

One of the basic principles of sympathetic magic is the concept that like is attracted to like. By mystically attuning the vitae in your body into a thaumaturgical magnet, you can literally siphon blood from your target, causing it to cascade out of your enemy’s pores and into your hand, to be absorbed instantly into the caster’s system.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to make an opposed challenge using your Mental attribute + Occult versus the target’s Mental attribute + Willpower, targeting a character within 25 steps of you. If you succeed, you can mystically draw forth 3 points of Blood from your victim.

This blood bursts through your victim’s pores, soaring through the air into your hand, and is then mystically absorbed into your own flesh. Blood stolen in this fashion has all of its normal properties — ingesting blood from a vampire creates a blood bond, poisoned blood still sickens you, diseased blood passes on its infection, and so on. Needless to say, this rather unsettling power is considered a breach of the Masquerade when used openly.

Exceptional Success: You steal 4 points of Blood from your target, rather than 3.

Focus [Intelligence]:
When you use Theft of Vitae to steal blood from a vampire, your power neutralizes the blood to a certain degree. Blood drawn with this power cannot induce a blood bond in you, sicken you, or carry diseases. Supernatural powers affecting vampire vitae, such as Vicissitude’s Acid Blood, remain in effect.

• Summon the Simple Form

Initiates in the Path of Conjuring have the ability to create an object formed from a single material. These items cannot have moving parts and lack any complex mechanisms. With this power, you can conjure a lump of stone, a wooden stake, or a bar of iron.

System: By expending a standard action and 1 point of Blood, you can conjure any inanimate item that a normal person can hold with one hand. Items created with this power must be of simple design and cannot contain electronics or moving parts. Objects created by Summon the Simple Form always appear in your hand. You cannot conjure living or undead creatures. After you have conjured an item with this power, you must spend 1 point of Blood each minute you wish to keep the object in existence. The first minute does not require an additional expenditure of Blood. If you do not spend this Blood, the object vanishes.

Focus [Intelligence]:
Summon the Simple Form can be invoked with a simple action rather than a standard action.

•• Magic of the Smith

You have the ability to conjure any complex object made of mixed materials and moving parts of which you have a fundamental understanding.

System: By expending 1 Blood and concentrating for five full turns, taking no other action except movement, you can create a complex object with Magic of the Smith. So long as you are familiar with the desired object’s design and have the appropriate skills, you can create items with moving parts or electronic components. With the proper skills, you can create a gun, a cell phone, a laptop, a battery, a small engine, or other such useful items. These items are limited in size; a normal person must be able to hold it in one hand. Objects created by Magic of the Smith always appear in your hand.

Objects created by Magic of the Smith may require outside assistance to function. A cell phone needs a service provider (or a skilled hacker) before it can make a call, and most electronic items will need electricity to function. Objects created with Magic of the Smith are assumed to have anything they need to function normally. For example, a conjured gun is created with a full clip of ammunition, and a conjured cell phone’s battery has a full charge. After you have conjured an item using this power, you must spend 1 point of Blood each minute to keep the object in existence. The first minute does not require an additional expenditure of Blood. If you do not pay this cost, the object vanishes.

This power can be used to create a normal piece of equipment. For more information, see the equipment rules in Chapter Thirteen: Influences and Equipment, page 515.

Focus [Intelligence]:
Magic of the Smith can be used to create an object up to 10 cubic feet in size. If used to create an object too large for you to hold, the object appears directly in front of you, touching your outstretched hand.

••• Permanency

Objects that you create are real and permanent, requiring no further expenditure of Blood in order stay in existence.

System: After creating an object using Summon the Simple Form or Magic of the Smith, you can spend 1 Blood and use a simple action to make that item permanent. The object does not disappear unless banished with a power such as Reverse Conjuration.

Focus [Perception]:
When you create an item using Summon the Simple Form or Magic of the Smith, you can choose to make the item permanent without the need to spend Blood or use an action.

•••• Reverse Conjuration

You can destroy conjured items – either those created by you, or by another thaumaturge – dissipating them into the magic void from which they come.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to attempt to dispel an item conjured by Path of Conjuring. You can banish any of your own creations without a challenge. To banish an item created by another thaumaturge, you must make a static challenge using your Mental attribute + Occult against a difficulty equal to the creator’s Mental attribute + Occult. You can target any item that you can see or sense with this power, but you have no special way of telling a conjured item from a natural one.

You can use Reverse Conjuration to banish objects or creatures summoned by other Thaumaturgical paths, such as the elementals summoned by the Path of Elemental Mastery. Banishing an elemental requires you to best it in an opposed challenge using the Thaumaturgy test pool.

Focus [Perception]:
You can use a simple action to determine if an object within your line of sight is natural or conjured. After determining if an object is conjured or natural, you can spend 1 Blood and use a standard action to attempt to dispel it, as stated in the rules above.

• Contradict

You have the power to twist your target’s cognitive processes and perceptions, forcing her to reverse her last decision into something darker and destructive.

System: Spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge using the Thaumaturgy test pool to use Contradict. If you succeed, the action or decision your target is about to undertake becomes its negative, far darker opposite. Your target determines the details of this decision, and she must roleplay it, although the Storyteller may intervene and provide specific instruction. You cannot predict the exact results of Contradict in advance, but it always takes the form of a more negative action than the subject had originally intended to perform. You can use Contradict on any target within your line of sight. Contradict cannot be used in combat nor to effect actions that are mainly physical or reflexive.

Exceptional Success:
This use of Contradict is subtle, and cannot be detected with an Awareness challenge. This is an exception to the rule that allows Awareness to detect the use of supernatural powers.

Focus [Wits]:
Opponents receive a -5 penalty to Awareness challenges to discover your uses of Contradict.

•• Subvert

Subvert pushes your victim to surrender to dark temptations that her Morality might normally discourage her from indulging under normal circumstances.

System: When you witness another character taking an action that indulges a desire or resisting the temptation to act on her desires, you can spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge to enact Subvert. If you succeed, the subject’s actions change, and she succumbs to her desires. Subvert influences all of a subject’s actions with varying degrees of subtlety. Should another opportunity arise to succumb to her desires, the victim must expend a point of Willpower to overcome this effect for five minutes Subvert lasts for one hour.

Exceptional Success:
Your Subvert lasts for the rest of the night.

Focus [Wits]:
Characters under the effect of your Subvert suffer a -2 penalty to resist your use of other Path of Corruption powers.

••• Dissociate

You have the ability to metaphorically cut into the heart of your victim and dissociate her emotional bond with others, leaving her a shell of her former self. Your victim becomes withdrawn from passionate lovers and bitter enemies alike.

System: Spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge using the Thaumaturgy test pool to enact Dissociate. If you succeed, the victim of this power becomes withdrawn, suspicious, and emotionally distant. For the next hour, your target suffers a -3 penalty to Social challenges in which she must interact in a friendly or pleasant way. This penalty does not apply to defensive test pools.

All of the victim’s blood bonds lower by one step for one hour. If you use this power on a character who has participated in the Vaulderie or a similar ritual, her vinculum rating reduces by one step for the duration of the effect. A victim may relent to this power, but if she does so in the hope of temporarily reversing bonds of blood, she must spend 1 Willpower to relent. Similarly, you must spend a point of Willpower to use this power on yourself if you hope to overcome a blood bond.

Exceptional Success:
The effects of Dissociate last for the rest of the night.

Focus [Intelligence]:
Blood bonds and vinculum ratings reduce to zero for the next hour.

•••• Addiction

You have the power to trigger an uncontrollable hunger in your victim, creating a physical and psychological dependence that drives all of her thoughts and motivations. This addiction must have a specific focus, such as a sensation, substance, or specific action normally considered taboo.

System: If you wish to addict a subject to a sensation, substance, or action, she must first encounter it. The thaumaturge then spends a Blood, uses her standard action, and makes an opposed challenge to enact Addiction. If you succeed, the victim gains one Compulsion or Obsession derangement for the rest of the night; you determine that derangement’s trigger, based on your manner of temptation. If a character is subjected to a second use of this power, the new effects overwrite the older application. For more information on Derangements, see Chapter Five: Merits and Flaws, page 266.

No individual can become addicted to something that causes damage (normal or aggravated) through the use of this power.

Exceptional Success:
The Addiction inflicted by this power lasts for two game
sessions or one month, whichever is longer.

Focus [Intelligence]:
Targets affected by your Addiction gain a Derangement trait. Additionally, your addictions cannot be overwritten by other thaumaturges, unless the other thaumaturge is also Intelligence-focused. Other uses of this power simply fail
when targeting a subject you have already Addicted.

• Elemental Strength

By drawing on the timeless strength and endurance of the surrounding earth and stone, you can force your body to take one of those properties for a short period of time.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your simple action to activate Elemental Strength. For the next five minutes, you gain either the Strength or Stamina focus (your choice). You can only benefit from one application of Elemental Strength at any given time.

Focus [Intelligence]:
While Elemental Strength is active, you receive a +2 bonus to grappling challenges.

•• Wooden Tongues

You have the ability to listen to the wild spirits that live inside of an inanimate object. Such spirits are often pedantic and concerned only with that which interests them. If you can convince them to pay attention, you can learn a good deal of information about activities that the spirit has witnessed. Keep in mind that the experiences that interest you might not interest a coffee maker.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to activate Wooden Tongues. For the next five minutes, you have the ability to communicate with the spirits that live inside everyday objects and can bid them to communicate with you. The nature of the object determines the personality of the spirit; a knife will have a sharp personality, whereas a coffee maker might be very excited.

A spirit will answer basic questions truthfully, but unfamiliar concepts may confuse it. You can reasonably expect answers to the following types of questions:

• What is your function?
• Has anything interesting happened around you?
• What did the person who ran by moments ago look like?
• Has anyone been fighting here recently?

Inanimate objects accessed by this power cannot detect characters hidden by supernatural powers.

Focus [Perception]:
Your use of Wooden Tongues lasts for an hour, rather than five minutes. Additionally, you can overhear the mumbled conversations of inanimate objects all around you, which provides warning when another individual approaches.

As long as you are able to hear, you are aware of anyone who comes within five steps of you. Even if you cannot directly see a character, you can approximate her location by listening to the ambient chatter surrounding you. This effect cannot be used to detect characters hidden by supernatural powers.

••• Animate the Unmoving

You have the power to animate objects and command them for a limited time to act according to your wishes. These objects bend and move as commanded, but their functions are limited by their forms.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to animate an object within your line of sight. The object gains limited mobility and obeys your commands to the best of its ability for the next hour. You can give those objects simple commands, such as “Chase that man,” or “Attack anyone who enters.” Objects aren’t very smart and have extremely limited reasoning. Animated objects cannot use weapons or benefit from weapon qualities. A command stating “Bringme the gun when you see a red car drive past outside,” could result in an extremely confused bar stool.

You have the ability to animate and simultaneously control a number of objects equal to your dots of the Occult skill, but each object must be animated separately. They remain animated as long as they are within your line of sight, for up to an hour.

Treat objects animated by this power as 2-point Stock NPCs. Animated objects with wheels or legs move at normal speeds. Objects without wheels or legs move at a rate of one step per action. Animated objects cannot be targeted by Mental and Social powers, but cannot attack anyone the thaumaturge cannot attack herself. For example, if the thaumaturge is successfully affected by the Presence power Entrancement, her animations are unable to attack the vampire who entranced their master.

Focus [Perception]:
The duration of your ability to animate an object extends to the end of the evening. Additionally, you have a vague idea of what your animations are doing and what is going on within two steps of each animation. You might know that someone is attacking your animated barstool with a hatchet, but you cannot tell exactly who is swinging the axe.

•••• Elemental Form

Ancient legends describe wizards with the ability to transfigure their shapes into the form of ordinary objects. You have the power to transform your body into any inanimate object with a mass roughly equal to your own.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to assume the shape and form of any object that is of a size roughly equal to your own. You retain your senses, but are unable to move under your own power. The object you become functions exactly like a real object of its type — becoming a television means you can be plugged in and turned on, with no harm inflicted to you. This power lasts for the remainder of the night.

You do not have access to disciplines while in this form. While using Elemental Form, your attributes and health levels remain the same, but you may be more difficult or easier to harm at the Storyteller’s discretion. If you turn yourself into a glass vase, a blow from a hammer might inflict 10 points of normal damage instead of the standard 1. Conversely, if you turn yourself into a boulder, you’re probably immune to a dagger-wielding Toreador’s attack. Transforming into an inanimate object provides no protection against Mental and Social powers.

Characters using Elemental Form have no mystic ability to remain cohesive. If an individual transforms into dust, air, or water, she will probably be dispersed and die within a few turns.

Elemental Form is a transformative power and cannot be combined with other transformative powers. You can end this transformation at any time by expending a simple action.

Focus [Intelligence]:
When you assume Elemental Form, you can become an object as small as half of your normal size, or as large as twice your normal size.

• Hand of Flame

Initiates of the Lure of Flames learn to summon forth a shimmering, dancing flame over their hand (or hands). This fire projects a bright light and provides you with a terrifying weapon against other vampires.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to conjure forth a mystical fire that encases your hand (or hands). Hand of Flame casts light and allows you to strike with your hand to burn your opponents, causing aggravated damage. You can even use it in conjunction with other powers like Celerity and Potence, becoming a formidable combatant.

Once cast, the Hand of Flame remains until you expend a simple action to snuff it out. You suffer no damage or inconvenience from the Hand of Flame; indeed, you can even wear gloves or other clothing, which remain unaffected by the fire. However, should you cause something else to catch fire, those secondary flames can hurt you.

Focus [Wits]:
You summon forth your Hand of Flame at any time without requiring the expenditure of an action. Additionally, you are highly trained to be more efficient when fighting with flame in hand-to-hand combat. When using Hand of Flame in combat, you receive a +1 bonus to your Brawl attack test pool.

•• Flame Bolt

You have the power to summon a bolt of flame in the palm of your hand and then launch it at an enemy. The flaming blast shimmers through the air to strike your target with a devastating explosive blast.

System: Spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge to cast a Flame Bolt at an enemy within 20 steps of your location. A successful Flame Bolt inflicts 2 points of aggravated fire damage when it strikes, then snuffs out in a puff of mystic fire. Should your Flame Bolt strike a flammable target, such as a pile of hay or papers, but not clothing worn by someone, the target catches fire.

Exceptional Success:
Your Flame Bolt does an additional point of aggravated damage, for a total of 3 aggravated damage on each successful strike.

Focus [Wits]:
You do not need to spend Blood to use Flame Bolt, though you must still use your standard action.

••• Pillar of Fire

With a gesture, you can summon a mighty pillar of intense flames at a location or target of your choosing.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to conjure forth a pillar of flame that is approximately six feet in diameter, and of equal height. You must place this Pillar of Fire within 20 steps of your location. Anyone but you who stands within or passes through this diameter takes 2 points of aggravated damage. You are immune to the damage from your Pillar of Fire, but should you cause something else to catch fire, those secondary flames can hurt you.

If directed at a victim, the fire shoots up underneath the subject. You must best your target in an opposed challenge using your Mental attribute + Occult versus the target’s Physical attribute + Dodge. If you succeed, your target takes 2 points of aggravated damage, otherwise she dodges out of the way before the pillar is fully formed. The normal effect of the Dodge ability doesn’t reduce damage from this attack.

Pillar of Fire causes damage to characters in its area of effect at the end of their everyman initiative. If a target remains within the Pillar of Fire for more than one turn, she continues to take its damage at the end of her everyman initiative until she leaves its area of effect.

Damage from Pillar of Fire doesn’t stack with itself or with other area-effect powers. If you have more than one such power affecting the same area, only the highest damage effect applies.

The column of fire remains for five minutes, until you decide to extinguish it by expending a simple action, fall into torpor, or die.

Focus [Intelligence]:
Anyone standing in or passing through your Pillar of Fire takes 3 points of aggravated damage each turn.

•••• Engulf

With a gesture, you can mystically scorch a target, forcing your victim to spontaneously burst into flames. This agonizing fire continues to burn until the victim manages to take specific actions to extinguish it.

System: Spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge to Engulf a target within 20 steps of your location. If you succeed, the target bursts into flames, suffering 2 points of aggravated damage. Further, the victim is lit on fire, taking 2 additional points of aggravated damage at the end of each successive turn until the victim uses two actions (simple or standard) to smother the flame. Anything the victim touches while on fire has the potential to likewise catch fire, at the discretion of the Storyteller.

You can Engulf a target multiple times in successive turns, causing cumulative damage as the victim repeatedly combusts. However, no matter how many times a victim suffers the effects of individual uses of Engulf, she still only takes 2 points of aggravated damage from fire on successive turns.

Exceptional Success:
Your use of Engulf does an extra level of aggravated damage, for a total of 3 points of aggravated damage per strike. An exceptional success does not increase the damage your target takes from burning on subsequent rounds.

Focus [Wits]:
It requires three actions (standard or simple) to smother the flames caused by Engulf.

• Force Bolt

Initiates of the Movement of the Mind have the ability to project a bolt of pure telekinetic force, stunning or knocking over objects or opponents.

System: Spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge to project a bolt of pure telekinetic force at any target within 20 steps of you. A successful strike against a creature or person knocks the victim up to five steps in a direction of your choosing. A successful strike against an object can affect an item no more than 200 pounds in weight. If the object is free-standing, you can push it five steps in any direction. An object in someone’s grasp can be knocked out of the individual’s possession, if you defeat the holder in an opposed challenge while targeting the item instead of the individual.

Exceptional Success:
Your Force Bolt strikes your opponent in vulnerable areas, stunning her. The victim loses her next standard action.

Focus [Wits]:
In addition to the standard effect of Force Bolt, a person or creature takes 2 points of normal damage from the impact. The knockback caused by this power sends victims or items flying six steps, rather than five.

•• Manipulate

You have learned to control your telekinetic abilities and now can lift and manipulate a small object, within your line of sight, with the same agility as though you were physically lifting it.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to manipulate an object weighing up to 50 pounds in weight. Objects hefted with this power can move at your normal walking speed, and they must be something a normal person could lift with both hands. You can move or use the object in any fashion, as though you were using your hands. Thus, you can pick something up, push a button, or fire a gun by using this power.

After activating Manipulate, you can remotely control a targeted object for five minutes or until you lose line of sight. Remotely using an object takes your full concentration and requires you to spend a standard action. Additionally, the difficulty of fine control at range adds a -3 penalty to all test pools.

Manipulate cannot target objects possessed by other characters unless they are unconscious or otherwise immobilized.

Focus [Perception]:
You can Manipulate inanimate objects up to 100 pounds in weight. You are so adept at utilizing Manipulate that you do not suffer the standard -3 penalty when remotely using an object.

••• Flight

You have learned to project your telekinetic strength inward, unfettering you from the constraints of gravity to fly through the air.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to activate Flight. For the next five minutes, you can fly at normal speeds. While flying, you can carry up to 10 pounds of equipment for each dot of Movement of the Mind you possess.

Focus [Perception]:
If you use both your simple and standard actions to move, you can fly up to nine steps instead of the standard six steps

•••• Repulse

You have mastered the ability to project a telekinetic wave of potent force from your body, which violently repulses people (threatening enemies and allies alike) and small objects away from you.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to Repulse anything under 500 pounds that is currently within five steps of your location. Any character within five steps of you whose Physical attribute is lower than your Mental attribute is knocked six steps back, moving directly away from you.

Characters with a Physical attribute equal to or higher than your Mental attribute are knocked back three steps. Objects weighing up to 200 pounds are also knocked back six steps. Objects weighing up to 500 pounds are knocked back three steps. Objects greater than 500 pounds are not affected.

Characters who are grappling or biting you automatically lose their grip and are knocked back. Characters whose trajectory causes them to bounce off solid objects or characters struck by flying debris take 1 point of normal damage from this use of Repulse.

You cannot pick and choose targets when using Repulse. All characters within range are affected equally.

Focus [Wits]:
You knock your target back six steps no matter how high her Physical attribute is.

• Analyse

Initiates of the Path of Technology learn to tap into the fundamental truth behind a device. With a touch, you can project your perceptions into a device and glean an understanding of its purpose, the principles of its technology, and how to operate it. Analyse does not grant permanent knowledge, only a momentary
flash of insight, which fades within minutes.

System: To activate Analyse, you must touch a technological device, spend 1 Blood, and use your standard action. Thereafter, you project your consciousness into the device, granting you temporary, but comprehensive, understanding of its purpose, the principles of its functioning, and its means of operation. In this manner, you can touch a computer and learn its specifications, touch an alarm and know under what conditions it will sound, or touch a car and determine its condition, top speed, and so forth.

All but the basic knowledge gained through the use of Analyse fades at sunrise, unless the thaumaturge has perfect recall or enhanced memory. A thaumaturge can preserve such information, if she takes the time and effort to write it all down.

Focus [Intelligence]:
Analyze can also be used to understand a digital
technological innovation, allowing you to read software and
electronic files.

For example, you can read the entire file
contained on a flash drive, know all of the software installed
on a computer, or peruse a cell phone’s recent caller list —
all without turning the devices on.

•• Burnout

You have the power to destroy any electronic device within your sight by forcing the power supply, either internal or external, to
surge and burn out the circuits.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to use Burnout on any electronic device within your line of sight. The targeted device is destroyed beyond hope of repair. Burnout cannot be used to directly injure an individual, although the sudden destruction of a car’s fuel injection control chip can certainly do so at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Focus [Wits]:
Burnout can be used to specifically target electronic data storage and erase it beyond any hope of mundane recovery. If you cause this effect, there is no sign that the destruction was anything other than simple device failure.

••• Encrypt/Decrypt

You have the ability to protect or access electronic devices and
media files.

System: With a single touch, you may Encrypt any device, mystically scrambling its controls so that it only works for you. In addition, you can also protect any electronic media file you access, securing the file so that it cannot be opened by anyone but you. You also have the ability to reverse this power and Decrypt scrambled or protected systems so that you can access them despite their protection protocols.

Characters attempting to access something you have encrypted suffer a penalty to their test pool equal to the number of dots you possess of the Computers skill. Anyone who attempts to access the device using Path of Technomancy must make an opposed challenge using the Technomancy test pool. Note that this challenge is not necessary if the hostile technomancer simply wishes to destroy the device.

Focus [Intelligence]:
Cracking your Encryption with mundane equipment is impossible. Only another technomancer can successfully Decrypt your protocols. Further, technomancers suffer a penalty to their test pool equal to the number of dots you possess of the Computer skill when attempting to influence or read something you’ve encrypted.

•••• Remote Access

You have such an innate connection to technology that with but a brief glance, you can remotely access any electronic device and utilize it as though you were physically operating it.

System: Spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and target any electronic device within your line of sight. For the next hour, you can use your simple or standard action to interact with the object, as if you were accessing it normally, even if you are not within its normal range. You can enter data into your cell phone without taking it out of your pocket, read the text on a monitor that you can’t directly see, reset the alarm on someone else’s watch, or reprogram a computer without touching it.

Focus [Wits]:
You automatically bypass any mundane security on the device you’re targeting, but you may need to make a challenge to effect equipment secured by another technomancer. With this power, you can automatically access a computer, even if you do not know the passcode.

• Fog

Initiates of the Path of Weather Mastery can summon forth fog to blanket an area or landscape.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to summon fog. Over the next hour, fog will form over a large area, up to one mile in diameter for each dot of the Occult skill you possess. Anyone caught in this fog is unable to see more than five to 15 steps. The amount of naturally occurring moisture in the air determines this fog’s density.

Your Storyteller has final say over exactly how long it takes the fog to form and how aggressively it blocks vision, based on your location and current weather conditions. The fog lasts for one hour for each dot you possess of the Occult skill, unless you choose to end this power early. Once Fog ends, its effects slowly fade, evaporating over the next hour.

Focus [Perception]:
In addition to the standard use of Fog, you can spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to instantly fill an area up to the size of a large ballroom with a thick fog. If used outdoors, your fog extends 50 steps in every direction, with you at the centre.

Individuals in your instantly-created Fog cannot see more than three steps away. Characters wishing to attack or use a power on characters more than three steps away must use the Fighting Blind combat manoeuvre.

Powers that allow you to see in total darkness, such as Eyes of the Beast cannot be used to bypass Fog, but powers that allow you to compensate for your lost sight like Heightened Senses can bypass this restriction.

This Fog lasts for one minute for each dot you possess of the Occult skill, but you can dispel it early by expending a simple action. For more information on Fighting Blind, see Chapter Six: Core Systems, Combat Manoeuvres, page 281.

•• Fluctuation

You have learned to subtly control the local weather patterns, slowly fluctuating the temperature up or down according to your needs.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to alter the temperature within a one-mile radius. You can raise or lower the temperature by up to 5 degrees Fahrenheit for each dot you possess of the Occult skill. This temperature change happens slowly, shifting 1 degree each hour until it reaches the desired level. Once there, power persists for one hour for each dot you possess of the Occult skill, before the temperature slowly returns to normal.

Focus [Intelligence]:
In addition to the standard effects of Fluctuation, you can spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to raise or lower the temperature in an area up to the size of a large ballroom. You can set the temperature anywhere between -20 degrees Fahrenheit and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. At its coldest, this power can freeze water in three turns. At its hottest, it can cause unprepared mortals to suffer from heat stroke, wither plants, and dry out inanimate objects within a few minutes.

••• Gale

Via the power of your blood, you have the ability to command potent gales of terrifying force.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to call up high winds in a one-mile radius for each dot you possess of the Occult skill. You can summon up winds that blow at up to 30 miles per hour, with gusts of wind up to twice that speed. This increase in wind speed happens slowly. Winds increase in speed by one mile per hour every 10 minutes, until reaching the desired speed. Once the wind reaches the desired speed, this power lasts for 10 minutes for each dot you possess of the Occult skill, before slowly returning to normal. High winds can cause random black outs, road blockages, grounded flights, and damage to property at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Focus [Intelligence]:
In addition to the standard effect of Gale, you can spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge using the Thaumaturgy test pool to fire a blast of air at your target. If your target fails to dodge, she is hammered by a violent gust of wind, knocked back up to 6 steps, and lands prone. If your target impacts a solid surface, she takes 2 points of normal damage.

•••• Storm

You have learned to summon and control potent storms of great destructive power, which can wreak havoc upon your enemies and property alike.

System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to call up a Storm. This Storm blankets a wide radius in high winds and rain, or snow, if the temperature is low enough. The wind speed rises across the area of effect until it reaches 20 miles per hour. Your area of effect is a one-mile radius for each dot you possess of the Occult skill. Gusts of wind in the area can reach 40 miles per hour. This increase in wind speed happens slowly. Winds increase in speed by one mile per hour every 10 minutes until reaching the desired speed. Once the wind reaches the desired speed, this power lasts for 10 minutes for each dot you possess of the Occult skill.

By concentrating and taking no other action for 10 minutes, you can further ravage a one-block radius, intensifying the storm in that area. To do this, you do not need to see the affected area, but you must be familiar with that area. If you employ this effect, the target area suffers from power outages, flooding, and property damage. Roads become impassable, blocked by downed trees and other debris.

Focus [Perception]:
In addition to the standard effect of Storm, you can spend 1 Blood and use your simple action to surround yourself with a swirling storm. This miniature maelstrom lasts for one full turn for each dot you possess of the Occult skill. Once per turn, while this power is active, you can expend a standard action to employ the focus effect of the Gale power, without spending Blood.

Blood Mastery

By destroying a small quantity of your enemy’s blood, you can leverage this symbolic act to give you power over your victim. You manifest this power over the target the next time you come into conflict.

System: By burning 1 point of Blood from your target over an open flame, you gain a limited mystical mastery over her. In the very next opposed challenge against the victim, you automatically win the initial test. If your target spends Willpower to retest, you resolve the challenge normally from that point forward. Should Blood Mastery fail to trigger by dawn, the ritual expires.

Bind the Accusing Tongue

Bind the Accusing Tongue curses a subject by forcing a mystical compulsion upon her that prevents her from speaking ill of you in any fashion. To prepare for this ritual, you must create an image of the target, such as a photograph, a sketch, or wax effigy; acquire a lock of your victim’s hair; and obtain a black silken cord. To curse your victim, wrap the cord about your victim’s hair and image while reciting the ritual’s vocal component and focusing your ire at her.

System: Once the ritual is complete, make an opposed challenge against your intended target using the Thaumaturgy test pool. If you succeed, your victim cannot speak, write down, or otherwise communicate anything negative about you. If she tries, her voice (or hand) simply cannot to do so. The effects of this ritual last until dawn.

Communicate with Kindred Sire

You are connected to your sire through chains of blood that can never be severed. This ritual allows you to communicate telepathically with your sire, no matter where the two of you are in the world.

System: You must meditate on the connection between you and your sire while intoning this ritual. Upon completion of the ritual, you establish a gentle telepathic communication with your sire from anywhere in the world. Your sire has the option to refuse the telepathic contact, and should that happen, you feel connected, but receive no reply. If your sire is in torpor or dead you receive a distinct empty feeling, rather than no sense of reply. Once established, this link lasts for an hour.

Defence of the Sacred Haven

Sunlight is a great bane of a vampire’s existence. With Defence of the Sacred Haven, you can create a temporary mystical defence against sunlight when the strength and protection of your shelter is in doubt.

System: Defence of the Sacred Haven prevents sunlight from entering a room up to 10 steps across in size. A mystical darkness blankets the area. Sunlight reflects off windows or magically fails to pass through doors or other portals. To invoke this ritual’s protection, you must draw sigils in your own blood on all the affected windows and doors. The ritual lasts as long as you stay in the room in which you cast it.

Deflection of Wooden Doom

Deflection of Wooden Doom protects you against being staked. To cast this ritual, you must sit in a circle of wood for 10 minutes and chant the proper incantations. Once the ritual is complete, you place a tiny splinter of wood under your tongue. As long as the splinter remains there, you are protected from staking.

System: The first time someone attempts to use the Pierce the Heart combat manoeuvre against you, that weapon’s wood mystically crumbles to dust as it touches you, and the attack automatically misses. Once this ritual blocks one attempt to stake you, the ritual ends.

Engaging the Vessel of Transference

Engaging the Vessel of Transference enchants a glass container to mystically steal blood from any living or undead creature who touches it. The vessel replaces the blood that it steals with a volume of your blood equal to that which was taken. Once the ritual is completed, the Vessel of Transference automatically fills with your vitae and becomes inscribed with an occult sigil, which empowers the ritual.

System: A Vessel of Transference must be between the size of a small cup and a one-gallon/four-liter jug. Whenever an individual’s bare skin touches a container enchanted with Engaging the Vessel of Transference, she feels a tingling, noticeable chill against her flesh. The Vessel of Transference triggers the first time a character other than the ritual’s caster touches it. Once activated, the vessel draws out 1 point of the individual’s Blood, and then magically preserves the Blood until the vessel’s seal is broken. The ritual only switches Blood between itself and a subject if it touches bare skin — even thin cotton gloves keep it from activating. A Vessel of Transference is fragile and automatically breaks if used in an attack.

Individuals with 2 or more dots of the Occult skill recognize the sigil and the chill of discomfort, and can identify a Vessel of Transference, discerning the purpose of the container. The two most common uses of this ritual are to covertly create a blood bond and to obtain a sample of a subject’s blood for ritual or experimental purposes.

Illuminate the Trail of Prey

Your knowledge of blood magic is such that you have learned to track your enemies via the principle of identity. You invoke the spirits of the earth with the name of your enemy or an image of her face to reveal her location.

System: The primary component of Illuminate the Trail of Prey is the birth name of your target or a picture drawn of her face created by someone with 2 or more dots of the Crafts skill. You do not need to see your target to cast Illuminate the Trail of Prey, but you must cast the ritual in a location that she has visited since the last sunrise, and you must best the target in an opposed challenge using the Thaumaturgy test pool. If you fail this challenge, you cannot try again against the same target for the rest of the night.

If you succeed in the challenge, glowing footprints appear in the earth. These footprints lead to your target. Only you can perceive these footprints, and the level of brightness depends on how long it has been since she was last in this location. Old tracks burn less brightly, while fresh tracks blaze with light. Illuminate the Trail of Prey ends at sunrise.

This ritual can track your foe so long as she travels over the earth, but the route follows the exact path that the individual took — which can make following a target difficult. Illuminate the Trail of Prey can track someone walking, running, or travelling in a vehicle so long as it passes over the earth. However, if your target passes over water or flies through the air, the trail will disappear at the
 she left the earth.

Principal Focus of Vitae Infusion

You have learned to freeze your blood in stasis and thaw it out for later use. This power can be very useful for a vampire who needs to feed in an emergency.

System: Through ritual concentration, you can transform 1 point of your Blood into a small red sphere the size of a common marble. Casting this ritual draws that point of Blood from your system. At a later time, you can place this sphere in your mouth, crush it between your teeth, and mentally command it to turn back into blood, thus drinking the blood and refilling your Blood pool. The entire process of
reabsorbing a point of Blood requires one simple action.

If another character is present when you create a blood sphere, you can teach that character the mental command to transform the sphere into blood. If she places the blood sphere in her mouth, she can then give the mental command, allowing her to use the blood sphere in the same way you would. Of course, since your own blood is used to create the blood sphere, the subject establishes one step of a blood bond to the caster of this ritual.

You can create a number of blood spheres equal to of the number of dots you possess of the Occult skill. If you make a blood sphere that would take you above this limit, a previously existing sphere is immediately destroyed. Ritualists know that allowing another individual – particularly another thaumaturge – to have access to your blood is very dangerous. Users should consider themselves warned.

Warding Circle

You have the ability to create a circle of protection that will ward off supernatural and partially supernatural creatures.

System: During the casting of this ritual, you must use mortal blood to draw a circle on the ground (or other flat surface). This circle has a diameter of up to one step for each dot of the Occult skill that you possess. Once created, a Warding Circle cannot be moved without destroying it. You might paint a ward on a piece of plywood, but you destroy the Warding Circle if you move the wood.

By default, your Warding Circle affects partially supernatural creatures, such as ghouls or mortals with werewolf or fae blood. If you have 3 or more dots in your primary path of Thaumaturgy, your ward also affects vampires, werewolves, and fae.

If you have 5 dots in your primary path of Thaumaturgy, your ward also affects ghosts, spirits, elementals, demons, and characters who are psychically projected. Affected character types who pass through your Warding Circle take 3 points of aggravated damage. When creating a ward, it is possible to exclude certain creature types. A thaumaturge with 5 dots in her primary path can make a Warding Circle that allows vampires to enter but damages the other listed creature types.

Individuals who are subject to damage from a Warding Circle can sense its presence when they approach within one step of the circle. The ward created by this ritual is spherical, making it difficult to jump over or burrow beneath the protection.

A Warding Circle never affects the caster and may be tuned to exclude other individuals, so long as those individuals are present during the ward’s casting and contribute a point of Blood to the ritual. Wards cannot be tuned after casting; adding another individual to the ward after it is cast requires the caster to destroy the ward and create another in its place.

The blood used to create a Warding Circle does not fade until the ritual’s duration ends. Individuals who would be harmed by a Warding Circle cannot damage it. An individual cannot use a mop to clear away a ward that would affect her. Warding Circles can be broken by individuals who are not targeted by that ward’s protection or by the natural destruction of the environment. If you draw a circle in blood across a highway, it could be smeared by the passage of cars, washed away by rain, or broken by a mortal with a mop. Warding Circles cannot inflict damage on a character more than once per turn.

Casting a Warding Circle takes the normal casting time, five minutes, if you only wish to establish a short-term ward, which lasts for the rest of the night. If you wish to create a long-term ward, lasting a year and a day, you must expend a downtime action to cast it.

Banish Big Brother

Orwell knew the future. Big Brother is everywhere. Cameras are watching your every move. This ritual allows you to have a brief respite from constant surveillance.

System: It is rumoured that the Anarchs first developed this modern ritual. Banish Big Brother allows the caster to detect and potentially nullify technological eavesdropping devices within line of sight.

You can turn off microphones, surveillance cameras, and so forth, but not undetectable, distant devices, such as satellite surveillance.

Until the next sunrise, you always sense when you are being recorded, and you can preemptively disable the device involved, before it successfully captures a recording of you. Recording devices affected by Banish Big Brother become hopelessly inoperative until one hour passes, after which they resume normal functioning.

Burning Blade

Thaumaturges are rarely known for their martial abilities. You have an edge. You can mystically prepare your bladed weapon to ignite with a bluish flame when triggered, to literally burn your enemies.

System: To use this ritual, you must chant over a blade, typically a knife or sword. Once completed, the magic in the weapon remains dormant until triggered. To activate the weapon, you must use a standard action to slice your hand and spread your blood along the length of the blade. Only the blood of the thaumaturge who cast the ritual can activate the blade, and only she can use it. This process causes 1point of normal damage.

Once activated, the weapon flickers with a cold, bluish flame. The weapon inflicts aggravated damage on all supernatural creatures with a successful attack. This ability lasts for one attack for each dot of the Occult skill you possess, or until the weapon leaves your possession. The weapon’s wielder cannot choose to do normal damage and reserve aggravated strikes. Each successful attack uses one aggravated strike until there are none left, at which point the weapon reverts to inflicting normal damage.

Craft Bloodstone

A Bloodstone is a small pebble that has a sympathetic link with the thaumaturge who created it, allowing her to always know its direction and general distance. To create a Bloodstone, you must place a small pebble into a vial filled with 3 points of Blood from any source and recite an invocation over the vial. The Bloodstone slowly absorbs the power of the blood, and the liquid becomes clearer and clearer, until it is as transparent as water.

System: Once the Bloodstone ritual is complete, you have a mystical connection to the stone and can tell its relative position and general distance from you at all times. A caster can create a number of Bloodstones equal to the number of dots she possesses of the Occult skill. If a Bloodstone is Obfuscated or otherwise supernaturally hidden, the caster can follow the trail until she reaches the general location of the stone, but the connection becomes blurred at that point, and she can no longer feel the Bloodstone’s precise location beyond that point.

Eyes of the Night Hawk

You have the ability to project your consciousness into a predatory bird and experience the night through its senses.

System: This ritual allows you to see through the eyes of a bird and to hear through its ears. You must select a bird of prey for
this ritual. After you finish the ritual’s incantation, the bird obeys your mental commands to a point. She may fly in a desired route, spy for you, and even ferry small objects. However, she cannot fight for you, unless specifically trained for said purpose. The bird returns to you after finishing its flight. Once it returns, if you do not poke out the bird’s eyes, you will suffer a three-night period of blindness. This ritual lasts until sunrise.

Illusion of Peaceful Death

The Masquerade can be difficult to maintain even under the best of circumstances, as factions of warring vampire coteries fight for dominance and resources. A bloody murder at the wrong time can draw undue attention from the police to an already complex situation. You have an ace in the hole for the little accidents that sometimes occur. To cast this ritual, you must have a carefully prepared feather soaked in the blood of a good man. You must use the feather to dust a corpse while chanting the phrase, “It must have been his time to go. At least he went out in his sleep.”

System: Once this ritual is complete, the target corpse appears to have died of natural causes, even if it was drained of all blood or horrifically mangled. This ritual does not add blood to an exsanguinated corpse or heal broken bones, but it does prevent mundane investigations from finding evidence of foul play. Supernatural investigations are capable of seeing through this illusion with some difficulty. Such investigations suffer a -3 penalty when used to investigate a corpse targeted by this ritual. The effects of Illusion of Peaceful Death last for one month.

Machine Blitz

You have the ability to introduce chaos into systems of order, forcing machines to go haywire. You must chant the proper incantations and then ritually destroy a piece of technology that you have personally used.

System: Once the ritual is complete, all machines targeted by your focused hatred start to malfunction. Use your standard
action to stop any machine or electronic device that you can clearly see. For the next hour, this ritual can be used to kill car engines, render flash drives inoperable, drain the battery of a cell phone, stop life-support machines, etc. Essentially, Machine Blitz stops any machine more complex than a rope and pulley. This ritual only stops machines; it does not grant any control over them. The effects of this ritual are invisible and appear to be coincidental. Repairing an object targeted by Machine Blitz requires an appropriate skill, such as Computer, of 3 dots or more and roughly an hour of work.

Recure of the Homeland

Life leaves a resonance behind in the places we inhabit. We are connected to the lands of our birth. You have learned how to use this resonance and connection to heal yourself. You can call upon the power of the earth to heal your own aggravated wounds. You must gather at least a handful of dirt from the city or town of your mortal birth and recite a litany of your mortal family tree. Next, you mix the earth with 2 points of your Blood to make a healing paste.

System: The paste created by Recure of the Homeland can heal 2 aggravated wounds each night. Only you can benefit from this paste, and you must use it within one minute of completing the ritual, or the magic fades.

Detect the Hidden Observer

The same paranoid Anarch sorcerer who devised Banish Big Brother supposedly developed this ritual. He created it as a means of ensuring that valuable secrets wouldn’t fall into the hands of his enemies. To enact this ritual, you must cast a portion of your blood into a fire fuelled by personal documents or recordings. Once the fire dies, you must anoint your forehead with the ashes that remain.

System: Until the next sunrise, you feel a sharp pain in your forehead whenever another individual uses supernatural powers to actively spy on you. This ritual’s caster also discovers the type of attempted surveillance, whether listening, watching,telepathic contact, etc. Thisritual does not block these powers in any way, nor does it offer any clues about the observer’s location, nor her the identity; it only alerts you that someone is spying.

Detect the Hidden Observer does not protect against passive uses of supernatural powers. You cannot detect a Nosferatu using Obfuscate to spy on you, but you could detect an individual using the ritual Scry or the Auspex power Clairvoyance.

Flesh of Fiery Touch

Thaumaturges often must find ways of protecting themselves in order to prepare their magic. This defensive ritual inflicts painful burns on anyone who deliberately touches your skin. This ritual darkens your skin; your skin appears similar to a mortal’s, if that mortal had experienced long-term exposure to the sun. Its tone is slightly unnatural and metallic. Some vain thaumaturges use this ritual purely for its subsidiary effect of darkening their skin to a healthy sun-bronzed hue.

System: Performing this ritual requires a great act of courage. You must swallow a small glowing ember, suffering a single point of aggravated damage. Until dawn, anyone who voluntarily touches you receives a burn. This ritual does not damage those you touch nor those who accidentally come in contact with you.

Anyone who hits you with a Brawl attack takes 1 point of aggravated damage. Anyone who attempts to Grapple you takes ever-increasing damage until they release you or until you break free of the Grapple. On the first turn of a Grapple, the character holding you takes 1 point of aggravated damage on her everyman initiative, just as she would if she’d struck you with a Brawl attack. On the second turn of the Grapple, the character holding you takes 2 points of aggravated damage. On the third turn, she takes 3 points of aggravated damage. Damage inflicted by Flesh of Fiery Touch increases by 1 point each turn until your captor lets go, dies, or loses consciousness.

Incorporeal Passage

By looking into a fragment of a mirror while intoning this ritual’s chant, you become completely incorporeal. So long as you continue to look into this mirror, you can literally walk through walls, and few places on earth can bar you from entry.

System: While under the effects of this ritual, Physical attacks pass through you. You can step unhindered through any solid barrier. The ritual lasts for five minutes, but you can end it early simply by turning away from the piece of mirror that you hold. While under the effects of Incorporeal Passage, opponents can still target you with Mental or Social attacks. Once you invoke Incorporeal Passage, you can only move forward or stand still. You cannot turn, nor go backwards. The magic involved in the ritual prevents you from engaging in any form of active attack while you are in this incorporeal state, though you can activate defensive powers. For example, you cannot use Dread Gaze, but you can activate Majesty.

If Incorporeal Passage ends while you are in contact with a solid object, you take 1 to 5 points of normal damage, based on the size of the object, and your body ejects the object.

If Incorporeal Passage ends while you are fully or mostly inside of a solid object, such as a wall, all of your health levels fill with damage, and you are shunted into the nearest empty space large enough to hold your body, where you immediately fall into torpor (if you are a vampire) or begin the process of bleeding to death (if you are a mortal).

Mirror of Second Sight

The Sabbat developed this ritual, taking cues from Aztec folklore and magic traditions. You must find a silver mirror and soak it in your blood over the course of three nights. Thereafter, whenever you peer into the mirror, you can see supernatural creatures’ true forms in the reflection.

System: You can enchant a mirror that reflects the true form of supernatural creatures; vampires appear pale and corpselike, werewolves appear in their half-wolf form, the fae appear in all of their wild, glamorous beauty, and ghosts are visible in the mirror, appearing as semi-transparent versions of themselves.

This silver mirror must be no less than four inches wide and no more than 18 inches long. Mirror of Second Sight only functions for the caster. To all others, it is a just another mirror.

Pavis of the Foul Presence

By casting Pavis of the Foul Presence, you reflect the effects of the Presence discipline against your aggressor.

System: First, you must tie a blue silken cord around your neck while intoning the chant to activate the ritual. Once the ritual has been cast, the very next time a character targets you with a Presence power or a Presence-based technique, Pavis of the Foul Presence reflects the effect of that Presence power back upon the aggressor. Once triggered, the ribbon around your neck turns to ash, ending the effects of Pavis of the Foul Presence.

Resolve the Presence power’s opposed challenge as normal with the aggressor. If your attacker wins the challenge, the incoming Presence power simply has no effect on you. The attacker must wait at least one hour before targeting you with the same power again, although she can target you with other Presence powers. For the next hour, you are immune to the power which triggered Pavis of the Foul Presence, if the same character attempts to target you with that power again.

If you win the challenge to resist the incoming Presence power, Pavis of the Foul Presence turns the power back on the user. In this case, that power automatically affects the user, as if you had used it on her.

Note that Pavis of the Foul Presence only reflects powers that specifically target you. This ritual does not affect powers that do not target you directly, such as Majesty or Awe.

Soul of the Homunculi

Thaumaturges often need laboratory assistants whom they can trust implicitly. You have learned how to conjure a temporary servant, called a Homunculus, which is completely loyal to you, because it is made from your blood.

System: To cast the ritual, you must slice open your arm and bleed into a mystically prepared earthen bowl. The magic of the ritual merges and animates whatever random unimportant items you happen to have lying around your workshop – glass beakers, dissection tools, pencils, crumpled papers, semiprecious stones – and it binds those materials together into a small humanoid form animated by the power of the ritual and your blood.

The main benefit of working with a Homunculus is the amount of time and energy it saves you preparing all of your ritual components and performing mundane tasks, granting you 2 additional downtime actions a month. In addition, if your servant assists you in casting a ritual, the time required to cast that ritual reduces, as if the ritual is one level lower, to a minimum of one minute when casting a level 1 ritual. For example, casting a level 3 ritual with the help of this Homunculi takes 10 minutes, instead of the standard 15 minutes.

A thaumaturge can only have one Homunculus in existence at any one time. If she creates a new one, the old one is destroyed.

Homunculus Retainer
Homunculus
2-dot Retainer
Specialties: Occult, Lore
Effective Health: OOOO

Your Homunculus has a test pool of 4 in most tests. In challenges involving Occult or Lore, its test pool is 8. A Homunculus is a naturally timid creature and flees if attacked, though it will try to defend its master’s life at the cost of its own. It has no disciplines of its own, but it has a full understanding of all of your Thaumaturgical knowledge and can instruct others if so commanded. It is impervious to any mind-controlling disciplines or magic, as it is completely bound to your will.

Shaft of Belated Quiescence

You have the ability to enchant a stake of wood to purposefully seek out your enemy’s heart.

System: This ritual turns an ordinary stake of rowan wood into a particularly vicious weapon. When the stake penetrates a vampire’s body, the tip breaks off and begins working its way through the victim’s flesh to her heart. The trip may take several hours or several nights, depending on where the stake struck. The stake eludes attempts to remove it, burrowing further into the victim’s body to escape surgical removal. Vampires who have had their hearts removed by Serpentis (or are otherwise immune to staking) are immune to this internal attack.

The ritual takes an entire night to complete. The stake must be carved of rowan wood, coated with 3 points of the caster’s Blood, and blackened in an oak-wood fire. When the ritual is complete, the stake is enchanted to act as described below.

A wielder performs an attack with a Shaft of Belated Quiescence as she would with a normal weapon. If she inflicts at least 1 point of damage after the target’s Fortitude or similar defensive abilities reduce the incoming damage, the tip of the stake breaks off and begins burrowing. If the attack deals no damage, the stake can be used to make subsequent attacks until it strikes deep enough to activate. Once the tip of the stake is in the victim’s body, she must make an opposed challenge every hour to avoid being staked, as the wood attempts to worm through her body.

The caster uses her Thaumaturgy test pool versus the victim’s Physical attribute + Survival to resolve this challenge. Each time the target succeeds in the opposed challenge, she takes 3 points of normal damage. If, at any point, the victim marks off an Incapacitated health level as a result of this damage, the tip pierces her heart.

Removing the part of the body where the tip impacted, such as by a Vicissitude user activating Blood Form, or a vampire electing to cut off her arm, may stop the tip’s progress, at the Storyteller’s discretion. A character with 3 or more dots of the Medicine skill can remove the shaft by performing a 10-minute operation. Attempts to surgically remove the tip of the shaft are made using a character’s Physical attribute + Medicine test pool against a difficulty rating of 10.

Once the tip pierces the target’s heart, it stakes a vampire and instantly kills mortals and partially supernatural creatures, such as ghouls.

You can perform the Shaft of Belated Quiescence ritual on other wooden weapons, such as spears, arrows, practice swords, and pool cues, provided that they are made of rowan wood. The ritual cannot, however, augment a bullet or a weapon that does not have the staking quality.

A thaumaturge can have one Shaft of Belated Quiescence in existence for every 2 dots she possesses of the Occult skill. If she makes a new Shaft of Belated Quiescence that exceeds this limit, a shaft created earlier is destroyed.

Innocence of the Child’s Heart

Innocence of the Child’s Heart masks your aura from the Auspex power Aura Perception. Any individuals who use that power on you perceive a white aura, untainted by any signs of vampirism. This ritual requires a high price: the sacrifice of a mortal child.

System: Innocence of the Child’s Heart requires the ritualistic sacrifice of a mortal child and the harvesting of her heart. You must dip a beloved toy that once belonged to that child in the heart’s blood. The toy quickly absorbs all of the blood until it is clean. As long as you carry the toy, your aura appears pure white, untainted by any signs of vampirism or diablerie. The ritual lasts for one week, plus an additional week for every dot of the Occult skill you possess. Naturally, this horrific ritual takes an extreme toll on the caster’s Humanity.

Unless the character is on the Path of Evil Revelations, she loses a point of Morality when she enacts this ritual.

Mirror Walk

Practitioners of Psychic Projection understand that there are multiple layers to the universe. A Malkavian thaumaturge, thought to be the inspiration for the evil-stepmother archetype in all of the Grimm fairy tales, leveraged her obsession with mirrors and knowledge of the psychic plane to create a ritual that would allow her to travel from place to place in the material world. Mirror Walk creates a sympathetic link between two mirrors, allowing you to travel between them.

System: You must create two identical mirrors of the same appropriate size, made with silver. Then, soak both mirrors in 2 points of your own Blood and chant over the course of three nights to create a special resonance link between the two objects. Once completed, you can stand before either mirror and recite the mystical password to open a magical gate between the two mirrors.

Such powerful magic cannot be done swiftly. It requires three turns for the portal to open. The glass ripples and shimmers when ready, and only then can you step through the egress. You can take one willing passenger with you on this trip, but you must act swiftly, as the gateway is a crack in reality, which closes in two turns.

The mirrors created by this ritual remain functional until broken or until the thaumaturge dies. You can only enchant one pair of mirrors at a time. If the thaumaturge creates another pair, the first set is destroyed. Only the thaumaturge who created the mirrors can use them, and once used, neither mirror can be used again until 10 minutes pass.

Severed Hand

The Amir of Clan Assamite created this ritual as a means to show mercy to criminals who deserved punishment, but not the Final Death. Severed Hand allows you to permanently sever a part of a restrained vampire’s body, preventing the vampire from ever regenerating the lost body part. Although a hand is typically the most common appendage removed, this ritual can affect eyes, fingers, tongues, and other body parts.

System: The Severed Hand requires you to completely immobilize your victim, normally accomplished by causing your victim to enter torpor.

This ritual takes an entire night to perform, during which time you must sever the limb you wish to curse and coat it with an alchemical compound that prevents it from decaying or from being regenerated. Any thaumaturge who holds the severed limb receives a +3 bonus when targeting the limb’s owner with Thaumaturgy powers.

The damaged caused by losing a limb can be healed in the normal manner, but the severed body part cannot be restored until the original limb is recovered or destroyed, or until a year and a day has passed. The severed limb can be concealed by powers like Mask of a Thousand Faces or replaced by use of powers like Vicissitude.

Scry

Via staring into a pool of water in a silver bowl, you can see and
hear what is happening around your subject.

System: Scrying is the practice of remote viewing via a reflective, translucent substance, such as water. You must fill a wide silver bowl with purified spring water mixed with a drop of owl’s blood. Next, you must concentrate on an individual or location familiar to you, gaze into the bowl, and make an opposed challenge using the Thaumaturgy test pool. If you succeed, you can see and hear what is happening around the target as though you were personally in her presence. This ritual lasts for a number of minutes equal to the number of dots you possess of the Occult skill.

If used to Scry on a location, no challenge is required. You can view those surroundings as if you were standing in the centre of the area. If you target a location with Scry, the viewpoint is immobile and cannot be changed for the duration of the ritual. You cannot use supernatural powers through Scry. If you attempt to Scry on an individual, and you have an object of personal value or deep connection to the target, such as a piece of her hair, a love letter, or so forth, you do not need to be familiar with the target to use this power. The object used to establish a link to your target crumbles to dust when this ritual ends.

Scry automatically fails if the target is currently invisible, such as someone concealed by the powers of Obfuscate.

Blood Contract

There is power in the written word. A contract empowered with blood is said to be unbreakable. You have the knowledge to make that so.

System: Blood Contract creates an unbreakable agreement between two parties who sign it of their own free will. The contract must be written in your blood. All clauses in the contract must be understood by all parties and responsibilities must be listed implicitly. Each party referenced directly in the contract must sign her agreement to the stipulations in her own blood. A Blood Contract must include the following three clauses:

• A clear description of the service or favour provided by the individual who is being contracted.
• A clear description of the payment provided by the individual doing the contracting.
• The terms under which the Blood Contract can be terminated.

These clauses do not have to be fair, but they must exist for the Blood Contract to function. Attempts to add clauses that forbid the destroying of the contract, override the required clauses, or absolve an individual from the consequences of breaching the contract, cause the ritual to immediately fail.

Anyone who signs said contract is now mystically bound and must follow it to the letter, including the thaumaturge, if she is one of the signing parties. Violators automatically suffer enough damage to cause them to enter into torpor. Should someone be foolish enough to violate the contract, both parties sense it immediately.

The Blood Contract lasts until one party dies, until its completion cause is triggered, or until the document itself is destroyed.

It is possible to coerce an individual into signing a Blood Contract with threats, but if a character is compelled to sign a contract with a supernatural power, the ritual fails.

Sample Blood Contract: Percival (the target) must do his best to ensure that no one discovers that Dominic (the caster) killed Prince Leon. In return, Dominic will teach Percival four powers of Dominate over the next six months. This contract shall be nullified if the circumstances of Prince Leon’s death become publicly known without Percival’s involvement.

Cobra’s Favor

Cobra’s Favor manipulates your vitae to burn with a toxin that causes horrific damage to any creature that consumes it. You must acquire an herbal poultice and the venom of a snake, and then mix these components with a point of your Blood. At the end of the ritual, you must spill the mixture into a prepared container, while reciting an incantation to transmute the concoction into a jet-black liquid.

System: You must ingest the elixir for the ritual to take effect, suffering 1 level of aggravated damage, which cannot be reduced or negated. Afterwards, anyone who consumes your blood suffers a point of aggravated damage per point of Blood ingested. This damage cannot be reduced or negated. Cobra’s Favor remains in effect for one month.

Paper Flesh

This dreadful ritual enfeebles the subject, making her skin brittle and weak. Humors rise to the surface, and flesh tightens around bones and scales away at the slightest touch. Used against tough opponents, this ritual strips away the inherent resilience of the vampiric body, leaving it a fragile, dry husk. You must inscribe your target’s birth name and image on a piece of paper. Then you must burn it to cinders while cursing the victim’s name.

System: If you succeed in an opposed challenge against your target, she loses her highest 3 dots of Fortitude, starting with any elder Fortitude powers she possesses.

If the target has more than three elder Fortitude powers, she may choose which powers are lost. If your target is Stamina-focused, she loses two Fortitude powers, rather than three. Should the target survive until sunrise, this ritual ends and all of her Fortitude returns.

If Paper Flesh removes the prerequisites for your character’s Fortitude-based techniques, you lose access to those techniques until your Fortitude returns.

Any character who loses Fortitude automatically realizes that she has been affected by a power, and realizes the manner in which she is more physically vulnerable.

Unless you know the victim’s birth name, you must target someone who is physically present when you cast the ritual. If you know the victim’s birth name, you can target her at a range of up to 10 miles.

Stone of the True Form

To create a Stone of the True Form, you must acquire a small stone and coat it with a mixture made from a point of your Blood and other eldritch compounds. Once the ritual is complete, the stone serves as an anchor to metaphorically connect the material world with Plato’s world of idealized forms. If you have the will, you can force others to assume their natural shape.

System: Anyone touching your Stone of the True Form reverts to her normal shape, deactivating all transformative powers. Further, individuals cannot activate transformative powers for the remainder of this turn and for the next full turn after having touched the stone. Stone of the True Form can also temporarily undo physical changes made by uses of Vicissitude.

Stone of the True Form is effective even if the target is not solid. A cloud of mist can be “touched” by a Stone of the True Form by passing the stone through the mist. This movement does not affect targets who are completely insubstantial, such as those in the psychic plane.

With a Stone of the True Form, you can strike an individual within 10 steps by throwing the stone at her, if you succeed in an opposed challenge using your Physical attribute + Athletics versus your target’s Physical attribute + Dodge. Alternately, you can hold a Stone of True Form in your hand and use the Disarm combat manoeuvre to touch your target with the stone. When used in this way, the Disarm combat manoeuvre doesn’t disarm your opponent, but does bring the stone into contact long enough to affect the target.

A Stone of the True Form lasts indefinitely, but you can only have one Stone of the True Form in existence at a time. If you create a new Stone of the True Form, the first one is destroyed.