Your magician can create a magical barrier around an area to keep out ghosts and spirits. This barrier can be created as a general ward that keeps out all low-level entities, or as a powerful barrier designed to protect against a single supernatural being. Both types of wards can be used to protect an area only against ghosts and spirits. The only way to move a ward is to move the entire structure it protects. While thaumaturges can ward the exterior of a house or even the interior of a car or van, they cannot create a portable or wearable ward. An area can be protected by only a single ward at a time — putting up a new one automatically eliminates any existing one.

Each ward must be tied to some sort of physical marker, such as a fence with symbols painted on it or a line of chalk drawn on a floor. If anyone disturbs or makes an opening in this physical marker, or if a drawing is washed away by rainfall or blown away by the wind, the ward instantly ceases to function. Magicians cannot create wards that are more than 21 yards on a side; they can protect a small house and most of its yard, a large house or most of a warehouse but not an entire office building or city block.

When creating a ward against a specific ghost or spirit, a mystic does not need to know the name of the entity — an obvious designation, such as “the ghost of the young man who was murdered here” or “the spider-like spirit that has been attempting to possess the inhabitants of this house” is a sufficiently accurate description. Specific wards protect against only that particular being, though. They have no affect on any other spirits or ghosts.

All wards have a Strength rating. This score is subtracted from the Power of any affected ghost or spirit that seeks to enter the area. If the entity’s Power would be reduced to zero, the entity cannot enter the area. Otherwise, the entity can enter, but its Power is reduced by the Strength of the ward for the entire time the entity remains in the area. Spirits or ghosts outside the warded area that attempt to use Numina to affect anyone or anything inside the place are still subject to the ward’s Strength.

Although spirits or ghosts may convince a mortal to remove or damage the physical markers that keep a ward in place, such entities are completely incapable of affecting these physical markers directly, even if they could normally move or destroy them. A spirit affected by a ward cannot make the area into an anchor while the protection is in place. This Merit does not undo the connection between an entity and its anchor if the rite is performed on such an object, however. The spirit or ghost’s Power is still reduced by the ritual, but the spirit remains in proximity to its anchor. Such a being whose Power is reduced to zero is forced into a sort of hibernation while the ward is active, becoming dormant and inaccessible.

Dice Pool: Resolve + Occult
Ritual Length: 10 minutes
Duration: One day (against all spirits and ghosts) or one week (against a specific spirit or ghost)

Roll Results
Dramatic Failure:
Improperly channeled magical energies either draw spirits and ghosts to the location or grant such beings a temporary +1 to their Power when they are in the area.

Failure:
The thaumaturge fails to produce a functional ward.

Success:
The thaumaturge creates a ward with a Strength equal to his Resolve. Alternatively, a mystic can create a ward against a specific spirit or ghost with a Strength equal to his Resolve +1.

Exceptional Success:
The thaumaturge creates a ward against all spirits with a Strength equal to his Resolve +1. General wards last for three full days. Alternatively, the thaumaturge can create a ward against a specific spirit or ghost with a Strength equal to his Resolve +2. Specific wards last for two weeks.

Suggested Equipment: A fragment of a spirit or a bottle of ghostly ectoplasm (+1). Raise this bonus to (+2) if the fragment or ectoplasm is from the ghost or spirit that’s targeted for a specifi c ward.

Possible Penalties: The magician attempts to place a ward on a major magical nexus point (–2), the location being warded is already the anchor of a ghost or spirit (–2)

Ritual Details: Drawing a line of chalk or salt around the walls of an apartment, hammering a series of iron nails into a perimeter, painting or drawing small symbols every few feet on the inside or outside walls of a house or marking walls with small splotches of the magician’s blood at regular intervals