Rituels

The mind does not survive torpor easily. Nightmares besiege the unconscious. Memories twist and tangle like a wall of swiftly-growing vines. Elements submerge beneath a demented fog. But for those who know this ritual, sacrifice can make it all better. The vampire must first blood-let an animal, human or vampire, inflicting a number of lethal points of damage equal to the character’s Blood Potency score (yes, this may kill the creature). The blood must be spilled into a censor, where it is mingled with the vampire’s own Vitae and then burned. As the acrid smoke rises, the vampire must whisper entreaties to Ianus, beseeching the god to look backward through the vampire’s Requiem for some kind of clarity. For the remainder of the night, the vampire’s mind is not given over to the fog of eternity, and she can remember everything about her Requiem without having to overcome torpid dementia (though the Storyteller may still require an Intelligence + Composure roll to remember certain things).

This ritual has a few restrictions. First, all the blood sacrificed to Ianus must come from a single creature. So, vampires of higher Blood Potency must sacrifice larger and larger animals… or, of course, humans. Second, the vampire may only cast this ritual once per week, with the exception being during the month of January (Ianus’s month, the beginning and end of the year). During January, the ritual can be applied every night.

If the vampire chooses to sacrifice another vampire, however, the effects of this ritual last a full week instead of one night.

When the body enters torpor, the vampire’s mind is awash in fog and nightmare — but what if it was active? Able to see the world? This ritual ensures that the vampire can watch the world change while her body remains torpid, whether for one night or one century. It necessitates, however, casting the ritual before torpor occurs, which can be a bit tricky to guess (which leaves some vampires casting this ritual “just in case”). First, the vampire must slumber beneath a door frame, gateway, archway or other portal. When she awakens the following evening, she may cast this ritual by spilling her own Vitae upon the floor along with some bits of hair from a chosen target. If the vampire enters torpor during the next 30 nights, her mind transfers away from her slumbering form and enters the mind of the chosen target. The target must be willing to accommodate the vampire’s conscious mind, however. If the target is unwilling, he’ll notice and can spend a point of Willpower to eject the vampire’s consciousness back into her torpid body. The target can be forced into willingness, as it were, using Dominate or Majesty.

While in the target’s mind, the vampire can choose two senses to share with the target for the duration. The vampire can communicate with the target and the target can communicate back, but this achieves another level when the target sleeps — the two may meet in the theater of the mind, face-to-face in dreams and nightmares.

This lasts for as long as the vampire is in torpor, or until the target ejects the vampire by spending a point of Willpower. If the target dies, the vampire goes back to her body. The vampire may not access any Disciplines or make any rolls other than Social rolls (used against the target).

This ritual does nothing for the Fog of Eternity when the vampire awakens from slumber — the events that occurred before torpor may be obscured by broken memory. But the vampire can clearly remember everything witnessed while in the mind of the target.

At times, it seems like all is tied to a vampire’s Blood Potency. It is the core of the creature’s power, the center of his vampiric nature. This ritual borrows Ianus’s ability to look and move both forward and backward in time — with it, a vampire can temporarily change her Blood Potency score up or down. She can lower her Blood Potency score a number of dots up to her Resolve score. She can raise her Blood Potency score by the same number. This lasts for the remainder of the night.

In raising Blood Potency, the vampire now has access to a larger pool of Vitae and can spend more per turn (most likely). Feeding restrictions may change (see “Effects of Blood Potency,” p. 99, Vampire: The Requiem). Certain traits or conditions (joining a bloodline, going above 5 in an Attribute or Skill, gaining certain Merits found in this book) necessitate having a high Blood Potency, and the player can purchase these with experience points and utilize them while her character’s Blood Potency is elevated. Once that rating returns to normal, she doesn’t lose the traits gained, but she loses access to any of those benefits. If she joins or creates a bloodline, it’s almost as if the bloodline hasn’t yet “taken hold” — it remains a temporary condition until she either uses this ritual again or bites the bullet and raises her Blood Potency through time, diablerie or experience points.

Lowering one’s Blood Potency means that the character’s trait maximum, max Vitae pool and max Vitae per turn will all likely drop. Of course, it also may change one’s feeding restrictions for a time. It might also make an elder a less-tempting target for diablerists.

Note that if the character has more Vitae in his pool than what his “max pool” eventually becomes (say, the character has 20 Vitae when his pool shifts down to a maximum of 15), that blood is violently ejected from the body out of any pore or orifice. It causes one point of aggravated damage during this process.

One Sanctified Daeva researcher dedicated his existence to finding a way to eliminate nightmares of the daysleep, or at least divert them. His idea stemmed from the belief that many such nightmares come from the inhuman and violent activities typical in vampiric existence. Guilt, or in some cases fear, the Daeva suggested, was the cause. He proposed that only through sacrificing something of great personal value to the Kindred could he hope to stave off the guilt that produced the nightmares, and his discoveries seemed to vindicate his proposal. He found a ritual that created a make-shift “lightning rod.”

The vampire can cast the ritual upon the chosen object at any time. To activate the object, it only need be placed in contact with the Kindred as he lies down to sleep for the day. When the Kindred awakens, the object turns to ash, taking every memory and feeling he had during his time asleep with it to oblivion, lost forever. The vampire regains an extra point of Willpower for that night’s rest.

If the vampire uses this ritual before entering torpor, he staves off nightmares for a time. Add the number of successes to the number of weeks that the character enjoys restful slumber before the nightmares begin again (see p. 28).

Offering: An object of some personal value to the caster, perhaps a picture of a loved one from his mortal life, an heirloom handed down through generations or a favorite childhood toy.

This ritual prepares a vampire for a voluntary journey into torpor and stores a small amount of the Kindred’s Vitae within his body. This blood does not prevent the vampire from awakening hungry, but it does suffuse the vampire’s mind and soul, mollifying the Beast.

While in torpor, the mind and body suffer the same nightmares and decay as any vampire’s would. If this ritual is performed correctly, however, the player adds any successes on the Theban Sorcery roll to attempts to retain memories upon awakening (p. 40), or to the vampire’s Willpower pool for purposes of determining success or failure against a dream Adversary (see Chapter One). This Willpower cannot be spent in the nightmare, but bolsters the character’s mental fortitude, making it less likely that the Adversary will defeat him. For example, if a vampire with Resolve 2 and Composure 3 enters torpor after the player achieves three successes on this ritual, the vampire has eight points of Willpower for purposes of determining victory or defeat against his nightmares. Only five of those points can be used for Heroic Effort, however.

Offering: One point of Vitae for each decade the vampire chooses to remain in torpor. The Vitae is then ingested after the ritual has been performed on it. The Kindred only knows if the ritual succeeded or failed if he awakens with his memories intact.

Prerequisite: Vitae Reliquary (p. 146 of Vampire: The Requiem)

Through careful manipulation of the blood, a vampire is able to take a specific memory or thought from her mind and place it into the blood itself for later use, whether it be to remind her of something that needs to be done or to provide others a clue as to a specific event or moment in time. Once the ritual is enacted, the memory leaves the vampire’s mind until restored by ingesting the blood. Upon freeing and ingesting the blood from its storage unit (whatever the Kindred chooses as the vessel is subject to the same restrictions as Vitae Reliquary), the vitae provides that vampire with the mental image or thought that was captured within. The moment is brief, lasting no more than a single turn.

The blood remains active as long as it is within the reliquary. Once shattered, the blood must be ingested immediately to activate the memory. If a full turn passes and the blood is not consumed, it turns to ash and the memory contained within is lost forever.

Offering: As for Vitae Reliquary.

An elder Mekhet belonging to the Banu Shaitan (p. 157) once saw her enemies converging and sought to escape the Final Death she was sure was upon her. Slipping into her tomb, she offered a prayer to Allah and slit her throat from ear to ear with a ritual blade. When her foes finally found the tomb and flung it open, it was empty.

This ritual allows a vampire to disappear during her time in torpor. She is therefore immune to sunlight, fire and predation. She falls into torpor immediately upon enacting this ritual (during which she must slit her own throat with a ritual blade), so a Kindred cannot know whether or not she has succeeded. No one knows for sure if the body does indeed disappear or if it just transforms to something else (air? dust?). Most elders don’t trust anyone around them when they are that vulnerable, making such verification difficult at best.

A dramatic failure on this ritual is devastating. The vampire vanishes, but is scattered to the winds. When her torpor ends, the player rolls Resolve + Composure, with a penalty equal to -1 for every century of torpor (minimum -1). If the roll succeeds, the character awakens, but is weakened — her Blood Potency falls to one dot, and she gains a severe derangement. If the roll fails, the character still awakens, but her Humanity has fallen to zero — she is now a mindless killer. On dramatic failure, the character never appears at all. She might wander into other vampires’ nightmares from time to time, though.

Offering: An object that signifies security to the Kindred on whom the ritual is targeted (splinter from the door to her haven, bullet from the pistol he keeps with him at all times, etc.) and a ritual blade. Both items are consumed by the ritual and crumble to ash.

This forbidden rite does not officially exist, since its pagan roots are quite clear. Still, a few elders do remember it, and it allows them to experience torpor without worrying that they will awaken maddened and lost. The price, however, is high.

This ritual involves the removal of a human brain. The brain must come from a human being who is at peace and who is relatively happy in his life. The only way to know for sure that the individual is an acceptable donator is through Auspex (Telepathy). Once a target has been positively identified, that person must be brought to the ritual chamber in such a way as to not cause them fear (drugged, usually). The Kindred performing the ceremony must then carefully remove the brain from the human, at which point she devours it in its entirety. When she falls into torpor, however long that sleep may be, the Kindred will be at peace, without the nightmares that usually invade her sleep. She awakens untouched by the Fog of Eternity, her memories intact.

Murdering and devouring the brain of a truly contented person, however, is a heinous act. Enacting this ritual automatically strips the vampire of a dot of Humanity (which, in turn, affects the length of the torpor). The player must also check to see if the vampire acquires a new derangement, but this can wait until the vampire awakens from torpor.

Offering: The brain of a human being at peace with his life. The brain must be consumed in whole for the ritual to succeed. The first thing the character does upon awakening from torpor is to vomit up the brain.