Ritual Magic

Most of the books in a wizard’s library aren’t spellbooks. They are reference books, arcane almanacs, glossaries and grammars of the occult. Academic treatises, collections of observations and experiments, annotated transcripts of debates on the finer points of thaumaturgical craft. A wealth of knowledge and learning, more than you could fit into even the most erudite mage’s head. When you want to perform truly powerful magic - ritual magic - there’s no substitute for a good library.

Like other parts of this game, occult libraries are divided up into Tiers. The magnitude of a ritual working is limited by the kind of library you have access to:

To cast a ritual they have learned, a mage must turn to their library. They consult their grimoires and their tomes and their treatises, determining which components and words and places of power and planetary conjunctions will be required to achieve the desired effect. When these preparations are complete, they have created a working.

Preparing a Working

Creating a working doesn’t necessarily require any rolls, although you might make a roll to speed up the preparations, push the limits of what a ritual can do, or prepare a working without a suitable library. In that case, you might roll at the risk of making a mistake in your haste, or misremembering some occult principle without the books to verify it.

To prepare a working, the mage first tells the GM which of their rituals they wish to cast and what they hope to achieve. The GM will then set a Tier for the working, which determines what kind of library will be needed and how long the preparations will take. The GM will also set some conditions for the working: where you will need to go and what you will need to do in order to actually cast it.

Here’s a rough guideline based on the Runes of Power ritual:

The working is a set of precise instructions for casting the ritual: when and where it must be cast, which words must be spoken and which sigils inscribed, what occult components will be needed. Each working can only be used once - not because it vanishes from memory, but because the precise calculations and measurements are useless once the critical moment has passed.

The parameters of a working tend to be somewhat strict. If you want a more flexible working, this will usually increase the Tier. For example, if you want to draft a general-purpose working that can be cast anywhere, at any time within the next year, then the preparations will take longer and require a bigger library.

Rituals

As long as you have prepared the working and all of the conditions are just right, you don’t necessarily need to roll any dice to cast a ritual. Some rituals do require some skill or precision to cast correctly; in that case, the risk you need to roll against is given in italics.

Deep Gazing. The mage specially prepares a reflective surface, such as a still pool or a mirror, to heighten the limits of their Second Sight. This allows them to see far more than simple auras and emanations. The subtle patterns and ghostly mirages that appear can give insight into the properties of an item, the nature of an enchantment, or the innate powers of a creature. The more detail you want to glean, the more elaborate the ritual will need to be. Roll against the risk that you fail to fully grasp what you are seeing.

Far Dreaming. The mage sends their own dreaming soul to walk freely in the moonlight. It can pass through solid objects as if they were made of smoke, but it cannot cross running water. While dreaming, you may not enter an inhabited place unless an invitation has been extended to you at some point.

Runes of Power. The mage draws or carves numerous delicate magical runes into some surface. When the trigger spell is spoken in their presence, elemental energy is conjured from the runes: flame, frost, wind, light, or lightning. The intensity and duration of the effect is determined by the mage when they prepare the ritual. Roll against the risk of inscribing the runes incorrectly.

Spectral Bottling. The mage uses a specially designed copper vessel to capture a person’s ghost at the moment of death. The vessel cannot be opened without releasing the ghost, but other magics can be employed to put it to a useful purpose. Roll against the risk that the vessel is flawed or leaky.

Star Writing. The mage leaves a message amongst the friendly “witch stars”, also known as the “wandering stars”, which lasts for about a week. Only those familiar with this ritual can interpret the patterns and twinkling of the stars and discern the messages hidden in their movements.

Weatherworking. Armed with a special silver net woven in an intricate and elaborate pattern, the mage works the wind and changes the weather over a long period of time. Gentle weather is easier to work than violent weather; storms are notoriously slippery. Roll against the risk of losing your grip on the weather.