Mind's Eye Theatre - Vampire The Requiem.pdf - RoseRed

theban sorcery
207
The vampire who enacts this ritual is the only one who can command the zombie. That
vampire may, however, instruct the corpse to accept direction from other individuals. A
corpse-creature left to its own devices takes no actions of its own volition; it must be given
direction, and undoubtedly laments being forced to carry them out.
A corpse suffers damage — lethal, bashing and aggravated — as it did in life. It remains
active until its rightmost Health box is occupied with aggravated damage. A zombie does
not bleed to death upon suffering lethal damage in its rightmost Health box, and must be
attacked repeatedly until utterly destroyed. Needless to say, appropriate makeup or (failing
that) prominent description tags are a necessity to portray this ritual’s use correctly. Zombies
can be affected by the same Disciplines that would have affected them before their death
although they cannot become vessels for Dominate or Animalism or become possessed by
ephemeral beings. Vampires and ghosts, despite being technically speaking deceased, can not
be turned into walking corpses.
Offering: A Communion wafer placed under the dead person’s tongue.
STIGMATA (LEVEL-FOUR THEBAN SORCERY RITUAL)
Although the majority of Theban Sorcery’s rites have a decidedly Old Testament fl avor,
Stigmata takes the very suffering of the New Testament’s Prince of Peace and turns it into a
weapon of divine punishment. The victim of this ritual must be within sight when it is cast.
He bleeds from the wrists, feet and side, the traditional fi ve wounds of Christ. Mortals suffer
one point of lethal damage per turn from blood loss, while Kindred lose one Vitae each turn.
If a vampire runs out of Vitae during the course of the ritual, she proceeds to suffer lethal
damage and is likely to frenzy (see p. 253). A vampire whose rightmost Health box is fi lled
with lethal damage by this means falls into torpor (see p. 248).
The draw to activate this power is penalized by the subject’s Stamina.
The number of turns the subject suffers from Stigmata equals the number of successes
achieved on the Theban Sorcery draw.
Offering: A crucifi x, which crumbles to ash as the ritual is enacted.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION (LEVEL-FIVE THEBAN SORCERY RITUAL)
The character transforms one substance or object into another. It can be water into blood,
for example, or a tree branch into a snake, or a person into a pillar of salt. The object or
substance transformed becomes a generic, perfectly normal, mundane version of whatever
it is. Transubstantiation cannot turn a frog into a Lupine or a human into a Kindred, for
example, though it could change a frog into a wolf or a human into a bat. There are a few
additional limits on the transformation. It works only on targets of an equal or smaller Size
than the caster, and the result cannot simulate human or supernatural intelligence. In addition,
the result also cannot be larger than the caster unless several sorcerers participate.
That is, the same frog could be transformed into a child, but the child wouldn’t be able to
have any intelligent discourse or even perform many complicated activities since it’s just a
frog turned into the simulacrum of a child. Vampiric Disciplines cannot be used to possess
simulacra of living creatures. Lastly, unless the Storyteller specifi cally rules otherwise, this
ritual cannot be used to create sophisticated devices, extinct animals, rare elements or other
exotic creatures and substances. The ritual must result in a relatively mundane species or
material which appears in its normal state. Transubstantiating something into rock would
not for instance create lava. The substance or object reverts to its original form when the sun
next rises (though a person transformed into, say, ice and whose arm is broken off has both
portions of herself turn back to normal in different locations, and swiftly bleeds to death).
Supernatural creatures are unaffected by Transubstantiation.