TNI’s ward against ranged blasts and certain other attacks.
Cost: five minor charges
This old ritual was rediscovered by TNI researchers some time ago, and has since leaked out to a hnadful of dukes.
Description: Okay, write this down.
Begin with salt. Grocery-store salt will do fine, you don’t need special magic salt. The kind with the girl in the yellow raincoat on it. You’ll need a lot of salt, a bathtub full. More than that and it gets to be unworkable. It’s easier to move around in a plastic garbage can, though. You can get a clean one from a Wal-Mart or anywhere.
You also need the target’s hair, “the target” being whoever needs to be protected. You need all his hair. Cut it with scissors, shave him, or her, the ritual doesn’t discriminate. But you need all the hair. Leg hair, arm hair, pubic, eyebrow, eyelash, everything.
Once you have all the hair, burn it, using the white pages from a telephone book as tinder. It doesn’t matter how much mass of white pages you use.
Once that’s done, collect the ashes and mix them with the salt. You have to use your bare hands for the mixing, and while you’re mixing you have to recite the following thirty times.
I’m going to say this phonetically.
Now the fun part. Find someplace out of doors, with bare earth. The target sits crosslegged on the earth. You, the performer of the ritual, the same lucky duck who did the chanting, pour the salt-ash mix out on the ground, with your bare hands, in a circle around the target. It doesn’t matter how big you make the circle, the effect doesn’t care.
You’ll know if it’s working because the salt-ash will start to turn black and melt. Then you go find whoever’s putting the whammy on your friend, right?
Effect: As long as the target remains within the dampening circle, he or she is immune to all magickal effects generated from outside the circle, from ranged blasts to the urbanomancy effect Spraypaint to the Chronicler’s third-channel power to read one’s history (assuming the adept or avatar in question is not also inside the circle). Likewise, the target is unable to magickally affect anyone on the other side of the circle. The only exceptions to this protection are major magickal effects, godwalker channels, and other high-end powers.
Once the ritual is complete, the salt-ash mix which makes up the dampening circle begins to blacken and dissolve into the ground. When all the mix has dissolved away, the circle is broken. The length of time this takes depends on the original volume of salt: a handful lasts a few minutes, a bucketful lasts about two hours, a bathtub or garbage canful lasts about a day. If the ritual is done with a larger volume of salt (a swimming-pool full, for instance) the circle will last a correspondingly longer time.
The circle is also broken if the target leaves the circle, if major effects the circle is unable to dampen cross it, or if someone scuffs it out with their shoe.
Note that the effects are for the target only; others can cross the circle at will, and enjoy no protection while inside it.