Some people will do anything for power… anything.

Power: Significant
Charges: 5
Some people will do anything for power; this ritual is further proof of that.

Okay… you say you heard about the Lingua Draconis, yeah. I can help you with it. Only thing is to speak the Lingua Draconis you need a dragon tongue. No, you need it like in your mouth. Don’t worry. It will make sense.

Here’s what you need:
All your tools need to be made of bronze. All of them.
You’ll need three clamps, built to these specifications here, a bronze pully, a length of silk rope, a bronze knife, a bronze brazier, and a bronze container… like a flower pot kinda.
You need about a cubic foot of earth from the gravesite of a saint. Surface dirt’s not gonna work, closer you get to the actual remains the better, good dark soil. Now get yourself a bottle of sacramental wine from a good Catholic priest and have him dedicate it to St. George. You know a little prayer to the great dragon slayer.
A square foot of red velvet.
About a half pound of brimstone powder. That’s sulfur in case you didn’t know.
A little vial of quicksilver, or mercury to us modern folks.
A pound or so of dragon’s blood. It’s this red resin, used in incense. Good stuff.

Now the really hard stuff.
You’ll need 3 drops of blood from the first menstruation of a girl of faith, 3 tears from a condemned killer, and 3 drops of honeysuckle nectar from honeysuckle growing in a graveyard. Keep ’em separated for now.
Lastly you’ll need a month’s supply of water and an empty room where you won’t be bothered for a month. And by empty, I mean empty. There shouldn’t even be a light bulb in there. If there are windows, you should board them suckers up. A basement would be ideal.

First let’s get the grisly work out of the way.

First we get some coals cooking up in our brazier. You’re going to need to keep this brazier burning for a month, so stock up on coal or briquettes or something.
Set up that pulley system with the silk rope and put the clamps on your tongue, like this. Tighten them good. Now the easiest way to do this is just to grab high on the rope and wrap it around your hand and arm and just drop to your knees or go prone. Yep, you’re gonna tear your tongue out. Try to stay conscious or you’ll bleed to death or drown in your own blood. Not a good start. Let your tongue dangle in that clamp for a couple minutes while you staunch the bleeding. Take the bronze blade and heat it in the brazier, and cauterize that nasty wound. Again, try to stay conscious. I did mention you can’t have any help on this, right?

The clamp design is usually good for tearing the whole thing out by the roots, but as long as you liberate your mouth of most of your tongue you’re still good. You need at least 3/4 of it to come out, so, like I said, attach
those clamps good.
Now, once you’ve stopped the bleeding, carefully drink a glass of the sacramental wine. It’s not as easy without your tongue and you don’t want to lose any. It’ll sting but compared to the previous pain, not much to worry about..

Now back to your tongue. Take it off the clamps and lay it on the velvet cloth, sprinkle both sides of the tongue with brimstone like you were breading chicken. Now put a drop of quicksilver on the tongue and wrap it tightly in the velvet. Bury it in your pot with the earth taken from the tomb or gravesite of a saint while standing under the new moon. Take the pot in and leave it alone until the full moon. Now, on the same night, you’ll need to take the rest of your wine, and mix it with the tears, blood and honeysuckle. Go ahead and invest your mojo into this wine at this point.

Now, for the next 2 weeks you must fast, and cannot bathe or groom or any of those modern things. You can sleep and drink water, but you have to be alone in a room with no human contact, or modern contrivances or even furniture. And no one, NO ONE, can see you.

On the night of the full moon go back to your buried tongue, without digging it up, and water the earth that holds it with the wine mixture, then cover it with a cloth or something so you can’t see the pot. Return to your fast until the next new moon, that’s right, a whole month with no food, but as long as that brazier is burning you’re okay. You may get light headed and hallucinate, but you won’t die. So really, don’t let the fucker go out. Also you should add a little Dragon’s Blood to it, every once in a while, you need to keep the room permeated with that cinnamony smell. A half ounce of it a day goes a long way.

One the night of the next new moon, look into the pot, but no peeking until then. If your ritual has worked an ‘Artemisia Dracunulus’, the herb ‘estragon’, will have sprouted there. Take the plant back to your room and
eat it. You will fall into unconsciousness and dream or hallucinate wildly for as little as a day, and as much as a week. When you wake up, your tongue, or more specifically the tongue of the dragon, will have regenerated in your mouth.

If you fucked up any part of the ritual, you’ll know by this point.

Enjoy being mute.

Good luck.

Effects:
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Magick Whispers: The possessor of a dragon’s tongue gains the ability to speak the Lingua Draconis, a primal magick language said to have survived from quite a few universes back. Lingua Draconis reduces the charge requirement on any ritual or spell by 1, to a minimum of 1.

Reptilian Dreams: In addition this sibilant, whispering language can be understood by reptiles. Of course to understand them, or even to understand what you are saying with your new tongue requires you to have Language: Lingua Draconis, a soul skill. You get it for free at 5% and can raise it normally. In addition you can teach it to anyone you want, but they can’t speak it, only understand it.

Dragon Echoes: The possessor gains the ability to develop paranormal reptilian senses, notably a heightened sense of taste and smell, and the
ability to ‘see’ heat changes. Each of these must be developed separately, and are all soul skills. The Possessor may bargain with the GM for additional reptilian senses.

Silver Tongued: The user gains a +10% skill shift when lying, or attempting to convince someone of something with falsehoods and half-truths.

Dragon’s Breath: Anyone looking at your tongue has to make a rank-3 unnatural check. It’s too long, too smooth, and covered with strange, writhing sigils. Your breath is always moderately sulfurous, and unnaturally
warm. People are going to find it highly distastegul to kiss you or even be in your face for long.

Forked Tongue: The user takes a 10% penalty when trying to convince someone of the truth. People don’t want to believe his truths but are only too ready
to believe his lies.

Sleeping Dragon’s Prophecy: Occasionally you will speak a prophecy in the Lingua Draconis, often while asleep, it is almost always obscure and bad, of course it has to be understood to even get that much from it.

The Dragon Stirs: The tongue causes unnatural phenomena in the area. The phenomena will always adhere to some legend or fact about dragons and
reptiles. Each time the Lingua Draconis is used a minor unnatural phenomena will appear in the next few hours. And over the 3 days of the new moon, and
full moon, there is a 33% chance each day that a significant phenomenon will occur. Only one significant effect will occur per month. Using the tongue multiple times will slowly build up the power of the unnatural phenomena. It always releases all of it’s pent up reality rending taint at once. A little taste of old chaos in a new world.

Venomous Tongue: At least once a month, at the GM’s whim, the possessor will speak a embarrassing truth about someone else in their presence. Like the
messenger’s channel, those that hear it will believe it. This could be annoying (Mike masturbates to Cop Rock), or potentially deadly (Mike slaughtered your sister to perform a powerful ritual.) This will always be a hidden secret, not some random truth like “Magick is real”. Someone will always be hurt by this truth.

System:
The Silencing: To tear out your own tongue is a Violence-3 and Self-6 stress check. Tearing out the tongue so brutally causes up to half the health of the caster in damage. Percentile are rolled and assembled at the whim of the GM. At a bare minimum it will do 25% of the casters health. The caster must make a body check in order not to pass out, if they have any applicable skills they may roll it instead. (Ignore pain, etc). If they fail, they take another d10 in damage, and may test again. This continues until they succeed or die. The cauterization causes lots of pain but no more real damage, and stops the threat of blood loss.

Note: an epidomancer gets no charges for this, nor do dipsomancers from sucking back the wine, or any other adept for any reason.

The fasting: Each day on the fast the caster temporarily loses a point of body and a point of speed. As long as the brazier is kept burning, no stat can drop below 10. When body and/or speed have bottomed out, a point is removed from Mind instead, and the hallucinations start. The only skill that is rolled as though no stat damage was done is the caster’s thaumaturgy. Isolation checks are also rolled for at unmodified levels. Refer to the isolation chart on when to make checks, keeping in mind the caster has no outside contact and nothing but himself in his empty room.
The hallucinations: The GM is free to play with the caster’s mind to his heart’s content really, and apply relevant stress-checks. Reality hates Lingua Draconis and will shape the hallucinations in a way that tries to get the caster to break the rituals taboos.
The End: Assuming they have kept fast, not contacted anyone, performed the ritual actions on the right nights, everything is rosy and the tongue is yours. The not-so-obvious taboo; the caster can not spend charges except on the ritual, nor perform actions to gain charges.
The Last Dream: After breaking fast with the estragon, the user will undergo a vision quest based upon how he sees dragons and reptiles culturally and personally. A Christian will dream they are the serpent in the garden, a Buddhist may dream he is the great spirit dragon that encircles Nirvana, a person afraid of snakes will have the
worst dream of their life…

No Herpemancer in their right mind would ever do this ritual and they call those affected by it the ‘Dragon’s Mouths’. To them, just the thought of it feels ‘wrong’ somehow. It is a connection to a serpent alien to this
reality, and alien to their own concept of reality; The Dragon, an archetype long gone from the memories of anyone, save perhaps the Compte. A Herpemancer can detect one of the dragon’s mouths on sight, and will often do anything it takes to avoid them. It is said that if a herpemancer can cut the bonds of the Dragon’s hold on one of it’s mouths, they will gain a major charge, but that would require ritual destruction of the tongue, body, and soul… in that order. In effect, possession of the Dragon’s Tongue makes one an avatar of a long dead god, Tiamat, the bloated female dragon of pure
Chaos.

Rumor has it that the Compte doesn’t look to fondly upon what he refers to as Tiamites either. But no one is really sure if he would take any direct action.

Also, as the tongue is a portal to the past, it’s possible for those with them to become a real Tiamite, becoming an true Avatar of the long dead god. No one really knows what powers this would channel someone, or what it’s requirements or taboos are… but they can’t be good. seeing as Tiamat’s reputation makes Kali’s looks like a tough love earth mother. Attempting to walk the Path of Tiamat is going to almost certainly make you some enemies amongst the Invisible Clergy, and God help the earth if a Tiamite should somehow rise to a level where they can ascend with a massively vulgar action against this reality. The Sleeper must not awaken.

Haing this vulgar artifact in your mouth is certain to break taboo with quite a few adept schools and avatar paths, but that is up to the GM to adjudicate. One thing is for certain, the messenger will abandon you without even the courtesy of a goodbye.