For the men in your life.
To be the ‘caster’ of this spell, you must be female, even though the targets of this spell are considered to be the males who are taking a secondary part. It’s unknown is this ritual was somehow the origin of the story of Snow White, or if the story of Snow White was the inspiration for this ritual (chicken or the egg questions are a common theme of the old European ritual magicks). Only men who are emotionally or biologically close to you (fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers and the like are all good) may take part in this ritual and thus receive any benefit. Any female that is not yourself will not be able to effectively participate in this ritual.
Cost: 2 Significant charges plus an extra 3 Minor charges for every male (other than the first) involved in the ritual.
Effect: Any male taking part in this ritual sacrafices 5 permanent wound points to your own maximum wound point total (+5 for each one). In return, each of the men has any firearms-level damage (total of the dice roll) reduced to martial arts-level damage (sum of the dice roll) for as long as you live. Your skin will also permanently turn a ghostly shade of white as a sign of the deal, even if you’re not Causcian.
Ritual Actions: Draw a large circle in red chalk with you standing in the center when the ritual starts. You must be wearing only white clothes and you must keep chanting the same Latin phrases over and over until this first part of the ritual is over. While chanting, any and all men taking part in the ritual must each stab himself in the off hand with a dagger made out of a pure iron, while yelling out “I give you my blood and you give me your soul!” in Latin. Once each male has done this, the first part is over.
To complete the ritual, you must then kill three female adepts before the next full moon. The female adepts can be killed in any way and each one of them must be either an Entropomancer, an Eperidomancer or a Personamancer.
I think she should have to drink the blood (symbolic of them giving their blood) and she should have to sleep with them (or at least kiss) each of them (symbolic of giving her soul to them).
It seem like there should be more drawbacks. It seems like everyone comes out very much ahead. There should be some drawback perhaps the men should take some part of the damage she does and she should be affected by anything that might damage or effect the souls of the men.
I like it except for that killing adepts thing. I think the ritual kiss to symbolise sex and love is adequate.
I’d pump this up to three, maybe four significant charges since it is a permanent affect.
Cheers,
Chris.
I’d like to note that I tried to get a sort of Snow White motif, rather than any kind of sexual theme (you may, however, require the males kiss the caster during the ritual if that suits you). That’s why killing the adepts was included.
If the charge cost is too low then up it.
As for the drawbacks of the ritual, remember that three adepts (note that adepts are considered relatively uncommon in the UA setting) which all have at least one thing in common are dead AND the woman is now a pale white when she wasn’t before.
That’s asking for trouble, let me tell you.
ALL old Fairy Tales have a sexual theme.
Red Riding Hood is as much as about rape as it is theft and murder.
And Sleeping Beauty? In one version, the prince impregnates her, she gives birth (still asleep) and one of the babies tries to suckle her finger, pulling out the poisoned.
The only thing I don’t like about the “killing three adepts” bit is that those are all post-modern schools (which are notoriously wobbly in definition). I’d be curious as to how the ritual description (regardless of medium: word of mouth, ancient scroll, .txt file) describes it because then there A) would be some ambiguity (killing the wrong type of adept) and B) more options (spontaneous schools that share an appropriate thematic element also useful). With A), the drawback is that the men lose those wound points and after three weeks, the woman does too perhaps. With B), everyone gets nervous and the OU starts churning out rumors, particularly if the description of the adept type is “dark and deceitful” or something otherwise (which is great if it really needs to be the MAGICK that is dark/deceitful and that the character of the adept is unimportant… and they whack some jerk dipsomancer).
Also, I’d argue that there are overlaps, but not for all three adept types. Personamancers overlap with Epideros (identity issues), but not Entropos. Entropos overlap with Epideros (risks of damage, blast style a little), but not Personamancers. So there really isn’t an obvious connection besides them all being adepts.