Below is a list of the officially published list of rituals that can be practiced via Necromancy. They are divided after tradition and include paraphernalia, effect, and other prerequisites.
Rituals[]
If a necromancer wishes to learn rituals from outside his tradition, he suffers a +1 penalty to difficulties on those Necromancy rolls.[1] Learning rituals from another tradition is possible as long as the character has a teacher that is willing to teach the ritual.
African/Voudoun Necromancy[]
Note: The African Impundulu bloodline detailed in Vampire Twentieth Anniversary Edition: The Dark Ages uses the same rituals as those described in supplements that deal with Voudoun Necromancy. Therefore, the rituals seem to be African in origin.
[1]
- Knowing Stone: By cutting himself and painting the name on a stone with his blood, the Necromancer can see where the soul of a person currently resides after petitioning the loas by dancing around the stone in trance.
- [2]
- Two Centimes: By ceremonially "killing" a person, laying them out on a pallet, and closing their eyes with two coins, the Necromancer can send the soul of a person into the Underworld as an intangible phantom. The person can still communicate with the Necromancer until the ritual ends.
- Part the Veil: The Necromancer chants over an object representing the target and a fresh human eye. If successful, the target gains the ability to see past the Shroud for several nights.
- [3]
- Blood Dance: In a ceremony where the Necromancer dances and chants to attract the right spirit, while scattering colored sands and ocean salt on the ground in a complex sigil, the Necromancer can summon the wraith of a relative of a present living person.
- Nightmare Drums: The Necromancer coats the personal object of a person in his own blood, then burns it while pounding on drums made of human skin. While the drums make no sound in the living world, they attract wraiths, along with the sacrificed object. In exchange for a small favor, the wraith will then haunt the dreams of the person whose possession was burned.
- Eyes of the Dead: The Necromancer chants while spilling his own vitae over an object or piece of anatomy associated with a deceased person with an intact head. If the Necromancer was able to see the corpse during the process, he can then use the corpse's sensory organs to spy on its surroundings.
- [4]
- Baleful Doll: The Necromancer constructs a doll while ritually chanting, painting it with his own vitae and clothing it in an article of the victim's clothing. If the doll resembles the target enough, any damage the doll suffers is sympathetically transmitted to it.
- Point of the Needle: Immersing a needle that has been used for tormenting a Baleful Doll in blood under the moon, the Necromancer can shrivel a target's limb by stabbing it with the needle.
- [5]
- Dead Man's Hand: The Necromancer takes a freshly severed hand, wrapping it in a piece of cloth stained with bodily fluids from the target. As the hand decomposes, so does the victim.
Aztec Necromancy[]
- [6]
- Ritual of the Smoking Mirror: The Necromancer needs an obsidian mirror with sharp edges that will cut into his hands if he holds it. When his vitae congregates in the mirror, the Necromancer either calls a prayer to the god Tonatiuh to activate Lifesight, or to the god Mictlanteotl, to active Deathsight. Both are seen in the reflective surface.
- [7]
- Ritual of Pochtli: In conjunction with another Necromantic ritual, two or more Necromancers carve Aztec glyphs into the flesh of a restrained mortal. They then drink from these injuries. Each participating Necromancer must make his own cut and drink from no other cut. Afterwards, the two Necromancers can draw on each other's knowledge during their practices.
- [8]
- Divine Sign: The Necromancer needs to know the birth date of a target, as well as an exemplar of the Tonalamatl to learn its day sign. If the target is alive, the Necromancer can predict its actions on the next day. If the target is a wraith, the knowledge of the day sign acts in a similar matter to the acquisition of a Fetter.
- [9]
- Ritual of Xipe Totec: The Necromancer removes the skin of a target with an obsidian dagger (the victim has to survive). The Necromancer washes away any remaining blood that is on the skin in a golden bowl, which is already filled with octla, amaranth, and other aromatic substances. When the Necromancer drinks from the bowl, he sweetens a small blood film that will attach the skin perfectly to his body.
- [10]
- Ritual of Teyolia: The Necromancer draws a vampire to the summit of an Aztec style temple. Four loyal ghouls hold the limbs, while the Necromancer cuts open the chest with an obsidian dagger. He then tears out the heart and puts the heart in a specially prepared vessel, to do with it as he sees fit (either diablerizing it or presenting it someone else to diablerize it). The vampire on whom the rite is practiced, however, suffers Final Death.
Eastern Necromancy[]
- [11]
- Preserve Corpse: By mixing grave dirt, defiled holy water, and rare herbs into a liquid and coating it on a corpse, the Necromancer is able to prevent decay from fulminate.
- [12]
- Haunting Breeze: The Necromancer can create a light supernatural wind which serves to frighten and confuse all those within a small area.
- [13]
- Death's Head: The Necromancer takes residues of a killed human (bone, flesh, ash) and mixes them into a paint-like substance that is used to decorate a porcelain mask. When the mask is worn, the Necromancer appears as a wraith to onlookers. After it is used, the mask crumbles to white dust.
- [14]
- Impregnable Soul: The Necromancer wards a body against the possession from one of the entities of the Underworld and prevents its soul from pulled out of it.
- [15]
- Enochian Passage: By plunging a silver dagger into his heart and falling into a body of water large enough to completely cover him, the Necromancer can manifest bodily in the Shadowlands, in front of the ruins that are believed to be Enoch.
Western Necromancy[]
- [16]
- Call the Hungry Dead: By burning a hair from the head of a person over a black candle, the victim hears voices across the Shroud.
- Eldritch Beacon: By molding the wax of a green candle into a sphere, the Necromancer makes a target stick out in the Shadowlands by a sickly green-white aura. Usages of Arcanoi against it profit from greater ease and severity.
- Words of Insight: The Necromancer travels to a place where the Shroud is weak. Then, he builds a triangle out of objects that present his own past, present and future and lights an incense burner in the center of the triangle. The Necromancer can then ask about his coming Fate and will be answered by wraiths.
- Minestra di Morte: The necromancer obtains a piece of a dead body and simmers it in vitae, together with salt, basil, and rosemary. When he drinks the concoction, he can learn if the person lingered in the Underworld after death, and if it became a wraith or a Spectre.
- Death’s Communion: The Necromancer performs a twisted ritual similar to the Lord's Supper, only with blood instead of wine and a dedication to Dis Pater and the coming of the Endless Night. Afterwards, the participating Necromancer gains a bonus on any uses of Necromancy.
- Rape of Persephone: By surgically creating up to seven additional genitalia on a fresh corpse out of its tissue, the performing Necromancers can freely trade Willpower points among each other and have greater success at following necromantic spells that do not specifically target a ghost, provided that they do have intercourse with the newly modified corpse.
- Circle of Cerberus: After donning well-maintained, high quality clothing and drawing a perfect circle around him, the Necromancer is protected from the powers of wraiths in the Skinlands, as long as the Necromancer abstains from physical comforts, baths and fasts.
- Insight: The Necromancer works with the eyes of a corpse to catch its last glimpses during its lifetime. Practitioners of Taboo slowly eat the eyeball, while practitioners of Authority by drip blood into the eye and recite a short prayer.
- [17]
- Draining the Well of Life: The Necromancer first gathers his wraith servants and carves their names into a vessel he intends to feed from. He then drains the victim completely dry, regaining lost willpower points rather than blood. The wraiths can then feed on the generated emotions to fulfill their Pathos, the greater the emotion, the more pathos.
- Eyes of the Grave: Using pinches of fresh grave dirt, the Necromancer can cause a target to have visions of its own death.
- Generating the Acheron Vortex: The Necromancer must have tasted the vitae of a Lasombra before the ritual. Under the new moon, he spills vitae from a Harbinger of Skulls and a Lasombra into a body of water, while listening to voices from the Underworld. The water forms a vortex through which the necromancer and one additional person can enter the Underworld
- Hand of Glory: The Necromancer obtains the mummified hand of a condemned murderer, wraps it in a shroud to squeeze out any remaining fluids, and puts it in an earthenware jar, together with salts, pepper, and saltpeter. After a fortnight, the Necromancer finishes the process by drying the hand in an oven together with vervain and fern. If the Necromancer wishes to active the hand, he has to coat its fingertips into the fat of a hanged man and ignite them. All mortals in a house the Necromancer has entered will fall into a deep sleep for as long as the fingertips burn.
- Judgement of Radamanthus: First, the Necromancer marks a wraith. Afterwards, he burns pages from a law book or religious text that applied to the Wraith in life in a cleansed bronze brazier. Combining the ashes with a mixture of pulverized silver, the Necromancer draws a perfect circle around him. When he summons the wraith, it will believe that the Necromancer has the authority to send it to the "true" afterlife (the one it believed in when it was alive), making it much more cooperative. The Ritual works only once on a Wraith.
- Occhio d'Uomo Morte: The Necromancer plucks an eye out of the corpse whose soul became a ghost. The eye is then prepared under the new moon, under the burning of incense and chanting. At the climax, the Necromancer plucks on of his own eyes out and switches it with the one from the corpse. The Necromancer can then permanently see beyond the Shroud. If the soul became a Spectre, the Necromancer can catch glimpses of the Hive-Mind.
- Parting the Veil: If the Necromancer is in the Shadowlands, he can sacrifice blood over an open flame until his skin begins to crack. Then, he has to douse the flames with his own blood. The rite weakens the Shroud and allows mortals to enter it when it is brought down low enough when they walk through the, for them still invisible, flames.
- Puppet: The Necromancer smears grave soil across the subject's eyes, lips, and forehead over the course of an hour. Any attempt of wraithly possession are easier.
- Spirit Beacon: This Ritual is designed to draw wraiths to a particular area. It requires the head of a man forsaken by God. This ghastly object acts as a beacon to all wraiths within the region. Giovanni who have seen these dreadful items in the Shadowlands say that an unholy radiance pours forth from the eyes, mouth, and ears of the head, drawing wraiths like moths to a flame.
- Thanatos' Caress: The Necromancer unearths a rotting corpse. After bathing himself, he then lies down on the corpse to break it apart. Once he is sullied in the remains of the rotten corpse, he eats the heart. Afterwards, the Necromancer can inflict the decomposition of aging upon a victim with a simple touch.
- [18]
- Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter: By acquiring the finger bone of the remaining body of a wraith, as well as its name and piece of a grave marker, the Necromancer transforms the finger bone into a compass needle that points to the nearest Fetter of the Wraith.
- Din of the Damned: The Necromancer draws an unbroken line of ash from a crematorium along the room's walls. If a person wants to eavesdrop on any events happening inside (either through mundane, mystic, or electronic methods), all it hears are ghostly whispers and the sound of of howling winds.
- Tempesta Scudo: The Necromancer performs a short and awkward dance while biting his lip and spitting the blood in a circle around him. Wraiths have a harder time harming the Necromancer within this circle.
- Tempest Prison: The Necromancer obtains a large glass container and buries it in a graveyard over the grave of a wraith. After lacing lines of blood in the ground while chanting for several hours, the glass becomes filled with a swirling purple and black mist, in which can be seen occasional flecks of light, like miniature lighting. When opened in front of a Wraith, it is immediately sucked inside.
- Drink of Styx's Waters: The Necromancer saws off the upper half of an exhumed human skull. The cup-shaped bone is then enforces with clay and made into a bowl. If a descendant of the original "donor" eats anything out from this bowl, any promises he makes during this time become enforced by a Spectre that torments him if he fails to uphold them.
- [19]
- Cadaver's Touch: The Necromancer melts a wax doll of a target while chanting rhythmically, turning the target into a reasonable facsimile of an undead. The effects last as long as the wax has not resolidified.
- Peek Past the Shroud: The Necromancer eats a pinch of ergot over the course of several hours to gain the ability of seeing beyond the Shroud for as long as the ergot remains within his body.
- Bastone Diabolico: The Necromancer removes a leg bone from a living person (who has to survive for a while afterwards). After submerging the bone in molten lead, the Necromancer inscribes it with various runes. Then the "donor" is clubbed to death with its own leg bone while the Necromancer chants in Ancient Greek. When a "devil stick" hits a wraith, it loses Passion, and against a Risen, it deals aggravated damage.
- Drink of Lethe's Waters: After acquiring a personal object of a wraith that can be damaged with water, the Necromancer destroys it by leaving it to soak in water and repeatedly spitting on it. After the object has been destroyed, the wraith loses all memory of her life among the living, making it highly suggestible.
- Summon Ethereal Horde: Using knowledge harvested from Sielanic Thaumaturgy, the Necromancer can summon Drones of the deceased into the world that then turn on the enemy. The Necromancer has to stand in a circle made out of the remnants of a cremated corpse, a coffin, and a gravestone and chant a prayer to the dead.
- Soulcrafting: The Necromancer must first design a machine made out of steel. Using a forge and a Fetter of a wraith, the Necromancer reforges the Fetter into a piece of machinery, binding the wraith at the machine in a semi-sentient state: It cannot act independently, but is able to fulfill complex commands.
- Call upon the Shadow's Grace: The Necromancer communicates with the "shadow" of a living person. While such a "shadow" is less forthcoming than that of a wraith, it can reveal things that the person would rather have buried.
- Caul the Living Mind: The caster mixes his blood with graveyard earth and a patch of skin from a newborn while encantating over it for several hours. Afterwards, if the skin touches the face or neck of another person, the target collapses into a catatonic state.
- [20]
- Call Upon the Shadow's Grace: By enacting this ritual, the Giovanni brings the self-destructive aspects of her subject's psyche to the fore. if used successfully, this ritual causes its subject to reveal her darkest secrets to the Giovanni. The subject will reveal any plots in which she is involved, treacheries she has committed, and lies she has told.
- Chair of Hades: The Necromancer exhumes the femur and tibia bones of a person, wrapping the bones in coarse cloth and encasing them with wood or metal so that they become able to sustain weight. He then constructs a chair from the bones. If a blood descendant of the person whose bones have been used sits in the chair, they lose all desire to do anything other than sitting in the chair, leaving only to quickly fulfill basic bodily needs.
- Chill of Oblivion: The Necromancer melts a foot-long cube of ice on the chest of the target that has to lie naked on bare earth for entirety of the Ritual. Afterwards, the target treats fire damage as if it was lethal damage and can extinguish fires through a Willpower effort. The aura of a target of the ritual becomes riddled with black veins similar to a Diablerist, and its eerie presence attracts ghosts and chills its surroundings.
- Esilio: The Necromancer speaks five syllables of unknown origin. A tear within him opens that connects him to the Well of the Void. Any wraiths and spectres the Necromancer can grasp and clutch to his chest are destroyed (Wraiths have the potential to return as a Spectre). Usage of the Ritual reduces Humanity permanently by 1.
- Garb of Hades: The Necromancer dresses himself in clothes that a person wore at the time of its death and the symbolically "breathes" out. The body of the Necromancer remains behind in a Torpor-like state, while the Necromancer's spirit takes possession of the corpse of the person whose clothes he wears.
- Grasp the Ghostly: By chanting for six hours and sacrificing an object roughly equal to its mass, the Necromancer can bring a Relic across the Shroud.
- The Ferryman's Recall: The Necromancer needs the intact corpse of a ghoul of his, as well as a Fetter of its wraithly form. The body has to be cleansed and drained of any remaining fluids. Then the necromancer paints a series of sigils onto the body, intended as place markers for the subject's spirit to relearn how to use his body. In the climax of the rite, the Necromancer pours his vitae into the throat of the corpse, Embracing him in a postmortem process.
- Orphic Sojourn: The Necromancer dresses himself in funerary garbs and meditates from dusk till midnight, surrounded by grave goods. At midnight, his spirit enters the Underworld, able to interact with its environment as if it was a native.
Gallery[]
VTES cards[]
African/Voudoun Necromancy[]
3 Dots
Eyes of the Dead. Art by Max Shade Fellwalker
4 Dots
Baleful Doll. Art by Richard Thomas
Aztec Necromancy[]
3 Dots
Divine Sign. Art by David Day
Western Necromancy[]
References[]
- ↑ VTM: Rites of the Blood, p. 85-86
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^ Level 1
^ Level 2
^ Level 3
^ Level 4
^ Level 5
| Dead Man's Hand | Blood Magic: Secrets of Thaumaturgy | pg. 113 |
| Dead Man's Hand | Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition | pg. 183 |
| Dead Man's Hand | Vampire: The Dark Ages 20th Anniversary Edition | pg. 295 |
| Ritual of Teyolia | Clanbook: Giovanni Revised | pg. 73 |
| Enochian Passage | Rites of the Blood | pg. 104 |
| Chill of Oblivion | Guide to the Sabbat | pg. 110 |
| Chill of Oblivion | Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition | pg. 183 |
| Chair of Hades | Blood Magic: Secrets of Thaumaturgy | pg. 106 |
| Orphic Sojourn | Vampire: The Dark Ages 20th Anniversary Edition | pg. 296 |
| Garb of Hades | Blood Sacrifice: The Thaumaturgy Companion | pg. 85 |
| Grasp the Ghostly | Vampire: The Masquerade Revised Edition | pg. 165 |
| Grasp the Ghostly | Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition | pg. 184 |
| Esilio | Clanbook: Giovanni Revised | pg. 76-77 |
| Esilio | Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition | pg. 183 |
| The Ferrymen's Recall | Lore of the Clans | pg. 109 |
| Call Upon the Shadow's Grace | Clanbook: Giovanni | p. 44 - 45 |