Leave No Trace
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Leave no Trace
History: This ritual was developed by the Assamite assassin “Wind of Death”. Though it was presented to the sorcerers of the clan, they generally ignored it due to its unusual format, and the fact that despite its trappings, it is based on hermetic principles.
Hunting Vampires is dangerous, and hunting sorcerers is more so. Hunting important members of a hierarchical clan of sorcerous vampires is, therefor quite dangerous indeed. A rogue Assamite bent on revenge against the Tremere somehow survived this hunt long enough to learn to cover his own tracks with this ritual ripped from the lore of his enemy.
Though the trappings are Babylonian (it calls on the god of water and clay, Enki, as well as the goddess of love and war, Ishtar,) it shares a brutally simplistic style with the Tremere it is designed to foil. The caster bakes a piece of himself (a hair or bit of skin) into a crude clay figurine about 3 cm high. The clay must be pure natural clay taken from the Euphrates river bed (which Enki is said to have created through an epochal act of masturbation, and from which the Gods took the clay to make humanity). Properly impregnated with the essence of the caster, the figurine must be fired in a specially prepared wood fired kiln. Here, the Babylonian trappings break down, and hermetic symbols representing birth, fire and decay must be drawn both inside and outside the kiln. Once completed, the figurine becomes representative of not the caster, but that part of the caster that is lost from his body since the figurine is created. The simple act of breaking the fragile piece of clay is enough to trigger its magic, and destroy any part of the caster's body that has somehow come separated from the whole since the firing was complete, exposing it however briefly to the fires of the kiln that bound the magic.
An appropriate kiln can take up to a night to prepare. Once existent, the ritual takes twenty minutes to prepare the figurine, and two hours to fire.
System: With one success on the ritual, the figurine remains potent until the next sunrise. Two allow the figurine to last one month. With three successes on the ritual, the figurine can last indefinitely. When the crude clay figurine is broken, any piece of the caster's body that has become separated from the whole flares briefly into flame, and leaves a fine gray powder, inert of any physical identity. This effect can never be used to do damage (even to a mortal who has ingested the caster's blood; for the purposes of the ritual, the blood is then part of the ghoul), and in only the most extreme cases could it provoke rotscheck. This ritual cannot be cast on anyone other than the caster.
Jamie's commentary: This ritual was first used by an Assamite assassin who stalked Kate's character Zahira. She was able to obtain a copy from the library of the Schismatic Assamites in exile. I designed it inefficiently for what it can do, kind of along "quick and dirty" lines. I believe that other pristine river clay can substitute for that of the Euphrates.
