Orpheus' Descent
Description: The vampire chants from dusk to midnight, imploring the chthonic gods of death to open a path to their lightless realm. If the ritual succeeds, a deep fissure tears in the earth. The vampire may descend into this crevasse and sojourn to the deepest labyrinthine recesses of Hades’ realm. In this nightmarish plane, rock and bone conjoin in impossible architecture as from a blasphemous thing never born — and yet the walls themselves undulate as with slow breathing. The vampire may find the oldest and the most wicked of the dead with enough searching, and untold wonders and horrors besides. It is the immutable law of such descent that the vampire finds who or what he seeks before dawn, provided that the object of his desire exists among the dead... Once the vampire finds
this thing or person, he must turn his back and climb up the infinite steps and passages that lead to the living world. Such a journey may appear to take hours or days or an eternity compressed into moments, but the vampire arrives at least an hour before sunrise on the night he left. If he never once looked back, the object of his quest emerges with him.
System: Ghosts restored to “life” in this fashion have until the next dusk to enjoy the remembered pleasures of flesh and make their final peace before their souls slip into the great unknown that lies beyond the underworld. If the object is inanimate, it endures and functions according to its nature as if remade. Only objects that once belonged to the living world may be reclaimed with this ritual.
Reference: PGHC 202-203
