Seek the Stolen Essence

Level 2 - Storyline Rituals

Description: This ritual allows a recipient to track the blood of a subject that has been spilled or otherwise removed from the victim's body. When complete, the recipient of the ritual's effects has an intuitive sense of the approximate distance and direction to where any of the victim's spilled blood might be.

System: The Assamite sorcerer begins the ritual with a repetitious chant meant to bring on a trance state. The sorcerer then takes the victim who has lost his vitae by the left hand and places that hand within a silken basket filled with hungry mosquitoes. The victim of lost vitae is told to will his blood into his left hand, so that the insects can feet on his blood. When one of the mosquitoes has landed upon his hand, the sorcerer withdraws the hand with the certainty that the insect is now busy feeding on the victim's essence. When the trance state is achieved, the sorcerer breathes deeply of the smoke of burning Khalif, and then blows the smoke upon the insect still attached to the victim's left hand. When the smoke dissipates, the sorcerer gently removes the insect and places it under the tongue of the ritual's recipient. If the ritual was cast successfully, the subject who receives the mosquito beneath his tongue, can now seek out the target's spilled blood for one night per success, as if it were so many homing devices, such as those created by Craft Bloodstone.

The ritual does not give the enchantment's recipient any sense of how much blood is in each location, a fleck that falls into the dirt draws the caster's attention exactly as much as a gallon stolen and preserved by an enemy. The ritual ends prematurely if all of the subject's blood outside his own body is consumed, taken beyond the physical realm, or otherwise destroyed. It does not seek out the subject's ghouls, nor can it be used to track the subject - only "loose" blood is sensed.