Craft Weirding Stone

Koldunism Level 2

A powerful Tzimisce koldun named Bogumir created this ritual as a gift to the best and brightest under his command. A brilliant tactician, Bogumir quickly achieved the vaunted rank of dominion in the subsect and was eventually titled with the added wartime honorific of Watch Commander. Indeed, he is recognized for being the first ever koldun to have earned this latter honor. To those in the know, the reason for this promotion was that Bogumir developed rituals such as this one using Aljusuri, much to the chagrin (and frank surprise) of many of his clanmates . To give proper credit, it is due primarily to Bogumir's unification efforts that Hand Tzimisce as a whole began to support the practice of Aljusuri as a legitimate means of furthering both clan and subsect. Although Bogumir himself has disappeared below radar in recent nights, his legacy remains - one whose impact on the subsect none can sensibly dispute.

Bogumir's most well known ritual allows a blood magician to create an object known as a weirding stone. In ancient times, the shaman or holy man of a village would use weirding stones to determine the outcome of a given situation or the solution to a particularly weighty problem facing his people. To the villagers, these stones were, in essence, guidance from the powers that be, the fingers on the hand of Fate. Millennia later, these stones are still in use, this time by the vampires of the Black Hand who call upon the counsel of these stones in much the same way as their mortal forbears did.

System: The rite for creating these stones is very high on ceremony, requiring the better part of an evening's worth of chants, preparations and gesticulations. The ritual also requires a specially prepared stone of a kind that is highly sensitive to mystical energies, such as onyx, amber or any number of quartz family members. During the crafting process, the caster must invest the stone with at least one blood point worth of his own vitae, after which the rock takes on a ruddy hue (regardless of the stone's base color). He then closes the ceremony with an investiture of Willpower; as many points as he cares to spend. If all has gone well up to this point, the caster will have a powerful little tool to benefit its crafter or those under his command at the end of the evening.
The blood invested into the weirding stone allows its crafter to always keep track of it. Although he has little discrete knowledge as to the stone's whereabouts, he has a constant sense of how far away it is and in what general direction. The more blood invested into the stone at the time of its crafting, the more detailed the information: With at least three blood points invested, the caster will know the instant the stone has been destroyed. With five blood points, he will know whenever the stone changes hands.

The Willpower invested into a stone allows the one carrying it to access the power of the crafter's will, even if he himself is no blood magician. This has two possible effects: First, by funneling one of his own Willpower points through the stone, the user may ask a question of the Fates and expect a helpful reply. The only requirement is that the question must be directional in nature, as the stone "replies" by pointing toward the answer. For example, "Which way did my quarry run off to?" would be a fair question, as the stone would then point in the proper direction, while the question "How well armed is my quarry?" would elicit only stony silence. Second, the user may opt to spend one of the Willpower points invested in the stone at the time of its creation. This allows him to send a brief telepathic message (roughly the amount one could speak with one breath) to the stone's crafter, wherever he may be. When a weirding stone runs out of stored Willpower it loses its ability to call upon the Fates, but remains active in every other way. Wierding stones may be "recharged," but only by the original crafter using the ritual process again.
Due to the stones' mystical connections to their crafter, each blood magician may only have a number of "active" stones equal to his Willpower rating at one time.