Passport to the Island of Shadows
History: After the Autumn equinox of 2015, this ritual began to play itself out in the dreams of a select few individuals. The dream that conveys this ritual comes with the rising of the sun and plays itself out several times before the subjects awaken with sunset. The dream repeats itself for seven days in a row, thereafter, the subject will know how to cast the following ritual automatically.
Description: This ritual must be cast in darkness, with only a single black candle as illumination. To begin the ritual, the caster must lit the candle with his left hand, while walking counter-clockwise in a circle around the candle. A second orbit must be made around the black candle, while sprinkling black volcanic sand and a third with sea salt. Then the cast sits cross-legged within the circle, with the black candle in his or her lap and hums or sings their favorite nursery-rhyme. With the end of the rhyme, the caster makes the 'wish' to visit the Island of Shadows and bites his left wrist and dowses the candle flame. With the extinction of the flame by blood, the caster should fall into a form of sleep similar to the daylight slumber of vampires.
System: This ritual is a rank three thaumaturgic ritual. The player rolls Intelligence + Rituals at a difficulty of six (6) for the gifted and seven (7) for untalented. A botch counts, as a casting gone wrong and the caster is transported through dreams to a random site with the Nightmare Lands, for a number of scenes equal to the number of botches rolled. Failure wastes spell components, time and some blood, but can be recast with the requisite increase in difficulty. Successes equate to the number of scenes the caster can visit the Island of Shadows before returning to his or her own dream and or awakening.
Notes: The Island of Shadows is a dream realm, but within its confines, that which occurs is real. Should the caster be stranded in the Nightmare Lands, then what happens there is also real. Should anyone other than those specifically selected by the thaumaturge who created the Island of Shadows cast the ritual, then that person's successes are automatically rendered as botches with the corresponding effects; those who are banned from the island by its maker suffer the same fate. Regardless of the number of successes scored and scenes spent in a dream realm, the spell is always broken by sunset.
- Isola di Ombre - The Island of Shadows...
