Awaken the Quiet Heart
This rite creates a rude mockery of human autonomic function in a Cainite. The withered heart begins to beat rhythmically, causing cold blood to flow, the lungs inhale and exhale on their own accord and other such nuances of mortal life reestablish themselves within the unliving body. The vampire looks no more lifelike than normal, but many truly inhuman Cainites are terribly disturbed by the return of sensations and responses thought long ago abandoned.
System: The vampire must spend a half-hour delicately and ritually extracting the heart from a human corpse (a body in any state of decay will do, so long as the heart is more or less intact). The Cainite then places the heart within a circle of grave dust and sprinkles it with a single point of his own blood; the player rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 8). The heart beats, holding the power of the rite for a number of hours equal to successes rolled. In order to affect another Cainite with the power of this ritual, the Cappadocian must hold the heart aloft while within plain sight of the intended subject and speak her name three times aloud. The ritual heart ceases to function, and the effects detailed above take hold in the targeted vampire's body for a number of hours equal to the successes rolled in the intital casting.
Cainites who adhere to a road that teaches either Conviction or Instinct suffer a -1 dice pool penalty (minuimum of 1) for all rolls made during the effect's duration, while those who walk a road that teaches both of these Virtues are down =2 dice (minimum of 0) for the same amount of time. Those who tread a road that practices both Conscience and Self-Control are, while possibly disturbed by the ritual's effects, mechanically unhindered. A Cainite deleteriously affected by this ritual may expend a pont of Willpower at the beginning of a scene to neagate the ritual's effects upon her for the duration of that scene. Note that Cainites upon certain roads, such as Humanity or the Beast (or even Metamorphosis or Bones), may actually experience a moment of truth from the experience of having this rite used upon them.
This ritual has no effect when used upon any being other than a Cainite.
