Turn Back the Skies
- Back to Level 7.
Description: The constellation symbolized within the bull-slaying scene in a Mithraic temple all seem to connect to the precession of the equinoxes - specifically, the transition from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries. A few powerful ashipu can use the Mithraic mysteries to send a soul back in time, from the present Age of Pisces to the twilight of the Age of Aries. this requires the sacrifice of a ram in an authentic Mithraic temple, and an armillary sphere (a device that depicts the constellations and the zodiac, celestial equator, and other map-lines of the heavens). These ashipu send minions back in time to seek long-lost secrets. Each use of the ritual can send several people back in time - a whole coterie of characters, in fact.
System: The magician's player spends a point of permanent Willpower while the ram's blood falls onto the subjects, and then turns the armillary sphere from the current heavenly configuration of the sky of the desired time. The souls of the subjects flash back in time and possess the bodies of mortals undergoing Mithraic initiation in the temple. Mithraism flourished from 68 B.C. to early in the 5th century A.D. so a sorcerer can send people to any time in that span. Those ashipu who continued to practice the Mithraic mysteries after the decline of the mortal faith may provide limited access to other times, at the Storyteller's option. The time travelers spend one lunar month in their stolen bodies before automatically returning to their own time.
If a time traveler dies in his borrowed flesh, his soul never returns.
Time travelers have no supernatural powers (they are mortal now, after all), but retain all their Abilities. A time traveler can also call upon one dot of any Abilities the possessed person had that he does not. (This incidentally lets the interloper speak the possessed person's language).
Any ashipu who knows this spell warn time travelers to avoid changing history. Causality can adjust to a few knocks, but murdering famous historical figures or teaching the Maccabees how to make gunpowder destroys the foolish character. If a time traveler deliberately tries to cause such a drastic change to history, the character's soul instantly snaps back to his body, which then explodes and burns to ash.
Storytellers should not take these "rules" to seriously, though. Turn Back the Skies is so powerful - and beyond the reach of typical Vampire characters - that Storytellers can treat it as a plot device that follows whatever rules their story demands. For instance, if a character does something by accident that could change history, you could let the player devise a plan to put history back on track. Suppose, for example, that a time traveler accidentally kills the young Nero before he became emperor. The players might suggest finding a double to take Nero's place. the characters have the rest of the month to find a lookalike before a vengeful History destroys them. Given a choice between killing characters and shunting them into a thrilling new story, we recommend the story.
