Kachina Decoy
Level 5 Thaumaturgy, based on Spiritual Hermeticism.
Kachina figures take a number of rolls in the lore of Southwestern native tribes. Larger than life costumes invoke the stories of the greater spirits, entreating for rain, good crops or hunting, and community harmony. Smaller figures invoke the spirits as guardians or fertility icons. Kachina Decoy invokes guardian spirits to protect against unwanted mystical intrusion.
This Kachina acts as a guardian to the caster, interposing itself and catching baleful sendings that target the caster.
System: The caster makes a one foot high statuette of himself down to as fine detail as he is capable. The statuette must be made of sacred red- and blue-corn meal whetted with a point of his own blood and water taken from a running stream. The caster must inscribe his own true name on a piece of birch bark and place it within the statue in place of its brain. He must then Name the statuette (spending a willpower point to make it True), inscribe that name on another piece of birch bark, and place it within the statuette in place of the heart. Once the statue is ready, it must be baked in a specially prepared oven fired with cedar. When done, it must be dressed in a Kachina costume made from buffalo hide and raptor feathers. The caster then dresses in an identical (to scale) costume, and preforms a ritual dance in honor of the spirit invoked to enforce the protection. A meal appropriate to the spirit must be set out to invite the spirit to attend the ceremony in its honor.
If the spirit accepts the meal and joins the dance (the ritual is successful), the Kachina will absorb a number of sendings equal to the successes on the casting, taking effects as appropriate to a statue made of corn meal. The Kachina is a permanent item that can intercept and hold up to as many curses as the caster achieved successes. Any more will pass its protection to affect the caster normally. As curses expire or are removed (possibly via the Effigy ritual), the Kachina is able to intercept and hold more curses.
The caster becomes innately aware of how many, but not what curses the Kachina is holding.
This is part of the Curse Breaking series, but has similarities to the Personal Guards and Wards series.
