Sympathetic Rigor

The Necromantic Library of Phineus -x- Level One Rituals -x- Level Two Rituals -x- Level Three Rituals -x- Level Four Rituals -x- Level Five Rituals

Description: Rigor mortis is one the traditional means by which death can verified and consists of a hardening of the muscles of the corpse, starting about three hours after death and ending after about three days. This ritual applies the mystical principles of contagion and sympathy in such a way as to allow the necromancer to paralyze a subject with nothing more than the spoken name of the recently deceased and a touch.
Origin: Benesj the Black
Ingredients: corpses less than 3 hours dead
Casting: The necromancer begins the ritual by washing the body with water and alcohol. Then he feeds on the corpse, taking a single point of dead blood into his system. Next he chants the name of the deceased as a mantra and massages the body, learning every detail of the corpse’s physiognomy. When the body of the deceased has entered the state of rigor, the necromancer seals the ritual by piercing a finger with one of his fangs and placing a drop of his blood in the mouth of the corpse. There after, he needs only mouth the name of the deceased and touch the intended target for the subject of this ritual to undergo rigor mortis.
System: The player rolls Intelligence + Rituals = difficulty five (5). The caster’s successes on this ritual equate to a number of turns (3 seconds to 3 minutes) that the victim of the ritual is paralyzed. This ritual takes one (1) hour to cast.
Botching this roll paralyzes the caster for a scene; while failure results in a waste of time. This ritual remains potent for three days, the time it takes for rigor to wear off and the deceased’s corpse to become limber as it decays. This ritual can only be cast once on any given corpse, but the caster can cast this ritual as many times as he desires on different corpses. Both mortals and vampires can be affected by this ritual and equally, both can break free. Mortals must expend willpower each round if they wish to be able to take actions. Vampires and other super natural denizens may roll willpower at standard difficulty (6) if they wish to take a normal action; each success on the willpower roll is a round in which they can take action. In either case, the victim must either expend willpower or roll willpower for each turn in which they wish to act, while under the influence of this curse. For each action, that a victim of this ritual takes, that individual must soak a number of levels of bashing equal to their current strength.
Reference: formerly titled ‘Corpse Venom’