Name of the Father
Level 3
Oblivion — Ceremonies
The Priest of Shalim can extol their victims with an ancient hex to be overcome with despair and emptiness as if separated from the world.
System
After spending your Standard Action to break the empowered charcoal sticks, engage your target in an opposed challenge while maintaining their Gaze and Focus. If you succeed, your target feels as if she has been consumed by darkness and despair. She gains the Blinded and Distracted Conditions. Any other powers or effects cannot mitigate the Blinded Condition. While under the effects of the ritual, she feels unending despair and cannot experience any form of sensory input except pain. After suffering from this Ceremony for 2 turns, she can resolve these Conditions by spending 1 Willpower for each. If the victim of this ceremony takes 3 damage of any type or resolves both Conditions, the effects of this ritual end.
To learn this Ceremony, a character requires two dots in the Cult of Shalim Loresheet or the instruction of someone who possesses the Ceremony. A ritualist may only empower 1 set of 5 charcoal sticks at a time.
Ingredients
5 charcoal sticks and the ability to speak ancient Greek from the Linguistics Merit.
Process
The ritualist must steep 5 charcoal sticks in their blood while reciting an incantation in ancient Greek for 15 minutes. For 1 month, the charcoal sticks are empowered by the ritual. During that month, the ritualist may use a Standard Action to break the charcoal sticks while she has the Gaze and Focus of a target character. Upon crushing the charcoal sticks, the eyes of both the victim and the ritualist turn jet black, and the victim begins to feel a crushing sense of despair.
Duration: 1 scene.
Challenge pool: Resolve + Occult vs. Composure + Resolve
Source: Enemies of the Night