Sofiane Qissi

While the Invictus pledge their oaths, the Carthians have their laws, and the Ordo Dracul evolve through the Mysteries, the Circle of the Crone and Lancea et Sanctum jealously guard the secrets of blood sorcery. Most Disciplines are simple, if powerful, to use — the Blood responds to a vampire’s call in ways she knows and is prepared for, without the need for elaborate ceremony or external action in all but the most powerful cases. The Acolytes and Sanctified, however, have discovered the means of using the Blood’s potential for so much more. By using the special Disciplines taught by those covenants, a vampire can perform a ritual to reach out far beyond her physical shell, twisting the world according to her desires. To the uninitiated, it looks like magic. To the Sanctified, it is prayer; and to the Acolytes, it’s an object of worship itself. To the Strix, its use by Kindred is an affront. The rewards of blood sorcery are great, but so too are the costs.

The process of using a blood ritual is broadly the same for both covenants, although the Discipline and the effects it makes possible are very different. The vampire prepares herself, deciding on which ritual to attempt. She uses her Ritual Discipline to summon the power, coaxing it through sacrifice and shaping it before making her request. If she has gathered enough power and focused it correctly, her will is done.

An Imam leads his congregation in the Salat al-Janazah, praying for Allah to forgive the recently departed before burial. In the basement of a haunted prison, giggling teenagers try to contact the spirit world with an Ouija board. After the funeral, family and friends gather to eat and drink, to laugh and weep at the memory of the dead. On the shore of an underground river, a magician pours out a libation of blood, compelling answers from the shades that linger there. 

Humankind has always turned to ritual and ceremony in its attempts to process and understand death. Spells and prayers ensure a peaceful rest for the dead, taboos avoid drawing their ire, and offerings encourage them to intercede on behalf of the living. It’s so ingrained in our culture it’s hard to even term it “magic;” it’s just the way things are. You don’t whistle past a graveyard, you cover all the mirrors in the house when someone dies, and you pour out some rum for the departed.

Sin-Eaters catalogue these formalized interactions between the living and the dead as Ceremonies, and syncretize them into their own faiths and works.

Symbolism and Sacrifice
Ceremonies take time, they require symbolic objects, and the most powerful ceremonies call upon community and sacrifice.

Symbolic objects and actions are how Sin-Eaters converse with the Underworld and draw on its powers. Many practitioners would like Ceremonies to be simple, consistent, and clear, but rituals are about relationships and are rarely as simple as A + B = C. Even Ceremonies conducted under exactly the same circumstances produce slightly different results, one time producing the smell of brimstone as a side effect and the next a howling wind that flings sand into the practitioners’ eyes.

Because of their connection to the Underworld, Sin-Eaters are compelled to make their Ceremonies personal. They modify their Ceremonies with symbols that reflect their backgrounds, emotional needs, krewe Doctrines, and their own personal understanding of life and death. If you’ve seen one Sin-Eater lead a ceremony, you’ve seen one Sin-Eater lead a ceremony.

Symbolic Objects
Symbolic objects or movements serve specific roles within the ritual. Circles protect, chanting and open mouths create openings, images reflect relationships, colors evoke elements, glyphs draw on ancient stories. 

The nature of symbols means that yellow, to one Sin-Eater, can mean cowardice, while it means great power to another. This potential of objects and movements to take on a multitude of meanings does not mean the symbolism is arbitrary. Rather, it means that, as many rivers run to the same sea, a multitude of symbols can lead to the same supernatural effect.

The Working
A Ceremony is largely comprised of symbolic elements that represent every aspect of the desired outcome. Each Ceremony presented here has some example elements, but those are by no means exhaustive or restrictive. Different krewes teach different versions of the same Ceremony, reflecting their own unique faiths, while self-taught necromancers stumble through their own symbolism in search of meaning. Every Ceremony requires the following symbolic elements: 

The Actor: The person or persons enacting the ritual. Your name, the phase of the moon you were born under, a favorite pen, a dram of your blood.

The Target: Who or what you’re trying to affect. (If the target of the ritual is physically present, that counts.) Her name, a bit of dirt from the bottom of her garden, pages torn from her favorite book, a tooth from a beloved family pet.

The Stage: A prepared space in which to perform the Ceremony. A basement on a moonless night, with no light coming in or out, save for one anointed beeswax candle. The grave of an unjustly murdered man, ringed round with salt and rue.

The Effect: The intended outcome of the Ceremony. Black thread, tied around the representation of the target. A broken mirror.

The Ritual: The sequence of action that ties it all together. Bathe the symbolic elements in the light of the candle, then eat each one while speaking the names of Chthonic Gods. Chant your target’s name and those of her close family members as the midnight hour passes, while pouring maggots over a corn poppet holding her fingernail trimmings. Make a paste of your blood and the shredded pages of your target’s favorite book, stir it into a cup of souring wine, and drink the whole right down.

Performing a Ceremony
Requirements: Assemble symbolic elements and perform a ritual as described above.

Duration: As described in the specific Ceremony. 

Subjects: As described in the specific Ceremony. Ceremonies cannot reach subjects in another world than the ritualist (e.g. the living world, the Underworld, or stranger places) unless specified in the Ceremony.

Action: Instant, specific Ceremonies may be resisted or contested; takes 15 minutes per dot level of the Ceremony. Additional ritualists can help with teamwork actions (p. 152).

Dice Pool: As described in the specific Ceremony.

Success: The Ceremony’s effect takes place, as described in the specific Ceremony.

Exceptional: The Ceremony provides startling new insight into the nature of the Underworld; take a Krewe Beat.

Failure: Nothing happens.

Dramatic: You touch the Underworld, the Underworld touches back and it takes. You gain the Deprived Condition (p. 299), which you can resolve by visiting the Underworld or performing a more powerful Ceremony.

Suggested Modifiers

Symbolic Idea Starters - Body

•  Precise movements or hand gestures
•  Dancing
•  Pilgrimage (Walking from one place of power to another)
•  Parades
•  Piercing, bloodletting, or tattooing
•  Extremes of hot or cold
•  Fasting
•  Sleep deprivation
•  Immersion in water
•  Walking on coals
•  Extreme physical suffering
•  Ecstatic fainting or seizures
•  Wearing specific clothing
• Observing taboos (avoidance of objects or actions that are profane in the context of the ceremony)

The Root Of Power
Although Sin-Eaters and their krewes make the most frequent use of Ceremonies, they aren’t unique to the Bound. Ceremonies don’t draw their power from the Bargain or the geist — as near as anyone can tell, they don’t draw their power from anywhere: they’re just a part of how the world works.

The truth is, anyone can learn Ceremonies, and indeed many people know and perform at least a few regularly, even if they don’t think of it as doing a “magic spell.” Virtually every religion’s funerary rites include the Pass On Ceremony, for example, and the Warding and Exorcism actions described in the Chronicles of Darkness Rulebook are effectively Ceremonies that have become such common knowledge that they don’t have a dot rating any more.

The Kindred wield strange powers — a vampire could sway men’s minds, vanish from plain sight, or manifest her victim’s worst nightmares. These powers come unbidden in the vampire’s blood, and call on not just his human mind but the Beast hidden just under the surface. The Beast walks unseen through the world of men and cows lesser animals. It slips the bonds of flesh and inspires awe and jealousy from other people.

Using Disciplines
Some Disciplines are a fundamental part of the vampire’s nature, available to her whenever she wants thanks to the power burning in her blood. These abilities may require her to expend Vitae; a few exceptional ones may also require her to spend a Willpower point. Others require her to demonstrate her mastery of the Discipline. The dice pool to activate a Discipline is made up of three traits, rather than two — an Attribute, a Skill, and the Discipline itself. The vampire uses her full mastery with the Discipline, no matter which ability she’s using — a vampire with Animalism 5 uses her full five dice for all Animalism powers, even if she’s just using Animalism 1. The corollary of that is that a vampire cannot use a Discipline power that’s greater than her Discipline dots — a vampire with Dominate 3 can’t access The Lying Mind or Possession, as they require more than three dots of Dominate.
Each Discipline calls on the Beast, whether using its talents overtly or expressing it through the blood inside. While the mechanical effect of a player failing her Discipline roll is that nothing happens, that’s not strictly true. Something happens. The Beast won’t just accept the idea that tapping its power produces no results. Maybe the lights flicker, or the vampire’s flesh writhes on her bones for just a second. Maybe her victim sees a second, screaming face trying to escape the vampire’s head for just a second. Whatever it is, it’s not enough to properly freak her victim out — that’s the domain of the Nosferatu, through their Nightmare Discipline. It’s just something that reminds the vampire that she’s not human, she’s tapping something within herself that she doesn’t fully understand and cannot truly control. The Storyteller and player should work together to come up with a couple of potential minor signs that the vampire’s tried to use a Discipline, even though nothing particularly supernatural has happened.

Learning Disciplines
Many Kindred spontaneously manifest new Disciplines, as the Beast asserts itself in new and strange ways. The Blood makes strong connections between vampires, so most Kindred only display the Disciplines of their Clan. To learn another clan’s unique Discipline, the vampire must first track down another vampire who possesses the Discipline and drink at least one point of his Vitae — with all of the attendant consequences.

Supernatural Conflict
The Kindred don’t just face off against one another. The World of Darkness is a strange and horrible place. Werewolves stalk the night, hunting unseen prey. Patchwork men question what it really is to be human, and some people who die don’t stay dead. Many of these creatures have mysterious abilities of their own, and when they come into contact with vampires it’s only a matter of time before someone goes too far and their powers come into conflict.
This book focuses on vampires and the mortals who surround them. One of the Kindred is harder to browbeat than a human, and thus adds his Blood Potency to rolls to resist Dominate. A mortal doesn’t have the supernatural chops to resist a Nosferatu manifesting his worst nightmares, so only rolls his Composure against the effect.
The supernatural forces of the world can resist a vampire’s talents in much the same way as the Kindred themselves. When a Discipline calls for a contested roll, use the victim’s nearest equivalent to Blood Potency — a werewolf’s Primal Urge, or a Promethean’s Azoth. In return, the power of the Blood protects a vampire from the strange powers of these creatures. Where another supernatural power calls on that equivalent trait, a vampire can add her Blood Potency to her Resistance Attribute for contested rolls.
Note that Blood Potency and related Traits do not add to the Resistance Attribute used in a resisted roll, just contested rolls.

Clash of Wills
Sometimes, two Disciplines clearly oppose one another. If the normal systems for the Disciplines fail to resolve this, such as when two vampires attempt to Dominate the same person, or Auspex is turned against a vampire hidden by Obfuscate, there is a Clash of Wills.
All characters using conflicting powers enter a contested roll-off, each using a pool of his Blood Potency plus his dots in the Discipline. Devotions use Blood Potency plus the highest rated Discipline among the prerequisites, while blood sorcery uses Blood Potency plus the character’s dots in Crúac or Theban Sorcery. Ties reroll until one player has accrued more success than all others. The effect invoked by that player’s character wins out and resolves as usual, while all others fail. Victory of one power in a clash does not mean the immediate cancellation of the others, save in cases where only one power can possibly endure (such as competing Domination).
Characters may spend Willpower to bolster the contested roll, but only if they are physically present and aware that powers are clashing. Certain powers, such as those with exceptionally long durations, are more enduring in a clash. Night-long effects add one die to the clash roll, weeklong effects add two, month-long three; and effects that would last a year or longer add four. Clash of Wills can apply to other supernatural creatures, as well. The traits involved depend on the creature and will be elaborated upon in later books.
Example: Two Mekhet, Piotr and Alan, have come into conflict Alan is attempting to use The Spirit’s Touch (Auspex 3) to snoop around Piotr’s den. However, the den is disguised by Oubliette (Obfuscate 5), thus the two characters enter a Clash of Wills.
Alan has four dots of Auspex and two dots of Blood Potency, so Alan’s player will roll six dice. Piotr has five dots of Obfuscate and three dots of Blood Potency, eight dice. Oubliette is a long-lasting power with a three-week duration, so Piotr’s player adds two dice, bringing the roll up to ten dice total. Neither character can spend Willpower on the roll because Alan isn’t certain anything supernatural is going on and Piotr isn’t present.
Both players roll; Piotr’s player gets two successes, while Alan’s roll
an impressive four. Therefore, The Spirit’s Touch has won out and Alan becomes aware of the building’s true nature. To all other characters the location remains occluded.