The vampire fills a censer with a mix of their blood and mystically significant woods and herbs, then walks through the chosen structure wafting the smoke over everything within while singing words that are sweet to the spirits of items. The spirits of the structure and any objects that are in it awaken, becoming loyal to the ritualist and malicious toward any other who comes within.

Level: 1

Effect: The ritual will protect a structure up to the size of a medium house that the Ritualist has ongoing control over (for example, a building they own or have blood-bonded the owner of, but not a random inn or house they have hidden in after killing the occupants), or a clearly defined area within a larger structure (e.g. the lowest basement of the castle).

While in this area the Ritualist cannot be surprised by anyone using mundane means and will know if such a person has been inside upon their return. Higher levels of success may allow the ritual to pierce supernatural concealment. Anyone other than the ritualist suffers a -1 to their tests while in the area as the items within and the very building itself spite their efforts.

Duration: One complete downtime period

Test: Mental + Occult

Possible Group Benefits:

• Fellowship: all Ritualists who are part of the ritual benefit from the advantages rather than suffer the disadvantages

• Domain: extend the ritual to cover an additional area equal to the first (this may be taken multiple times).

• Harrow the Interloper: increase the penalty inflicted by 1 (this may be taken multiple times).

The Koldun burns a mixture of blood and herbs that is especially sweet to the spirits of the air, while fixing their will on the spiritual connection between them and a chosen vassal.

Depending on the Koldun’s favoured approach, they either seize one of the spirits that cluster around the smoke and bind it into service with dire threats or extend a hand of friendship in offer of a fair deal. In either event, the temporary contract between Koldun and spirit grants the spirit understanding of ownership, allowing it to soar to the chosen vassal’s side as swiftly as the wind, bearing the Koldun’s message.

Koldunic legend claims this ritual was created by Voivode Khodok Gornostai.

Level: 1

Effect: The ritualist can send a spoken message of up to one minute in length to the chosen target.

The spirit is invisible to mundane eyes and whispers the message softly into the target’s ear, so under most circumstances only the target will know it was there, let alone what it said.

The ritual does not grant the target any ability to understand the message.

If the target is concealed from wind spirits in some way, successes will be deducted to overcome that concealment; where a ritualist does not have enough successes, the message will not arrive but the ritual will still count as successful for the purposes of determining negative consequences.

Where the speed of delivery matters, the number of extra successes will influence whether the message arrives before or after a key moment (e.g. whether a warning of ambush arrives before the target sets out so they can properly prepare, or when they are already in transit).

Duration: One conversation

Cost/Limitation: the target must be someone the ritualist owns in a literal or metaphorical sense (for example, Blood Bond or contract of employment).

If for some reason, the target does not qualify (for example, they have secretly broken their Blood Bond) the ritual will usually fail; however, under certain circumstances (Storyteller’s discretion), it might appear to succeed but pass the message to the wrong person or otherwise incur a negative consequence.

Test: Social + Occult

Possible Group Benefits:

• Susurrus: the number of successes needed to overcome any concealment is reduced by one (may be taken multiple times).

• Echoing Embrace: the spirit will carry a brief response from the target before returning to its natural behaviours.

The ritualist grinds a piece of stone at least the size of their fist to powder and mixes it with at least a pint of their blood to form a smooth paste while chanting ancient incantations that honour the Earth as cradle of all that exists.

If the ritualist covers someone entirely with the paste and embraces them within an hour of stopping the chant, the Earth spirits cushion the target’s soul and strengthen their body, vastly increasing the chances the Embrace will be successful.

Level: 1

Effect: The resulting vampire is no different to a vampire embraced without the ritual and the ritual cannot overcome specific barriers to Embracing a specific person (e.g. a literal Saint praying themselves to Heaven). However, the Storytellers will take a successful use of the ritual into account when considering the chance of someone not surviving the Embrace or of having their mind shattered by it.

Duration: N/A (Note: due to the expectation that costumes will maintain a basic level of modesty and the ban on containers of fake blood, we do not envisage characters benefitting from this ritual during a session.)

Test: Mental + Occult

Possible Group Benefits:

• …To Us All: the ritualist may make the paste from another vampire’s blood, allowing that vampire to gain the benefits when attempting an Embrace.

• Lingering Calm: the calming effect extends to the newly Embraced vampire’s first moments

The ritualist mixes carefully chosen herbs with vampiric blood while fixing their thoughts on a particular emotion, then boils the blood until it is reduced to a paste. If the ritualist smears the paste on their hands and touches someone who is blood-bonded, the bond becomes permeated with the chosen emotion.

Level: 3

Effect: Rather than creating the usual obsessive love of the regnant, a blood bond altered by this ritual will cause the target to experience the Ritualist’s chosen emotion (for example, overwhelming fear of the regnant) selected at the time of casting. Touching an unwilling target requires a combat test with a damage cap of 0.

Duration: Until replaced by another application of the ritual or removed.

Possible Group Benefits:

• Earth’s Embrace: the unguent becomes viscous and enduring enough that it might be smeared on a weapon, inflicting the effect on the next target touched by the weapon but capping damage at 1.

• Water’s Virtue: the unguent is more transparent and imposes the emotion more gradually, imposing -1 on tests to detect the ritualist is using it (this may be taken multiple times).

• Fire’s Passion: the ritualist may create an additional dose that imposes the same emotion (this can be taken multiple times).

The ritualist half-fills a cauldron with either soil or water taken from a place sacred to Earth, Water, or a deity of birth. Focusing their will, they bleed the majority of their blood into the cauldron, then consume the entire contents. If they empty the cauldron without succumbing to the Beast, their body becomes temporarily infused with the spirits of their chosen substance, allowing the ritualist to temporarily trick other spirits into thinking the ritualist is one of them.

As long as the infusion lingers, the ritualist may sink slowly into their chosen substance, either resting within it for a while or emerging from the other side.

This false similarity fades the longer the Moon moves from where it was at the time of the ritual, and longer the ritualist spends among any spirits the more obvious the imposture becomes; therefore, even the greatest and most parsimonious of Koldun cannot sustain the ritual’s effects much beyond a month.

The Koldun must be careful not to exhaust hospitality and propriety; some whisper tales of ancient Koldun who delved deeper into the demesne of mighty spirits than their will could overcome and became imprisoned within at their host’s whim.

Level: 4

Effect: The ritualist selects either Earth or Water when casting the ritual. The ritualist gains a number of tokens equal to their Koldunism rating at the time of casting. Whenever they are in contact with an inanimate object larger than themselves that is substantially made of their chosen element (Storyteller’s discretion on whether something qualifies) they may expend a token to sink into it becoming part of it. The ritualist may choose to emerge at the point they entered at any time; if they have not emerged before, they are violently ejected at the next nightfall.

Where exact speed of merging is relevant, it is the equivalent of a Move Action.

Alternatively, the ritualist may declare they are attempting to pass through the object, continuing slowly forward in a straight line and (hopefully) emerging from the other side. Where the ritualist already roughly knows the thickness of the object, the Storyteller will indicate how many tokens it will cost to pass through.

Where the ritualist does not know (for example, attempting to enter a hidden chamber they believe is within a mountain), they must declare how many tokens they are willing to expend: if the ritualist does not commit enough tokens but has at least one token remaining, they are immediately violently ejected at their entry point; a ritualist who exhausts their last token without reaching the far side risks being imprisoned within the object until the spirits choose to release them or suffering a number of wounds dependent on how deep they have gone.

Duration: One session or one downtime action.

Cost/Limitation: the ritualist suffers a frenzy check for attempting to cast the ritual. A ritualist who fails to cast the ritual must test to awaken from torpor to represent the risk that purging such a large volume of foreign matter causes too much damage for their body to handle normally.

Test: Mental + Occult

Possible Group Benefits:

• Cousin of My Cousin: the ritual produces a number of tokens equal to the Koldunism of all ritualists involved. In addition any participant (whether or not they are a ritualist) may receive tokens from the pool in exchange for advancing one step toward a Blood Bond with each participant who takes a token.

• My Sister’s Child: the ritualist may choose to align the ritual to both elements, allowing them to use tokens on items substantially of either element.

• Hospitality: a ritualist who would become trapped or wounded by overreaching themselves is instead ejected somewhere embarrassing or inconvenient that seems suitable to the spirit they have offended.

By devoting their body, mind, and soul toward a place that holds great significance for them, the most powerful of Koldun can tear out the roots that hold them to the place of their embrace and claim a new place as their home.

The Koldun walks the length and breadth of the area they would take as their property and sanctuary, gathering the most perfect symbols of its contents, convincing the inhabitants that they are part of the area’s community, and meditating on its qualities, until they make contact with the spirit of the place. The Koldun may pause their wandering to feed or take shelter during the day, or to perform acts that reinforce their integration into the society of the area, but if they perform any other task, the ritual fails.

Once the Koldun makes contact with the spirit, they must convince, cajole, or intimidate it into accepting the Koldun as the representative of the land.

If the spirit agrees, the Koldun grinds the collected symbols of the area with quantities of their blood until it forms a smooth paste. Travelling to the body of natural water closest to the centre of the area, they must hurl themselves in, then emerge as the sun rises. As the sunlight dries the last of the water from the Koldun’s body, their soul becomes bound to their new home.

While some Koldun of less traditional mindsets who know of the ritual question whether parts of it are metaphors, no Koldun who has performed it and not held annual festivals to honour their land and its community has ever prospered.

Level: 5

Effect: in addition to the casting roll, the ritualist must test against Rötschreck with failure both causing the ritual to fail and incurring other consequences.

If the ritual succeeds, the ritualist replaces their existing “home soil” location with the location at which the ritual is cast.

The ritualist may choose whether or not any assets they control with the “soil” keyword retain it.

Duration: Permanent.

Cost/Limitation: if the ritualist succeeds but does not obtain at least five successes on the casting roll, they must undertake a task for the spirit of their new home (Storyteller’s choice) before the end of the downtime period after the one in which the ritual is cast or count as not having access to their home soil until they do complete the task.

If the ritualist suffers a Bestial failure on casting, they gain the Toll: Territorial in addition to any they already have. If they already have this or a sufficiently similar Toll, that Toll increases by one level and the minimum level to which it can be reduced increases by one.

Test: Mental + Occult

Possible Group Benefits:

• Sumer Is Icumen In: one participant ritualist may sacrifice themselves (as in Full and Final Death with No Coming Back) to the spirit of the land to honour it, adding a success to the casting roll for the purposes of determining whether the lead ritualist owes a price (may be taken more than once).

• Lhude Sing Cuccu: the lead ritualist will not have to pay a price, but every Koldun within a significant distance (e.g. Western Europe) will know something has happened.

• Bucke Uerteth: by committing in advance to perform an additional task on top of any required due to levels of success, the ritualist will count as having at least one success on the casting test.

Truly powerful Kindred of ages past are thought to have crafted great fallen wonders, lost in the squabbles between Voivodes or to the Great Wars between Kindred. Among these are rumoured to have been a Voivode whose power over the Winds was so great that it was rumoured to have floated through the air, defying the very laws of God that pin man to this earth.

A few ancient Kolduns know of the ritual that begins such a thing, though none can put aside their differences or share enough of their knowledge to allow such a cabal to be assembled that would replicate such a feat. Nor find a large enough stone to act as the bedrock of such a construct.

Taking a single large stone, the Koldun spends many hours carving profanities directed at the spirits of the earth and inking each statement with a mixture of ink, their blood and grave soil. When every spare space is occupied, the real work can begin.

The Koldun must then convince the stone to believe the insults it has had carved into its very being, this is normally a long and arduous conversation, as the vampire and its blood work to turn the stone’s very spirit against its kin.

Then over the last night of Winter the Sorcerer must drive the spirit to fury, imparting some of its own beastial nature into the spirit to create an artificial frenzy. If successful then by the fall of the next night, the stone will hover in the air.

Level: 5

Effect: in addition to the casting roll, the ritualist must test for Frenzy on the final night of the ritual, failure ensures the ritual fails and will normally result in the destruction of the stone in the ensuing bout of rage.

If successful, the ritualist will gain a permanently floating stone platform. It hovers near the ground held aloft only by its contempt for its fellow. Each success allows the ritualist to do this on a larger stone.

It is easier to push around than its mass would allow, as if one of the things binding it to the earth had been sundered. Commanding or cajoling the spirit of the rock will also cause it to move; however unless the Koldun can find another solution, each attempt to change the Stone’s height or location will require a separate Koldunism test. Assets may be built on the stone if it is large enough to accommodate the asset and the owner can find suitable Kine to do the work.

Duration: Permanent

Cost/Limitation: a great deal of the Koldun is tied up in the contempt required to keep this aloft. Should the Koldun perish, the stone will crash back to earth. Should the Koldun create a new stone, the existing stone will crash.

All Kolduns in a significant distance will hear the disquiet through the earth when this happens, as the earth cries out. This normally takes the effects of minor earthquakes in the region.

Test: Social + Occult

Possible Group Benefits:

• To Break the Heart of Stone: If a large enough Diamond can be shattered on the final night of the ritual, by a ritualist other than the leader, you may add an additional success (may be taken more than once).

• Calm the Horror of the Land: If the ritual participants choose to, they can calm the agitation of the other Earth spirits in the area. This has the effect of making certain that the effects of this ritual are not heard and the minor earthquakes do not occur.

• Salt the Earth: Additional ritualists who participate may also command the stone, though not as well or as easily as the lead ritualist. Anyone who does this, may move the stone with a Koldunism test (as per the main rules) but lose one success to the test. You may not perform both Salt the Earth and Calm the Horror of the Land.