Ritual

A Ritual is a set series of actions and usually associated props that come together to produce an effect.

Specifics

Differing from spells given the time and setup involved. A ritual can take many forms given materials on hand. On the whole, they are more physical and time-oriented.

Important Rituals

The First

Main article: Awakening Ritual

This one is usually what turns humans into practitioners.

The Three

Main article: Defining Rituals

Major rituals that let pratitioners choose a person, place or paraphernalia.

Authority

Main article: Lordship Ritual

The formal ritual that lets someone claim a Lordship.

Known rituals

Retrocog ritual<ref> - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.5</ref>

Winter connection ritual<ref>“Like that, sure, but more… I dunno.  More like you get benefits just for doing the ritual, and you don’t have to go anywhere.  Maybe you deal with some people.  Some of it was in the collector stuff we looked up.”

“Doing a ritual so the world sends the trash-tier trinkets and doo-dads your way,” Lucy noted.

“Yes,” Verona said.  “And some that are like, they increase your claim.  Just a big, expensive ritual, and it gets harder to take stuff from you.  And you can do it multiple times, but each time the price doubles.  And you have to renew.  So if you’ve got some crazy claim ritual where the cost doubled up to something like a million dollars, you’re having to pay that every five years or whatever.  So you have to be careful.  Because failing to be ready when the renewal time comes clears you out.”

“Sounds like the sort of thing Bristow would love, and would definitely do,” Lucy said.  “And if you can find it in the Blue Heron Institute texts, chances are good he’s probably read it too.”

“Probably,” Verona said.  “And he’d take a ton of safeguards to protect himself, and probably wouldn’t schedule any big school takeovers for when the renewal thing is due.”

“Unless he needs the school to pay what’s due?” Avery asked.

“I don’t feel like that’s the key to handling this whole thing,” Lucy said.  “Anyway.  Yes, there are rituals that give you big benefits.  And they’re pretty much always on, sometimes needing renewal, or a constant power source, or whatever.”

“Yes,” Verona said.  “So my guess?  Silas has this.  And Faerie love the social manipulation and subtle crap.  So how does that work with something like a Winter Faerie?”

“A creeping frost over connections?” Avery asked.

“What does frost do, though?” Verona asked.

“Chills?  Makes things more rigid?” Avery suggested.

“Or it’s a prelude to freezing them,” Verona said.  “Imagine.  A big ritual, and it locks things down?  Imagine that this kid is spending time around people, establishing a relationship as… I dunno.  A friend, an enemy, a boyfriend, a student, and then freezing those relationships.”

“What’s the advantage in doing that to us?” Lucy asked.

“I think there’s a huge advantage in knowing exactly where you stand with people,” Verona retorted. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.9</ref> - Keeps Connections from shifting around.

Collector trinket ritual <ref> - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref>

Proper spellling ritual <ref>“What was her name?  Marlene Roy?”

“Marlen,” Toadswallow said.  “Like the fish, but with an ‘e’.  That’s the letter ‘e’, not the drug.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about, Toad, but I get the impression a lot of those clarifications are rude.”

“Then I’m doing it right.  Some practitioners have an ear for the distinctions.  How to spell something by how it’s said.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“It’s necessary.  A little perk that helps keep a contract with an Other from going awry, usually obtained with careful attention or a small ritual.”

“Huh.” - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.6</ref>- Being able to phonetically get the spelling of someones name

Drifter ritual - Helps ensconce the Drifter state,<ref>Marlen was a drifter.  Some practitioners tried to tie themselves to a place and its power.  She’d done the opposite.  She’d ritually disconnected herself from Earth and the earthly at a young age, with the consequence that getting in touch with her was hard.  Which was largely the point. - Excerpt from Fall Out 14.z</ref> allowing them not to be teathered by earthly concerns.<ref>“You’re not acting like it,” the woman replied.  “I’d rather die.  Being caught like this is bad enough.  I’m not talking about the goblins either.  Being grounded, my rituals inactive, dehumanized, bound?  Eating’s a chore, sleeping is uncomfortable, I have to use the washroom, and for most of that I’m being watched, watched, watched.”

“Wait, you don’t have to go to the bathrom or eat, normally?” Verona asked.

“Very little,” Marlen replied, glaring at Verona.

“That’s pretty cool.”

“It is!” Marlen snarled the last word, jerking the cuffs and making the cable squeak where it was knotted around the beam above her.  Nibble rose from his position, poised over the back of the couch like he was ready to hurry over.  Marlen made herself relax.  “It is cool.  Since I was ten, it’s all been easier.  Now I’m sweating, sitting in this dense, stinking meat, I’m chafing, I feel the prickle of the air.  I feel random twinges and pains I’d forgotten humans experience.  I want to be free of this again.  I want to ride my bike.” - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.4</ref>

Protection rituals - <ref>“Ear protection?” Avery asked.

“I hang out with goblins.  One of the first rituals Toadswallow taught me was a funky ritual a while ago to keep my hearing!” Liberty was raising her voice to be heard over the goblins. - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.3</ref> Used to protect certain body parts from harm.

Alcazar Rituals

Main article: Alcazar

The opening up of objects and people to rumage around and extract and change things.

Hatching Rituals

Turning objects into people, sometimes even letting them walk around.

Emergent Rituals

Those performed by the innocent unknowingly and one of the research subjects for Historians.<ref name="Hist">“You’ve been coming here a while?” Avery asked.

“Three years. Dom is from a family of historians. They study patterns in history, to see if any accidental rituals emerge.”

“Accidental rituals?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know how much to explain, because I don’t know how much you know, and I’m not the best teacher. Uh, when non-practitioners do stuff, they can still create rituals. We call them accidental or emergent rituals. If you find a big enough or ancient enough one, you can tweak it or harness it. City layouts forming diagrams that influence economy? Big money, potentially. Patterns in, I dunno, wars followed by baby booms? That could potentially be a whole generation that’s special. They came here to deal with Ray, the guy I’m apprenticing under, so I’ve got the scoop there.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.4</ref>

Related Rituals

Living rituals that exist independent of practitioners. Some are tied to Incarnations, which makes the term Ritual Incarnates an efficient but not all these are called Ritual Incarnates.<ref>Wildbow on Discord</ref><ref>“Ritual Incarnates,” Lucy said.  She’d finished her call.

“There are ways you can ask to play chess with Death,” Charles launched right into it.  “Or one Death.  War, Innocence, Pain, Hope, Mischief… all are forces that can take form in this world, you can meet them, you can deal with them.  They’re more solid and tied into things than a spirit, which influences, or an elemental that impacts the physical and natural world.  Incarnations represent particular human realities.  When these incarnations want to spread their influence, sometimes they set things in motion.  On the rare occasion, they happen naturally or by accident.  All we know about the Hungry Choir is that they arose somewhere else and they’ve settled here, at least for a little while.  Perhaps some locals are tied up in it.  The Other you call Miss could tell you more.”

“What is it?” Avery asked.  “Like, what did these Incarnations or accidents set in motion?”

“An Incarnation of Poverty might try to spread poverty.  Sometimes that would be with a cursed item; innocents handle it, they ignore the warnings printed on the item or shared by the seller, they lose their earthly belongings and fortunes, they die or suffer a dark fate, the item gets passed on, having strengthened Poverty, until someone figures out a way to deal with it.  Other times, it’s a ritual that finds its way to people’s hands.  In this modern era, when urban legends can gain traction and the internet is a thing, it’s getting more and more common.
[...]
Often, the karmic cost of bringing in innocents is tempered. If it’s just, if someone must opt in, and if there’s a possible way out, it’s less costly. Remember what I said earlier about the warning given with full expectation that the warning would be ignored? One such example. The Ritual Incarnate may be a game, or a pattern people willingly participate in, with enough traps or enough of an uphill climb that failing at the game is expected, and they may be difficult enough that by the time the participant is done, they are no longer capital-I Innocent, or even no longer human. These things tend to end when enough people get the hang of it.”

“The Hungry Choir is strong, so… nobody’s figured out how to beat it?”

“Not consistently. I’ve heard about one where a notebook described how to find the location of a tunnel entrance, which regularly moved. An Incarnate Ritual of Time. Going through the winding tunnels would take the participants back in time. They could alter their pasts, but while in the past, they had to arrange events so a specific scene would come to pass at a specific point in time, years in the future, as depicted on a mural along the way. They got three tries and if they failed to replicate the scene, they were unwound from Time altogether. The notebook was mass produced, some practitioners in the States got ahead of it, and used their expertise to beat it enough times it ran out of steam. In another case, an Incarnate Ritual of Envy, participants could log into a website, and would join as a group, engaging in a game of several rounds of swapping minds with bodies among members of the group, similar to musical chairs.” - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.4</ref> Very reliant on their patterns.

• Hungry Choir - An Incarnate that also represents Hunger and Famine
• The Placement Test - A Bloody Lord with several Others, caught up in it.

References

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