Ritual

Rituals are complex ceremonies that create magic effects. You don't memorize or prepare a ritual; a ritual is so long and complex that no one could ever commit the whole thing to memory. To perform a ritual, you need to read from a book or a scroll containing it and have a propensity for magic.

A ritual book contains one or more rituals that you can use as often and as many times as you like, as long as you can spare the time and the components to perform the ritual.

A ritual scroll contains a single ritual, and you can perform the ritual from that scroll only once. After that, the magic contained in the scroll is expended, and the scroll turns to dust. Anyone can use a ritual scroll to perform the ritual it contains, as long as the appropriate components are expended.

Unless otherwise noted, any reagents used as part of a ritual crumble to dust upon the ritual's completion.

Rituals are not necessarily well-known by the denizens of Ilisara. Ilisara is a low-magic world. These rituals are typically only known or understood by the greatest, most knowledgeable wizards and mages who have studied their school of magic for tens, sometimes hundreds, of years.

Rituals are not common. Buying a ritual scroll is hard. They can cost three times the gold price of the reagents used in a ritual, or more.

Rituals are also a relatively advanced and creative area for players of Ilisara to explore. If you have an idea for an interesting ritual, contact your DM and make one using the following page as inspiration. Rituals should always take hours or days to complete, and require resources near equivalent to its Arcana cost; for example:

Rituals requiring 8-10 Arcana cost several thousand gold in base reagent cost
Rituals requiring 5-7 Arcana cost a few thousand gold in base reagent cost
Rituals requiring 4 or less Arcana cost hundreds of gold in base reagent cost

Acquiring and Performing Rituals

A ritual book must be acquired and studied in order to master the ritual it contains. Alternatively, a ritual scroll allows a ritual to be performed one time. Performing a ritual may require a skill check, and may have time, material, and other requirements, depending on which ritual is being performed and whether a ritual scroll is being used.

If a player has Skill Training in Ritual Casting, then they can cast rituals in half the time.

Ritual Components

Each ritual has its own special cost to cast. This takes the form of:

Reagents. These may take the form of magical gemstones or body parts from exotic creatures.
Time. Rituals vary in length from an hour to several days’ casting time.
Arcana. Only creatures with a specific level of Arcana can cast rituals.
Special costs. Sometimes rituals require blood sacrifices, a specific location, or a specific time of day to be cast; some rituals are so strong that two casters are required.

Ritual Reagents

Blood of the Mountain: An incredibly rare, blood-red ruby found only in the deepest areas of Ilisara’s crust. These special rubies weigh up to seventy pounds, and are often a foot tall (or larger).

Rod of Convergence: A magical rod made from reagents on the Esk’s Isle, imbued with arcana from the death of a magical beast. Esk’s Isle lays within The Veil, an ever-shifting fog of magic and wonder that rests in the center of the ocean. Few know of the island’s location, and fewer still are brave enough to venture there.

Deer Skulls: Deer skulls are typically used in rituals linked to Kerrigor, the god of death. Average deer skulls are typically harvested and cleaned, painted, and carved in reverence to Kerrigor before they are used in a ritual. For the special Resurrection ritual, more is required. A mythical Ghost Herd of deer exists in Ilisara, fabled to have been made by Kerrigor himself. They are ethereal and live in both the Afterlife and Ilisara at the same By hunting this herd and acquiring the skull of one of its members, a character may be resurrected with the Resurrection ritual.

Other ritual components are listed with their respective rituals.

Rituals Requiring 8-10 Arcana

Arcane Simulacrum

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
4,000 gold worth of arcane residuum, achieved from grinding gemstones to dust	1 day	8

Description: The caster shapes an illusory duplicate of one beast or humanoid. The duplicate is a creature, partially real and formed from arcane residuum. It feels, sounds, and looks exactly like the original.

The Simulacrum:

Can take actions and otherwise be affected as a normal creature
Has half the original creature's hit point maximum
Forms naked without any equipment
Uses all the statistics of the creature it duplicates
Has limited capacity to be autonomous

A Simulacrum takes an extended amount of time and arcane residuum to create. The caster must chant a special incantation for several hours, focussing only on the Simulacrum spell, to successfully create one. The caster rolls an arcana check when she creates the Simulacrum. A Detect Magic check that beats this Arcana check can determine that the Simulacrum is an illusion.

The simulacrum is friendly to the caster and creatures they designate. It obeys its master’s spoken commands, moving and acting in accordance with what it understands her wishes to be, and acts on her turn in combat. Like other pets, its master must spend a Major action to command the simulacrum to take a Major action, but the simulacrum may freely use Minor actions. The simulacrum lacks the ability to learn or become more powerful, so it never increases its level or learns new abilities. The simulacrum lasts until it drops to 0 HP, at which point it turns back into the dust it was created from.

DM info: a Simulacrum functions as a shoddy copy of its original. Play a simulacrum like an android / emotionless creature without a will of its own and lacking intelligence. They’re better suited for animals than people. If the caster’s arcana check is really high, then the simulacrum functions better, and if it’s really low the simulacrum is worse.

Blood Regeneration

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Alchemical reagents worth 20,000 gold, crystal vessel	5 days	10

Description: You grow a duplicate body of a living creature inside a specially prepared crystal vessel filled with an alchemical solution.

Before you can perform this ritual, you must acquire the a hollow crystal vessel large enough to hold the creature to duplicate. You must then spend 1 hour mixing the alchemical reagents (or residuum) with seawater, which you pour into the vessel. Finally, you must secure a pound of flesh from the creature to duplicate and place it in the vessel as well. This grisly harvest costs 40 hit points from the creature.

The ritual’s performance takes several days. The bit of flesh begins to grow as the ritual caster chants ancient rites to Arth, the blood god. Once 5 days have passed, the flesh begins growing on its own. After 3 months, the flesh finishes growing into a perfect copy of the original creature. The clone remains in a state of suspended animation until the original creature dies or until the clone is removed from the vessel.

When the original creature dies, if its soul is free and willing, the soul immediately enters the clone’s body. The clone awakens with maximum hit points. For all intents and purposes, the clone becomes the creature that died.

If the clone is removed from the vessel before the original creature dies, it awakens with all of the memories and experiences of the original creature, and it has statistics identical to the original. The magic that gives the clone its life warps its perspective, and it becomes a creature under the DM’s control that hates and wishes to destroy the original creature.

Consult Oracle

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
A crystal ball worth 7,500 gold	2 hours	8

Description: You consult a divine emissary of the gods for a glimpse into what the future holds. You ask questions, and an unearthly voice replies.

Your questions must relate to a specific goal, event, or activity that has yet to occur. Since what is yet to occur is not known by any mortal being, the answers need not be known by any creature, alive or dead. This ritual can answer only questions related to events occurring within the next 7 days. After that, the skein of possibilities is too indistinct to gain useful information.

The guidance from the divine emissary is accurate, but great heroes are capable of thwarting fate, at least for a time. If the ritual reveals that a course of action is “certain death,” you should realize that nothing is truly certain until it happens. In addition, the emissary assumes that you will act on its guidance completely and immediately. If you don’t act on the information, or if you change the conditions in existence when you performed the ritual, then the guidance might no longer be useful.

Your Arcana check determine the number of questions you can ask.

15 or lower — 2 questions
16-20 — 3 questions
21-25 or lower — 4 questions
30 or higher — 5 questions

Convergent Selves

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Rod of Convergence	3 hours	10

Description: Convergent Selves allows the ritual caster to merge an aspect of themself from another timeline or world. This allows exchanging Tier abilities, skills, or magic items (of the same level and rarity) with another selection.

This ritual may have a side effect of altering additional aspects of the character, such as remembering secrets not known before, remembering events that didn't happen, possess slightly different equipment or clothing, or having a different hairstyle.

Upon completing this ritual, the caster rolls 1d6. This is the number of traits that must be exchanged with an alternate self. The traits exchanged can come from many other timelines or realities.

Divine Audience

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Varies	3 days	10

Description: Through painstaking research and preparation, you prepare a valuable offering for one of the gods. Your offering earns you an audience with the god. The god may choose to appear in its true form before you, or else manifest in another way.

Unlike rituals that provide cryptic answers (Consult Oracle) or have limited scope, the Divine Audience ritual provides direct contact to a god that might be genuinely informative and helpful, provided you convince it to help. The god begins in a neutral state—intrigued by the offering and willing to hear you out. But the god has agendas of its own, and its nature might color the information and advice it provides.

The reagents for this ritual vary, depending on the god summoned.

Arth requires a hefty blood sacrifice. Humanoid blood is worth more than animal blood, but much must be spilt for Arth to appear.
Vandun can be summoned by the death of an innocent child killed in front of its living parents.
Remedia requires the planting of a forest. This must be done by hand.
Anashta will only answer a summons given from the bottom of the sea floor.
Varos requires a fantastical display of pyrotechnics in the sky, turning night into day before he will grace someone with his presence.
Selune will only appear to those who have meditated in a dark, secluded space, and not made a sound for 3 days. She will not appear to more than one person at a time.
Duros requires the caster to make an offering of rare and precious metals.
Kerrigor wishes for the release of a trapped soul in Ilisara.
Hejong requires the caster to win a great battle in his name, abiding by his code.

There may be additional steps to summoning a god, or less stringent measures depending on the caster and their relations with the god. For example, a devout priestess of Anashta may have an easier time coaxing Anashta to them. As your DM for details. All rituals for summoning a god require the caster to know some of the gods’ divine tongue, and speak divine words during the summons.

Fleshshaping

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
A vat of blood from the target of this spell	5 days	10

Description: The caster bends the blood, bone, and flesh of a living being, transforming them into a different creature in a horribly painful way. After slowly bleeding the target and chanting dark incantations for several days without rest, the transformation’s permanence depends on the caster’s arcana check:

15 or less: The transformation only lasts for d4 hours, can be dispelled by a Dispel Magic check that exceeds the caster’s Arcana check, or is dispelled upon the target falling to 0 HP.
16-25: The transformation is permanent until a Dispel Magic check exceeding the caster’s Arcana check is made, or until the target falls to 0 HP.
26 and over: The transformation is dispelled when the target falls to 0 HP, but is otherwise permanent.

This spell has no effect on a creature with 0 hit points. An unwilling creature can roll [something] to defend itself if conscious, and if it succeeds, it isn’t affected by this spell.

Fleshshaped creatures:

Physical ability scores are changed to suit their new form
Mental ability scores remain unchanged
Adopt the mannerisms of their new form quickly
- For example, a human fleshshaped into a cat might compulsively purr when pet
Gains the hit points of its new form
If it reverts to its original form, the creature returns to the HP total it had before it transformed
If it reverts as a result of dropping to 0 HP, any excess damage carries over to its normal form. As long as the excess damage doesn't reduce the creature's normal form to 0 HP, it isn't knocked unconscious
Can't speak, cast spells, or take any other action that requires hands or speech unless its new form is capable of such actions
Gear melds into the creature’s new form. The creature can't activate, use, wield, or otherwise benefit from any of its equipment.

The caster of this spell may target themselves with it, but must have an assistant to aid them in concentrating on the spell if they are trying to perform it themselves. The blood loss and lack of rest involved can make this ritual hard to perform without aid.

Raise Land

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Precious metals worth 18,000 gold, or one Blood of the Mountain	1 day	10

Flavor: With an unsettling lurch, the land beneath your feet tears free, spilling rock, dirt, and debris on the terrain below as it climbs into the sky.

Description: Successfully performing the Raise Land ritual enables you to lift a specific quantity of ground into the air. The depth of the earth affected extends down to half the area’s radius, thus a 100-foot-radius section of land is 50 feet thick. The freed earth rises slowly at about 2 miles per hour until it attains a height equal to the radius (or less, if you choose). If this ritual is attempted indoors, the raised land stops once it hits a barrier.

Land moved by this ritual stays floating indefinitely in the air, and the Blood of the Mountain turns to dust when the ritual is complete.

Your Arcana check result determines the size of the land you can raise:

15 or lower — 100 feet
16-20 — 300 feet
21-25 or lower — 1000 feet
30 or higher — 2000 feet

If the caster is a dwarf, the required Arcana for this ritual is only 8.

Resurrection

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
A corpse and deer skull from the Ghost Herd worth 12,000 gold	8 hours	10

For creatures that have been dead for 24 hours or less. Resurrections require the Resurrection Ritual, which can be inscribed in spellbooks. Priests, clerics, necromancers, and others divinely attuned or specializing in Life or Death magic may learn to use Resurrection. It requires 8 Arcana to cast, and a successful Arcana check (rec. DC 20) to bring back a dead creature that has been dead no longer than 24 hours. You may only attempt to resurrect a creature twice. If both attempts fail, you cannot try again until d4 days have passed -- by then, resurrecting the creature will require divine intervention.

Summon Demon

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
A circle of summoning runes worth 5,000 gold	1 day	6

Reagents: In order to summon a demon, the summoning runes are typically forged of silver and inlaid on the ground. The runes can also be inscribed within a gemstone or crafted of gold and worn as jewelry. To complete the ritual, the caster must pay 10 hit points’ worth of blood and draw a pentagram within the summoning runes.

Description: Demons are all servants and agents of Vandun, save for very few. When you cast this ritual, you pull one specific demon’s consciousness through space to your location. It materializes as a shadowy, incorporeal version of itself, and may interact with you verbally. The summoned demon cannot interact with objects.

You must name a specific demon when you perform this ritual. If the demon you named is sufficiently powerful, it can roll an Arcana check against your own Arcana check to resist the call of your summons, and instead send an underling to you.

Demons possess esoteric knowledge and the ability to empower mortals in numerous ways, but the advice or power of a demon is never given freely. Some demons accept trade of magic items or secrets, while others demand favors or promises for their aid and information. Some demons offer service in exchange for being told what unpleasant ends the boon is to be used for.

In addition, convincing a demon to provide what you need typically requires a skill challenge. The details of this challenge are left up to the DM, but can include such elements as bargaining with Persuasion, threatening with Intimidate, or coercing with knowledge gleaned by Arcana checks.

Failure ends the ritual and might bring the summoned demon to your location in physical form.

Special: If you use a demon’s truename in the ritual in place of its name, you do not need to undertake a skill challenge to bargain with the summoned demon (at the DM’s discretion).

Few demons except demon lords have truenames, and demon lords guard their truenames at any cost. If you summon a demon lord by the use of its truename, the bargain you strike should also involve ensuring that you are not destroyed once the pact is completed.

Rituals Requiring 5-7 Arcana

Control Weather

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Varies	2 hours	6

Reagents: The reagents for this ritual vary by season, but all can be acquired for approximately 1,500 gold in a reasonably sized city. In Spring, an effigy of seaweed, driftwood and fresh flowers must be constructed. In Summer, an effigy of sunstones engraved with Varos’ symbol must be built and placed on a golden pedestal. In Autumn, an effigy of redwood adorned with fresh mushrooms and cave lichen must be constructed. In Winter, an effigy headed by a deer skull and built from metal wire must be constructed.

Description: You change the weather outside in a 5-mile radius centered on you. The change is limited by the current season. Choose from the options below based on the season.

Spring: Heat wave, sleet storm, or thunderstorm
Summer: Hailstorm, heat wave, or rainstorm
Autumn: Cold snap, fog, sleet, or windstorm
Winter: Blizzard, windstorm, or thaw

You control the weather’s general tendencies, such as the direction and intensity of the wind or the degree of obscurity from fog, hail, rain, and snow. You cannot control specific applications of the weather, such as where lightning strikes.

The weather can be up to a certain duration, depending on your Arcana check result:

15 or less: 6 hours
16-20: 12 hours
21-25: 1 day
25 or more: 3 days

When the time you specified is up, the effigy constructed as part of this ritual crumbles to dust.

Blood Simulacrum

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
A vat of blood	1 day	6

Description: The caster shapes an illusory duplicate of one beast or humanoid. The duplicate is a creature, partially real and formed from the caster’s blood. It feels, sounds, and looks exactly like the original.

The Simulacrum:

Can take actions and otherwise be affected as a normal creature
Has half the original creature's hit point maximum
Forms naked without any equipment
Uses all the statistics of the creature it duplicates
Has limited capacity to be autonomous

A Simulacrum takes an extended amount of time and blood to create. The caster must bleed themself slowly for several hours, focussing only on the Simulacrum spell, to successfully create one. The caster rolls an arcana check when she creates the Simulacrum. A Detect Magic check that beats this Arcana check can determine that the Simulacrum is an illusion.

The simulacrum is friendly to the caster and creatures they designate. It obeys its master’s spoken commands, moving and acting in accordance with what it understands her wishes to be, and acts on her turn in combat. Like other pets, its master must spend a Major action to command the simulacrum to take a Major action, but the simulacrum may freely use Minor actions. The simulacrum lacks the ability to learn or become more powerful, so it never increases its level or learns new abilities. The simulacrum lasts until it drops to 0 HP, at which point it reverts into a puddle of blood.

DM info: a Simulacrum functions as a shoddy copy of its original. Play a simulacrum like an android / emotionless creature without a will of its own and lacking intelligence. They’re better suited for animals than people. If the caster’s arcana check is really high, then the simulacrum functions better, and if it’s really low the simulacrum is worse.

Revitalize

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Plant seeds and a carved redwood idol of Remedia, worth 2,000 golda	1 day	6

Description: You scatter the seeds and pray to Remedia, invoking her divine power. After one day, plants sprout in an area equal to your arcana check’s results. These plants can survive in normally infertile ground, but still require water and sunlight to continue to grow. After this ritual is complete, the time to grow is about the same as any other newly-sprouted plant. Plants may consist of flowers, trees, or vegetable crops.

Arcana check results:

15 or less: An area no more than 100 square feet
16-20: An area no more than 500 square feet

21 or more: An area no more than 1,000 square feet

Soulguard

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Deer skull blessed by a cleric of Kerrigor, incense, and prayer. Typically costs 5,000 gold If purchased in a city	6 hours	6

Description: You sequester a portion of a creature’s life force for emergencies. The recipient of this ritual (which can be you) sacrifices 20 hit points.

The next time the recipient is reduced to -20 hit points equal and would ordinarily die, he instead regains 20 hit points.

Visage of Life

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
A scrap of material and arcane residuum worth 1,000 gold	1 hour	5

Flavor: The finger floats in your palm for a moment, and then the image of a young peasant appears. This finger did not, it seems, come from the prince as the villain claims.

Description: Using a scrap of once-living material, you create an image of the living thing that produced that scrap. The image that appears before you is actual size and appears as the living thing did before its demise for the ritual’s duration. Its pose is neutral and offers no information about the subject at its actual time of death.

Rituals Requiring 4 or Less Arcana

Anashta’s Blessing

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
A mermaid’s kiss	Instant	0

Targets of the Anashta’s Blessing ritual can explore the ocean’s depths at length and with leisure. Each person kissed on the lips by a mermaid gains the ability to breathe underwater. In addition to this ability, targets can speak normally and move as gracefully underwater as they do on land. Subjects are unaffected by the cold and pressure of the deep ocean. These beneficial effects begin when the target creature is fully submerged in water.

Equipment and possessions, such as books and scrolls, on a creature affected by the ritual can still be damaged by the water. Deep sea creatures may still be dangerous.

This boon lasts for 3 hours if the mermaid’s kiss is taken by force, or 24 hours if the mermaid willingly kisses the recipient. The ritual boon immediately ends if a creature leaves the water and takes one breath of air.

Mark of Hejong

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Red ink made from flowers grown on the graves of fallen warriors, worth approx. 500 gold in a city	2 hours	2

Special: This ritual must be cast by a follower of Hejong. The Mark only functions if used to prohibit unjust actions.

Description: You draw a mark on the subject of the ritual, who must be willing or Helpless for the time it takes to perform the ritual. At the ritual's completion, designate an action or a kind of behavior that the mark forbids, and select one of the following penalties or another worked out by you and your DM. When the subject performs the forbidden action or displays the forbidden behavior the subject is affected by the penalty for the next 24 hours. Example penalties include the following:

Ineptness: When the subject makes a successful d20 roll, it must roll again and use the second result.
Weakness of Flesh: The subject becomes vulnerable (takes double damage) to all sources of damage.
Curse of Solitude: The subject is blinded and deafened.

No matter the distance, you are aware when the subject triggers the penalty or when the penalty is lifted. A successful Dispel Magic check (rec. DC 20) can remove the Mark early.

Inhabit Animal

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Handful of golden acorns, worth 500 gold	1 hour	4

Description: You loosen your spirit from your body and inhabit that of an animal. You can use this ritual only on nonhostile, natural beasts whose level is equal to or lower than your own. The target of this ritual must be present for the entire time during which the ritual is being performed.

When the ritual is complete, you clearly perceive everything from the perspective of the animal host. You use the subject’s senses. While in the beast’s body, you can influence the host with simple commands, such as “Go there,” “Wait,” “Flee,” and so on. If the host comes under attack, the ritual ends immediately as the animal’s instincts take over. Otherwise, the ritual lasts d4 hours.

While under the effect of this ritual, your body is helpless as if in a deep sleep. Your body is unresponsive to any stimulus that does not deal damage. If your body takes damage, your spirit immediately returns to your body.

Shrink

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Arcane residuum worth 500 gold	1 hour	4

Flavor: With a final flourish, you shrink the statue down to a much smaller size. The guards will never notice it hidden in your boot.

Description: You shrink an object. Your Arcana check result determines how small the item becomes and how long the effect of the ritual lasts.

10 or less: 75% of true size, 1 hour
11-15: 50% of true size, 3 hours
16-20: 25% of true size, 6 hours
21 or more: 10% of true size, 12 hours

Song of Rest

Reagents	Casting Time	Required Arcana
Arcane residuum worth 500 gold	10 minutes	2

Special: Only bards may perform this ritual.

Description: When you perform this ritual, you and any allies who hear the performance become well rested. Characters gain the benefits of a rest period, including regenerating 50% of their hit point total, and feeling rejuvenated and energetic once again. A character can benefit from this ritual only once during any 24-hour period.

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