Rites & Rituals

Performed over the course of 12 hours (reduced by one hour per success on the casting roll), this ritual infuses the necromancer or a willing subject with the chill of the grave. The ritual’s material component is a one-foot (half-meter) cube of ice, which is slowly melted on the subject’s chest (inflicting three health levels of bashing damage on mortal subjects). The subject must lie naked on bare earth for the entire duration of the ritual. Once the ritual is completed, its effects remain for a number of nights equal to the caster’s Occult rating.

An individual affected by Chill of Oblivion treats aggravated damage from fire and high temperatures as if it were lethal damage. Furthermore, he may attempt to extinguish any fire by rolling Willpower (difficulty 9); each success reduces the fire’s soak difficulty (see p. 297) by 1, and a fire with a soak difficulty of 2 dwin-dles to glowing embers.

However, this ritual has several drawbacks. First and foremost, the subject’s aura is laced with writhing black veins that resemble those left by diablerie, and may well be mistaken for such by any observer who is not familiar with this ritual. The subject also radiates a palpable aura of cold that extends to about arm’s length from him; this can be extremely disconcerting to mortals, though it causes no damage, and its game effects mirror those of the Flaws Touch of Frost (p. 494) and Eerie Presence (p. 495). Finally, the mystical nimbus of the ritual draws hostile ghosts to the subject, who may plague him with unwholesome acts.