BlackengorgeSagaRituals for Kireth Majere
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Amanuensis
You touch the writing, tracing each character or glyph with a gently glowing crystal. As you do so, the words you flicker into existence onto the specially prepared parchment before solidifying into a near-perfect copy.
Level: 1
Component Cost: 10 gp
Duration: Permanent
Category: Creation
Market Price: 20 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana (no check)
You capture the writing from one source (a book, scroll, or tablet) and cause it to appear onto a special prepared paper, parchment, book, or some other similar item. This ritual copies up to 250 words of text, enough to fill one page with text. A copied illustration counts as a number of words proportional to the amount of the page the illustration requires.
This ritual can be used to copy a ritual scroll, even if you have not mastered the ritual on the original scroll. Creating a ritual scroll in this manner takes twice as long as creating a ritual book but has the same cost (in addition to the component cost of this ritual).
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Corpse Light
A sickly green flame springs forth, washing the area in nauseating light. In its illumination, those that walk in undeath are revealed beyond a doubt.
Level: 2
Component Cost: 25 gp
Duration: 1 hour
Category: Divination
Market Price: 100 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana or Religion
You create a pale green flame that illuminates as a lantern. The light emanates from an object you designate during the ritual. The green fire produces no heat. Any undead creature that enters the illuminated area or is within it, and that is of a level equal to or lower than your Arcana or Religion check - 10, is wreathed in a green, flaming aura that harmlessly flickers around the creature.
This aura appears even if the undead is disguised by a polymorph or illusion effect. Invisible undead are surrounded by visible green radiance. The glow reveals the square in which the undead is located, but it does not affect the total concealment granted by invisibility.
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Comprehend Language
As you finish the ritual, the guttural language of the creatures before you clarifies into something you understand.
Level: 1
Component Cost: 10 gp
Duration: 24 hours
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 50 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana
When beginning the ritual, choose a language you have heard or a piece of writing you have seen within the past 24 hours.
Using this ritual on a language you have heard allows you to understand it when spoken for the next 24 hours and, if your Arcana check result is 35 or higher, to speak the language fluently for the duration.
Using this ritual on a language you have seen as a piece of writing allows you to read the language for the next 24 hours and, if your Arcana check result is 35 or higher, to write the language in its native script or in any other script you know for the duration.
Using this ritual on a language you have both heard and seen as a piece of writing within the past 24 hours allows you to understand it in both forms for the next 24 hours, and an Arcana check result of 35 or higher allows you to speak and write the language.
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Last Sight Vision
As you finish the ritual, you see the final moments of the corpse's life.
Level: 2
Component Cost: 25 gp
Duration: 2 or more rounds
Category: Divination
Market Price: 100 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana or Religion
When you perform this ritual in the presence of a corpse or a skull, you witness an auditory and visual replay of the moments before the death of that creature, as seen from the creature's perspective. You cannot perform this ritual on headless corpses. Once you have performed this ritual, you must wait until you have gained a level before using it again on the same remains.
Your Arcana or Religion check determines the length of time prior to the target's death that you experience.
Check Result: Time Period
19 or lower: 2 rounds
20-29: 4 rounds
30-39: 6 rounds
40 or higher: 10 rounds -
Magic Circle
The circle of symbols scratched into the ground glows and sparks briefly as the demon tests the boundary. ‘This will not save you for long!’ it hisses.
Level: 5
Component Cost: 100 gp
Duration: Until broken
Category: Binding
Market Price: 250 gp
Time: 1 hour
Key Skill: Arcana
You inscribe a circle on the ground, a circle emblazoned with arcane symbols of protection. If drawn correctly, these symbols make it difficult for creatures of a particular origin to enter or pass. When performing the ritual, you choose aberrant, elemental, fey, immortal, natural, shadow, or all. The last option applies a -5 penalty to your check. The circle requires 1 minute to inscribe per square inside the circle (and it must be a circle).
An affected creature whose level is lower than your Arcana check result minus 10 cannot pass through the circle, affect creatures through the circle's boundary, or affect the boundary in any way. Other creatures of an affected origin take force damage equal to your Arcana check result when passing through the boundary, but doing so breaks the circle. Unaffected creatures can take a standard action to obscure the inscription and break the circle.
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Secret Page
You laugh through your broken teeth. The duke's impersonator might have found your journal, but he'll never see what you wrote there.
Level: 1
Component Cost: 10 gp
Duration: Permanent
Category: Warding
Market Price: 50 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana
You ward writings so others cannot read them. Use of this ritual protects one page (maximum 250 words). You make the page appear not to exist, causing anyone other than you to ignore it; the page's presence is blocked from a reader's mind. You can choose instead to obscure the page with false writings, which you produce before performing the ritual. Other readers see the false text rather than the real text.
When you perform the ritual, make an Arcana check, with a +5 bonus. The result is the DC for a Perception check to notice the concealed writing (readers use passive Perception unless they are specifically looking for concealed text).
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Undead Ward
The line you etched in the floor shines like ivory in moonlight, and the skeletons stop advancing.
Level: 3
Component Cost: 35 gp
Duration: Until broken
Category: Warding
Market Price: 130 gp
Time: 30 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana
You create a magical barrier against undead creatures. This barrier can be a closed circle, with an inscription time of 1 minute per square inside the circle, or a line, requiring 1 minute per 2 squares of length.
An undead creature whose level is lower than your Arcana check result - 10 cannot pass through the barrier, affect creatures through the barrier, or affect the barrier in any way. Any other undead creature takes radiant damage equal to your Arcana check result when passing through the barrier, but doing so breaks the barrier and ends the effect. Any creature able to pass through the barrier can take a standard action to obscure the inscription and thereby break the barrier.
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Speak With Dead
At your prompt, the corpse reveals its secrets to you.
Level: 6
Component Cost: 140 gp
Duration: 10 minutes
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Religion
You ask the corpse of an intelligent creature questions and receive answers. The corpse knows what the creature knew in life, what has occurred near the corpse, and no more; the spirit has (usually) moved on to another plane and is not present in the body.
Your Religion check result determines the number of questions you can ask.
Check Result: Number of Questions
9 or lower: Zero
10-19: One
20-29: Two
30 or higher: ThreeAt the DM's option, questioning the departed spirit might require a skill challenge using Diplomacy.
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Shrink
With a final flourish, you shrink the statue down to a much smaller size. The guards will never notice it hidden in your boot.
Level: 6
Component Cost: 50 gp
Duration: Special
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana
You shrink an object. Your Arcana check result determines how small the item becomes and how long the effect of the ritual lasts.
Check Result: Size/Duration
9 or lower: 75% of true size/1 hour
10-19: 50% of true size/6 hours
20-29: 25% of true size/12 hours
30 or higher: 10% of true size/24 hours -
Knock
A blue, glowing key appears in front of the door and disappears into it. The door glows amber for a moment and then unlocks.
Level: 4
Component Cost: 35 gp, plus 1 healing surge
Duration: Instantaneous
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 175 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana
The Knock ritual allows you to open a single locked door, chest, gate, or other object. It even works against portals sealed with the Arcane Lock ritual or doors secured with bolts or bars that are on the far side, out of reach. You must defeat all the closures on a locked object to unlock it. You make one Arcana check per lock, bar, Arcane Lock, or similar closure. The object you unlock does not open automatically; you still must open it yourself after the ritual unlocks it.
Make an Arcana check with a +5 bonus in place of a Thievery check to open each lock or closure. (See the Thievery skill description, page 189, for example DCs.) To undo bolts or bars you normally couldn't reach, you must succeed on a DC 20 Arcana check.
If you use this ritual successfully against a portal protected by Arcane Lock, you destroy the Arcane Lock and its effects end.
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Arcane Lock
You bind a door so that intruders can't easily pass. The door is limned with amber light, which fades to a soft glow, marking it as impassible to anyone other than you and your allies.
Level: 4
Component Cost: 25 gp
Duration: Permanent
Category: Warding
Market Price: 150 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana
You lock a door, a window, a gate, a portcullis, or some other means of ingress. You can open the door normally, but those who don't have your permission to use it find it locked. Your Arcana check, with a +5 bonus, sets the DC for Thievery checks or Strength checks made to open the door.
When you perform the ritual, you can allow for certain other creatures or types of creatures to pass through the door normally, ignoring the ward's effect. You can choose any or all (or none) of the following options:
Password: You can set a verbal password. If uttered within 5 squares of the portal, the speaker can ignore the ward for the next minute.
Individuals: You can designate up to ten other specific individuals who can ignore the ward at all times.
Descriptions: You can describe one or more categories of creatures who can ignore the ward at all times, using specific, observable characteristics such as species, type, size, or equipment carried or worn.
The Arcane Lock remains until you dismiss it, the door is destroyed, or until the ward is defeated, such as by the Knock ritual or a successful Strength or Thievery check. Wherever you are, you instantly know if your Arcane Lock is defeated by one of these methods.
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Skull Watch
As you complete the halting words of power, a light shines from the grim skull's sockets before fading again into blackness.
Level: 4
Component Cost: 50 gp
Duration: 4 hours
Category: Warding
Market Price: 175 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana (no check)
You enchant a skull to watch over an area and alert you when something intrudes. The skull uses your Perception modifier with a +5 bonus. It cannot hear or smell, and it never considers you an intruder. In addition, you can designate any number of other individuals as nonintruders. When you perform the ritual, you can also designate one or more categories of creatures that the skull will ignore. You can define these categories by obvious physical characteristics (such as height, weight, or body shape), creature type (such as humanoid), creature race (such as hill giant), or obvious equipment (such as a creature carrying a shield with a flame emblazoned upon it).
When the skull detects an intrusion, it mentally alerts you if you are within 1 mile. At any time during the ritual's duration, you can choose to look through the skull's eyes as a standard action. While you look through the skull's eyes, you cannot see through your own and are considered blind. You can end this effect as a free action.
The skull can be moved from its original position during the ritual's duration without disturbing the effect. Destroying the skull ends the effect, and you are not magically made aware of the skull's destruction (though you might already be alerted about intruders).
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Thief's Lament
Those of criminal intent find their talents fail them when they enter the area protected by this magic.
Level: 6
Component Cost: 140 gp, plus 2 healing surges
Duration: 24 hours or more (see text)
Category: Warding
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 1 hour
Key Skill: Arcana or Religion
Creatures in the warded area take a -5 penalty to Stealth checks and Thievery checks.
Your Arcana or Religion check determines the size of the warded area.
Check Result: Warded Area
9 or lower: Burst 1
10-19: Burst 3
20-29: Burst 5
30-39: Burst 8
40 or higher: Burst 12The warding effect lasts for 24 hours, but you (and not any assistants) can extend the duration by an additional 24 hours for each extra healing surge you expend just before the current duration expires.
You need not be in the same area or even on the same plane to extend the duration. If you extend the ritual's duration for a year and a day without interruption, the effect becomes permanent.
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Undead Servitor
The corpse shudders, then clambers to its feet. At your direction, it shoulders your gear and lumbers after you.
Level: 6
Component Cost: 150 gp
Duration: Permanent
Category: Creation
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 1 hour
Key Skill: Arcana (no check)
You imbue a humanoid corpse of natural origin and Medium or smaller size with the ability to move under its own power and an understanding of one language of your choice. It has speed 6 and Strength 16, never tires, and obeys you at all times.
The undead servitor is a noncombatant. When forced onto an active battlefield, treat the servitor as an allied minion (1 hit point, never damaged on a missed attack) with all defenses of 11. It acts just after you do and never makes attacks.
You cannot have more than one undead servitor at a time from different performances of this ritual. If you attempt to create a second servitor, that ritual fails without component expenditure.
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Wyvern Watch
A wyvern-shaped presence formed from mist fills the area, promising doom to those who stumble into its demesne.
Level: 6
Component Cost: 100 gp
Duration: 8 hours or until discharged
Category: Warding
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 1 hour
Key Skill: Arcana
You place a ward in a 4-square-by-4-square area. The ghostly form of a wyvern appears in that area. Your Arcana check determines the Perception DC to notice the wyvern's presence.
As part of the ritual, you can name creatures that can pass freely through the warded area, and you can set conditions that allow a creature to bypass the ward. Any other creature that enters the area is subject to an attack equal to your level + 4 vs. Will. On a hit, the target is immobilized (save ends). When the attack is triggered, you become aware that it has been triggered regardless of your distance from the ritual's area. The ritual is also discharged.
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Leomund's Secret Chest
An ornate iron-and-silver chest fades into view in front of you.
Level: 6
Component Cost: 140 gp, plus a focus worth 200 gp
Duration: Until dismissed
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana (no check)
As part of mastering this ritual, you must create or commission a chest that bears arcane designs, and an object with personal meaning for you must be built into the chest's frame. After the chest is ready, you can store it anywhere you like. Performing this ritual then summons the chest from wherever you left it to wherever you are, along with all its contents. You can remove or add objects to the chest (subject to its natural size limitations) when it is present. Any time after summoning it, you can dismiss it back to its previous location.
Explorers use this ritual to ensure they have enough supplies or to cart treasure away from a dungeon more easily. If the chest is ever lost or destroyed, you must create a new one before you can perform this ritual again.
Focus: A chest worth at least 200 gp.
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Preserve Flame
Under winter rain or the ocean's depths, the old mage's fires burned just as well as in midsummer.
Level: 6
Component Cost: 75 gp
Duration: 8 hours
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana (no check)
You alter one fire of bonfire size or smaller within 5 squares of you. No amount of water or effort can douse the flame until the ritual's duration expires. The ritual caster can voluntarily end this effect as a minor action.
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Endure Elements
Neither the biting cold nor the searing heat troubles you anymore. You travel in arctic or desert wastes as comfortably as in temperate climes.
Level: 2
Component Cost: 20 gp
Duration: 24 hours
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 100 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana or Nature (no check)
The Endure Elements ritual lets you designate up to five ritual participants, including yourself, who ignore penalties associated with extremes of nonmagical weather.
An affected creature suffers no ill effects from ambient temperatures between -50 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and the creature's equipment is likewise protected from the ravages of these temperatures and of precipitation.
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Water Breathing
The cool water fills your lungs, yet you find yourself able to breathe and speak as well as you can on land.
Level: 8
Component Cost: 135 gp
Duration: Special
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 680 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana or Nature
When you perform this ritual, you can designate up to eight participants (including yourself if you wish) who breathe water as easily as they breathe air. Furthermore, they can speak normally underwater.
Water Breathing doesn't change your ability to breathe air. It doesn't confer a greater swim speed or the ability to fight underwater unhindered. It does protect any gear you and the participants carry, such as books and scrolls, from water damage.
Your check result determines the duration of the effect.
Check Result: Duration
14 or lower: 1 hour
15-19: 2 hours
20-24: 4 hours
25-29: 8 hours
30 or higher: 24 hours -
Discern Lies
His lies quiver through the ether like water thrown on a hot griddle. The suspect doesnRsquo;t even know he's giving off this signal, but to you it's clear as day.
Level: 6
Component Cost: 140 gp
Duration: 5 minutes
Category: Divination
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Religion
Make a Religion check. Use the result as a bonus to your Insight checks to discern any untruths spoken in your presence during the duration. If anyone aided you while performing this ritual, they can't help you make the resulting Insight checks.
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Analyze Portal
Scintillating motes of color sparkle inside the portal and from their patterns and movements you discern its secrets.
Level: 8
Component Cost: 250 gp
Duration: Instantaneous
Category: Divination
Market Price: 800 gp
Time: 1 hours
Key Skill: Arcana
When you perform this ritual, choose a specific active and permanent portal you can clearly see. Analyze Portal causes the portal to erupt with faint lights that flicker and spin, letting you learn a great deal about its destination and function. Its most basic effect is to reveal the portal's destination. Although a portal usually displays what its destination looks like, this ritual reveals the destination's name and its general location in the world or the plane on which it is located.
When you learn the origin and type of the last creature to use the portal, you also learn any keywords associated with that creature.
Analyze Portal can also reveal the identity of the creature that created the portal. If no creature created it, you learn of the event that created it.
Check Result: Information Learned
29 or lower: The name of the portal's destination
30 or higher: The origin and type of the creature to use it last
30 + one-half creator's level: Identity of the creature that created it, if any -
Aura Mask
Before your eyes, the wondrous object shimmers briefly and then returns to an apparently mundane state. Though you know the truth of its power and value, to others it appears normal in every way.
Level: 8
Component Cost: 10 gp
Duration: 24 hours (special)
Category: Deception
Market Price: 250 gp
Time: 10 minutes
Key Skill: Arcana
When performed upon a magic item, Aura Mask makes it appear nonmagical when someone tries to use an Arcana check to detect magic. Your Arcana check result determines the DC for the Arcana check to see through your deception. The Arcana check DC to determine that an item is magical is the higher of the item's normal DC or the result of your Arcana check made as part of this ritual.
The ritual's effects last for 24 hours.
Optional Focus: You can extend the duration of this ritual indefinitely by leaving the item near a small, jeweled eye of gold and ruby wrapped in a silken blindfold. The blindfolded eye is a focus worth 100 gp. As long as the item remains within 20 squares of the focus, the Aura Mask remains in effect. You can hide or protect the ritual's focus in any way you like, as long as it remains within range. A single focus can maintain up to five Aura Masks or False Auras on five separate items, as long as they are all close enough to the focus.
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Change Self
Level: 6
Component Cost: 35 gp and 1 healing surge
Duration: 1 hour (see below)
Category: Deception
Market Price: 360 gp
Time: 1 minute
Key Skill: Arcana (no check)
You take on the appearance of a humanoid of your size. You can also alter the appearance of your clothing, armor, and equipment, all of which must remain present and maintain the same general shape. You retain your statistics in your new form. Creatures viewing or interacting with you can make an Insight check (DC 10 + your Arcana check modifier) to detect the deception.
Ritual Scroll: You can perform this ritual as a standard action if you do so from a scroll. If you do so, the ritual costs you 1 additional healing surge, and the DC to see through the deception is 5 + your Arcana check modifier.
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Tongues
Level: 5
Component Cost: 25 gp and 1 healing surge
Duration: 10 minutes
Category: Exploration
Market Price: 200 gp
Time: 1 minute
Key Skill: Arcana or Religion (no check)
You or one ally present during the ritual's performance gains the ability to speak and understand all languages. Creatures that can hear the target understand what he or she says as if he or she were speaking their native language. If the target can hear another creature that is speaking a language, he or she understands what that creature says as if it were speaking the target's native language.