Orc Rituals

Orc rituals may be used so long as one knows the proper techniques and has favor with the gods, either pending or from a sacrifice made in the moment. Minor blessings require a minor favor, while significant blessings require a significant favor. A check may be required where a blessing would be opposed by another force or where it exceeds the core scope of the shaman's abilities or influence. A failed check to request a blessing does not expend a favor or sacrifice.

The below represent blessings that Karnhage might be familiar with from his time as a blood bowl coach. Thematically-appropriate variations of these may also be used. For example, the specific curse of "Ashes in Their Mouth" may be modified to have a different effect or method of circumvention.

Minor Blessings

Helping Hand: Ask a relevant god to aid an endeavor. Grants a check three additional dice. Can be used to provide assistance to a current effort, to a planned undertaking, directed to protecting a person or group from harm, or otherwise used to aid a future check.

Minor Restoration: Ask a relevant god for endurance. Each player character recovers a pool die if possible.

Divination: See the future in the stars, the wind, the pattern of flying birds, the entrails of animals, the lay of cards, the roll of dice, or whatever your preferred divination methods are. Receive a general answer to a general question.

Gather Information: Collect people towards you that know about a subject of choice, if possible.

Oracular Feast: Hunt, kill, and cook an animal to gain access to its sense memories. As you sleep you can recall everything that creature saw, heard, smelled, or otherwise sensed in the last few days of its life. This effect can be shared between all those who consume a significant portion of the animal.

What the Dirt Saw: Eat a handful of dirt, either straight or in a drink, stew, or other meal. In meditation you become aware of everything that happened near that dirt over the last couple days. This effect can be shared with a small group of people.

Find Trail: Find a trail left by someone or something in the past week from the smallest traces.

Waaagh: Paint a craft or vehicle red to bless it. It gains the "Waaagh" tag benefiting speed and maneuverability related checks so long as the paint lasts.

Grant Fertility: A person, animal, or acre of land becomes more fertile.

Call Weather: Call in a specific kind of non-catastrophic weather in the next few hours. Must be plausible to the location and season.

Find Game: You find local game to hunt.

Befriend Animal: You make an animal, wild or tame, a loyal and trained companion for the length of a scene.

Rouse Spirit: Awaken a local spirit to corporeal form. Spirits without reason to be hostile will generally offer assistance if treated respectfully.

Stand Tall: When righteous, you stand out from the crowd as more distinct and worthy of attention.

Draw a Crowd: You draw a crowd to a righteous assembly, if practical.

Natural Authority: You impress someone to take you seriously who might not otherwise.

Moral Compulsion: You force someone to reconsider their actions according to their own values.

Judgmental Stare: With only a look you inflict a sense of impending doom on someone who has reason to fear your judgment.

See Connections: You get a sense of what political, spiritual, or philosophical movement a particular subject most identifies with.

Significant Blessings

Restoration: You and and a small group of people are fully rested and refreshed.

Revelation: A godly avatar plainly answers a few honorable questions for you. Requests for objective information are nearly always fine, but advice on how to achieve specified tasks may be judged.

Ancestral Link: Ask a deity to help you establish a connection with your ancestors and seek their wisdom and guidance.

Spirit Possession: Ask a deity to allow you to enter into a trance state and allow a spirit or entity to temporarily possess your body, allowing you to gain access to their knowledge or abilities under their control.

Righteous Fervor: You inspire a crowd to recklessly righteous action.

Domesticate Animal: You make an animal, wild or tame, a loyal and trained companion.

Ashes in Their Mouth: For the next year, a specified target is cursed to taste all food as ashes unless they personally hunted or gathered it from the wild.

Salt the Earth: Many acres of land are rendered barren.

Condemn: For at least a year, a specified target is defined by a justified denunciation that you apply to them.

Common Will: Use your spiritual connections to promote a righteous idea or concept within a group, such as a village, neighborhood, or city.

Major Blessings

There are no predefined major blessings given the considerable rarity of major favors. Rather, the player can define a very powerful effect in keeping with the theme of ritual magic. Significantly more powerful versions of the lesser blessings are available, but do not limit the breadth of what is possible with a major blessing.

The Book of Resurrection

The book is divided into three parts, each separately bound between its covers. Based on a partial translation, the first appears to be a layered series of commentaries regarding the divine purpose of the ban on resurrection, reaching no definite conclusion, apparently an excerpt from a broader religious work.

The second is the core of the book, and the portion disfavored by the gods, a guide to performing a resurrection. With Smash's assistance Karnhage was able to determine the function of the described rituals. Learning to practice their unfamiliar techniques would require a more complete translation and considerable time spent on their study.

Mark Spirit: Binds a living person’s spirit to a bone totem, the target contained within a focusing circle for the ritual’s one-hour length. The bone totem provides the strongest possible sympathetic connection to the target spirit whether pre- or post-mortem.

Bind Spirit: Binds a particular spirit to a person who is no more than one year old, replacing the divinely-selected spirit.

Mind Bottle: Drains the accumulated experiences of a recently-deceased person (ideally within twenty-four hours) to a specifically-prepared vessel as a viscous fluid.

Distill Cognitive Elixir: Refines some or all of a store of experiential extract into a consumable elixir.

The second part of the book concludes with a lengthy discussion, including annotations in several hands, on the proper ordering and ages for providing refined experiences to a redeveloping youth.

The third is a small collection of non-blasphemous minor rituals deemed useful to those practicing disfavored magic. With a modest investment of time – represented by the purchase of a relevant tag – Karnhage can learn to perform these, each costing a minor favor to cast.

Break Sympathy: A set of individual rituals for destroying sympathetic connections. The target may be stripped of connections to bodily remnants (e.g., hair and nails), lost body parts, personal possessions, one's ancestors or descendents, etc., with different specific rites for different sympathies.

Undead Decoy: An undead servant may be imbued as the sacrificial target of a search in place of one or more people, with pursuers being led to it until its capture or destruction.

Doppelganger Cadaver: A dead metahuman or animal body is physically reworked to resemble the body of someone of broadly similar mass.