What would you do to travel between worlds, to influence the masses, to grant a wish? To what distant lands would you venture? To what depths would you crawl? To what ends would you scheme?
The following is a collection of three ritual spells intended to inspire adventures. Their effects are powerful and their requirements are many.
Make your words truth. Speak only ultimatum.
Requirements: The skulls of each member of a noble lineage. Soil collected from the lowest chamber in the family seat. The family heirloom, which will act as a focus.
Ritual: Arrange the skulls into the family tree. Draw pedigree lines with the collected soil. Sit at the foot of the family tree with the heirloom across your lap. Recite the spell’s verbal component.
Effect: The spirits of the family line are drawn within the heirloom. While you bear the heirloom, your words are treated as truth by all who hear. Additionally, those who hear your voice are compelled to follow your orders until the following dawn, upon which they regain their free will without any memory of their actions while under your influence. Creatures with high mental fortitude have a 4 in 6 chance to resist the spell’s effect.
Open the gate. Stand upon the moon.
Requirements: The Moon Blade, a lunar-forged weapon long since lost. The locations of the 8 lunar seals: temples devoted to the Thing on the moon, or locks to seal it away.
Ritual: Begin at the new moon seal. Beneath the corresponding lunar phase, release the seal with the blade. As the moon shifts between phases, travel to the corresponding seal and sever it. Your journey will end when you sever the final seal beneath the waning crescent. Once the ritual is started, failing to sever a seal before its phase is complete will destroy the Moon Blade and mend all severed seals.
Effect: Upon severing the final seal, a gate to the moon will open within your vicinity. A creature that steps through such a moon gate is instantly transported to a corresponding gate upon the moon, which it can use to return. Creatures that travel through a moon gate are acclimatized to the lunar environment. Upon each subsequent new moon while at least 1 lunar seal is severed, you may open another moon gate at a point of your choosing that you can see.
“There are many uses for such a gate! The moon is quite small compared to our world, I suppose one could make haste across our lands with a sufficient network of gates. Then again, the seals were made for a reason… what terrible Thing could be lying in wait?”
A sanctuary for the good. A prison for the vile.
Requirements: A great creature of pure evil, such as an archdemon, undead lord, or lunar presence. An urn carved from a block of lodestone. Buds from the flowering grove atop the highest peak. Blessed water, enough to fill the urn.
Ritual: Place both the water and the buds into the urn. Allow the buds to soak for 1 week. Lure the evil creature near the urn and slay it. Open the urn’s lid and allow the creature’s soul to be drawn within. Close the lid. After 1 week, roots will sprout from the urn and a great tree will begin to grow.
Effect: After another week the tree will be fully grown and your stedding will form with a radius of 1 mile centered on the tree. While within the stedding magical spells have no effect, and resting with a body of water, such as a pond or stream that passes through the stedding, heals all curses. Additionally, no evil creature weaker than the owner of the soul sealed within the urn may willingly enter the stedding. If the tree is burned, the stedding is lost and the evil soul is released.
Take these spells as inspiration. May your heroes covet their effects, or seek to stop a villain from completing their ritual.
published to SCHISTOSTEGA on: 9/26/2025