Darrell Benvenuto
benvenut@qcunix.acc.qc.edu
In Coordination with
Gerry Saracco
urbwarzine@earthlink.net
"I shall further the knowledge of the House and Clan and share with its members all that I find in my search for wisdom and power. No secrets are to be kept, or given, regarding the arts of magic..."
A Guide to the Proper Use and Gameplay of Thaumaturgy
Ordered Levels of Thaumaturgic Rituals
A Discourse Upon the Nature of Reality and Vampires as well as the Origin of the Species
Upon the Nature of Generations
Furthermore, all of the rituals and paths contained herein are merely suggestions. They are open for modification by the Storyteller and Players of the Game. They are not fixed in stone by any means, and only exist to assist in helping WOD gamers towards more creative and enjoyable Gameplay.
Some words, sections and detail in this document is/are Copyright White Wolf Games, Inc.
By Darrell Benvenuto
The White Wolf Storyteller System is an excellent gamesystem; it places quite a bit in the hands of the Storyteller and players of the game. In most instances, this is good. Concerning Thaumaturgy, however, this was not quite so good. Though Thaumaturgy under the Tremere is a regimented, highly complex and ordered thing, and though the Clan still follows a great deal of the structure and order of its original Hermetic past, the rules that can be found in any of the published books, even the Tremere Clanbook itself, governing the art and science of Thaumaturgy are sparse, left mostly to the Storyteller and Magus to work out. It is sad that so much work was put into other aspects of the Storyteller System, yet this vital, complex and fascinating area was left to languish.
This brief section, created and composed by me, is an attempt to lay out a simple set of guidelines for both Storytellers and Players on how Thaumaturgy works and how it should be handled. These guidelines have been extrapolated from as many sources as were available to me at the time, including the Tremere Clanbook and both Player's Guides. They may, as anything else in this document, be used, modified or ignored by Storyteller and Player.
The original intent of the developers at White Wolf was that separate thaumaturgical paths would comprise the primary abilities of a Tremere; indeed, the basic Clan Discipline, Thaumaturgy, is but one of many thaumaturgic paths.
However, in actual practice, most Storytellers and Players feel the reverse is true; rituals form the base stock of a thaumaturgist's abilities, and the paths are secondary. Clearly, this is not the case, as one cannot use rituals of a higher level than one's Thaumaturgy rank; so while being able to use rituals vastly expands the scope of a thaumaturgist's abilities, the true road to power lies in expanding beyond the known paths and creating new ones, as well as rituals designed to work with and complement these paths. Only once a Magus has set foot upon this road are they on their way towards the upper Pyramid, and the Inner Circles of Mystery.
Paths draw their energies from the essence of the Kindred -- effectively consuming the energies of the Vitae within the Magus as they are used. It should be interesting to note that it is the life energy of the Kindred that is drawn, not the physical Vitae itself. Thus, realistic-minded Storytellers might wish to have those Kindred who have drunk their fills and then exhausted their Blood Pools through use of their paths cut themselves and allow the drained Vitae to spill out of their bodies before consuming more; after all, they are only able to consume and contain so much physical liquid at one time. Thus, sacrificial magic, in which the entire life force of a victim is available to be used, enables the sustained casting of high-level paths (can we say Humanity loss?). Thus, when a Tremere uses his level 4 Discipline of Thaumaturgy to "steal" blood points from a target, s/he is not actually taking physical blood, but rather life essence, in a vaguely similar way to that which Cain must have done in ages past (see the Nature of Vampires, as well as the path of Nature's Touch and the Malkavian Clanbook). Note that although the book states that the "source of the attack will be plainly visible" in the writeup on Thaumaturgy level 4, it does not describe the visual effect. A crackle of lurid blue-white energies briefly sparking from the Magus to the Victim, perhaps? It's all up to the Storyteller, as usual.
It is said that Vampires carry their own Reality around with them (Tremere Clanbook, pg. 36). For a more detailed discourse on this interesting statement, as well as the nature of "Reality" and the origin of Kindred, see my next section, towards the rear of this document. For the moment, we see that rituals were intended as a means for Kindred to simulate the "tie" to Reality that mortal Mages have (their ability to use the magickal nature of Reality as manifested in Quintessence to work their Rotes), and enable thaumaturgists to work the more potent spells that paths cannot perform, without incurring Paradox. It is a Kindred's own special nature that allows one to work Thaumaturgy; it cannot be done by any other creature (see the Nature of Reality section).
Rituals, especially the upper-level ones, take a long, long time to research and create; it is unlikely that any player will be doing so without a lot of free time on their hands, as well as the disposition and resources to experiment. The Clanbook Tremere's admonition that Storytellers restrict their players' ability to create rituals seems at odds to an earlier sentence in the same section which indicates that rituals allow Tremere to do almost anything they can imagine.
In the Tremere Clanbook, it states that most rituals take effect when the conditions of their casting have been fulfilled. However, there is a serious trend in those who create rituals to make them almost like paths, in that they require rolls for everything from Activation to Concentration. Bear in mind that the Storyteller is the Final Arbitrator in any instance such as this, and s/he can modify them in any way that s/he feels is necessary to maintain game balance.
Rituals take a long time to learn, as they usually consist of complex sets of symbols that need to be inscribed, objects and items to be burned, blood to be drawn, word forms to be spoken, movements to be made and the like. Intelligence is the primary Attribute for a Magus, and with good reason!
Storytellers and Players who create rituals should bear in mind that the casting of rituals is a complex thing, and rarely easily done or quickly accomplished. A good guide to how long it should take is an absolute minimum of five minutes per level of the ritual; and that is very, very short. The Magus is not casting a Rote, or using a path -- s/he is following an intricate series of steps to bring forth a magical effect. I know it is difficult to seemingly restrict either yourself or your players when there are published books by White Wolf on the market that contain such rituals as "Puissant Shield," a 4th level ritual that creates an invisible kinetic barrier about the caster, and provides complete immunity to all projectile weapons -- yet only takes a strip of cowhide and one minute to cast. Try to resist the temptation to make or approve powerful yet quick rituals; the game will be more fun overall for you and everyone else as a result.
So much confusion has arisen out of the Storyteller's lack of clear instruction on this point that it is ridiculous. That the process is not more clearly illustrated in the Tremere Clanbook makes it even more difficult to understand. On the one hand, it is clearly seen that to use any path, one must make a Willpower roll, but why is it that at level 3 of Movement of the Mind, no roll is required? Furthermore, what do they mean by the difficulty of the Willpower roll is the level of the Discipline + 3 ? And why do they say difficulty or Successes? The way the thing is written, it almost seems that the better you get in the path, the harder it is to use!
Well, let's see if we can make some sense out of this. Let's deal with the glaring inconsistency first: why is there no roll required to use Movement of the Mind to fly? Furthermore, if the Magi can levitate and fly themselves around at will, why is it that they still have to make Willpower rolls to use lesser levels of the same path, such as to move a pencil? And why does it cost one full Blood Point to move either a pencil or a half a ton?
As far as I can tell, the no-roll rule on level 3 Movement of the Mind was done for convenience's sake. Having your Kindred fail one of many constant willpower rolls that s/he needs to make in order to fly any distance and having them fall out of the sky would be ridiculous, and perhaps dangerous. So let us leave it intact, again for convenience's sake, though certain Storytellers may wish to make changes or not, as they see fit. The single-blood-point per use of the path is in need of change; I would recommend that use of path levels two or more steps below one's current level of Mastery of that path would not only not require a Willpower roll to use (like Flight with Movement of the Mind level 3), but also would only require a fraction of a Blood Point; only continued, repeated use of the path at such a low level would consume a full Blood Point (the Storyteller will tell you when this point comes).
Again, as far as I can tell, the Spirit Thaumaturgy path was designed and came into existence before the Wraith system did. Thus, it concerns more with Plant Spirits, Animal Spirits, Demons and the like than it does with Wraiths. An excellent book to bring one into the spirit of such a path (if you'll excuse the pun) is "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare. In it, Prospero, the betrayed Duke of Milan, wields control over several Spirits, including Ariel, a powerful Nature Spirit. It's a fun way to play the path, and both the Storyteller and the Player can derive much enjoyment from interacting through and with a clever cast of mischevious or malicious sprites that they may get to know, or that may take an interest in the characters and follow them around. The Storyteller must take this path into account if s/he is using the Wraith system in their campaign, and make either modifications to their system or to the path to compensate for its effects.
System 1: The Magus makes a Willpower roll, using 1 die for every remaining dot of Temporary Willpower s/he has left. The difficulty for the roll is based on the level of effect that the Magus wishes to obtain plus three. Note that the Magus cannot achieve a higher level of effect in a path than s/he has levels in that path. One or more successes means that the effect is generated. A Magus may spend a Willpower Point for an automatic success, but this means that s/he will have one less Temporary Willpower Die to use for future rolls in their paths.
| Level | Effect | Difficulty |
| 1 | Candle | 4 |
| 2 | Palm of Flame | 5 |
| 3 | Campfire | 6 |
| 4 | Bonfire | 7 |
| 5 | Conflagration | 8 |
The level of effect in attacking someone with Lure of the Flames or Movement of the Mind is also the number of Health Levels (Aggravated and Normal, respectively) that are delivered to a target (assuming that they hit their target if an attack roll is required, such as with Lure of the Flames), which then may be soaked using Fortitude and/or Stamina.
System 2: The Magus makes a Willpower roll, using one Die for every point of Temporary Willpower s/he has remaining. The difficulty is determined by the Storyteller, based on stress, circumstances, etc. The number of successes that are achieved determine the level of effect of the ability that have just been achieved, up to a maximum of the Magus's level in that path. So a Magus with the Lure of the Flames at level 4, while under attack by an enemy, could try to create a level 4 blast of flame, but roll poorly (reflecting their inability to concentrate in the heat of battle) and only generate a level 2. Now, that was simple, wasn't it?
When one looks in the first few pages of most of the Bibles that one can find laying about, you come upon an odd passage in Genesis; after Cain had slain his brother Abel, lied and had received the Mark of God, he traveled to the Land of Nod, where he met and eventually married his first wife (let's leave Lilith out of this for now, as we are talking about the Biblical version, not the Book of Nod -- we'll address her in a bit). Now -- we have to ask ourselves, where did his wife come from? Her parents? Their parents?
Mages who have investigated the reason why Vampiric Thaumaturgy, both paths and rituals, do not invoke Paradox, have revealed the somewhat cryptic answer that "Vampires carry their own Reality around with them" (see Tremere Clanbook). What does this mean?
The answers to these questions are fairly simple. The creature that was Cain came from another Shard Realm; an alternate dimension, or plane of existence, if you will. One, as a matter of fact, where the Rules comprising Reality were considerably different from the one the Kindred now occupy. Being wholly a creature of that Realm, he was not entirely subject to the rules that govern this one. The rules of his Realm that affected him, such as his being harmed by sunlight, his body being dead yet still strangely alive, and his need to feed upon life energies from others to exist, still were in play.
The Realm which most people exist in, this Realm that Cain found in his wanderings, is known as Nod; thus when we see that Cain "traveled to the Land of Nod", he was in fact shifting to another Realm. This also answers the first question; where all these other mortal humans came from. Surely not from the loins of Adam and Eve, nor from their descendants.
Why, then, has this other Realm never been found? There could be many reasons. Gateways open and close of their own accord; and the creature known to Man as Cain may have wandered through several Shard Realms, or even the Deep Umbra, before arriving at Nod. Furthermore, the total and enforced belief of the larger proportion of mortals upon Nod in the text as it appears in the Bible during the Dark and Middle Ages may have caused the Gateway, if it was connected or nearby to Nod, to close up as Reality in Nod conformed more closely to those belief concepts.
Now, looking at the Book of Nod, we see many references to Lilith, who very well may have been a demon or entity of some sort from the Deep Umbra. In fact, this is likely, since the Gateway to the Shard Realm that Cain originated in most likely existed in the Deep Umbra, and he wandered for a while before encountering Lilith. It was alleged she that bestowed Vampirism upon Cain. Now, even if this is correct, as opposed to the Bibilcal variant, the above concepts still hold true; it is, in this instance, that the altered reality that affected Cain was first derived from Lilith.
The Malkavians know a little bit of this; some of the most far-reaching of them have realized that by breaking up their "reality tunnel," or completely altering not only their view of the world, but their minds, they can take full advantage of their unique nature as Kindred. They can do things that no other Kindred can, through manipulation of their own Altered Reality, and thus, indirectly, manipulate the greater Reality of Nod around them (See the Malkavian Clanbook), though not in the same manner as Mages do. Possessing full or even partial control of the Altered Reality of their beings lends individuals great power -- it is one of the reasons why those closest to Caine in terms of Generation are nearly demigods.
While I was compiling this Book, it never ceased to astound me how many folks would submit level 4 or 5 rituals that began with "This relatively simple ritual only requires ten minutes or so to cast...", and expected it to be taken seriously. A level 5 ritual is an exercise in High Art; it requires the caster to be of level 5 in Thaumaturgy, and it will have taken him several years, at least, of difficult study, to master the ritual. The casting of it should take days or weeks, the summoning, binding and participation of mystical entities, vast expenditures of energy, the participation of other Tremere, the use of dozens or hundreds of components and more -- not a mere matter of minutes' worth of muttering to oneself.
Ritual Magic is extremely versatile, but it requires (a) lots of knowledge on the part of the caster, knowledge that takes a lot of time to acquire, and (b) time to prepare things and cast the rituals. Those rituals that allow you to store up an effect, i.e., all that is required is a single word to unleash or trigger something, are rare. If you are attacked, gagged and tied up, you're stuck!
Widely available first and second level rituals that are commonly taught in Tremere Chantries around the world are not combat effective. In fact, combat effective rituals are the rarest and hardest to find. The kind of rituals taught include such useful and helpful ones as Defense of the Sacred Haven, Purity of the Flesh, Soul of the Homunculi, Communicate with Kindred Sire, Principal Focus of Vitae Infusion, Engaging the Vessel of Transference and the like.
While the White Wolf books say that theoretically, there is no limit to the number of rituals that a Kindred could learn, one must bear in mind the fact that (a) most neonates are young, and have only just achieved the first Circle of Mystery; they don't know a whole heck of a lot of rituals; maybe two or three first-level ones, and (b) rituals take a long time to learn! An upper level ritual, say 4 or 5, could take upwards of twenty years to master! First and second level rituals, which take days or weeks to learn (when studying non-stop, and hard -- if the Kindred is doing other things, or is preoccupied, it takes much longer), are much more within the grasp and mindset of younger Kindred, who have not yet learned to plan for whole decades at a time.
While the oath that all Tremere swear dictates that knowledge be shared, knowledge is power -- and in the twisty confines of the Pyramid, Tremere often hoard all that they can. Hundreds of unique rituals have been lost when their creator met an unexpected demise, never having thought to pass them on in any form.
As a Storyteller, it is important that Game Balance be maintained. Blood Magic (Thaumaturgy) is useful, versatile and can play a valuable part in any game or campaign. However, it should never be so overwhelming as to take center stage over everyone else's desires and abilities, unless the group is composed of Tremere, and you are roleplaying life in the Chantry. Not only because of Game Balance, but because of the very nature of the Tremere; they prefer to be the power behind the throne, as it were, and using one's powers flagrantly and openly tends to alienate the very ones whom you are trying to impress. Quiet power is a Tremere trait; let the supplicants come to them seeking favors, not the other way around. By concealing one's true abilities, one can often fool an opponent into underestimating you, and thus they can be directed, humbled or eliminated as you see fit. Someone playing a Tremere properly is unctious, respectful and serious. If you have a combat-happy player that just wants to throw fire about, or use paths of Thaumaturgy for combat, you should either (a) advise them to play a different clan, (b) have them disciplined, killed or sent to Vienna by their Regent when they make a serious transgression, or (c) just shave this disruptive player from your group; being a Camarilla Vampire is about Roleplaying first and foremost -- combat is not the end all, be-all of it.
I will not deprive nor attempt to deprive any member of House and Clan Tremere of his magical power. To do so would be to act against the Strength of our House. I will not slay or attempt to slay any member of the House and Clan except in self-defense, or when a Magus has been ruled outlaw by a properly constituted tribunal. If a Magus has been ruled an outlaw, I shall bend all efforts to bring such Magus to justice.
I will abide by the decisions of the tribunals, and honor the wishes of the Inner Council of Seven. The tribunals shall be bound by the Spirit of the Code of the Tremere, supplemented by the Peripheral Code and interpreted by a properly consitituted body of Magi. I have the right to appeal a decision to a higher tribunal, if they should agree to hear my case.
[ The Periphreal Code is then read, taking several hours. It is this which causes the Oath-taking to last almost all night. The Code governs every aspect of the life of a Neonate, one's duties to the House and Clan as well as to fellow Tremere. Rules of Conduct, Behavior and Comportation are described. One's relationship and duties to the Council of Lords, the Pontifexes and the Inner Council of Seven are described in detail. The legal proceedings of the Tremere are given, including the composition and formation of Tribunals, the weight of their decisions, and the potentials for harm to those Tremere that violate the Code or the Oath. ]
I will not endanger House and Clan Tremere through my actions. Nor will I interfere with the affairs of mundanes and thereby bring ruin upon my House and Clan. I will not, when dealing with Devils, or others, in any way bring danger to the Clan, nor will I disturb the Faeries in any way that would cause them to take vengeance on the House and Clan. I also swear to uphold the values and goals of the Camarilla, and I will maintain the Masquerade. Insofar as these goals may conflict with my own goals, I will not pursue my own goals in any way that would endanger the Masquerade. The strength of the House and Clan Tremere depends on the strength of the Masquerade.
I will not use magic to scry upon members of the House and Clan Tremere, nor shall I use it to peer into their affairs. It is expressly forbidden.
I will train only apprentices who will swear to this code, and should any of them turn against the House and Clan, I shall be the first to strike them down and bring them to justice. No apprentice of mine shall be called Magus until he first swears to uphold the code. I shall treat my apprentices with the care and respect that they earn.
I concede to my elders the right to take my apprentice should it be found that my apprentice is valuable to an elder's work. All are members of the House and Clan and valuable first to these precepts. I shall abide to the right of my superiors to make such decisions.
I shall further the knowledge of the House and Clan and share with its members all that I find in my search for wisdom and power. No secrets are to be kept, or given, regarding the arts of magic, nor shall I keep secret the doings of others which might bring harm to the House and Clan.
I demand that, should I break this oath, I should be cast out of the House and Clan. If I am cast out, I ask my brothers to find and slay me that my life may not continue in degradation and infamy.
I recognize that the enemies of the House and Clan are my enemies, and that the friends of the House and Clan are my allies. Let us work as one and grow hale and strong.
I hereby swear this oath on [current date]. Woe to anyone who tempts me to break this oath, and woe to me if I succumb to temptation.
Well, maybe not abuse.
Should you wish to submit more materials for future, more comprehensive releases, feel free to send them to Darrell Benvenuto at (benvenut@qcunix.acc.qc.edu) for review.