Crúac
Crúac is the common name for the pagan blood sorcery practiced by The Circle of the Crone. A type of ritual magic, Crúac, meaning “crescent,” is a mixture of pre-Christian and pagan magic from across the globe whose only common element is a reliance on blood sacrifice. Crúac is denounced by many traditional Kindred as “black magic” or “witchcraft,” and in areas where The Lancea Sanctum holds sway, Crúac’s known practitioners are occasionally persecuted as heretics. Of course, it is such very derision and fear of Crúac that leads many to The Circle of the Crone and, by extension, to this Discipline’s study. The Circle of the Crone’s message of empowerment speaks to many a neonate, and for some there is no greater expression of that empowerment than this Discipline.
Crúac is one of the central mysteries of The Circle of the Crone’s belief structure, as well as a potent weapon in the covenant’s arsenal. As might be expected, knowledge of the Discipline is a closely guarded secret. New initiates are not usually trusted with its secrets. As a new member in a quasi-religious Kindred faction, a vampire might well have to prove his loyalty to the Circle through tests and ordeals before its adherents are willing to share their knowledge. Though vampires who leave The Circle of the Crone for other covenants invariably take their knowledge with them, many find it all but impossible to increase their knowledge of Crúac outside the Circle’s structure. A character must have at least one dot of Covenant Status (Circle of the Crone) in order to learn Crúac. A player who buys at least one dot worth of that Merit at character creation may spend one of his character’s three Discipline dots on Crúac if he wishes. Any time a player wants to increase his character’s Crúac score, the character must still have at least one dot of Covenant Status (Circle of the Crone) to do so.
Because of myriad cultural differences within The Circle of the Crone, many rituals exist that approximate the following ones in effect if not in name. Thus, the level-one ritual Pangs of Proserpina may be known as the Appetite of Limba in New Orleans or the Curse of Tawrich in Tehran. Other Vampire books offer new Crúac rituals, and players and Storytellers are encouraged to create their own using those presented here as models.
Crúac has been known to the Kindred since the earliest nights. Some legends of the Circle claim that the first Crúac ritual was born when the first vampire fed, others that The Crone wove all of them in the nights before time and now teaches them to her chosen servants.
Wherever Crúac came from, it is the truly defining feature of the Circle. Only those within the Circle teach it; only those within the Circle learn it. A few renegades might know its rituals, but woe be to those who think to pass their knowledge on. Crúac is bloody, primal and powerful, and the same is true of those who guard its secrets.
The ritual itself is both essential and irrelevant. There must be a ritual. It is not possible to invoke Crúac with a simple effort of will and invisible expenditure of Vitae. The ritual may be very brief, particularly if a skilled ritualist performs an easy ritual, but it is always present.
On the other hand, the details of the ritual seem to be largely irrelevant. Different traditions within the covenant perform the rituals in different ways, and they all work. What is more, if a Kindred knows a Crúac ritual’s power, she can learn other practices to enact it simply by learning new words or dances. Ritual forms learned in this way work just as well as the one she learned initially.
That is not to say that any old ritual works. There are some that do, and some that do not. No one among the Acolytes truly understands what makes the difference, although many seek answers — and many claim to have them.
While vampires do not know about dots and Humanity scores, they do know that knowledge of Crúac limits how closely the vampire can approach to Humanity. This does not worry most Acolytes — they accept that they are not human, and thus are not supposed to act human. What interests them is why Crúac has this effect. The number of rituals a vampire knows seems to make no difference, though that is the most important measure of power for many blood sorcerers.
Theories are many and varied, and draw on a myriad different mythologies. The most popular are variations on a single theme, however: that the Discipline prepares a vampire’s soul to receive the imprint of the rituals, and that in that preparation some elements of Humanity are scourged away, perhaps to make way for divine knowledge. A soul more in tune with Crúac can accept the truth of more powerful rituals, and force more power through weaker ones.
Legends claim that vampires with potent blood can gain access to Crúac rituals that far outstrip the power of those commonly known. Some claim that the most powerful rituals (that is, each of the ••••• rituals) turn the ritualist into an avatar of particular deities. Of course, to learn the ritual allowing such a literal deification the vampire must give up her Humanity — gods are not human, and humans are not godly. A master of Crúac is.
Manipulation is her wiles, her ability to persuade the forces of the universe — or the magical Beast within herself — to give her what she wants. Ritualists who rely on Manipulation tend to be very expressive in their rituals, shading every word with pleading emotion or turning every gesture into an imperious signal of command.
Those who emphasize Occult, in contrast, play up the details of the rituals and their sympathetic correspondences with other occult creatures and phenomena. If a ritual requires a Knife, this ritualist uses a Knife embellished with names of power. If the ritual requires a chant, the ritualist holds forth an image of the being named therein.
Crúac, finally, measures the fitness of the ritualist’s very soul. A ritualist with many dots in Crúac imparts an unmistakable quality of authenticity to every part of a ritual. It might still be horrific, or stomach-turning, or glorious, but even a mortal viewer gets the sense that there is something entirely proper about this creature behaving this way. Of course, that might inspire an intense desire to destroy such an evident monster.
This mystical authenticity may impart a sense of ancient but forgotten traditions, chthonic creepiness, fairy-tale dreaminess, fearsome wildness or practically anything else, but the influence of Crúac dots are always spiritual or supernatural. The influence of Manipulation dots may be terrifying, ecstatic or sexy, but they are always emotional, whether animal or humane. The influence of Occult dots may be archaic or modern, Eastern or Western, but they are always complex, precise and intellectual.
The most common view is that the ritual petitions the gods to cause a certain effect. Different rituals petition different gods (and define “gods” in different ways), but petition them for the same effect. In this view, the scars on a ritualist’s soul show that she is worthy to have the petition answered, which is why simply repeating the actions of a ritualist is not enough to bring about the effect.
The other common view is that the ritual resonates with something within the vampire, amplifies it, allowing the ritualist to draw out the power necessary to cajole the powers whose intervention is sought. In this view, all ritualists invoke the same power but use a ritual that is appropriate to their own personality.
Finally, some believe that the ritual merely draws the attention of the appropriate powers, but that it is the mark on the vampire’s soul and the sacrifice of blood that actually seals the bargain. The different rituals are merely different notable signals; anything that gets the attention of the correct power will do. Diana prefers slaughtered stags, but the Morrigan’s eyes are drawn to bloody heifers.
The most popular (but not necessarily most informed) belief is that the rituals petition The Crone herself. The details of this vary depending on the ritualist’s beliefs about The Crone, but the claim is that Crúac goes straight to the top. Those who know about the existence of Crúac rituals to deal with spirits cite this as evidence — Crúac could not bind spirits unless its power came from a source beyond them.
Only slightly less common is the belief that Crúac petitions spirits. These sorcerers feel that it is arrogant to claim a hotline to The Crone, and also worry that it would be very dangerous if they actually had one. Accordingly, they preach a more humble position. As support, they point to the fact that more difficult rituals have stronger outcomes. This can be easily explained in their beliefs by claiming that stronger spirits are harder to persuade. It is rather more problematic for those who believe that all rituals, weak and strong alike, reach The Crone herself.
Finally, some vampires believe that Crúac petitions the vampire’s own Beast. They point to the necessary loss of Humanity involved in learning blood magic, and to the absence of apparent responses to a Crúac ritual. If ritualists truly were petitioning The Crone or other spirits, these Acolytes argue, they would at least occasionally get some response other than the ritual’s results. That does not happen. Thus, they argue, the Kindred can only be arguing with herself.
A substantial minority, however, point out that petitions can be denied, but that Crúac only fails if the ritualist fails. They suggest that this is more characteristic of commands, where only the power of the sorcerer compels the mystic forces in question to act. This is favored by those who think that Crúac petitions the Beast.
Finally, some that Crúac tricks mystic forces or beings into doing what the ritualist wants. They argue that this is one of the reasons Crúac erodes Humanity — it is fundamentally a deceitful relationship with the world, and such inherent spiritual dishonesty is incompatible with morality.
The first step, then, is for an aspiring ritualist to persuade some other vampire to teach her the ritual. No vampire does this for free, although some may be willing to teach now in exchange for payment later. For low-level rituals, a simple monetary payment sometimes suffices, although even then the price is high. For higherlevel rituals, the price is almost invariably set in terms of service. If the student has better (or just different) political connections than the teacher, the teacher may simply require a favor, often before he will teach the ritual. If the teacher has more power, which is more common, the student must often do something more menial or physically daunting for the teacher. Most teachers set difficult tasks, but seldom object if a student involves the rest of her coterie in accomplishing them.
The organization of this varies from city to city. The Hierarch of Annapolis reserves the right to approve any training in Crúac, although he very rarely does any teaching himself. Both teacher and student must petition him, and he almost always requires some sort of service before granting his permission; this is in addition to anything the teacher requires of the student. In most cities, however,these arrangements are entirely personal, and the hardest part may be finding a potential teacher in the first place.
The process of teaching is violent, bloody and physical. Lectures and discussions are completely ineffective — Crúac is taught by torturing the student. First, the teacher trains the student in the proper ritual forms. This rarely takes very long, although for particularly elaborate ritual forms it may take a few nights. Then the teacher tortures the student in particular ways. After each night’s agony, the student tries to perform the ritual. Once it succeeds, the training is over.
Different teachers and different rituals demand their own forms of torture. One teacher imparts the basic knowledge of Pangs of Proserpine by digging the student’s stomach out of her body. Another teaches the ritual by forcing barbed wire down the throat, and drawing it out through the navel. Still a third pours acid into the student’s throat. At some point in the agony, the student’s soul shifts and he understands the ritual. The student knows when this has happened, but the teacher does not. Because many teachers stake or restrain their students before beginning the process of instruction, to avoid the consequences of frenzy, the students may well have no way to share their breakthrough with their teachers, and thus must continue to suffer, until the teacher is satisfied.
Some students ask for their coteries to be present during teaching, and many teachers allow it. It‘s not possible to gain enlightenment simply by witnessing torture, and the torture doesn’t have any effect if repeated by someone who does not know the ritual to begin with. It is ultimately the responsibility of every sorcerer not to diminish their power by sharing rituals with those outside the covenant.
If a sorcery teacher is attempting to sear the ritual, Touch of the Morrigan, into a student’s soul, she might burn his body with a hand-shaped brand — or she might simply afflict her student with the agonizing touch of the ritual itself. To teach a student the mystical hunger-inducing ritual, Pangs of Proserpina, a teacher might taunt a starving student with Vitae before feeding him razor blades or a mixture of motor oil and roofing tacks to tear up the student’s gullet, where the essential nature of the ritual can best be felt. Different teachers have different traditions or philosophies about how to best evoke these ritual secrets in a student (no doubt many teachers are merely reproducing the lessons taught them, without any real understanding of the process). What’s consistent from lesson to lesson is this: the tribulation of the flesh leads to an enlightenment of the soul.
In most cases, the ceremonial tribulation required to learn a Crúac ritual can be assumed to happen successfully in the background, between stories, as part of other covenant holidays and rituals. An Acolyte might be considered to have undergone the necessary tribulation for some ritual to be learned in the future when she participated in holy night ceremonies last autumn, for example. Only when she later spends the experience points to buy the ritual in game terms is she considered to have mastered its effects.
(Note: The following action is ultimately a dramatic tool for Storytellers. Use it to illustrate what an Acolyte’s Requiem is like. Use it to determine if a blood sorcerer can master a particular ritual before the arrival of some dreaded event. Use it to test the limits of a childe’s love for her sire or Mentor. But you probably have no good reason to usethis rule every time a player wants to buy a new ritual for his character — if he’s earned and spent the experience points, he’s probably waited long enough already.)
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Empathy + Crúac. Instruments of torture simply enable this dice pool to deal damage, but do not add any bonus dice to the roll as a result of their Damage ratings.
Action: Extended. Each roll represents one night of tribulation, and inflicts one lethal wound per success. The action succeeds when a number of successes equal to twice the ritual’s level are accumulated. Each sunrise between the beginning of the extended action and its completion imposes a cumulative –2 penalty on subsequent dice pools in the extended action. If even a single night goes by without a new roll being made, all successes thus far accumulated are lost. Note that rolls yielding no successes do not ruin the extended action.
Teaching does not quite take a whole night; both teacher and student have time to hunt, provided that they do so quickly. A student may attempt to feed once per night using the abstract system detailed on p. 164 of Vampire: The Requiem.
A student may return to his Haven or undertake other interim actions in between bouts of educational tribulation without canceling the extended action. Exactly how much time is left over in any night after a student’s studies is up to the Storyteller, but higher-level rituals generally require more time per night.
Dramatic Failure: The student is too overwhelmed or distracted by his physical suffering to appreciate the benefits of his tribulations. The extended action is broken and must be begun again.
Failure: The student does not learn the ritual but has not lost his educational momentum. The extended action continues.
Success: The student endures lethal damage and gains some new understanding of his soul, his body and they combine to make the ritual possible. If this success completes the extended action, then the student’s player may spend the necessary experience points to buy the ritual now or at any time in the future.
Exceptional Success: The teacher finds just the right means of getting through to her student, who learns the ritual more rapidly than most.
However, you might prefer to restrict the creation of new forms to those Kindred who are gifted, rather than taught, a ritual. Multiple forms thus still exist, but a group following Hel might still teach a ritual that invokes Isis, as no one in a Nordic tradition has been given that particular ritual. This yields rituals that reflect their region or belief system of origin, rather than rituals that are easily adapted to other ritual styles.
In the end, the rules for altering ritual forms only come into play if the Storyteller decides that rituals available for use in the chronicle require them. The mechanics for making major revisions to ritual practices will likely only come into play for one of two reasons: either individual expression of one’s rituals is a matter of some importance in your chronicle, or the Storyteller is creating obstacles to be overcome.
The individual expression of a ritual, and the ability to alter it, might be essential in a city with warring Acolyte factions. Maybe a ritual’s customary practices need to be altered to Disguise the fact that it was learned from a turncoat sorcerer. Perhaps a schism in the local covenant has caused Acolyte coteries to stake out philosophical turf within the covenant’s beliefs, and the way one invokes The Crone says something about whose side he’s on.
Alternately, the Storyteller might only introduce a five-dot Crúac ritual into play as a major reward for recovering some ancient artifact. To keep the ritual from being used too often, eroding its sense of importance, he decides that each roll of the extended action to invoke the ritual requires not one turn but one hour until such time as your coterie successfully revising the ritual down to its simplest form with several nights of translation, prayer and ceremonial bloodletting. Or maybe the extended action to devise a major variation on the ritual is an essential part of the dramatic deadline in a forthcoming story. For example, the coterie must reduce the invocation time on the ritual they’ve learned if they’ll have any hope in completing the ritual during their midnight window of opportunity next week.
None of these optional rules can reduce a ritual’s casting time below the basic rules specified in Vampire: The Requiem.
This imposes a penalty to his dice pool. The penalty is at least –2, for the smallest changes, but be as much as –5 for changes such as translating a chant into another Language. If the ritual succeeds despite the penalty, the new ritual form is viable and can be used without penalty in future. If the ritualist gets no successes on any roll, the new ritual form is inert, and can never succeed for that sorcerer.
It is not possible to stack variations in this way. The change must always be minor compared to the original form of the ritual, not to the form that the ritualist knows. It is thus possible to make a minor change to a known ritual form, but for penalties to be determined as if the ritualist were making a major change because of the new form’s dissimilarity from the original overall. If the ritualist does not know the original form of the particular ritual he is altering, there is no way to know the penalties in advance. (Thus the Storyteller may choose to make certain rituals more difficult to deviate from than others in his chronicle.)
Experienced ritualists who know the original form of a ritual can make minor changes without risk, and many do, imposing their own style onto the traditional ceremonies for the sake of confusing or frightening other sorcerers.
Designing a major variation requires an extended Intelligence + Expression + Crúac action. Each roll represents one night of work, and a dramatic failure sets the number of accumulated successes back to zero. These nights need not be consecutive, as long as the ritualist is able to maintain an undisturbed shrine or ceremonial space where he can continue his work for the duration of the extended action.
The target number of successes for the ritual is 10 plus twice the ritual’s level. Thus a major variation on a thirdlevel ritual has a target number of 16 successes.
The ritualist may attempt to cast the ritual at any point during this extended action. The dice pool to activate the ritual suffers a dice pool penalty equal to the successes not yet achieved on the extended action. That is, successes on the extended action diminish this penalty on a one-for-one basis. As with minor variations, if the casting succeeds, the new ritual form is usable, and may be used without penalty in the future. If the ritualist gets no successes on any roll, the new ritual is useless, and can never succeed. The ritualist must start the revision process from scratch.
The story goes, then, that Ianus gave the Etruscan Kindred — those who came before Rome rose upon the seven hills — his blessings so that the truly potent and powerful among them could survive the ravages of time, could see both forwards and backwards. Other stories say that the Kindred stole this power from the gods, as they have many of their hoary rites and Disciplines, and that they will one day pay for the transgression.
The gifts (or pilfered secrets) of Ianus are the province of the Circle of the Crone, who have made Ianus’s magic a part of the bloody Crúac system. The rituals below are available only to those with Status (Circle of the Crone) 3, and who have a Blood Potency of 5 or higher. Those beneath that Blood Potency may still attempt to perform the rituals, but suffer a penalty equal to the difference of five minus their Blood Potency scores (a vampire with Blood Potency 3 trying to cast one of these rituals would therefore suffer -2 dice to the Manipulation + Occult + Crúac roll).
Crúac is one of the central mysteries of The Circle of the Crone’s belief structure, as well as a potent weapon in the covenant’s arsenal. As might be expected, knowledge of the Discipline is a closely guarded secret. New initiates are not usually trusted with its secrets. As a new member in a quasi-religious Kindred faction, a vampire might well have to prove his loyalty to the Circle through tests and ordeals before its adherents are willing to share their knowledge. Though vampires who leave The Circle of the Crone for other covenants invariably take their knowledge with them, many find it all but impossible to increase their knowledge of Crúac outside the Circle’s structure. A character must have at least one dot of Covenant Status (Circle of the Crone) in order to learn Crúac. A player who buys at least one dot worth of that Merit at character creation may spend one of his character’s three Discipline dots on Crúac if he wishes. Any time a player wants to increase his character’s Crúac score, the character must still have at least one dot of Covenant Status (Circle of the Crone) to do so.
Because of myriad cultural differences within The Circle of the Crone, many rituals exist that approximate the following ones in effect if not in name. Thus, the level-one ritual Pangs of Proserpina may be known as the Appetite of Limba in New Orleans or the Curse of Tawrich in Tehran. Other Vampire books offer new Crúac rituals, and players and Storytellers are encouraged to create their own using those presented here as models.
Crúac has been known to the Kindred since the earliest nights. Some legends of the Circle claim that the first Crúac ritual was born when the first vampire fed, others that The Crone wove all of them in the nights before time and now teaches them to her chosen servants.
Wherever Crúac came from, it is the truly defining feature of the Circle. Only those within the Circle teach it; only those within the Circle learn it. A few renegades might know its rituals, but woe be to those who think to pass their knowledge on. Crúac is bloody, primal and powerful, and the same is true of those who guard its secrets.
The Nature of Crúac
Crúac is not simply a matter of performing certain actions, speaking certain words and sacrificing Vitae. Blood magic is a matter of the state of the soul of the vampire. Those Kindred who know a Crúac ritual have had it branded into their being, and that brand is expressed through the ritual.The ritual itself is both essential and irrelevant. There must be a ritual. It is not possible to invoke Crúac with a simple effort of will and invisible expenditure of Vitae. The ritual may be very brief, particularly if a skilled ritualist performs an easy ritual, but it is always present.
On the other hand, the details of the ritual seem to be largely irrelevant. Different traditions within the covenant perform the rituals in different ways, and they all work. What is more, if a Kindred knows a Crúac ritual’s power, she can learn other practices to enact it simply by learning new words or dances. Ritual forms learned in this way work just as well as the one she learned initially.
That is not to say that any old ritual works. There are some that do, and some that do not. No one among the Acolytes truly understands what makes the difference, although many seek answers — and many claim to have them.
Crúac and Humanity
Dots in the Crúac Discipline do not allow a vampire to do anything. Only individual rituals do. Nevertheless, the dots a vampire has in Crúac limit the maximum level of his Humanity to 10 minus dots in Crúac. For low levels of Crúac, this is rarely a practical problem; very few Kindred have Humanities of 9 or 10.While vampires do not know about dots and Humanity scores, they do know that knowledge of Crúac limits how closely the vampire can approach to Humanity. This does not worry most Acolytes — they accept that they are not human, and thus are not supposed to act human. What interests them is why Crúac has this effect. The number of rituals a vampire knows seems to make no difference, though that is the most important measure of power for many blood sorcerers.
Theories are many and varied, and draw on a myriad different mythologies. The most popular are variations on a single theme, however: that the Discipline prepares a vampire’s soul to receive the imprint of the rituals, and that in that preparation some elements of Humanity are scourged away, perhaps to make way for divine knowledge. A soul more in tune with Crúac can accept the truth of more powerful rituals, and force more power through weaker ones.
Legends claim that vampires with potent blood can gain access to Crúac rituals that far outstrip the power of those commonly known. Some claim that the most powerful rituals (that is, each of the ••••• rituals) turn the ritualist into an avatar of particular deities. Of course, to learn the ritual allowing such a literal deification the vampire must give up her Humanity — gods are not human, and humans are not godly. A master of Crúac is.
Crúac in the Game
The dice pool for performing Crúac is Manipulation + Occult + Crúac. This represents the three sources of power for the ritualist.Manipulation is her wiles, her ability to persuade the forces of the universe — or the magical Beast within herself — to give her what she wants. Ritualists who rely on Manipulation tend to be very expressive in their rituals, shading every word with pleading emotion or turning every gesture into an imperious signal of command.
Those who emphasize Occult, in contrast, play up the details of the rituals and their sympathetic correspondences with other occult creatures and phenomena. If a ritual requires a Knife, this ritualist uses a Knife embellished with names of power. If the ritual requires a chant, the ritualist holds forth an image of the being named therein.
Crúac, finally, measures the fitness of the ritualist’s very soul. A ritualist with many dots in Crúac imparts an unmistakable quality of authenticity to every part of a ritual. It might still be horrific, or stomach-turning, or glorious, but even a mortal viewer gets the sense that there is something entirely proper about this creature behaving this way. Of course, that might inspire an intense desire to destroy such an evident monster.
This mystical authenticity may impart a sense of ancient but forgotten traditions, chthonic creepiness, fairy-tale dreaminess, fearsome wildness or practically anything else, but the influence of Crúac dots are always spiritual or supernatural. The influence of Manipulation dots may be terrifying, ecstatic or sexy, but they are always emotional, whether animal or humane. The influence of Occult dots may be archaic or modern, Eastern or Western, but they are always complex, precise and intellectual.
Interpretations of Crúac
Crúac is about manipulating someone or something. The manipulation may be a petition, a command or a deception but is essentially an interaction with something other. No vampire who knows Crúac rituals disputes this. Similarly, no blood sorcerers dispute that the power is real, depends on blood and is ultimately granted from somewhere outside the control of the Kindred (even if that uncontrolled place is thought to be inside the vampire). The details, however, are widely debated, even within groups with otherwise uniform beliefs.The Role of the Ritual
As noted before, the same effect can be produced by very different rituals. Some sorcerers speculate that specific effects are caused by the details of the rituals, and that it just happens that there are several ways to bring about the same goal. Others, however, believe that the ritual itself is rather unimportant.The most common view is that the ritual petitions the gods to cause a certain effect. Different rituals petition different gods (and define “gods” in different ways), but petition them for the same effect. In this view, the scars on a ritualist’s soul show that she is worthy to have the petition answered, which is why simply repeating the actions of a ritualist is not enough to bring about the effect.
The other common view is that the ritual resonates with something within the vampire, amplifies it, allowing the ritualist to draw out the power necessary to cajole the powers whose intervention is sought. In this view, all ritualists invoke the same power but use a ritual that is appropriate to their own personality.
Finally, some believe that the ritual merely draws the attention of the appropriate powers, but that it is the mark on the vampire’s soul and the sacrifice of blood that actually seals the bargain. The different rituals are merely different notable signals; anything that gets the attention of the correct power will do. Diana prefers slaughtered stags, but the Morrigan’s eyes are drawn to bloody heifers.
The Petitioned
The second substantial debate on Crúac is over the function of rituals. Ritualists cannot agree who or what they are petitioning for the effects of Crúac.The most popular (but not necessarily most informed) belief is that the rituals petition The Crone herself. The details of this vary depending on the ritualist’s beliefs about The Crone, but the claim is that Crúac goes straight to the top. Those who know about the existence of Crúac rituals to deal with spirits cite this as evidence — Crúac could not bind spirits unless its power came from a source beyond them.
Only slightly less common is the belief that Crúac petitions spirits. These sorcerers feel that it is arrogant to claim a hotline to The Crone, and also worry that it would be very dangerous if they actually had one. Accordingly, they preach a more humble position. As support, they point to the fact that more difficult rituals have stronger outcomes. This can be easily explained in their beliefs by claiming that stronger spirits are harder to persuade. It is rather more problematic for those who believe that all rituals, weak and strong alike, reach The Crone herself.
Finally, some vampires believe that Crúac petitions the vampire’s own Beast. They point to the necessary loss of Humanity involved in learning blood magic, and to the absence of apparent responses to a Crúac ritual. If ritualists truly were petitioning The Crone or other spirits, these Acolytes argue, they would at least occasionally get some response other than the ritual’s results. That does not happen. Thus, they argue, the Kindred can only be arguing with herself.
Petition, Command or Deception
The final main debate is over how the ritualist approaches the power in question. By far the most common position is that the ritualist is requesting the intervention of a higher power, whether in a polite, seductive, deceptive or exuberant fashion. This is overwhelmingly the most popular position among those who believe that rituals invoke The Crone.A substantial minority, however, point out that petitions can be denied, but that Crúac only fails if the ritualist fails. They suggest that this is more characteristic of commands, where only the power of the sorcerer compels the mystic forces in question to act. This is favored by those who think that Crúac petitions the Beast.
Finally, some that Crúac tricks mystic forces or beings into doing what the ritualist wants. They argue that this is one of the reasons Crúac erodes Humanity — it is fundamentally a deceitful relationship with the world, and such inherent spiritual dishonesty is incompatible with morality.
Learning Crúac
Crúac cannot be learned from books or other records, though records can reveal how others have learned Crúac rituals. Kindred can either learn the rituals that are gifted to them by the gods, as described above, or study with ritualists who already know the ritual the Kindred wants. As very few Kindred are given rituals, the latter is by far the more common approach.The first step, then, is for an aspiring ritualist to persuade some other vampire to teach her the ritual. No vampire does this for free, although some may be willing to teach now in exchange for payment later. For low-level rituals, a simple monetary payment sometimes suffices, although even then the price is high. For higherlevel rituals, the price is almost invariably set in terms of service. If the student has better (or just different) political connections than the teacher, the teacher may simply require a favor, often before he will teach the ritual. If the teacher has more power, which is more common, the student must often do something more menial or physically daunting for the teacher. Most teachers set difficult tasks, but seldom object if a student involves the rest of her coterie in accomplishing them.
The organization of this varies from city to city. The Hierarch of Annapolis reserves the right to approve any training in Crúac, although he very rarely does any teaching himself. Both teacher and student must petition him, and he almost always requires some sort of service before granting his permission; this is in addition to anything the teacher requires of the student. In most cities, however,these arrangements are entirely personal, and the hardest part may be finding a potential teacher in the first place.
The process of teaching is violent, bloody and physical. Lectures and discussions are completely ineffective — Crúac is taught by torturing the student. First, the teacher trains the student in the proper ritual forms. This rarely takes very long, although for particularly elaborate ritual forms it may take a few nights. Then the teacher tortures the student in particular ways. After each night’s agony, the student tries to perform the ritual. Once it succeeds, the training is over.
Different teachers and different rituals demand their own forms of torture. One teacher imparts the basic knowledge of Pangs of Proserpine by digging the student’s stomach out of her body. Another teaches the ritual by forcing barbed wire down the throat, and drawing it out through the navel. Still a third pours acid into the student’s throat. At some point in the agony, the student’s soul shifts and he understands the ritual. The student knows when this has happened, but the teacher does not. Because many teachers stake or restrain their students before beginning the process of instruction, to avoid the consequences of frenzy, the students may well have no way to share their breakthrough with their teachers, and thus must continue to suffer, until the teacher is satisfied.
Some students ask for their coteries to be present during teaching, and many teachers allow it. It‘s not possible to gain enlightenment simply by witnessing torture, and the torture doesn’t have any effect if repeated by someone who does not know the ritual to begin with. It is ultimately the responsibility of every sorcerer not to diminish their power by sharing rituals with those outside the covenant.
Teaching Crúac
The teacher must torture the student in order to impart knowledge of a Crúac ritual. The form that tribulation takes depends on the sorcerer doing the teaching and the ritual being taught, but should require the student to endure two lethal wounds per level of the ritual, no matter what form that damage takes.If a sorcery teacher is attempting to sear the ritual, Touch of the Morrigan, into a student’s soul, she might burn his body with a hand-shaped brand — or she might simply afflict her student with the agonizing touch of the ritual itself. To teach a student the mystical hunger-inducing ritual, Pangs of Proserpina, a teacher might taunt a starving student with Vitae before feeding him razor blades or a mixture of motor oil and roofing tacks to tear up the student’s gullet, where the essential nature of the ritual can best be felt. Different teachers have different traditions or philosophies about how to best evoke these ritual secrets in a student (no doubt many teachers are merely reproducing the lessons taught them, without any real understanding of the process). What’s consistent from lesson to lesson is this: the tribulation of the flesh leads to an enlightenment of the soul.
In most cases, the ceremonial tribulation required to learn a Crúac ritual can be assumed to happen successfully in the background, between stories, as part of other covenant holidays and rituals. An Acolyte might be considered to have undergone the necessary tribulation for some ritual to be learned in the future when she participated in holy night ceremonies last autumn, for example. Only when she later spends the experience points to buy the ritual in game terms is she considered to have mastered its effects.
(Note: The following action is ultimately a dramatic tool for Storytellers. Use it to illustrate what an Acolyte’s Requiem is like. Use it to determine if a blood sorcerer can master a particular ritual before the arrival of some dreaded event. Use it to test the limits of a childe’s love for her sire or Mentor. But you probably have no good reason to usethis rule every time a player wants to buy a new ritual for his character — if he’s earned and spent the experience points, he’s probably waited long enough already.)
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Empathy + Crúac. Instruments of torture simply enable this dice pool to deal damage, but do not add any bonus dice to the roll as a result of their Damage ratings.
Action: Extended. Each roll represents one night of tribulation, and inflicts one lethal wound per success. The action succeeds when a number of successes equal to twice the ritual’s level are accumulated. Each sunrise between the beginning of the extended action and its completion imposes a cumulative –2 penalty on subsequent dice pools in the extended action. If even a single night goes by without a new roll being made, all successes thus far accumulated are lost. Note that rolls yielding no successes do not ruin the extended action.
Teaching does not quite take a whole night; both teacher and student have time to hunt, provided that they do so quickly. A student may attempt to feed once per night using the abstract system detailed on p. 164 of Vampire: The Requiem.
A student may return to his Haven or undertake other interim actions in between bouts of educational tribulation without canceling the extended action. Exactly how much time is left over in any night after a student’s studies is up to the Storyteller, but higher-level rituals generally require more time per night.
Dramatic Failure: The student is too overwhelmed or distracted by his physical suffering to appreciate the benefits of his tribulations. The extended action is broken and must be begun again.
Failure: The student does not learn the ritual but has not lost his educational momentum. The extended action continues.
Success: The student endures lethal damage and gains some new understanding of his soul, his body and they combine to make the ritual possible. If this success completes the extended action, then the student’s player may spend the necessary experience points to buy the ritual now or at any time in the future.
Exceptional Success: The teacher finds just the right means of getting through to her student, who learns the ritual more rapidly than most.
Ritual Forms
The form of a Crúac ritual is vital, but not fixed. As a result, characters who know the same ritual may practice alternate forms of it. If the character learned the ritual through the gift and quest, this is a relatively straightforward process, as described above. Most ritualists, however, must rely on a certain amount of trial and error.The Purpose of Ritual Forms in the Game
The rules given here make it relatively easy for characters to create new ways to cast the Crúac rituals described in any Vampire book. This is deliberate, as it allows all factions within the Circle to customize Crúac to fit their beliefs. The ritual form is mostly just a matter of narrative color, so allowing player characters to do this is unlikely to cause seriousgame balance issues.However, you might prefer to restrict the creation of new forms to those Kindred who are gifted, rather than taught, a ritual. Multiple forms thus still exist, but a group following Hel might still teach a ritual that invokes Isis, as no one in a Nordic tradition has been given that particular ritual. This yields rituals that reflect their region or belief system of origin, rather than rituals that are easily adapted to other ritual styles.
In the end, the rules for altering ritual forms only come into play if the Storyteller decides that rituals available for use in the chronicle require them. The mechanics for making major revisions to ritual practices will likely only come into play for one of two reasons: either individual expression of one’s rituals is a matter of some importance in your chronicle, or the Storyteller is creating obstacles to be overcome.
The individual expression of a ritual, and the ability to alter it, might be essential in a city with warring Acolyte factions. Maybe a ritual’s customary practices need to be altered to Disguise the fact that it was learned from a turncoat sorcerer. Perhaps a schism in the local covenant has caused Acolyte coteries to stake out philosophical turf within the covenant’s beliefs, and the way one invokes The Crone says something about whose side he’s on.
Alternately, the Storyteller might only introduce a five-dot Crúac ritual into play as a major reward for recovering some ancient artifact. To keep the ritual from being used too often, eroding its sense of importance, he decides that each roll of the extended action to invoke the ritual requires not one turn but one hour until such time as your coterie successfully revising the ritual down to its simplest form with several nights of translation, prayer and ceremonial bloodletting. Or maybe the extended action to devise a major variation on the ritual is an essential part of the dramatic deadline in a forthcoming story. For example, the coterie must reduce the invocation time on the ritual they’ve learned if they’ll have any hope in completing the ritual during their midnight window of opportunity next week.
None of these optional rules can reduce a ritual’s casting time below the basic rules specified in Vampire: The Requiem.
Minor Variation
The first option is to make minor changes to the ritual. The ritualist may want to use his left hand rather than her right, for example, or chant the necessary words in Hindi rather than Arabic. In this case, the ritualist simply tries the ritual with the change in place.This imposes a penalty to his dice pool. The penalty is at least –2, for the smallest changes, but be as much as –5 for changes such as translating a chant into another Language. If the ritual succeeds despite the penalty, the new ritual form is viable and can be used without penalty in future. If the ritualist gets no successes on any roll, the new ritual form is inert, and can never succeed for that sorcerer.
It is not possible to stack variations in this way. The change must always be minor compared to the original form of the ritual, not to the form that the ritualist knows. It is thus possible to make a minor change to a known ritual form, but for penalties to be determined as if the ritualist were making a major change because of the new form’s dissimilarity from the original overall. If the ritualist does not know the original form of the particular ritual he is altering, there is no way to know the penalties in advance. (Thus the Storyteller may choose to make certain rituals more difficult to deviate from than others in his chronicle.)
Experienced ritualists who know the original form of a ritual can make minor changes without risk, and many do, imposing their own style onto the traditional ceremonies for the sake of confusing or frightening other sorcerers.
Major Variations
It is harder to design a major variation on a ritual form, but a major variation can be anything, even a completely new ceremony. Ritualists most often make major changes when they have learned a ritual form that takes hours to perform but want a ritual practice that can be completed in a few seconds.Designing a major variation requires an extended Intelligence + Expression + Crúac action. Each roll represents one night of work, and a dramatic failure sets the number of accumulated successes back to zero. These nights need not be consecutive, as long as the ritualist is able to maintain an undisturbed shrine or ceremonial space where he can continue his work for the duration of the extended action.
The target number of successes for the ritual is 10 plus twice the ritual’s level. Thus a major variation on a thirdlevel ritual has a target number of 16 successes.
The ritualist may attempt to cast the ritual at any point during this extended action. The dice pool to activate the ritual suffers a dice pool penalty equal to the successes not yet achieved on the extended action. That is, successes on the extended action diminish this penalty on a one-for-one basis. As with minor variations, if the casting succeeds, the new ritual form is usable, and may be used without penalty in the future. If the ritualist gets no successes on any roll, the new ritual is useless, and can never succeed. The ritualist must start the revision process from scratch.
Crúac: The Ianus Crescent
Ianus, or Janus. The two-faced keeper of portals and doors, of beginnings and endings. Janus did not originate in Rome, despite the name, but is just another expression of older gods — the Etruscan Ani, the Akkadian Anu. With one face he could gaze toward the future, and with the other he could see backwards through time. It is this ability that allows Ianus to pursue the nymph, Carna. It’s what allows him to protect Rome’s Capitoline Hill from the Sabines. The doors to Ianus’s temples were left open during times of war so that the god could see what was coming, and what had come before.The story goes, then, that Ianus gave the Etruscan Kindred — those who came before Rome rose upon the seven hills — his blessings so that the truly potent and powerful among them could survive the ravages of time, could see both forwards and backwards. Other stories say that the Kindred stole this power from the gods, as they have many of their hoary rites and Disciplines, and that they will one day pay for the transgression.
The gifts (or pilfered secrets) of Ianus are the province of the Circle of the Crone, who have made Ianus’s magic a part of the bloody Crúac system. The rituals below are available only to those with Status (Circle of the Crone) 3, and who have a Blood Potency of 5 or higher. Those beneath that Blood Potency may still attempt to perform the rituals, but suffer a penalty equal to the difference of five minus their Blood Potency scores (a vampire with Blood Potency 3 trying to cast one of these rituals would therefore suffer -2 dice to the Manipulation + Occult + Crúac roll).
Execution
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Occult + Crúac. Because of its sanguinary nature, Crúac doubles any bonuses that a vampire’s blood ties might apply, such as in a ritual performed on a sire, grandsire, childe or grandchilde. Also, the Nosferatu clan weakness does not apply to the Discipline user’s roll.
Action: Extended. The number of successes required to activate a ritual is equal to the level of the ritual (so a levelthree ritual requires three successes to enact). Each roll represents one turn of ritual casting. Note also that each point of damage suffered in a turn is a penalty to the next casting roll made for the character, in addition to any wound penalties that a caster might suffer.
Costs to activate Crúac rituals must be paid before the roll can be made. Normally this isn’t an issue, as a ritual that costs one Vitae can have its activation roll made in the same turn (as spending Vitae is a reflexive action). In some cases, though, a ritual costs more Vitae than the caster can spend in a single turn. In cases like these, the caster’s player makes the roll on the turn he (reflexively) spends the last Vitae necessary to invoke the ritual.
If a character fails to complete the ritual in time (such as by being killed before accumulating enough successes) or decides to cancel the ritual before garnering enough successes to activate it, the effect simply fails. Any Vitae expenditures made are not recovered, however.
Dramatic Failure: The ritual fails spectacularly, inflicting some aspect of itself as a detrimental effect upon the caster. A ritual intended to damage a subject inflicts its damage upon the caster, for example, while a ritual designed to plague its victim with pangs of hunger visits its effects upon the caster.
Failure: The ritual fails entirely, but not dangerously. Vitae is consumed as normal, but the ritual has no effect.
Success: The ritual takes place as described.
Exceptional Success: The ritual takes place as described. In many cases, extra successes are their own reward, causing additional damage or conferring extra duration, capacity or similar benefits.
Unless specified otherwise, rituals last for the duration of a scene or until the next sunrise, whichever comes first.
Modifier | Situation
+4 | Power is turned on or applies to a vampire with whom the user has a blood tie (see p. 162).
— | The character is unaffected by threats or distractions.
-1 to -3 | The character is rushed or distracted, such as by invoking a ritual in combat or while being harried by pursuers. This penalty is cumulative with multiple distractions (such as by casting a ritual in combat during a hurricane). Successes gained on a meditation roll for the night (see p. 51 of the World of Darkness Rulebook) offset interruption penalties on a onefor- one basis.
Action: Extended. The number of successes required to activate a ritual is equal to the level of the ritual (so a levelthree ritual requires three successes to enact). Each roll represents one turn of ritual casting. Note also that each point of damage suffered in a turn is a penalty to the next casting roll made for the character, in addition to any wound penalties that a caster might suffer.
Costs to activate Crúac rituals must be paid before the roll can be made. Normally this isn’t an issue, as a ritual that costs one Vitae can have its activation roll made in the same turn (as spending Vitae is a reflexive action). In some cases, though, a ritual costs more Vitae than the caster can spend in a single turn. In cases like these, the caster’s player makes the roll on the turn he (reflexively) spends the last Vitae necessary to invoke the ritual.
If a character fails to complete the ritual in time (such as by being killed before accumulating enough successes) or decides to cancel the ritual before garnering enough successes to activate it, the effect simply fails. Any Vitae expenditures made are not recovered, however.
Dramatic Failure: The ritual fails spectacularly, inflicting some aspect of itself as a detrimental effect upon the caster. A ritual intended to damage a subject inflicts its damage upon the caster, for example, while a ritual designed to plague its victim with pangs of hunger visits its effects upon the caster.
Failure: The ritual fails entirely, but not dangerously. Vitae is consumed as normal, but the ritual has no effect.
Success: The ritual takes place as described.
Exceptional Success: The ritual takes place as described. In many cases, extra successes are their own reward, causing additional damage or conferring extra duration, capacity or similar benefits.
Unless specified otherwise, rituals last for the duration of a scene or until the next sunrise, whichever comes first.
Modifier | Situation
+4 | Power is turned on or applies to a vampire with whom the user has a blood tie (see p. 162).
— | The character is unaffected by threats or distractions.
-1 to -3 | The character is rushed or distracted, such as by invoking a ritual in combat or while being harried by pursuers. This penalty is cumulative with multiple distractions (such as by casting a ritual in combat during a hurricane). Successes gained on a meditation roll for the night (see p. 51 of the World of Darkness Rulebook) offset interruption penalties on a onefor- one basis.
Components and tools
Cost: Uses of Crúac always cost at least one Vitae. Unless the text for a specific power (known as a ritual) specifies otherwise, assume that the cost is one Vitae. Vitae plays a very important role in the use of Crúac — it literally calls upon the power inherent in the Blood to fuel supernatural effects. Use of Crúac requires that the Vitae be “spent” in a visible or otherwise significant manner. For example, when a Vitae is spent for a character to activate a ritual, he likely has to cut himself with a dagger and bleed on the ground, activating the magic with the spilled Vitae (or through some other direct appeal to the power of the Blood).
Crúac does not have the same linear progression that other Disciplines do. A character’s mastery dictates the highest level of rituals that he may learn. Rituals are bought with experience points. For example, a character with two dots of Crúac can know an unlimited number of level-one and level-two rituals (provided the experience points to learn each of them are paid). He may not learn any level-three Crúac rituals until his Crúac dots increase to 3. Each time a character acquires a dot of Crúac (including at character creation), he gains a ritual of that level at no additional cost.
Crúac is insidious. It demands a certain degree of subservience and even cruelty from its practitioners, possibly in deference to the dire old gods from whence the Discipline is rumored to come. For some power-hungry sorcerers, Crúac indulges the will instead of enlightened use of the Discipline. A character’s dots in this Discipline, subtracted from 10, is the maximum to which his Humanity may rise. For example, the Gangrel Roland Gentry possesses Crúac at level three. His maximum Humanity is therefore 7. If a character increases his Crúac score higher than his Humanity would normally allow, his Humanity immediately drops to the appropriate level and the player makes a Humanity roll to see if the character acquires a derangement in the process of heightening his occult knowledge. (See pp. 182-188 for more on Humanity rolls and derangements.)
Crúac does not have the same linear progression that other Disciplines do. A character’s mastery dictates the highest level of rituals that he may learn. Rituals are bought with experience points. For example, a character with two dots of Crúac can know an unlimited number of level-one and level-two rituals (provided the experience points to learn each of them are paid). He may not learn any level-three Crúac rituals until his Crúac dots increase to 3. Each time a character acquires a dot of Crúac (including at character creation), he gains a ritual of that level at no additional cost.
Crúac is insidious. It demands a certain degree of subservience and even cruelty from its practitioners, possibly in deference to the dire old gods from whence the Discipline is rumored to come. For some power-hungry sorcerers, Crúac indulges the will instead of enlightened use of the Discipline. A character’s dots in this Discipline, subtracted from 10, is the maximum to which his Humanity may rise. For example, the Gangrel Roland Gentry possesses Crúac at level three. His maximum Humanity is therefore 7. If a character increases his Crúac score higher than his Humanity would normally allow, his Humanity immediately drops to the appropriate level and the player makes a Humanity roll to see if the character acquires a derangement in the process of heightening his occult knowledge. (See pp. 182-188 for more on Humanity rolls and derangements.)
Related Organizations
Creating Crúac Rituals
Crúac Errata
Second printings of Vampire: The Requiem incorporate a few minor tweaks and fixes to the rules for casting Crúac rituals. Where possible, those clarifications have been incorporated into the Crúac Overview on p. 203 of this book. To correct the rituals in your first-printing copy of Vampire, however, remember this: Crúac rituals should not use contested actions to determine the quality of their activation.For example, take a look at rituals like Blood Price (••••, Vampire: The Requiem p. 144-145) and Blood Blight (•••••, same page). Instead of requiring contested rolls against the subject’s resistance Attribute + Blood Potency, the activation rolls for these rituals should be extended actions penalized by the relevant resistance Attribute (Resolve, Stamina or Composure). Whenever you find a Crúac ritual that uses a contested action to determine its activation successes, replace that with an extended action penalized by the same resistance Attribute mentioned in the contested action.
Yes, this means that the only reliable way to protect one’s self from a blood sorcerer is to stop her from completing her ritual. Or getting the hell out of there.
(Note: To find out what printing your Vampire book is, turn to the credits on p. 10 and look at the bottom of the red box in the right-hand corner. If your book is a second printing, you’ll see it says “Second printing” right there. If no printing is specified, you’ve got a first printing.)
Losing Crúac
What if a ritualist decides to turn her back on Crúac and seeks to restore her Humanity? Is this possible?It is. A player may choose to raise her character’s Humanity above the maximum level permitted by her score in Crúac. When she does so, the dot of Crúac, and all rituals of that level, is lost. The character does not regain the experience points, and the abilities do not come back if her Humanity later drops once more. The increase in Humanity washes the vampire’s soul clean of the rituals, and they must be learned again if a reforming ritualist changes her mind.
(At the Storyteller’s discretion, if the lingering temptation of once-known mystic powers is important to the story, a character might not lose access to Crúac rituals immediately. Rather, she might lose her dot in Crúac but retain her rituals for a year and a night (or some other suitably arcane period). When the deadline comes, and the rituals are about to be lost forever, will the character still be willing to surrender her mystic powers for the sake of her Humanity? Or will she spend experience points to regain her Crúac dot and retain her rituals before it’s too late?)
It is incredibly rare for a ritualist to turn her back utterly on Crúac. The stories of those who have are legends on a par with legends of vampires who have achieved Golconda.
Other Ways to Learn
What if your teacher isn’t a vampire? The system described herein assumes that your Acolyte character is learning Crúac rituals from another Kindred blood sorceress, but that doesn’t have to be the case. A vampire might be taught a voodoo rite by a mortal shaman (see World of Darkness: Second Site), with the rite being translated into Crúac by the vampire’s flesh and Vitae. Or your Acolyte might be put through a tortuous ordeal by a spirit or ghost intent on teaching him a new ritual, whether your character knows it at the time or not. If you were inspired create a new Crúac ritual by some Gift you read in a Werewolf book, you might even have some bizarre werewolf medicine man haunt the vampire student for days, biting and slicing the ritual into his flesh and soul.Remember: Unique, strange events are a classic ingredient of supernatural horror tales. As the Storyteller, you have the authority to deviate from the rules for the purposes of setting up a great story or granting a player a special award. As a player, you have the right to suggest such deviations — and the joy of fearing the limitless possibilities lurking in the World of Darkness.
Ultimately, the story is king. Riff on this teaching process as you like if it helps you translate gameplay into better stories.
Prophetic Crúac
This chapter contains a number of Crúac rituals that allow some degree of prophecy. These need to be handled carefully. First, these rituals do not, strictly, foretell the future. Rather, they provide important information about the present that the sorcerer may not otherwise be able to see. Crúac prophesies tell the ritualist what is important now, but not what will happen tomorrow.Second, you should account for these rituals when designing stories. Consider what clues a prophecy might reveal to help keep the scenario moving along without short-circuiting it. These rituals do not explain why something is important, only that it is important. So direct the diviner to look in the right place, rather than simply supplying answers. Many of these rituals are an excellent way for you to start stories, by dropping an important clue in the coterie’s lap. In such cases, the ritual might be a bit clearer than the number of successes would typically indicate.
When in doubt, if nothing else seems to work, a prophesied action can be granted bonus dice as a reflection of the sorcerer’s heightened awareness of the circumstances and potential outcomes of her action.
Using the same ritual repeatedly gives the same answer every time, until something happens to change the present situation substantially.