Blood For the Gods

(• • • Spirit, • • Life, • Prime) Dead Magic 75

The Aztec priests had dozens of sacrifices addressed to specific gods. In the sacrifice to Huehuetcotl, for example, captives were drugged, thrown into a pit of fire and dragged out of the blaze with hooks. Then their hearts -- still beating -- were pulled out and thrown back into the fire. the Aztec gods rewarded such sacrifices with power. A few modern paradigms, usually bleak and demonic, address this ritual to different gods.

System: Successes on the Effect roll determine the duration of the gifts granted by the gods. The specific gift depends on the deity to whom the ritual is addressed, Spirit magic attracts divine notice, while Life incorporates the god's boon into the mage's Pattern. A modicum of Prime is required so that the Pattern can assimilate the powerful influx; one mage who performed this rote without the requisite Prime acquired a disturbing Resonance noticeable even to Sleepers a few days before he spontaneously exploded in a bloody spray.

This Effect increases one Attribute or Talent by 2, or grants some minor special characteristic, and earns the mage a frightening Entropic Resonance. The Storyteller determines both, based on the nature of the deity who received the sacrifice. A botch means the god was not pleased.

Note that this rite not quite the same as the rote Heart for Huitzilopochtli and is marginally easier to cast; the intervention of the gods doubtless smoothes matter. However, it does not grant the mage the same level of raw power. Rather, it gifts the mage with some benefit from the gods -- perhaps making him phenomenally quick for the duration if the sacrifice goes to Tezcatlipoca, who often appears as a jaguar, or giving him a fearsome visage and the ability to breathe water, if sacrificed to Tlaloc the rain god.