Our Enemies are Delicious

(• • • Life,  • • • Spirit)                                                                                  Dead Magic  76
The Aztecs had something like the neighborhood backyard Barbecue, but the meat was particularly rare.  The Aztecs conquered new people constantly not only for sacrifices, but because they were an empire of cannibals and their delicacy was captured warriors.  After the priests sacrificed hundreds of prisoners, the corpses were returned to the warriors who had captured them.  The corpse was then served at a banquet thrown by the warrior and attended by his friends, and neighbors and relatives.

Aztec cookouts demanded the proper decorum.  Exotic foods garnished the dead, and the warrior's friends were expected to compliment the host on the quality of the meal.

If an Awakened priest performed the sacrifice, however, the flesh imbued the cannibal with strength.  Entire armies cannibalized their prisoners to give the warriors that bit of the departed soul that lingered.  The priests only used this rote before critical battles, to prevent addiction among the ranks.

System:  If a person eats a corpse prepared by this rote, raise all of his Physical Attributes by 1 but lower his Social Attributes by 1 as well.  The corpse must be eaten the day it's prepared.  (In some paradigms, the cook -- not the priest -- performs this rote on the corpse.)  Each day after, the cannibal loses a dot on one of his Physical Attributes and regains one on his Socials, until they all return to their original ratings.

The rote has two dangers.  First, ritual sacrifice and cannibalism risk a strong Entropic Resonance.  Second, a cannibal can become addicted to the powerful delicacy.  Each time a character eats meat prepared with this rote, roll the character's Willpower (difficulty 5, but quickly rises if he cannibalizes such corpses regularly).  If the roll fails, the character's got a corpse habit; lower his Physical Attributes by 1 if he doesn't indulge at least once a week.  A month of cannibalism-free living and plenty of spent Willpower cures the addiction, if not the Resonance.

Of course, the Effect is usually built to last at least a day.  A shorter version can be cast if the mage simply can't score enough successes, but the ameloration of social decay doesn't speed up.