Altar Magic Rituals

Altar Magic Rituals:
Point Reserve 4 (special, is tied to a dead obelisk seed)
Restrictions: Only works within Menthos' zone. Objects made with this magic can not physically leave the zone.

Male/female sacrifice Ritual

A sacrifice ritual where people put food into a mansa basket and set it upon the altar with prayers thanking me for the good things in their life. The ritual has two forms. Women sacrifice plants. Rice, manboo, yams, whatever to me thanking me for the plants, the good harvest, and the fertility of the land. Men sacrifice meat and fish thanking me for the peoples success in fishing and the hunt. At the end of both rituals I devour the offering in a flash of blue light without harming anyone or the basket.

Altar Creation Ritual

Three men and three women from the village must go to my altar and weave a basket shaped basket into it's exact shape. Every manboo stalk and mansa reed for this basket has to be cut on the altar and woven at night by the light of my obelisk so it can only be done in my most important cities.

Once that is done the fake altar must be hauled back to the village, placed in it's center, and tiled over with blue and black colored tiles. Blue like my my obelisk but with black worms like my altar has writhing blue ones within it.

Finally every man, woman, and child, living within the village must use their shell hooks to cut themselves and bleed uppon the new altar asking for my favor. When this is done the altar will flash with a blue light and become twin to the one in Mesina. From that point on altar rituals can be done at it too; though this one of course requires an obelisk as well to get started.

The ritual can be done anywhere at least 6 people live, but at least 6 people have to live at the site continuously year after year. If the site is abandoned for more than a year the new altar reverts to it's original form and the blood letting part of the ceremony has to be redone to reactivate it once people inhabit the site once more. This may be done on purpose if the village needs to move for some reason.

Scarring hook ritual

In this ritual the man or woman carves his or her sharp shell carving hook on my alter following a very specific schedule. He works through sunrise, then from noon till one, and finally again at sunset. He repeats this each day making his sexes specified sacrifice at the begining and end of each carving period. When he is finally done a small flash of blue light turns his shell or bone hook into a razor sharp glowing blue crystal the same color as the alter and with the same glowing worm patterns in it.

The crystal hook has the following properties:

[.A.] It never dulls or breaks
[.B.] It carves easilly through wood, bone, reeds, or manboo without cutting flesh unless willed too.
[.C.] If willed to cut flesh for a ritual the wound heals within the day and the cutter can determine if it will scar. If it scars it will scar cleanly and the cutter can determine HOW it scars: raised, white, glaring red, or flat, or puckered. Cutting yourself or another still hurts of course; otherwise these would be useless for sacrifice.

Teleportation Scarring Ritual:

This is a ritual of scarification placing the image onto the backs of my people. It is painful and involves a LOT of cutting. The ritual begins with the recipient laying on the altar as the sun rises a male "priest" intoning a set prayer to Me while holding one of my new gemstone carving hooks.

Then the priest carves the pattern slowly into the persons back from sunrise till sundown willing a clean raised scarring. Each bit of flesh goes into a manboo "sacrifice" basket at the foot of the altar. Throughout the priest chants asking me to accept this flesh and this person as my own.

The priest will finish carving the pattern as the sun sets and then take the the basket over his head as the person sits up on the altar and perform the male sacrifice ritual giving ME the flesh in a blinding flash of blue light.

Once this is done the tribesman will gain the ability to instantly teleport himself and up to 300 pounds of cargo from any location within my aura area directly to one of my altars. Multiple people with this power can work together to move larger objects. I figure the length, complexity, and sheer pain of this ritual should keep the cost down but I'm willing to pay up to 20 points for it; at my discount of course. lol.

The finished scarring will look like something like the first bamboo picture on this site: http://freshpics.blogspot.com/2008/04/scarification-tattoos.html