Advanced Rituals allow spellcasters to weave multiple spells into a single spell with a more advanced outcome. They take more time, may consume more specific components, and may involve multiple spellcasters. Advanced Rituals expand the capability of ritual casting. Ritual casting takes time and occurs only outside combat and within the story and exploration of roleplaying. Advanced Rituals may be used as a plot device, a new player reward, and a flavorful creativity outlet for players. Please consult the rules on Advanced Rituals for details on how these rituals may be used.
Advanced Rituals are rarely written as "spells" in the tidy way a modern arcanist expects. They tend to be preserved as workings, ceremonies, contracts, songs, diagrams, and procedures because the magic lives as much in sequence and circumstance as it does in words. A character might discover an Advanced Ritual as a chapter in a massive grimoire, bound in lacquered hide and chained to a lectern, where the ink changes color under moonlight and the margins are crowded with generations of corrections ("Do not speak the Third Name before the salt is laid"). Others are found as folio packets in a cracked reliquary: thin sheets of hammered metal or vellum stitched with silver thread, each page a single step of the rite, meant to be laid out on the ground like a map. In temples, they may be preserved as liturgical appendices, call-and-response passages hidden inside hymnals, requiring the right choir to even complete the sentence.
Just as often, Advanced Rituals survive outside books entirely. Some are architectural: carved into the walls and ceiling of a vast cavern where the stone itself forms the diagram, so the caster must stand at specific points and speak upward into glyphs older than language. You might find a rite etched as a spiral of runes down a forgotten stairwell, each landing another instruction, with the "final word" only visible from the bottom looking back up—meaning you literally cannot read the whole thing without committing to the descent. In ruins, a ritual might be encoded as a mosaic floor or stained-glass constellation, where the sequence is learned by walking the pattern at the correct pace while holding the proper components. And in the darkest places, the working is preserved as a living record: a bound spirit that recites the rite only to those who bargain correctly, or a chorus of preserved skulls whose harmonies supply the missing parts a lone caster can’t pronounce.
Acquiring an Advanced Ritual is less like learning a spell and more like recovering a method, an orchestration with choreography. A character might need to copy it by hand under dangerous conditions, decipher a missing stanza, or perform a lesser version to prove they understand the cadence before the full working reveals itself. Some are traded as contraband, sold in candlelit backrooms as performance scripts, disguised as playbooks or shipping ledgers—while others are granted as honors by orders that guard them jealously. Even after discovery, mastery usually requires practice: the first attempt is rehearsal, the second is competence, and only then does the ritual become something the lead caster can reliably conduct -- especially when choral casting, rare components, or an attuned location turns the rite from a procedure into a moment that the world remembers.
Below is a multitude of unique recommended advanced rituals which may be discovered in your campaigns.
Create nice AD&D-like stat blocks for the descriptive lists.
Mass resurrection!
Adjust base costs.
Adjust durations. rm "As primary spell."
Discuss single spell Advanced Rituals
Suggest ideal spells to use.
None.
You conjure a thick fog bank and stitch a swallowing hush into its drifting edge. Within the shroud, sound dies in the mist—perfect for infiltration, covert meetings, or a quiet approach that must leave no audible trace.
You vanish from sight and soften your passage into something the world struggles to remember. Footprints fade, disturbed dust settles, and the path behind you looks untouched—ideal for scouting, heists, and controlled retreats.
You draw a pocket of living dark and braid concealment through it, so even close eyes struggle to confirm what's there. It's a classic ambush working: a hidden operative inside a lightless veil, repositioning without betraying their outline.
You sweep a scene for lingering auras and then focus your attention into a single, conclusive reading. This ritual is favored by investigators and dungeon-delvers who need answers now—what was cast here, what item matters, and what magic is still “warm.”
You don't just decode language—you create true exchange. Words arrive with intent intact, idioms don't collapse into nonsense, and tone carries cleanly across cultures, making this rite invaluable for delicate parley and first contact.
You secure an entry with stubborn arcana and set an invisible tripwire of warning around it. The result is simple and effective: a barrier that resists casual intrusion and a notice the moment someone tests it.
You bind a lock to a will and give it a voice—one that can challenge, warn, or deceive. This rite turns a doorway into a sentry: it can demand a passphrase, announce intruders, or bait the careless into revealing themselves.
You command a lock to yield while smothering the spell's telltale boom. It's the quintessential “heist-only” working—too slow for a frantic chase, but priceless when the plan demands a quiet breach.
You inscribe a waiting ward that doesn't kill—it takes. When triggered, the glyph snaps like a chain, locking a trespasser in place long enough for guards to arrive or for an ambush to close cleanly.
You bottle destruction into a patient mark and leave it sleeping on stone, wood, or steel. When the ward awakens, it delivers a prepared blast—ideal for siege work, traps, and deterrents that don't require your presence.
You raise a comfortable refuge and teach it caution. The hut becomes more than shelter: it's a camp that knows when someone approaches, buying you the precious moments that separate rest from ruin.
You combine protection with logistics, turning a safe camp into a supplied camp. This rite is beloved on long expeditions: it reduces the need for hunting, preserves momentum, and keeps the party fed without drawing attention.
You grant your companions command of the water's two worlds—below and above. Whether you must cross a lake under moonlight or walk a flooded corridor as if it were stone, this ritual turns a watery obstacle into a route.
You weave swift ascent with a promise of mercy if the magic fails. The working is intentionally cautious: it enables aerial movement while ensuring a sudden fall doesn't become an epitaph.
You turn walls and ceilings into stealthy roads. With this rite, the party can take the “impossible” route above a guard line, moving with spiderlike certainty while leaving almost nothing behind to be found later.
You don't rely on a single “no lies” circle—you pressure truth from two angles at once. Words are constrained, intent is read, and evasions become obvious, making this rite best suited to controlled social scenes rather than combat urgency.
You calm the room before you redirect it. This ritual is persuasion with safety rails—useful when you need compliance without panic, and when emotional volatility would make an ordinary suggestion brittle or dangerous.
You lay illusion atop actual alteration, so the mask holds up to proximity and scrutiny. Where a simple glamour might fail under touch or odd angles, this rite anchors deception in real changed features.
You don a disguise and teach it to “read” correctly—or incorrectly—under magical inspection. The result is a counterfeit presence: a face for eyes, and a separate lie for divinations and aura-reading.
You sharpen your sight for both concealed creatures and concealed workings. Invisible interlopers stand out, auras betray traps, and the usual “either/or” choice between seeing beings or seeing magic becomes unnecessary.
You locate a specific object and immediately “put eyes near it” to confirm the find. This is the working of recovery teams: identify where the prize is, then verify the surrounding situation before anyone risks a retrieval.
You keep remains intact and then coax coherent answers from them. This ritual is a cornerstone of grim investigations: it buys you time, prevents further decay, and ensures the dead can still speak when you're ready to listen.
You draw a circle of warding and sanctify its intent, making it harder for hostile outsiders and influences to press through. It is a practical rite for safe rooms, summoning sites, and nights when the air feels watched.
You don't simply break a curse—you strip away the spellwork supporting it. This ritual is used when you suspect layered malice: hex plus hidden scaffolding, curse plus contingency, or an affliction anchored by a separate enchantment.
You cleanse the body and then reinforce it against a second wave. This rite is favored in venomous regions and plague-warrens—places where “cured” can quickly become “reinfected” without ongoing protection.
You join two lives with protective sympathy and then add a reserve of grit to the bond. This ritual is best cast before danger: it turns a fragile ally into someone who can survive the first brutal exchange.
You create a dependable baseline defense and then reinforce it with a visible blessing. This is a “start-of-the-day” working—simple, efficient protection meant to carry you through the first surprise.
You harden flesh and toughen the body's surface into something closer to living armor. The ritual is slow but decisive—built for frontline work where endurance matters more than speed.
You grant sight in darkness and teach the eyes to reject invisibility's lie. This rite is a delver's blessing: shadows lose their advantage, and unseen predators become merely predators.
You flood a space with honest light and then peel away hostile spellwork that clings to it. This rite is performed before a breach or after a haunting—when you need an area cleared, not merely illuminated.
You negotiate meaning with a creature and then give that creature a clear task and destination. In civilized lands it's quaint; in hostile wilderness it's a lifeline—messages delivered without roads, riders, or obvious tracks.
You search for traps with both mundane caution and arcane awareness. This rite doesn't just “ping danger”—it helps you interpret it, separating old mechanisms from fresh wards and telling you where caution must be absolute.
You open a small extradimensional refuge and then scrub the approach of signs that it was ever used. It's an escape artist's rite: vanish into safety, and leave the pursuers with nothing reliable to follow.
You set valuables beyond easy reach and then wrap the hiding place in divination-resistant silence. This rite is a downtime classic: stash something that must survive betrayal, scrying, and “friendly” curiosity.
You identify contamination precisely and then remove it with practiced certainty. This working is common among expedition leaders: it prevents a single tainted barrel, bite, or spore cloud from turning the whole journey into a slow collapse.
You create an enduring light and bind a prepared message into its glow. The flame becomes a sentinel: it can warn, signal allies, mislead intruders, or serve as a living “sign” that can't be quietly removed.
You lay sticky strands and then make the ground beneath them treacherous. Victims slip, stick, and struggle—an excellent capture or corridor-denial trap when you have time to prepare the field.
You call a sleet-lashed squall and give it direction like a battering ram of winter air. Visibility collapses, footing fails, and the storm presses foes where you want them—best used as ambush or siege preparation.
You accelerate wild growth and then teach it to grab what moves within it. The result is a living trap: brush that becomes a net, vines that become hands, and a path that turns into a mistake.
You seed the ground with hidden pain and then smother the screams it causes. This rite is a brutal ambush tool: movement becomes punishment, and panic can't rally allies with sound.
You add water to the world and then take command of its shape and behavior. Whether you need a sudden moat, a breached canal, or a controlled surge through a fortress level, this ritual is engineering by incantation.
You raise stone walls and then immediately shape the ground around them into trenches, berms, and defensible angles. The rite is slow compared to battle magic—but fast compared to any army with shovels.
You link minds for coordination and then punch a single clear instruction across distance. This is mission-control magic: establish team cohesion, then deliver a decisive message even when the group is scattered across miles.
You mimic death convincingly and then cloak the subject from easy magical discovery. It's an escape rite and a smuggler's safeguard: the body “rests,” and divinations struggle to find what they are not meant to notice.
You heighten capability and then hide the capable one from hostile attention. This ritual creates the classic “invisible specialist”—the lockpicker, scout, or saboteur who can work in plain view without being seen.
You fuse raw acceleration with the refusal to be restrained. Cast before battle, this rite creates a spearpoint ally who moves too fast to pin down and too freely to be stopped by terrain, bindings, or grapples.
You lock a victim in place and then turn their metal into a confession. This working is rarely a “combat cast” due to time; instead it's used as trapcraft, intimidation, or controlled punishment when you can force the moment.
You create a plan for the worst day and the discipline to survive it. The fallen are preserved against time, making revival possible even when you cannot act immediately—an insurance policy written in incense and diamond dust.
You repaint the land with illusion and then erase the evidence of your passage through it. Ambushers, fugitives, and guerrillas favor this rite: the terrain lies convincingly, and the ground refuses to testify.
You craft writing that only the right eyes can read—and those eyes find it strangely persuasive. This is courtly sabotage and criminal leverage: a message that lands cleanly and nudges the reader toward the outcome you want.
You layer concealment, silence, and a refusal to leave evidence into a single seamless working. It's the “perfect infiltration” rite: unseen, unheard, and untracked—best cast as preparation when precision matters more than speed.
You establish a secure shelter, set warning wards, and add a decisive line of consequence for anyone who crosses it. This ritual turns a campsite into a defensible strongpoint—built for nights when the wilderness feels hungry.
You identify what magic is present, learn what it is, and then disguise what it appears to be. This is counter-intelligence for spellcasters: understand the truth first, then author the lie everyone else will see.
You compel honesty, read intent, and then steer the subject toward the next truthful step. This rite is designed for controlled social pressure—interviews, interrogations, and public reckonings where every lie has witnesses.
You seal an entry, place a warning, and give the ward a voice to challenge intruders. The door becomes a guard and a storyteller: it can announce threats, demand passwords, or bait an enemy into revealing themselves.
1st-level something advanced ritual
You open the way while stripping the action of its two biggest tells: sound and visibility. This rite is built for infiltration—doors yield, alarms go unheard, and the breacher becomes a rumor rather than a witness.
You prepare a dive party for hostile water: lungs don't fail, bodies don't bind, and currents can be negotiated rather than endured. This is expedition magic—cast ahead of time, then used to make the environment obey.
You grant flight, sharpen the tempo of battle, and keep a safety net ready for sudden failure. This rite is for planned assaults and daring insertions—too slow to improvise, but terrifying when executed as designed.
You turn ceilings into roads, erase evidence of passage, and remove the body from sight. This is a clean infiltration package: above the guards, beyond footprints, and wrapped in quiet certainty.
You locate the prize, place eyes near it, and then coordinate the team that will act on that knowledge. This ritual is “operations magic”—best during downtime or preparation when precision beats speed.
You find the quarry, confirm the quarry, and then relay decisive instruction with no ambiguity. This rite is how organized forces hunt: eyes on target, then orders delivered before the target can move again.
You preserve the body, bridge language, and extract testimony that would otherwise be garbled. This rite is especially valuable in old ruins and foreign lands where the dead may know the truth—but not your tongue.
You draw warding geometry, add consecration, and include an unweaving clause for hostile magic that tries to ride the boundary. This is a sanctum ritual—cast on purpose, in a chosen place, to make a line that holds.
You target layered afflictions with deliberate thoroughness: identify what's wrong, restore what's been warped, and strip away the supporting spellwork. This ritual is for the “complicated cases” ordinary cures can't safely untangle.
You treat acute conditions, reinforce the patient's resilience, and add a protective ward against poison's return. This is battlefield medicine performed off the battlefield—used in camps, clinics, and plague zones between crises.
You set a baseline arcane barrier, reinforce it with a blessing, and add sympathetic protection through a bonded link. This rite is meant for the party's most exposed ally—layered defenses that stay relevant when plans go wrong.
You fuse hardened flesh with a steady, barklike resilience and then back it with extra vitality. The result is not subtle—it is survival made visible, designed for those who will stand where others would fall.
You see through darkness, catch the outline of the unseen, and read the magical “color” behind it all. This rite is a delver's staple—turning a hostile complex into something you can interpret rather than fear.
You create uncompromising illumination and then layer in the ability to expose and strip magical concealment. This rite is for clearing a site—forcing hidden glamours into the open and burning away the tricks that protect them.
You find hazards, understand which ones are magical, and lay warnings behind you as you advance. This is disciplined dungeon procedure—best when you expect pursuit, backtracking, or the kind of ruin that punishes careless exits.
You create a concealed refuge, ward its entrance, and scrub the approach of evidence. This is the “we can actually rest here” rite—used when enemies are clever, persistent, or both.
You hide valuables away, secure the cache against tampering, and resist magical tracking of what you've hidden. This rite is for paranoid professionals: the kind who assume betrayal is not a possibility, but a schedule.
You forge a false landscape, reinforce it with real overgrowth, and ensure the scene won't betray you through tracks or disturbed ground. This is hideout magic: the land becomes complicit in your disappearance.
You create a snaring, painful field and then deny it the mercy of sound. Trapped targets can't easily call for help, and the usual chaos of combat noise doesn't carry—an ambush rite meant to end problems quietly.
You design a capture, not a fight: slick footing, adhesive restraint, and a final paralysis to stop any last escape. The ritual is slow, but the result is decisive when triggered or used as planned setup.
You summon driving sleet, add directional pressure, and thicken sightlines into near nothing. This rite turns a battlefield into confusion and disorientation—best used as ambush preparation, retreat cover, or siege harassment.
You raise stone, shape the ground to control approaches, and seed the structure with a triggered punishment. This is fortification with teeth—built to funnel enemies into a predictable mistake.
You add water, command its shape, and ensure your allies can ignore it as a hazard. The ritual creates chaos for enemies and advantage for friends—an engineering rite for breaches, defenses, and terrain denial.
You establish safe shelter and solve the two hidden killers of long travel: hunger and contamination. This ritual creates a bivouac that is defensible, provisioned, and far less likely to turn a party's supplies into poison.
You create an enduring light, bind a voice into it, and then disguise its magical “fingerprint.” This rite is covert communication: a signal lantern that can speak the right phrase—and won't look like what it is to casual detection.
You blend superficial disguise, physical alteration, and aura misdirection into a single coherent identity. This rite is built to survive scrutiny—eyes, touch, and the casual divination that would expose lesser impostors.
You stabilize the body, deepen the feigned death, and cloak it from divinations. This is the “survive the manhunt” rite—used when the safest place to be is “dead,” and the second-safest is “undetectable.”
You enhance capability, remove the body from sight, and grant the environment new routes. This is the “heist toolkit” rite—skill, concealment, and mobility packaged for planned intrusion.
You make one ally faster, harder to restrain, and tougher to drop. This rite is for the one who goes first—when the plan demands momentum and the enemy demands you pay for it.
You restrain the subject, enforce honesty, and read intent to catch evasions before they form. This rite is interrogation by design—meant for controlled spaces, not for the chaos and timing demands of battle.
You create a trap designed to take a target alive without noise. When it triggers, the victim is halted and silenced—an abductor's favorite because it prevents both escape and alarm.
You bind lingering misfortune to a ward and lace it with terror on impact. This trap isn't just harm—it's control: victims panic, companions hesitate, and the curse's shadow makes every decision feel wrong.
You prepare false signage that matters because it's backed by real warning and an audible announcement. This rite is equal parts intrigue and security—misdirect the curious while alerting allies the moment someone ignores the warning.
You link minds, establish remote sight, and add reliable long-range instruction. This is “mission control” in spell form: see what's happening, keep the team synchronized, and deliver decisions instantly from afar.
You locate the object and then strip away the most common deceptions that conceal it. This rite is for retrieval after theft: it finds the prize and makes sure you're not being fooled about what you found.
You recruit an animal, ride its senses for reconnaissance, and then send it out with a message. This rite turns local wildlife into a scouting network—subtle, inexpensive, and surprisingly effective where humanoids are watched.
You identify illness, sanitize supplies, and treat the afflicted in one sustained working. This rite is how communities survive contagion—best performed methodically, with space, time, and a calm perimeter.
You preserve a body against time, restore life when the moment comes, and then bolster the revived against immediate collapse. This rite is triage planning—expensive, slow, and invaluable when death is likely.
You restrain with force, paralyze with compulsion, and secure exits against clever hands. This ritual is for dangerous captives—when you need the prison to hold even while you look away.
You raise a wall of flame, shroud it, and silence the panic it causes. The result is psychological warfare and concealment together—best as an ambush setup, a retreat screen, or a terrifying barrier during a siege.
You set a lethal ward, bind a prepared explosion into it, and disguise the ward's magical signature so it appears harmless or unrelated. This is bait-trap craftsmanship: the rune lies, then the fire tells the truth.
You combine freezing devastation with storm-driven battlefield control. The ritual is slow, but the outcome is catastrophic when staged—ideal for a planned ambush, a chokepoint defense, or a siege where you can choose the moment.
You locate hostile magic, strip it away, and prepare to blunt the retaliation that follows. This rite is for breaches—when you expect a ward to scream, and you want it to die quietly anyway.
You construct a safer binding environment by layering warding geometry and a clause for stripping planar tricks. This is a downtime rite—performed in a prepared site—meant to reduce the odds of a bound entity escaping through clever magic.
You give the group false faces, erase travel signs, and resist the divinations that would identify you anyway. This rite is covert movement at scale—ideal for escaping a city, crossing borders, or traveling while hunted.
You fix a creature's identity inside a scrying vision and then open a gate with chilling certainty. The destination does not drift: the portal anchors to the viewed creature's location as the ritual resolves, effectively pulling the “there” to your “here.”
You open a gate into a prepared warding circle so the arrival point is immediately constrained by sigil geometry. This rite turns summoning into negotiation: the circle becomes both barrier and boundary, enabling controlled parley—or containment—at the moment of contact.
You call a prepared, marked object to your hand and braid a verification thread through the same working. The scrying element confirms what arrives (and hints at tampering), making this rite beloved by spies, nobles, and anyone who cannot afford counterfeit keys.
You observe an object through scrying and then teleport, anchoring your arrival to the relic's witnessed location. Treasure-hunters prize the rite because it converts “we saw it once” into “we can reach it now,” as long as the divination holds true.
You don't merely sever a curse—you diagnose it, unwind it, and then restore what it distorted. The working is favored for heirlooms and layered afflictions where breaking the curse is only half the victory.
You learn the curse's story—names, vows, origins—before you try to break it, and that knowledge becomes leverage in the breaking. This rite is the answer to ancient maledictions that resist ordinary solutions, because it attacks the root rather than the symptom.
You raise powerful undead within warded geometry, so the circle's runes become instructions hammered into bone and shadow. Compared to crude battlefield animation, this rite produces results that feel disciplined—like soldiers assembled with doctrine, not merely commanded with force.
You bind an extraplanar spirit into prepared corpses and enforce obedience through planar law and sigil constraints. The result is an undead lieutenant whose will is leashed by binding terms—an abomination created with contract precision rather than brute necromancy alone.
You lace compulsion into the same sympathetic thread that lets you observe your target. The geas rides the divinatory conduit like a verdict whispered across leagues, reaching a creature you can see—so long as the scrying holds.
You don't help a field—you rewrite a season. Weather arrives on time, winds spare blossoms, soil reshapes where it needs to, and growth surges across broad farmland. This is a civic rite performed from attuned places and is rarely useful in battle, but it can change the fate of a region.
One thread shows you the quarry, another points to the quarry, and the third teaches your feet the fastest honest route. The result is brutally practical: “There—and this is how we get there,” even through tangled roads and forgotten passes.
You conjure a celebration that feels like legend: streets become rivers of light, music arrives on cue, and a feast fit for dignitaries anchors the revel. The spectacle is large enough to move crowds—pageantry for hundreds—meant as a civic or downtime rite rather than a battlefield trick.
This ritual is performed in a circle of carefully placed lights—candles, lanterns, or coals—each one representing a question that must
be asked gently. The lead caster invites a voice from remains, then extends the conversation outward: to ancestors, to distant powers,
and finally to the cold, precise answers of fate itself.
The rite is not safe in the way a locked door is safe. It is safe in the way a well-written contract is safe: so long as every phrase
is exact. Many casters record the entire working in advance and read it aloud without improvisation.
The caster does not “send a spell.” The caster opens a lawful channel to a higher sky and convinces that sky to answer. Through scrying,
the lead caster fixes the place in mind with cruel clarity; through the gate, a thin wound in reality opens above the distant ground; and
then the judgement falls—radiant, vertical, and absolute.
This working is the terror of tyrants and the last resort of righteous orders. It is slow enough to require planning, but decisive enough
to end a siege, shatter a war camp, or erase a ritual site before the enemy can complete their own work.
This rite is how a city becomes a stage—and how the stage lies back. Streets subtly re-angle, distance becomes unreliable, landmarks “move”
in the mind, and the people themselves are wrapped in a coordinated illusion of identity. A traveler might walk for an hour and swear they
never left the same square. A spy might meet a contact and later realize the contact's face was a deliberate fiction.
In the hands of a benevolent ruler, the rite can be used for festival wonder and citywide celebration. In the hands of a paranoid regime,
it becomes a tool of fear: a metropolis where no one trusts what they see, including themselves.
Where ordinary divinations offer hints, this rite demands coherence. The caster gathers omens, consults a higher will, interrogates the
boundary of the unknown, and then seals the answers into a single actionable guidance—often tied to a specific person, mission, or choice.
When the ritual resolves, the lead caster (and often the primary beneficiary) receives a structured vision: warnings, likely outcomes,
and a “true north” principle that remains reliable even when details shift. Many orders use this rite before crusades, expeditions into
forbidden realms, or political gambits that could topple dynasties.
This rite is a fortress made of promise. The area becomes hostile to fiends and undead, sanctified against corruption, and wrapped in
protective law that discourages intrusion even by clever magic. When combined with a great burst of radiant force, it becomes not just a
ward—but a statement: “Nothing unclean may remain here.”
Temples cast it before relic processions. Paladin orders cast it before last stands. Some DMs reserve it for holy sites and legendary
moments, where the land itself is asked to take a side.
This is a heist-team's favorite “get out” plan and a rescue order's favorite “get in” plan. The caster first establishes certainty about
the target's location, then prepares a stable arrival/exit point, and finally masks the team's movement so pursuit becomes guesswork.
Used responsibly, it retrieves captives from enemy territory. Used irresponsibly, it retrieves artifacts from museums and calls it
“rebalancing history.” Either way, it's a 12-hour commitment—an operation, not a spell.
This rite is used by rulers, inquisitors, and—sometimes—merciful healers. The caster establishes a divinatory link to a subject, invades
the subject's sleep with a shaped dream, and binds the experience to a lasting lesson the mind struggles to ignore. It is not a “conversation.”
It is a verdict delivered in metaphor.
In gentler hands, the dream can be a warning that saves lives. In harsher hands, it becomes a tool of coercion. As always, the DM is the
final judge of what a combined ritual can reasonably accomplish at the table.
This rite is civic magic at its most theatrical: the city becomes a living festival. Streets bloom with illusory banners, music and
light arrive on cue, and every plaza can host a scene that repeats perfectly for days. A final thread of suggestion encourages joy,
calm, and cooperation—turning chaos into celebration and crowds into chorus.
When used for benevolent ends, it is remembered for generations. When used for propaganda, it is remembered too—just with a different
kind of shiver.
The rituals below are examples of truly consequential workings—rites that shape nations, settle wars, and rewrite the terms of survival. Many require four or five spells, and their ritual casting times (12 hours or 3 days) make them the province of preparation, pilgrimage, and dramatic set-pieces rather than improvisation.
This rite is spoken like a funeral and sung like a coronation. The lead caster calls lost souls back through the veil, restores the body
to wholeness, and then floods the returned with vitality enough to survive the shock of reunion. Priests of great temples perform it at
consecrated altars; archmagi perform it at leyline nexuses; tyrants perform it in sealed vaults and call it “inventory recovery.”
The working is not subtle. The air grows warm, then cold, then painfully alive. Names are spoken. Promises are demanded. When it ends, the
returned gasp as though surfacing from deep water—alive, restored, and very aware that something vast has been asked on their behalf.
This rite is how a “safe room” becomes a sanctum and how a sanctum becomes a legend. It layers planar exclusion, sacred (or profane)
dedication, privacy against scrying, internal defenses, and a final clause of consequence for trespass. When the working is complete,
the threshold feels heavier—like the building has decided to remain standing regardless of the world outside it.
Many fortresses are built with stone. This one is built with certainty. Cast repeatedly in the same place, it can become a keystone
of permanent wards and generational strongholds.
This is not “good farming.” This is a treaty between land and caster. The rite brings rain on schedule and sunlight at the right angle,
reshapes irrigation channels and terraces as if the valley itself remembers how it wants to be tended, and sanctifies the growth so blight,
taint, and unnatural pestilence struggle to gain a foothold.
When cast at an attuned location—standing stones, an ancient druid grove, a sainted river confluence—the valley seems to breathe out.
The work is slow, but the reward is political power: food, stability, and the quiet loyalty of thousands who eat because you acted.
Cities don't fall because walls are low; they fall because someone opens a door. This rite turns a district—sometimes an entire keep—
into a paranoid, watching thing. Wards mislead intruders, deny planar entry, punish trespass, and keep the interior hidden from distant
scrutiny. The warding “feels” present: torches seem to look back, hallways subtly guide strangers the wrong way, and doors resist as if
personally offended.
Rulers commission this rite the way they commission fleets: as a declaration that what lies within is not meant to be taken.
Farmers tell the tale as a prayer; druids keep it as a treaty. This rite does not merely encourage growth - it negotiates with the land. Over three days the casters lay thirteen furrows or lines of stones (as the terrain allows), anoint them with incense and oil, awaken a chosen living landmark (an ancient tree, a venerable hedge, a great standing reed-bed), and then knit weather and soil into a single obedient season.
When the covenant is sealed, a valley-sized region (or a comparable tract chosen by the DM) enters an unnatural year of plenty: rains arrive when needed, frosts retreat from tender shoots, and pests turn away as if smelling a predator. Crops grow thick, fruit swells heavy, and weeds struggle to take hold. The awakened landmark becomes a local steward; it cannot command the harvest, but it can warn of blight, fire, flood, or cruel magic.
The rite is slow and public by nature. In wartime it becomes a beacon-and therefore a target.
This rite is a chamber-council for the dead and the unseen. Over three nights the casters light a strict pattern of candles, trace a circle of names, and invite voices from three directions: the corpse’s memory, the world’s remembered stories, and the vast outsiders who observe mortal history with cold patience.
When completed, the ritual creates a formal “session” that lasts for the duration. During the session, you may ask questions as if you were casting the component divinations in turn, but the answers come as a single, coherent testimony: the dead speak, lore clarifies, omens weigh the truth of statements, and an otherworldly perspective corrects deliberate deception. If the session is held in a quiet, respected place (a shrine, tomb, library, or battlefield cairn), the voices tend toward clarity; in a profaned place, the testimony is bitter, cryptic, or laden with accusation.
Many who perform the Parliament of Echoes make the mistake of treating it as interrogation. The rite works best as diplomacy.
A fortress made of rules, not stone. This rite braids holiness (or unholiness) with absolute boundaries: trespass becomes difficult, scrying becomes unreliable, concealed keystones vanish from all sense, and every doorway can become a trap if spoken to in the correct tongue. The Bastion is the classic answer to “How do we keep it safe when we must leave?”
When completed, choose a site you have occupied throughout the casting. The site becomes warded against planar travel, intrusion, and distant observation. The ward can be keyed to allow chosen creatures to pass or to be repelled; it can be made gentle as a warning or violent as a condemnation. In addition, one hidden anchor-object within the site (often a cornerstone, reliquary, or sealed vault) is sequestered from discovery, and one or more glyphs can be bound into the site’s architecture as final, cruel punctuation.
This ritual is almost never completed in secret. Those who attempt it in the open usually do so because they can defend the casting for three full days.
The Star-Spear is an infamous working: an act of distant wrath delivered with ceremonial precision. The casters first secure the “view” (a scryed truth), then open a narrow, deliberate connection to a higher realm, and finally let judgment fall like a pillar through a keyhole. Witnesses describe it as a silent lance of radiance, followed by thunder that seems to arrive late, as if reality needed time to admit what happened.
When completed, you designate a creature you can scry (or a location whose truth you have fixed through the casting). A celestial aperture opens high above the target point and a column of radiant devastation descends. The strike may arrive as a single catastrophic moment or as a sustained “burn” that lingers for the duration (DM’s choice based on the fiction and the ritual’s amplification). Storm and wind gather in sympathy; clouds curl as if pulled by a hook.
This rite is the opposite of subtlety. Its greatest defense is the distance between the casters and the consequence.
Citywide illusion is not merely size. It is continuity. This rite binds five separate deceits: the landscape lie, the crowd lie, the story lie, the scheduled lie, and the warded lie. The Masque is how a city becomes a stage that refuses to break character.
When completed, a city district (or an area chosen by the DM) is overlaid with a grand illusion that changes streets, hides routes, invents plazas, and makes barriers feel real to the touch. Within that area, selected inhabitants can be given consistent disguises, while scripted scenes can be triggered by time, location, or a spoken phrase. The illusion can be designed to feel celebratory, protective, or cruelly predatory-and it can be tuned to mislead divinations by presenting a false “normal.”
The Masque is often used defensively: not to stop invaders, but to make them waste days walking circles.
Some divinations predict. This rite persuades. Over three days, the casters layer omen, counsel, and story until fate begins to behave like a well-rehearsed play. The Chronicle is recorded as words, knots, chalk-marks, or carved runes; each “line” of the Chronicle is a promise the world becomes more likely to keep.
When completed, you name a course of action for a group (a journey, a negotiation, a trial, a hunt, a heist) and a window of time. For the duration, those who follow the Chronicle receive a persistent sense of the “right next step”: a pull away from doomed choices, a taste of warning before ambush, and a quiet confidence when the promised path is still open. The Chronicle does not negate risk, but it tilts chance. The DM may represent this with advantage on key checks, reduced uncertainty, or clearer prophetic guidance-always with the understanding that the Chronicle is strongest when obeyed.
This rite is spoken like a legal document and drawn like a trap. The caster does not merely open a way to a creature; the caster prepares a place for the creature to arrive, a moment for it to be caught, and a sentence it must hear before it can speak its own.
When completed, you may call a specific creature whose name you know (or whose identity you have established through the casting) to a prepared circle within the ritual site. The creature is pulled through a gate and arrives within the bounds of a binding circle. The working presses immediately into restraint, compulsion, and terms: the creature may be held, compelled to hear your proclamation, and bound to a demanded service or bargain.
The rite is infamous for the consequences of arrogance. Calling a creature is easy; surviving the creature’s opinion of you is not.
A treasure is only truly owned when it can be summoned. This rite creates a durable sympathetic link between a marked object and a prepared receiving-place. The object is hidden from casual discovery, its vault is hardened against intrusion, and a single decisive gesture can call the prize home.
When completed, you touch a sapphire to the object you wish to bind and speak its “true receipt” into the ritual ledger. The object becomes difficult to locate or steal by mundane means; locks harden, wards settle, and the object seems to “refuse to be found.” At any later time, you may break the sapphire to summon the object to the prepared receiving-place, even across vast distance, so long as the object still exists and is not under effects that explicitly prevent such travel (DM’s call).
This rite is popular among archmages for a simple reason: it turns paranoia into a mechanism.
Maps show distances. This rite abolishes them. The Relic Road first learns the correct path, then draws a circle of return, and finally folds the travelers through a single, decisive step. It is frequently used to recover lost heirlooms, stolen regalia, or artifacts that have been buried in deliberate secrecy.
When completed, you name an object you seek (or a location strongly associated with it) and present a token from that place or story. The ritual reveals the most direct route in the moment the casting ends-and then, if you choose, it carries you along that route in a single instant to a safe arrival point near the destination (as determined by the DM). A prepared teleportation circle is etched as part of the rite, allowing immediate retreat or reinforcement.
This rite is the reason many vaults are built to be found only once.
Curses cling like stories: they have beginnings, rules, and endings that refuse to be rushed. This rite identifies the curse as a narrative, strips its hooks from the victim, restores what it damaged, and seals the object so the same malice cannot easily reattach itself.
When completed, you cleanse a single cursed object and all creatures presently bound by its curse. The rite reveals the curse’s nature, origin, and triggers (when such knowledge is possible), then breaks the binding, mends lingering afflictions, and sanctifies (or profanes, if performed by darker hands) the object’s presence so that re-cursing requires deliberate, renewed effort.
The Purification is loved by adventurers, hated by witches, and respected by everyone else.
Tyrants love distance. So do the righteous. This rite is a five-link chain that reaches through vision, enters sleep, lays down law, edits memory to make the law feel inevitable, and then delivers the final phrasing in the waking world. Those who survive it describe the sensation as waking up already convinced.
When completed, you designate a creature you can scry. Over the duration, the creature becomes vulnerable to a procession of messages: a waking sending, a dream visitation, a binding geas, and a subtle rearrangement of recollection that makes the geas feel like a remembered promise rather than an imposed command. The working is strongest when the edict is phrased as a vow the target can rationalize. A creature whose will is unbroken may still resist, but even resistance leaves a scar of certainty: “Something tried to make me swear.”
This rite is forbidden in many lands-and quietly preserved in many more.
The Panopticon is not a single eye; it is an institution. This rite assembles pursuit from five disciplines: story, sight, supernatural scouting, relentless location, and the refusal to be fooled by glamours. It is how inquisitors become legends and fugitives become myths.
When completed, you designate a quarry by name and description. For the duration, you can locate and observe the quarry with brutal precision, even as they flee, disguise themselves, or hide behind mundane barriers. The ritual supplies a constant sense of “there” (direction and distance), intermittent vision when circumstances allow, and contextual lore that helps you predict where the quarry will go next. In practice, the Panopticon turns a chase into an inevitability-unless the quarry has the power to break the rules of the world as thoroughly as you do.
A festival that cannot be forgotten is a spell with a crowd. This rite feeds the people, clothes the city in light, scripts harmless wonders into alley and plaza, and gently persuades despair to step aside. In times of war, it has been used as resistance; in times of peace, it has been used as a founding myth.
When completed, a celebration blooms across an area chosen by the DM: food appears in abundance, music carries without tiring the musicians, lanterns drift as if they know where to gather, and illusions perform on schedule-dancing constellations above rooftops, ghostly fireworks over rivers, and staged “miracles” that make children scream with delighted terror. The rite can also be keyed to perform civic functions: calming riots, honoring the dead, or turning a coronation into an unassailable symbol.
This is necromancy as architecture. The casters raise bodies, animate them into temporary frenzy to “loosen” the dead from fear, then bind the resulting horde under a single crowned will. The final sanctification is inverted: a hallowing that blesses emptiness and declares life an intruder.
When completed, you create a hierarchy of undead within the ritual site: newly made undead rise in ordered ranks, their obedience sharpened and their hunger disciplined. For the duration, the site itself becomes an ally to the dead - sounds dampen, warmth leaches away, and the living feel watched. The crown of command may be a literal circlet, a rune-etched skull, or a spoken title that only the dead recognize. If the crown is destroyed, the structure of control fractures (often violently).
The Ossuary Crown is a war crime in many kingdoms, and a rite of passage in a few.
This rite is a bargain with magic itself: “Be quiet here.” It layers personal protections, countermagic, and absolute interdiction into a ward that feels like stepping behind thick glass. Wizards describe the sensation as comforting; sorcerers describe it as suffocating.
When completed, you designate a sanctuary boundary within the ritual site. Within that boundary, hostile magic struggles to take hold; charms and compulsions slide off, detection fails or lies, and transmutation that would harden or break the body is resisted. At the DM’s discretion (and often as a reward for strong amplification or an attuned location), the sanctuary may briefly manifest as a true null-zone that suppresses ongoing magical effects at the boundary’s heart, while allowing explicitly invited magic to function.
The rite takes three days because it must convince the world that this place is an exception.