Shrines

Shrines are places of magical or religious power, allowing the creators to gain favors from their deities or from the winds of Magick.

A shrine can have many shapes such as an altar, a holy statue, a stone circle, a giant straw puppet, a pile of skulls, an alcove with candles and statue, a chapel, a mausoleum, a monument,… It is up to the creator to define the shape as what makes narrative sense.

Shrines need to be created once. After creation, they can be activated (usually with some ritual) to enable its effects. A shrine may be activated multiple times. Opponents may attempt to deactivate the effect, or destroy the shrine entirely.

Creating Shrines

The creator first chooses a shrine effect from the table below, or even combine multiple effects. The creator needs to have a level of shrine creation training of at least the power level of the shrine. If additional people are aiding the creator, add +1 to the creator’s training level for each additional character that has at least 1 level of shrine creation training, and add +1 for each 10 characters that do not have any level of shrine creation training. If multiple effects are added to the shrine, take the sum of all individual power levels for all effects.

Shrine creation	Level
Basic creation power level	Creator’s training level
Each additional trained creator	+1
Each additional 10 untrained creators	+1
Multiple shrine effects	Sum of individual power levels

The time it takes and the cost to create a shrine depends on the total shrine power level. The cost represents all the tools, materials, occult ingredients, and labor fees needed to construct the whole shrine. If the creator already has (partially) provided these elements, the cost of the shrine may be reduced at the GM’s discretion.

Level	Examples	Time to build	Cost to build
1	Small straw puppet, wooden statue, circle of boulders, pile of skulls, table with candles	1 hour	1 cp
2	holy statue, altar, relic box	hours	1 st
3	giant straw animal, big stone statue, rock-carved alcove	days, 1 endeavour	10 st
4	chapel, mausoleum	weeks, 2 endeavours	10 GK
5	menhir circle	months, 5 endeavours	100 GK
6+	mountain-carved statue, monument	years, campaign spanning	1,000+ GK

Activating a Shrine

After creation, a shrine needs to be activated to start its effect, usually with a ritual, and often requiring special ingredients. After the duration of the effect, the activation must be repeated to restart the effects. The activation ritual may involve praying, chanting, singing, conducting an orgy, indulging in excessive drinking, getting in a trance. For low level shrines this could be as simple as a short prayer or a small sacrifice (such as some food, wine, flowers, burning incense, or decorated stones). For higher level shrines this usually takes more elaborate and complex rituals with multiple people, and more exotic materials (such as 3 eyes of a murderer, human milk, tears of a gypsy, feathers of a griffon, or a blood red obsidian).

The time needed to activate a shrine is listed in the table below.

Level	Time to activate
1	1 turn
2	turns
3	minutes
4	hours
5	days
6+	weeks

Deactivating a Shrine

Characters can deactivate a shrine by dealing damage. The amount of damage needed is listed below. Lethal damage is not effective against structures, so only counts half. Spells and prayers do full damage. If a spell or prayer of an opposite school is used, the damage is doubled. The GM decides whether a spell or prayer is of opposite school.

Level	Dam. to deactivate
1	25
2	50
3	100
4	200
5	400
6+	800
Lethal damage	Half
Impact damage	Full
Spell/prayer damage	Full
Opposing spell/prayer	Double

Destroying a Shrine

To destroy a shrine entirely, it first needs to be deactivated. Afterwards, no tests are needed to destroy the deactivated shrine, only time. The time needed to destroy a shrine is listed in the table below.

Level	Time to destroy
1	turns
2	minutes
3	hours
4	days
5	weeks
6+	months

Shrine effects

Area

The area in which a shrine is effective is loosely defined as a 100 meter radius, which roughly corresponds to long range. It is up to GM discretion what is exactly within reach of the shrine’s effects.

Duration

The nominal duration is 1 day, after which the shrine needs to be re-activated. Some shrines have a one-time effect, for which a duration is irrelevant.

Increasing the duration can be done by increasing the power level of the shrine, according to the table below.

Power level	Duration
+0	1 day
+1	1 week
+2	1 month
+3	several years
+4	probably centuries

Effect

See the table below for the different shrine effects. The descriptions use the following keywords:

• Creators are all people that participated to the creation of the shrine.
• Opponents are all people that were not present when the shrine was created.
• Observers are all people that were present but did not participate to the creation of the shrine.

Level	Name	Effect
1	Fertility	Crops in the area grow faster.
1	Blight	Crops in the area wither and die.
1	Spiritual sight	All creators gain darkvision in the area.
1	Eternal rest	Prevent bodies from rising as undead within the area.
1	Nature’s calm	Calms all animals within the area.
1	Nervousness	Makes all animals skittish within the area.
1	Preservation	Prevents food from spoiling within the area.
1	Good wind	Affects wind for the next 1d6 days on each activation (affecting travel, fog/smoke).
1	Rainfall	Affects rain for the next 1d6 days on each activation (affecting travel, crop growth).
1	Luminosity	The shrine glows, lighting the area.
1	Foul darkness	The area is filled with a foul darkness, reducing visibility down to 1 m (next square). Darkvision does not help.
2	Fearlessness	All creators become immune to fear while within the area.
2	Spell blocking	All spells cast in this area suffer disadvantage on the spellcasting test.
2	Magical chaos	Miscast tests automatically fail for all spells cast in the area.
2	Unreliability of flight	Ranged attacks automatically miss if targeting a creature within the area.
2	Damage amplification	All creators gain advantage to damage in melee and ranged combat.
2	Good night’s rest	Double the number of hit points healed for each night’s rest inside the area, to every creature.
2	Arcane resistance	All creators gain +5 spell defense TN.
2	Berserker’s soul	Each creature in the area must make a courage test each turn or go in Frenzy.
2	Feast of blood	All lethal and impact damage is doubled in the area.
3	Uninvitation	Prevent undead or a specific monster from entering the building.
3	Nightmares	All opponents that enter the area suffer from nightmares for 1d6 days, get 1 exhaustion condition each morning.
3	Arcane amplification	All casters in the area gain advantage to cast spells or prayers of a chosen type.
3	Universal precision	All creators gain advantage to hit in melee and ranged combat.
3	Bluntness of weapons	All creators gain IR +3 and a resistance to lethal damage (half damage).
3	Unlife	Any creature that dies while the shrine is active, reanimates within 1d6 turns. Use a zombie statblock for humanoids.
3	Mental pain	All opponents must make a courage test or suffer 1d6 L damage each turn.
3	Self-defense	On each successful melee attack on the shrine, the attacker must make a dodge test or suffer 4d6 L damage.
3	Vermin spawn	Each turn, summon 1 minor creature (skeleton, ghoul, small demon, giant rat,…) or 1d6 swarm creatures (birds, snakes, rats, giant spiders,…)
3	Striking	The shrine casts a bolt spell each turn striking a single target, with a total modifier of +5. No miscasts.
3	Poisonous fog	A poisonous fog fills the area, reducing visibility to 1 meter. Each opponent must make an Endurance test or suffer 1d6 L damage per turn.
3	Fear	All opponents must make a courage test or be feared, each turn.
4	Good luck	Each creator will benefit from good luck for 1d6 days after activation. GM defines what that means.
4	Bad luck	Each opponent will suffer from bad luck for 1d6 days after entering the area. GM defines what that means.
4	Envigorating	Envigorating: all creators gain 1d6 stun points per turn.
4	Healing	Healing: all creators gain 1d6 health points per turn.
4	Summoning	On each activation of the shrine, 1 particular creature is summoned.
4	Damage immunity	All creators become immune to either lethal or stun damage (creator’s choice) while within the area.