A Stallia Ceremony - Magnitude 12 - The Star Serpent
Performing the Ceremony
This ceremony may only be performed during a Summit where The Precipice alignment to Stallia is in effect. Its effective Magnitude is 8.
Performing this Ceremony takes at least 2 minutes of roleplaying. This Ceremony targets one character, who must be present throughout, but need not be one of the priests performing the Ceremony.
Effects
The Target may offer up a written question on a piece of paper folded 5 times, which must pertain to information available entirely within the Mortal Sphere. Matters of opinion or predictions of what may happen will recieve incomprehensible results.
The Target must then meditate alone for some time, at which point a factually correct answer may appear in their minds if they have formulated their question correctly, placed there through direct connection to the Star Serpent.
The Target experiences a roleplaying effect: The power of the highest heights has overshadowed you, and flickering images of six burning eyes haloed by stars haunt your visions. You are startled by them every time you look into a dark place or up into the sky.
The roleplaying effect lasts until the following dawn.
Description
It is only through solemn meditation that this ceremony is reported to function. Whether it be that an active mind strives too much to comprehend the intellect that overshadows it, and in doing so fails to grasp what is being conveyed, or simply that the Star Serpent reaches out only to those fully prepared to accept its blessings is unknown.
Those who have experienced this connection have historically described the information as being given to them in weird and hard to define ways - language but not of any type that can be spoken or written down, as much intention as it is
Performing the Ceremony
Drawn, naturally, from the Star Serpent, this Ceremony requires connection to the Shackled One through the lens of its Chapter's Eternal. Doing so is always a potentially dangerous and fraught option, as it pulls the human mind too close to that which is anathemic as a warning for a reason - those who do not take this ceremony with the severity and seriousness it deserves risk opening their minds even briefly to a near-infinite wellspring. Doing so almost inevitably means death.
This Ceremony, therefore, is done most commonly with hearts and minds as much as words. Written entreaties and wispered requests for clarity are common, holding to hope that the sacrifice of crystal mana and the blessed protections of the Sanctified Square are enough to safeguard the one with the quest for knowledge in their communement with the Star Serpent.