Unknown Armies

Rituals

The Unwritten Word

A ritual which lets the target of the spell disappear from any kind of record now extant or made in future.

This ritual hails from the dawn of recorded history; in fact it is a reaction to the recording of history. It has been passed down the millennia by word-of-mouth only. You won't find a person who knew it in any history book - that should be proof enough of its power. The ritual is commonly used on persons, but it can be used for any item as well. The only prerequisite is that the item must be completely unique; there may be no other copy or version of the item, nor may there ever have been one. Note that it might be possible to break the spell by creating an exact and working copy of the item, but so far this has not been proven. If the ritual is used on a person the help of a trusted friend or servant is needed; this person does not need to know the ritual but must be prepared to lend the caster a hand.

Cost:
5 significant charges

Ritual Action:
Cover yourself, the recipient of the ritual or the item with symbols of as many languages and alphabets as you can find with reasonable research. No symbol may be used twice and the complete body must be covered with only as much space as needed to still recognize the symbols. The symbols must be drawn with the blood of the caster at the time of the new moon. Next the body must be completely encased in wet clay (breathing holes are allowed). The clay-encased body must be placed outside before dawn, and the clay must harden under the sun; the body may not be moved before sundown. When the sun has disappeared under the horizon, use a bronze hammer to shatter the clay encasing. The symbols will have disappeared from the body without a trace.

Effect:
From the breaking of the clay onward no written (or in modern days, filmed, sound-recorded or electronically stored) record of the person or item made or already in existence will last long enough to be of practical use. For modern purposes this means that security video tapes will be accidentally erased before they can be watched; police reports will be misplaced or accidentally shredded so that no investigations will be made; business cards will vanish before the phone numbers on them will be used or memorized; the possibilities are endless. The only recording device not affected is memory. Anyone may remember a person on whom the ritual was cast, talk about him, know his name and phone number, and even give them to others, but if the information is written down it will soon be affected by the magick.

Robin | profile | Jul 18, 02 | 4:13 pm

Visitor Comments

Interesting, but I’d play-up the down-side in today’s society of not having any print or electronic identity: it’d be impossible to open a bank account, get a credit card, get a driver’s license, prove ownership of a car or anything else, rent a house or apartment, hold down any kind of job other than something paying cash under the table.

You’d have no medical history, any kind of long-term care would be out of question as the hospital would loose all track of your tests & possibly that you’re even there. Medication would also be hard to come by. No letters, e-mail, even your blog/newsgroup posts would disappear.

The “beneficiary” of this ritual would, without the largess or protection of others, be fairly helpless without a large supply of cash on hand, which would create it’s own problems. Even then, anything that can’t be gotten immediately (the memory-only issue) or through a third party is probably impossible to get at all.

In that regard I could see the darker elements of the Underground using it as a curse to cut an enemy off from his or her resources, or to keep underlings in-line:

A call-girl is found badly beaten in an alley, the police report disappears, the ambulance report disappears, only the intern at the emergency room remembers treating her, and swears he followed reporting procedures. After a shift-change the duty nurse can’t find any record of why there’s an unconscious women in her ward, who she is, or what needs to be done to keep her alive so she calls the cops, while the hospital accountants want to get rid of her…

Talk about identity loss!

Greykev | profile | Jan 11, 04 | 2:40 pm

The ritual is not only intended for persons, but I agree that in the modern world it would have its drawbacks. On the other side, you can rob and steal your way through life, only having to worry about immediate opposition; as long as you evade being shot on the spot you might be able to get along pretty well.

Robin

Robin | profile | Jan 12, 04 | 3:55 am

You know how in a big school like this there are always a few classrooms that are supposed to be empty every class-period? Well they aren’t. There’s a group of students and teachers who use those supposedly empty rooms without the rest of the school being any wiser. Students who aren’t in any of the regular classes, or even registered with the school, and teachers I’ve never seen in anywhere else. The thing is, I think they’ve starting to notice me looking in on them, and they aren’t happy about it.

Greykev | profile | Jan 12, 04 | 11:31 pm

crud, the above bit is supposed to go on the "High school Horrors" rumor - what I get for having multiple windows open I guess.

-GK

Greykev | profile | Jan 12, 04 | 11:33 pm

Two ideas about this ritual:
1. Perhaps the recipient immediately fades from family photographs & such?
2. One way to handle it that might make it more useful would be to rule that it only erases a single Identity (the name of the recipient would be written among the symbols in this case), allowing for the possibility of inventing a new identity later.

Orion_Magnus | profile | Mar 11, 12 | 8:05 pm