Ambassadorial Gatekeeper

Rules

Performing the Ritual

Performing this ritual takes at least 2 minutes of roleplaying. This ritual targets a character, who must be present throughout.

Effects

This ritual allows a single target to accompany one of the contributors through a portal. The target can enter the portal alongside one of the contributors, but can leave through it without requiring their assistance provided they do so before the next sunrise

The ritual must be performed at a portal; at the completion at least one of the contributors must accompany the target character (or characters) through that portal. There is no additional mana cost to operate the portal.

Note that as with operate portal, it is not possible for anyone to carry a living creature who is dying or terminal, or otherwise incapacitated, through the portal unless they are also a target of the ritual.

Additional Targets

This ritual can affect additional characters who are members of the same band. Each additional target increases the magnitude by 8. Each character must be present throughout the ritual.

Description

This simple, if expensive, ritual is primarily used to convey characters who are not magicians to the Hall of Worlds, usually either to address the Imperial Conclave or to attend an audience with an eternal. In the past it was also used to allow mundane visitors to pass through the hidden portals that are sometimes found in regio, especially by those Dawnish enchanters and Marcher landskeepers who did not consider it appropriate to call on the denizens of those chambers without at least a token entourage.

While one of the ritualists must accompany the target through the portal the first time, they can return under their own power simply by walking through an appropriate portal - provided that portal has not been sealed in some way. While a magician can usually force open a portal that an eternal does not wish them to use by casting operate portal, a fully mundane person has no such capacity.

Although the ritual is usually performed in a regio, there is no requirement that the ritualists draw on that regio - in theory Ambassadorial Gatekeeper would work as easily on a portal found outside of a magical aura.

Some League mountebanks ironically reference the Pauper's Key and call this ritual The Beggar's Cavalcade - and the name is also used by a few members of the Celestial Arch order (specifically those who consider a magician who acts as a conduit for non-magicians to be acting in a slightly shameful manner). By contrast members of the Golden Pyramid have been known to favour using this ritual to allow artisans to enter the Hall of Worlds and attend meetings of the Conclave - in one capacity or another. Among the Suaq icewalkers and the Navarr this ritual is called The Guide for Empty Places, and a ritualist who leads a group through a portal traditionally assumes total responsibility for their safety - and their safe return. This can be a heavy burden, and there are stories of guides who have crippled or on some occasions even killed errant members of their own party whose foolish or rude behaviour has endangered the others.

One potential advantage to this ritual over the traditional incantation is that, while the ritual must be performed without armour, there is no requirement for the target to be unarmoured. It has sometimes been used to allow heavily armoured allies to accompany a magician on an excursion to a potentially dangerous regio chamber.

Common Elements

This ritual is invariably cast in a regio, and the invocation and other trappings often reflect or symbolise the Realm to which that regio is attuned. Keys. especially metal keys. are a very common element as is the creation of an artificial threshold across which the ritualists and their guests step at the completion of the ritual. This is often achieved by laying down a thin layer of salt or powder, or among practical Marcher ritualists by laying down a staff or drawing a line in the dirt.

Some ritualists give a token to the targets of the ritual intended to protect them or mark them as guests - iron keys on thongs are a very common signifier that someone is a guest in a chamber or the Hall of Worlds. The rune Hirmok and Lann, the virtue of Loyalty and the constellations of The Key and The Door are often evoked with this ritual.