Joyless Spirit's Corruption

Cost: 30 motes
Target: One god or elemental

This ritual is the most effective method to turn a god or elemental of Creation into a spirit with power and responsibility in the Underworld. Usually, only the most corrupt gods of waste, ruin and decay conceive of advancing themselves by joining the Underworld, a realm without gods of its own, but a few exceptions occur. (For instance, Fou Tung, Annalist of Brigands' Murders and Deaths, believed he could better perform his function in the Underworld than in his palace in Yu-Shan.) The ritual works only on a willing god who knows full well that it renounces the Celestial Bureaucracy and Creation completely.

The spell's six-hour ritual involves anointing the god with funerary oils and foul potions that represent the transition from life to death. It must take place in a shadowland and end as the sun sets. Among other tainting portions of the ritual, the necromancer sacrifices a mortal ridden by a ghost, and both god and necromancer sip its blood. After the ritual, consider the god "dead" for purposes of where it regains Essence and at what rate (see Exalted, p. 313). The god is also considered a creature of darkness, and it now bears responsibilities in the Underworld, resembling those it had in Creation. Elementals become tied to the dead and silent elements of the Underworld. The Underworld has no Celestial or Terrestrial Bureaucracy, however, and no censors, so most spirits who tie themselves to the Underworld are free to do as they please.

Once per year, the necromancer who uses this spell to corrupt a god may demand one favor from it. The fallen god must grant the request unless its performance would take more than a month or endanger its existence.