Prerequistes: Thaumaturgy, Survival 128; Experience: 123456789xp
Activation: 2 hours Duration: While maintained
Ingredients: A chime tuned to sound at 439 Hz, a mcGuffin; see text.

To prepare for this ritual the thaumaturge spends at least 24 hours in nature in the area to be warded, meditating on the nature of their surroundings and picking up and discarding a few potential mcGuffins. While the time required to meditate varies based on the size and complexity of the area, thaumaturges generally know they are ready to perform the ritual once they have found the correct focal point and mcGuffin.

The thaumaturges begin this ritual by drawing an elaborate warding circle at the focal point of the mystical energies that mark the area to be warded as one area. They then place the chime, the thaumaturge and the mcGuffin in a triangulation in the centre of the circle.

The thaumaturge then chants his will into the chime, while he uses his a point of his blood to complete the circle and the mcGuffin to focus the chime to the nature of the boundary they wish to ward.

Upon successful completion of the ritual the chime will sound once. Thereafter it will continue working for one week, sounding once for every event that potentially threatens the area the chime was focused on.

If a chime is already active the enchanted chime and an effigy of the mcGuffin can be used to repeat the ritual and maintain the enchantment for another week. Normally an apprentice or ghoul should be able to perform this maintenance even without proper thaumaturgic training, if they have the ritual text available for recitation and are careful to not disturb the magic circle.

The chime will sound on any event that might potentially threaten the area. While this might sound like its very strong, it is actually its mayor weakness for the chime cannot tell the difference between the butt end of a cigarette on a rainy day and an arsonist during dry season. Therefore thaumaturges often exercise special care to select the mcGuffin, the location of the ritual and the particularities of the warding circle to let the chime ward only the area they are actually interested in. This often requires trade-offs where eliminating a lot of the false positives might also exclude some actually interesting events from the warded area. In addition to this the chime has to remain exposed to the elements so things like hailstones or gusts of wind might also sound the chime; or cause it to move in tandem with the clapper to prevent a sounding.

System: Among events that can threaten the boundary are at least all thaumaturgic rituals, since they, by their nature, have to potential to fail in highly unpredictable ways. The chime will always sound at the same volume, regardless of the distance of the triggering event.

During preparation the thaumaturge makes one extended perception(wits?)+survival roll per full day they spend in the area until they have accumulated 10 successes per square mile to get to know the area. Spending time in not-nature will rapidly increase the difficulty for the day the transgression happened. It is impossible to leave the area during meditation and the area alters itself to include the paths of the thaumaturge if required. This usually changes the number of successes required.

The difficulty of the activation roll depends on how precise the thaumaturge wants to be. For example, a sufficiently green back-yard is much easier to learn about than central park, but central park is much easier to learn about than "central park, except for the roads and major paths, except for the bits I had to cross to get around"