Rituals are conducted by one or more mages, and must be conducted in a place of power, whether holy ground or an Aether Conflux. Veilguard has one large central Conflux that ritualists can use, and Mystics can create holy ground using the Hallow ritual.
You can find a complete list of the rituals available on the Ritual Lists page.
You must have one of the Arcanist or Mystic abilities to contribute to a ritual casting.
If you are a Mystic, you can only perform rituals with other Mystics of your deity.
If you are an Arcanist, you can only perform rituals with other Arcanists.
At least one participant in the ritual must have mastered the Ritual List containing the ritual that is being cast; the character(s) who have mastered the ritual act as the leaders of the performance of the ritual. Leading a ritual is mostly a ceremonial position, acting as the conductor who guides the other participants in what to do.
You can always assist someone else in performing a ritual, even if you haven’t mastered it yourself, provided that you are both either Arcanists or Mystics of the same deity.
Mana cannot fuel a ritual; it lacks the density of power needed to create the effects of a ritual, and disperses into the atmosphere too quickly to be used in one. Aether, however, is a perfect energy source for magical rituals, provided it is condensed into a small package (such as an Aether Crystal) and then steadily released into the ritual’s workings. This makes Aether Crystals a vital resource, as they are by far the most reliable means of powering rituals known to mortalkind.
Every ritualist taking part in a ritual can consume one or more Aether Crystals to power it. Each Aether Crystal consumed this way contributes +1 Ritual Power to the ritual, which is doubled if the mage in question has Mastered that ritual.
The maximum number of Aether Crystals that a mage can consume during a ritual is equal to their Aether Channeling attribute. The value of this attribute is determined by a number of factors, such as whether they’re a Mystic or Arcanist, how many levels of the Mana Well ability they have, whether they’ve drunk a Brightblood Elixir or similar, and so on.
A mage can only take part in a limited number of rituals in a day, represented by their Ritual Fatigue attribute; the process of channeling power in a ritual is arduous, and it takes training to endure it multiple times a day safely. Each mage starts off being able to take part in 1 ritual per day, plus +1 per level of the Ritualist ability they have.
At least one participant in the ritual must have mastered the Ritual List containing the ritual that is being cast; the character(s) who have mastered the ritual act as the leaders of the performance of the ritual. Leading a ritual is mostly a ceremonial position, acting as the conductor who guides the other participants in what to do.
You can contribute to a ritual even if you haven’t mastered the ritual being performed, by pouring energy and aether into it and letting those who do know how to perform it shape the energies into the desired effect. However, knowledge of a ritual drastically increases how much you can aid in performing a ritual, so when possible seek out other ritualists who know the ritual(s) you want to perform in order to perform them more effectively.
The total amount of Ritual Power that a mage contributes to the ritual is doubled if they have mastered the Ritual being cast.
You do not need to have mastered a ritual to assist in performing it; you only need to be a Mystic of the same deity as the leader(s) of the ritual, or an Arcanist if the leader is an Arcanist.
If a mage consumes more than 7 Aether Crystals during a single ritual, they suffer from Aether Shock, with symptoms that can range from annoying to debilitating to deadly. It does not matter how high their Aether Channeling attribute is; there is a hard cap on how much energy a mortal body can channel safely, and while it’s possible for trained ritualists to exceed this limit if necessary, it is still a dangerous process.
Mechanically, this takes the form of a Traumatic Wound card handed to you by a Referee or by Wheelhouse; the severity and consequences of the Aether Shock will be determined by the card you receive.
When you cast a ritual that has a lasting magical effect on something, that effect is called a Sorcery. Most Sorceries are applied to a person, Enterprise, Army, Province, or Nation, though some rare Sorceries can affect an area of ground or some other kind of target.
In all cases, if you apply a Sorcery to something that already has a Sorcery affecting it, the new Sorcery dispels the old one. For example, you cannot have two Personal Sorceries affecting you at the same time, as the second one that is applied to you overwrites the first one. However, you can have a Personal Sorcery affecting you, an Enterprise Sorcery affecting your Enterprise, and a Provincial Sorcery affecting the Province your Enterprise is located in, because all three of those Sorceries are targeting different things (you, your Enterprise, and your Enterprise’s Province, respectively).
There are some specific rules for casting Sorceries on the various scales of effect:
When you perform a ritual that places a lasting harmful effect upon something, that effect is known as a Curse.
Unlike Sorceries, multiple Curses can affect the same target. However, the same Curse cannot be applied to the same target more than once. It is entirely possible to stack a dozen different Curses on someone or something that you particularly dislike, though past a certain point that level of spite starts to draw the attention of the Old Gods, so tread carefully when you contemplate burying your enemies in maleficent magic.
Curses do not require the target to be present during their casting (though if they are it simplifies the process of applying them considerably). Instead, when you wish to perform a ritual to cast a Curse, you must go to Wheelhouse to pick up a Curse Card, and then perform the ritual with a Referee present. After you perform the ritual, whoever possesses the Curse Card has 30 minutes to find and deliver it to its intended recipient, at which point the Curse is applied to them. If they cannot deliver the Curse Card within that timeframe, the Curse dissipates, and any resources used to perform the ritual are wasted.
Like Sorceries, Curses require specific targets to apply them to something bigger than a single person:
In the fiction of the game, Curses and Sorceries that affect Provinces, Armies, and Nations are incredibly difficult to perform outside of Veilguard; it’s simply impossible to cast them on such a large amount of territory and/or people at once, and the few ways that exist to get around this hurdle are so expensive in terms of Aether Crystals and rare materials that it’s simply not worth the trouble to attempt to cast such rituals normally.
Veilguard changes that calculus, though; its nature as a liminal space outside the material world means that rituals performed there that have a magically-sympathetic conduit to a part of the material world can ignore the general requirements of being able to see or touch a target when you perform a ritual. This effectively lets ritualists cast Sorceries (and Curses) upon anything they have a sympathetic link to and enough power to affect in its entirety. This property makes Veilguard one of the best weapons that the mortal nations have against the cultist threat — provided that they can find ways to work together and leverage it effectively, of course.