I recently thought about what kind of initiations I have given player characters into sorcery. The first trials are easy to come up with new and exciting ways to present. Humility for example is just so much fun to teach ^^
Sacrifice on the other hand. It kinda quickly gets boring. You can only sacrifice "true love" so many times.... and actually I am kinda reluctant to let players sacrifice something like that because it usually is such a good story hook.
So, lets collect some sacrifices players in our chronicles have made to gain access to occult lore.
I'll make a start:
Emerald: A finger, an eye, friendship to a certain person, Wealth, Their self (like brigid, was actually fun to see it roleplayed)...
Saphire: Compassion (never being able to channel it again sucked though), a lover (the relationship), his daiklaive (symbolic for leaving the way of the warrior and stepping onto that of the sorceror), eyesight
Adamant: the ability to love, the ability to speak

Emerald:  Any single organ not required for an active life (spleen, appendix, eye, ear, lesser digit), all of their Essence for a month, or a small Artifact (level 1 or 2) or lesser Hearthstone (level 1 or 2).

Saphire: Family member(s) (you can be mean and make them pick one), a lung, kidney, or major organ that won't kill them, their morality (make them phsically do the sacrificing of a stranger), a level 3 or 4 Artifact or Hearthstone, or the ability to walk.

Adamant: Personally sacrificing their entire family (see Lews Therin Kinslayer for details), destroying a city, destroying a one-of-a-kind Artifact, or committing an act required to get a wanted level of 5.

I broke the rules slightly when my sorcerer learned emerald and made the sacrifice and casting his first spell happen simultaneously. Guilt about his past was holding him back, so his first spell was Theft of Memory, used on himself to remove all memories of his family. He then destroyed the resulting gemstone. Not sure yet what will be asked of him for sapphire.

As an ST, I'd have him slay his family and then give him back his memories somehow.

You have to remember that convenient "destined trials" clause, where a sorcerer can have already been through the trials by chance before deciding to become a sorcerer. So long as you've done all the trials by chance - because sacrifice has to come last - you might not have to do it yourself. So, for example, almost any Exalt could learn Terrestrial sorcery just from being Exalted, because they've lost their mortality and, with it, their simple life for a much larger and more risky one.

Similarly, a Celestial sorceror could lose the tribe or town they were responsible for to an undead horde, or similar, and in so doing be forced to humility and travel and so on- eventually, they realise they cannot restore their people, and must "sacrifice" that goal and rebuild the direction of their life from scratch.

And for an Adamant sorceror, they might have already lived past a normal human lifespan, and in so doing, have lost their friends, family, mentors etc. to old age. Of course, they could have cast a spell to lengthen their lives a bit, but they didn't... they were too busy. Losing everyone you loved is a decent sacrifice for Adamant circle.

Or you could just lose sanity, peace, your dreams, the capacity to forget/remember, or so on.

Don't give your players an easy out with the sacrifice. Nobody gets to burn a 2-dot artifact and move on; you might be a lax ST and let a player get away with that, but the Salinian Working demands better.

One of my players sacrificed the Hearthstone to his Manse when he attained the Emerald Circle. I guess he thought he could wait for it to re-form and get a different  stone; instead, he can never attune to the Manse again. When you give up a symbol, the Working enforces it and takes away what the symbol stood for.

The sacrifice shouldn't be EXPENSIVE; it should be MEANINGFUL. It should change the character on a fundamental level, not set him back a couple dots until he gets more fucking loot.

Agreed. A sacrifice that has no meaning to the character, or that can simply be replaced has no meaning. If a character sacrifices an arm, then they shouldn't just be allowed to use a charm or artifact to grow it back...replace it perhaps, like say with a prosthetic, but it should actually change something, and perhaps have personal meaning. A sacrifice that costs you nothing in the long run, or has no personal meaning to the character, shouldn't be acceptable.

An example might be that of a Verbena Mage i played a while back, who had sacrifice as one of his foci. He was engaged in a major ritual to help guard the group's chantry, and warding the place from danger...as well as binding all members of the chantry in a loyalty oath. A warrior of some skill, he sacrificed one of his hands as a symbol of his willingness to fight to defend the chantry to the last, and that he was willing to give of himself for the cause. Could he theoretically have grown it back easilly, as a powerful Verbena, and thus highly skilled in life magic? Perhaps...but doing so would have made the sacrifice meaningless, and in the hands of a good ST likely resulted in the ritual breaking as he broke the spirit of sacrifice.

If someone gives up something that is meaningless, then the attempt to learn should fail, as they can't push themself beyond their preconceptions and into a new life as a sorceror. Likewise, if they sacrifice something meaningful, and then seek to reclaim it, then they should lose their ability to use sorcery...as they've effectivelly broken with the working and their offering was not made in good faith.

I can see how they might want to research getting back/healing limbs if they lost it or find some way of compensating. Being one armed might suck if your spells needs two hands or arms... y'know. ^_^;

But I wouldn't cut off being able to do sorcerery. I would simply have the new arm grow back. But it doesn't work quite the way the sorcerer wanted it to. It's a gimpy arm. or it's a clearly inhuman arm.

Of course, the sorcerer might eventually get enough magitech and supplies to build a SUPER robo-arm of death and anniliation... in which case... MORE POWER TO HIM.

Oh, I agree that there's nothing wrong with replacing it, there's still been a sacrifice made, there's still a change. But simply growing it back shouldn't really be an easy out.

I don't know how people will take to this, but my Dawn Caste character has been pursuing sorcery (he's a really driven guy, and there's reasons for this.. anyway) and I see most of the suggestions about sacrifice here to be inconsistent with what initiation into sorcery is really about.

I've been considering Taoism and Asian philosophy in general, and as I advance in sorcery, I'm going to talk to my ST and develop sacrifices that the character will discover he doesn't "really need any more".  This to me is a little friendlier than "cut your arm off or you can't cast spells" - it's less vindictive, more natural, and to me more in line with the Salinan ideals anyway.  It's a view that sees sacrifice not as loss but more like transformation. You must still give up something important, but you haven't diminished yourself.

Conveniently, this also totally bypasses the "grow your arm back" issue.  If you don't WANT the thing you gave up, or you've accepted its surrender, you won't pursue getting it back.

Interestingly the trainers at sorcerer academies have gotten farley good at arranging sacrifices that are easy to make. It even talks about lesser sacrifices for people that do not intend to have sorcery be the focus of there lives.

The ordeal of sacrifice at the heptogram is almost trivial. One thing you can never speak of again, and voluntary rationing of food and water for a weak.

One of the other examples is your little finger.

Next to these the suggestion of giving up an eye or the life of a loved one seems more than a little extreme for terrestrial sorcery.

The example sacrifice for solar sorcery is only the life of one child.

As to getting the thing back.. I don’t think that would be a problem. The sacrifice is not a trade for power with a thinking being, it is a lesson that must be learned. Thus if you try to sacrifice something intending to get it back, it will not be a sacrifice (until you realize your not getting it back), if you somehow recover the article of your sacrifice after learning sorcery, but had no expectation that you would then your in the clear, you actually made the sacrifice in good faith so you learned the lesson.

Edward

What if you commit that act without being a sorcerer in the first place?  Would that be sufficient to give you a 'free-entry' into Adamant Sorcery?    :twisted:

That's kind of what I had in mind with the PC I mentioned earlier. In his case, the transformation in question was the acceptance that he was now something other than mortal. Memories of his family (and how they died) was essentially grounding him into mortal thinking. That needed to be jettisoned to accept his role as quasi divine and, thus, worthy of the power of sorcery.

Matthew 12:46-50

46 While He was still speaking to the crowds, behold, His mother and brothers were standing outside, seeking to speak to Him.

47 Someone said to Him, "Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to You."

48 But Jesus answered the one who was telling Him and said, "Who is My mother and who are My brothers?"

49 And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, "Behold My mother and My brothers!

50 "For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother."

If you want to talk about making sacrifices, there's worse examples.

I agree with many of the things which have been said here. Sacrificies should be meaningful, not just set someone back a couple of dots. The character I mentioned earlier who sacrificed his daiklaive, never ever touche a weapon again for example.
But I still think they should be sacrificies. Giving up something you don't need anymore anyway is no sacrifice, no matter how much Taoism you read, it is the sissy way out.  I don't have my white treatise on me right now but I can't remember the Salinians being sissies. If your storyteller is fine with that, more power to you, but I was looking for examples of real sacrifices.
On the other hand, a lot of people seem to think that killing a lot of stuff is a sacrifice... how is destroying a city a sacrifice? It is sacrificing others, not something of your own. Now if we were talking about a solar pummeling his own powerbase into pieces, adamant circle here we go, but just killing random 100000 people will not open the solar circle.
And I would like to concentrate on celestials, I know the dragon blooded arrange for easy sacrifices, but what do you expect from them? They are barely exalts. ^^