Ashin Cardé Varanin
Are you on the square?
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: A ring designed to let the wearer undertake the ancient Sith rituals known as the Cold Rites.
- Image Source: Tim's Silver
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Ashin Varanin
- Affiliation: Various associates and business contacts.
- Market Status: Closed Market
- Model: Ring of Cold Rites
- Modularity: No
- Production: Semi-Unique
- Material: Alchemised steel, corrupted kasha crystal
- Corrupted kasha crystal, causing hallucinations and cold focus, particularly in ritual/meditation settings
- Extreme durability
- The ring enables the wearer to undertake the Cold Rites, largely-forgotten hallucination-based Sith rituals that enhance cold judgment and emotional control.
- Normally, these rites require a visit to certain caves on the planet Upekzar, or at least the use of rhak-skuri hallucinogens. The ring makes those requirements optional, allowing the user to undertake the Cold Rites anywhere.
- A kasha crystal is designed to bolster clarity of thought. The corrupted version enhances the qualities that the Rites are designed to teach.
- Wearing the ring, while difficult and at times traumatic, can strengthen the wearer's ability to recognize and resist hallucinations and illusions, whether Force-based or chemical in nature. This is a side effect: a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.
- Like most high-end works of alchemy, the ring is supernaturally durable. For example, it can resist the blade of a lightsaber.
- Wearing the ring induces major or minor visual or auditory hallucinations, most strongly during rituals or meditation. While this is the ring's intended purpose, it is also a significant liability.
- The hallucinations may persist or recur even after removing the ring. However, the ring does not function when under the influence of ysalamiri or void stone, meaning a cessation of both hallucinations and cold focus.
- Enhancing coldness of judgment and hardness of heart can have significant interpersonal ramifications. Handle with care.
Ashin designed these rings in 865 ABY. The ring's unique alchemy stemmed from experiments she conducted while planning her wife
Spencer Varanin
's escape from the Netherworld. The ring's prototype was unready when circumstances escalated, and Ashin and her associates completed the rescue without help from this particular form of alchemy. She only completed the project afterward, while settling into her most recent retirement. In the few years since then, she has made several of them as gifts or for barter purposes. One went to
Dissero
, for example, as he had provided the original kasha crystals.
