Enter Death (4e Ritual)

{{4e Ritual
 * name=Enter Death
 * level=11
 * component_cost=One or more healing surges
 * category=Binding
 * time=Varies
 * market_price=&mdash;
 * skill=Arcana
 * duration=Varies
 * description=Your body freezes over while you perform this ritual and for its duration (you are treated as being petrified), except if you use this ritual to perform a binding (in which case you remain frozen for the casting time only). Your spirit enters death while you are frozen, and you perform one of the following actions. You must have a set of bells in order to do so.

Bind Creature
Component Cost: 4 Healing Surges Time: Two hours Duration: Until broken

You imprison a willing or helpless creature within 6 squares of your body in life (or anywhere in death) in death&mdash;if the creature is in life it is transported into death, vacating its body. The creature's spirit is trapped in suspended animation inside the equivalent of a Magic Circle ritual that prevents the passage of all creatures other than you (up to the level determined by your Arcana check).

For the binding to be broken, the breaking creature has to be in death, but other than this, the binding can be broken in the same was as a magic circle. The creature must be taken back or travel back to life in order to reinhabit its body (which involves simply walking back towards life).

At your option, you can petrify the body of the bound creature; this is reversed if the creature re-inhabits its body, however if the creature is undead, its body dies automatically. If the creature's body is killed, its spirit remains trapped in death, but if it escapes it must find another body to inhabit or remain incorporeal.

Commune with Dead
Component Cost: 2 Healing Surges Time: 1 hour Duration: 10 minutes

You command a spirit in death to answer one or more questions. The spirits of the dead appear as apparently incorporeal beings that have lost form with time. They could potentially know anything, as they could be from any time period.

Make an Arcana check to determine how many questions you can force a dead spirit to answer.

Each question is answered immediately, so you know the answer to one question before asking the next. The spirit will answer the questions as briefly as possible. For the spirit to know the answer to a question, the answer must be known to at least one creature, even if that creature is no longer alive. The spirit has no foreknowledge and only a limited ability to judge what it sees. Ten minutes after you finish performing the ritual, the spirit leaves, even if you have unasked questions remaining.

Dead Messenger
Component Cost: 1 Healing Surge Time: 1 hour Duration: Instantaneous

This functions as the Sending ritual except that the message is carried by a dead spirit to the target (who must be within range of your body in life). The message takes a number of hours equal to one fiftieth of the number of miles the message is carried.

Raise Dead
Component Cost: 500gp plus 2 healing surges Time: 1 hour Duration:Instantaneous

This functions as the Raise Dead ritual.

Speak with Dead
Component Cost: One Healing Surge Time: 10 minutes Duration: 10 minutes

This functions as the Speak with Dead ritual, except that the corpse must be within 6 squares of your body in life. }}
 * fluff=A fog rises around you, and your body freezes over slowly. But your spirit walks in death, for a time, so that you can bind or command the dead.