"One day a raft appeared with an image of Herakles the Dactyl on
board, halfway between Chios and Erythrae. A tug of war resulted as
the men of Chios and the Erythrean men both struggled to draw it to
their own shore, but neither could prevail. Phormion, who - like
Stesichorus - was blind, dreamt that the Thracian women of Erythrae,
by plaiting their hair into a rope, could draw the image ashore,
which they duly did. Afterwards the rope was laid in a sacred house;
Phormion visited it and was cured of blindness."
Encyclopaedia Goetica, Volume 2 - Geosophia - The Argo of Magic, Jake Stratton-Kent
This spell weaves a
magical rope of legendary strength out of ten people’s hair. The rope
can be directed towards any visible target upon sea or land (not
air), though the further it goes, the harder it is to control and the
greater the toll it takes upon the caster. Secluded
settlements have
been using the spell to pull ships (and their cargo) upon
rocky coasts.
Apart from the main
caster, the spell requires ten long-haired persons (each called
Clotho during the ritual), two aides in charge of braiding (each called Lachesis), and
one person (Atropos) who holds the sacred scissors with which the
hair are cut when it is time for the spell to end.
Ritual Procedure: The
Clotho aides
are hang upside-down in nets, their hair dangling. The caster
moves to a spot that provides a line of sight towards the target, and
sleeps there by use of potion, herb or magic. Then the Lachesis aides
start braiding.
The spell begins to work as soon as the first braids are completed, slowly but
steadily extending the length of the hair. As soon as all braids are
united, the rope is ready. It is then that the dreaming caster starts
guiding the rope with her will. Once the rope finds its target, it
starts coiling around it. If the target is animate, or controlled by
animate beings, a grappling battle begins (treat the rope as a sea
serpent or a kraken tentacle immune to non-magical damage).
Otherwise, the rope is wrapped tightly around the target and starts
pulling it where the caster directs it.
When this is over, the Atropos must cut the hair of all the Clotho people with the sacred scissors, at which point
the spell ends and the caster awakes, alas bereft of vision for one
month per kilometer traveled.
The rope is coiled
by the Clotho aides, and transferred and stored to a holy place (a house
of gods in the case of Erythrae). During the months of the main caster’s
blindness, all other blind people who touch the rope are cured.
Notes:
-The rope is
unnaturally thick, roughly two meters in diameter.
-The rope can pull
any item as long as it isn't part of the earth. Thus a huge ship can
be pulled, while a stone lying half-buried in the earth (that has not been
excavated by human hand) cannot.
-The rope’s speed
is roughly one kilometer per turn/10 minutes.
-For each five
kilometers (beyond the first five) traveled by the rope the caster is
required to make a suitable test, spell check or saving throw with
a steadily increasing difficulty. If she fails it, the control is
broken and the rope swiftly coils back to its source, where it
unravels, each braid trying to suffocate the person it originates from.
If the Atropos aide is not fast enough with the scissors, the Clotho ones die in a matter of minutes.
-Due to the risk involved, most casters do not guide the rope beyond 5 kilometers.
-Cutting the hair
without the Atropos scissors is not an easy task. For the duration of
the spell they are hard as steel wire.
-After the spell's
completion, the rope loses its extraordinary flexibility, though it
gains the power to heal blindness as mentioned above. Also, it can be
used as a fishing net in times of need, if the braids are
sufficiently loosened. This can happen only once for each rope;
afterwards it becomes useless. Fish and other sea beings caught in
the hair provide unnatural sustenance but also tend to whisper long
after they have been eaten – they may reveal sea secrets but they
also make concentration and sleep hard for a month.
