Heart’s Blood

This ritual is related to the Altar-Chant and, despite being far more benign to others than its cousin, is similarly suppressed by the Order, albeit to a lesser degree. This is the spell by which a magician may sacrifice some of their own life-force to power magic that they would otherwise not have the focus to command. While the stereotypical Heart’s Blood ritual involves literal blood-letting, the cost to the user’s health is not always so obvious. Even for experienced practitioners, caution is advised when tapping their deepest reserves in this way.

The base difficulty is d4, and the simplest form of this spell allows the caster to choose a die-size of damage to take with a d1 return of energy, which may be spent on an immediately-ensuing ritual or spell in place of strain or fatigue costs, per point of damage taken. A medical skill check at d8 allows a specified rather than random amount of damage to be taken. The energy that can be extracted from each point of damage can be increased by a step if the difficulty is increased by a step (any number of times), or by increasing the casting time for this ritual to an hour (one time only).