Untether Aspect

In contrast to borrowing aspects, which almost never overwhelms their user, untethering aspects of oneself can present significant danger. The caster creates a representation of the aspect of themselves – a skill, ability, or quality – that they wish to cut away for a time, and ritually puts it away from themselves. Often this is as simple as writing down the name of the aspect and folding it up. The spell can be performed on another living thing, if they do not resist, and can even be used to transfer an aspect from one person to another.

As with Borrow Aspect, the base difficulty varies: d10 or d20 depending on whether the aspect is a matter of experience or something more inherent. Removing an aspect from, or transferring one to, something other than oneself raises the difficulty by a step unless they help with the ritual; if a recipient casts Borrow Aspect at the same time, both spells have their difficulty decreased by one step. Casting this spell costs three or six strain (for trained or inherent aspects). What’s worse, though, is that each hour with part of oneself missing imposes cumulative strain (one the first hour, two the next, etc.). A grueling day-long version of the spell can untether an aspect of the magician permanently, but in this case the cost in strain is also permanent (i.e. SP are reduced by three or six points).