The Severed Hand
Known only to a very select few among the Sabbat Inquisitors, the Ritual of the Severed Hand is employed in the breaking of Vinculi. Inquisitors use it to recover spies and agents they have inserted into Sabbat packs suspected of heresy. Because of the ritual's questionable origins, it is rarely used in the modern nights, and some Inquisitors have even suggested destroying all known copies of the formula, lest it fall into the hands of the Camarilla.
System: The ritual requires the subject to stand relatively motionless, though this can be arranged with restraints or staking, and need not be voluntary. The caster proceeds to anoint the subject with an alchemical mixture that must be prepared in advance; this must contain two points of the caster's blood, powdered human bone, a variety of crushed herbs, and the ashes of a vampire slain by fire or sunlight. Symbolically, if not in actual fact, the ritual forces the blood "contaminated" by the Vinculum into a single one of the subject's extremities - a hand is most common, though a foot might be selected instead. At the completion of the ritual, this extremity must be severed. This causes three health levels of aggravated damage which may be healed in the standard fashion. Once done, the subject is freed of any and all Vinculum ties. The ritual requires that another blood point be spend during the casting, and it requires five full hours to invoke; the subject must be relatively motionless or restrained for the entire duration. Should the casting roll indicate a botch, the subject's Vinculi are actually increased by 1.
