Utter Destruction of Bonds

Level 6.

Description: This is an incredibly powerful ritual, which must be used with discretion. Even many who know it do not realize its potential. It will destroy any bond or open any portal the caster desires. Opened portals may never be re-closed (without the aid of equal or greater magic), nor may destroyed bonds be re-established.

Casting: The Casting of Utter Destruction of Bonds is a simple incantation that takes a mere 10 minutes to recite. At the end of the chant, the caster must remove his own tongue literally tearing it out of his own throat. (This step is part of the ritual: removing and preserving one's own tongue in advance is simply arbitrary masochism). Tearing the tongue out causes one level of aggravated damage that cannot be soaked, and the caster will be unable to speak intelligibly until he heals the damage, and thus re-grows the tongue. The caster must additionally spend one point of Willpower. Doing so bolsters the resolve of most casters to tear out their own tongues, but even the most deranged and masochistic must spend the willpower to power the ritual. The tongue is then crushed and speared on the object to be affected.

System: This ritual opens any designated object, and that object will never again be able to be closed. This includes manacles, handcuffs, chests, boxes, windows, doors, safes, zippers, wounds, walls, books, eyes, mouths, throttles, holes in the earth, and the mouths of volcanoes. It also opens dimensional boundaries that are tied to physical objects, or possibly destroys the dimensional bonds that lie behind them, and permanently destroys wards. Powerful magical effects may resist at the storyteller's discretion: If they were made with more successes than the caster achieved on Utter Destruction of Bonds, they might be unaffected.

Not included are Blood Bonds, mental control or slavery. Storytellers must arbitrate in all cases.

Edited by Jamie to clean up the language and adapt it to previous ruling (Bruce ruled at one time that it was only one level of damage, and I used it to sever the bond to an alternate dimension). I do not believe that I have changed the meaning of the ritual in any way.