Hands of Sacred Life
Rules
Spring Magnitude 2
Performing the Ritual
Performing this ritual takes at least 2 minutes of roleplaying. This ritual targets a character, who must be present throughout.
The ritual fails if you or the target are hit, or attack another character.
Effects
The target of this ritual, who may be one of the characters performing it, regains all lost hits.
Additional Targets
This ritual can affect additional characters. The magnitude increases by one for every two additional targets. All targets must be present throughout, and the ritual fails if any of the targets are hit, or attack another character.
Description
The Hands of Sacred Life is a simple, yet potent, healing ritual that is at its most effective when it restores several people to full health. The more patients the ritual treats, the more powerful it is in comparison to the heal incantation. It sees most use on battlefields, or in the aftermath of accidents and disasters. A single competent ritualist can restore nearly a dozen injured or dying people with a handful of mana crystals.
The heal spell is more versatile, and can be performed much faster, but even a skilled magician is likely to find their personal reserves of strength quickly depleted in the aftermath of an especially vicious engagement. The Hands of Sacred Life comes into its own in this kind of situation, allowing a small team of ritual magicians to heal many targets to full health at the expense of a little extra time.
The other primary use for this ritual is on those occasions when other reserves of healing power are depleted or dangerously low. While many ritual magicians eschew the study of healing incantations, the ability to quickly improvise this ritual is available to anyone who has made even a cursory study of the lore of Spring; in such circumstances it can be a literal lifesaver.
Common Elements
Blood and water are very common elements in this ritual. Highborn magisters and Urizen mages alike use bowls and ewers of fresh water as part of the rite, cleansing wounds and quenching the thirst of their patients as they perform the ritual.
Small gifts or benedictions are another common feature of this healing ritual. A band of Marcher ritualists may quickly weave poppets from grass and corn, dunk them in water or beer and give them to their targets with whispered words of healing. In The League this ritual is often associated with the character of The Doctor, and the use of The Chalice; in Dawn, a cabal of weavers is more likely to carefully bind the wounds of their targets with strips of woven white linen or silk.
Elements such as natural sunlight, wholesome food and drink, the Rhyv rune, the constellation of The Fountain and even the supernatural regeneration of the hydra or firebird might all be evoked to restore vitality to the targets of this ritual.