Reference: Our GM just had us come up with our own concepts/aspects, and tie into eachother's characters through backstory on our own, rather than pass the sheets around, so we built our aspects more like a character in development through 5 milestones than the traditional method.
In the new campaign I'm joining, I built a focused practitioner (evocation only) who used to be a pure mortal. When he was 17, his younger brother got taken away (voluntarily, but my character doesn't remember that way) by the white council to train... so he went looking for power... and made a deal.
Lucky and unlucky for him, it was with Vadderung... not that he necessarily didn't come across other options first, but something led him specifically to Odin. (I'm thinking either the fact that Odin has more of a foot in the mortal world than a lot of other options, and is a lot more respectful of free will was what settled it for my character- after all, he wanted the power so he could use it, not be a slave to it.)
Vadderung, of course, offered Sponsored Magic- but he also put something else on the table. Sponsored Magic would be power on-loan, you see... and if I was dedicated and willing enough... he could offer me a chance at power of my own, if I was willing to pay the price.
This is Odin, the god who sacrificed one of his own eyes to gain Wisdom, and hung from the great tree (dead) for the power of runes.
I'm treating these as references to two specific rituals he underwent when he was still a young god (and that anyone who knows of the rituals now could go through) to obtain Evocation and Thaumaturgy, respectively. (Before having performed these, Odin himself was just a warrior god, like most of the Aesir, though a particularly cunning one.)
My character agrees... and performs the first of the two rituals... in it, he's required to cut his own left hand off (I'm writing the backstory such that each individual who goes through the ritual would get asked something somewhat different based on who they are and why they wanted the power... not that it's been done often). He gets Evocation, flavored by his own cold dedication to finding and saving his brother (with a little vengeance mixed in), The Sight (but not soulgaze, yet anyway), and Wizard's Constitution (as a side-effect of the magic flowing through him, as Butters and Harry hypothesized)...
...and a couple aspects as part of the backstory- one a milestone ("Ha! I've done worse to myself!" He has little respect for physical pain or damage, and balls of steel...) and the other an Extreme Consequence ("Need a Hand?").
The latter is the one I'm concerned about... physical effects are obvious- there will be times not having a left hand will be a problem.
Magically, I suggested to the GM that he'd be MUCH weaker at defensive magic, since that's strongly associated with the left side of the body (taking in energy)- I may still try defensive magic, but I didn't specialize in it, and the GM can compel me to flub any such attempts.
It also refers to his pragmatic view on shortcomings- he worked for Vadderung for several years after that (still does) while he looked for his brother- more often than not in a team, and they had to help cover his shortcomings as much as he had to help cover theirs. Teamwork is something he simply gets, and he'll rarely refuse someone assistance if they need it.
One of the other players pointed out to me that I could conceivably use magic to create a hand for myself out of air or frost (since I'm building him as a frosty) when I need one... but I have mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand, it'd be nice to do from time to time... I had a mental image of him riding a motorcycle before I decided on his left hand as the sacrifice... and that's pretty well impossible one-handed. It'd also be a nice visual special effect to be able to use... and, well, handy.
I assume it would count as Mundane Effects... for the sake of wanting it to not be that easy, I built it as a 5-shift effect (my base casting ability without foci or spec) Mundane Effect (use of left hand, 0 shifts) + Weapon:1 for 5 rounds (1 shift damage, 4 shifts extra duration).
On the other hand... (har har)... I'm wondering how appropriate this is. He lost his hand some time ago, and Extreme Consequences are semi-permanent- no reason why, by now, he can't have found a way around it... but it's still on his sheet like that. Would I be, in essence, circumventing the aspect and cheapening my character?
Just as importantly... if giving up his hand was part of a cosmic bargain (with primal forces even beyond Odin, since he once went to them too)... would circumventing that price qualify as breaking the bargain, or since he's using the power he got from it to do so story-appropriate? (after all, Odin uses his power/wisdom/foresight to more than make up for the loss of an eye)
Thoughts?
As a side-note, when/if I have him take thaumaturgy, I'm going to have him go through the other ritual during down-time between game stories, replacing "Ha! I've done worse to myself!" with "I died, and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt..." from milestone to represent him going from ballsy to just plain cavalier about getting hurt, and probably another self-inflicted extreme consequence "Chill of Death" to replace whatever seems appropriate when the time comes.
