I wasn't sure if it would qualify as needing to be in the spoilers section, as so far I'm only poking at Magical Theory as a whole with what has been introduced. Though I've read all the books and I don't recall someone besides The Brotherhood using it to restrain them. However if I need to move it to Spoilers for a more in depth discussion, I would be happy to do so.I think the rule is no spoilers from the most recent book in the Books section. I tend to be a little more careful because I figure folks new the series but not fully caught up might stumble in.
Heck griff, i'm all caught up and I feel like I missed something cause I don't remember any magical tattoo bearers?(I mean, Susan did that thing with those things..... but that's not new enough to possibly be a spoiler)
So we've established it can be done though it's rare. I'm sure there are upsides and downsides to it, which I'm curious on as well.I've given it some thought because my fanfics are treading this water. My take is that a practitioner should design the tattoo and have someone else apply it. Otherwise you end up with shoddy work that's more prone to error. But the professional has to be the best, no mistakes can be made, and they have to be trustworthy, because they're going to know intimate details of your crafting.
Obvious Downside, is once you have one created, it's kinda hard to change or redo. So it has to be perfect the first time. Granted, it'd be pretty hard to disarm someone whose got a spell work of a blasting rod on their arm instead of on a foci.
So, next bit of questioning comes down to speculation. How do you get it done? Does it have to be done by someone else? Does that person have to have the talent to put it in? Can someone else ink you and then you put power into it? Does it have to be a special kind of ink? Surely with tattoos being as old as they are, there has to be a reason that so far we've only seen one or two people do it at all.
What advantages could there be besides the obvious, what drawbacks? And what problems about how to go about it? I'm hoping for full theory here.
I disagree one could have a reservoir within a tattoo. From what we've see of the spell put upon his staff it had one reservoir because it was one whole object. The rings actually had separate enchanted pieces loosely bound together through a twine. I predict doing such a thing with a tat would place the reserve source upon the one already present, your own life force. Breaking it down into more is not a simple matter of redoing the spell it would seem...Hence the "overly developed" part. I'm not saying it would be easy. The idea of channeling face-melting heat and bone-crushing pressure into your skin sounds like a horrible idea. But if you want to explore such potential uses of tattoos, we can at least consider methods.