To swear a blood oath, you make a cut on your body. If you break the oath, you cut off the part of your body, where the part to be cut off is drawn from the next joint nearest your head outwards:
- mark a fingertip: lose that outermost joint of the finger.
- mark the base of a finger: lose the finger.
- mark your palm: lose the hand
- mark your elbow or shoulder: lose the arm.
- mark your chest: lose the chest, which is to say that you cut your body off at the neck, and thereby lose your life.
Some questions to consider in a story:
- In a village where the previous toot’s approach to blood oaths is the standard, a child is born missing a limb. What does this effect have on their perception of the child? Is the child perpetually forsworn, or is the child held as incapable of swearing oaths?
- Would it make sense to have a special dye pigment be rubbed into the cuts of a blood oath, to distinguish accidental scarring from intentional? A soldier walks into the bar, heavily scarred. Did they swear many oaths, or just get in many fights?