HEALING, DEATH, MEMORY AND RESTORATION LIMITS
/CORE RULE
Healing magic can save lives, reduce suffering, stabilize injury, support recovery, and restore some damaged function.
It cannot make every injury temporary.
It cannot erase all disability, pain, illness, aging, grief, or death.
The existence of magical healing must not remove the need for physicians, surgeons, midwives, nurses, herbalists, caregivers, rehabilitation, sanitation, nutrition, rest, and time.
/HEALING THE BODY
Healing depends on the nature, severity, age, and location of an injury.
A shallow wound differs from a crushed limb.
Blood loss differs from infection.
A recent break differs from one healed incorrectly.
Organ damage, burns, poison, disease, nerve injury, and traumatic amputation require different knowledge and treatment.
A healer cannot repair what they do not understand merely by applying power.
/STABILIZATION
Many healing effects should stabilize rather than instantly restore.
Stabilization may stop bleeding, support breathing, reduce shock, prevent worsening, or preserve life until proper treatment becomes available.
A stabilized patient may remain unconscious, weak, injured, or disabled.
Survival is not complete recovery.
/RECOVERY TIME
Magic may shorten recovery without eliminating it.
Bodies need rest, food, cleanliness, rehabilitation, emotional support, and protection from reinjury.
A healed soldier may not immediately return to battle.
A patient may experience pain, weakness, limited motion, fear, or permanent change.
Recovery should reflect the seriousness of the original harm.
/PERMANENT INJURY
Some injuries remain permanent.
Loss of limbs, senses, organs, mobility, fertility, or chronic health may not be fully reversible.
Prosthetics, mobility aids, modified clothing, adapted tools, care networks, and magical assistance may improve life without erasing disability.
Disabled characters remain complete people.
Do not treat disability as punishment, moral failure, or a condition that must be cured for a happy ending.
/SCARS
Scars may remain after successful healing.
They can affect movement, sensation, appearance, identity, memory, and social treatment.
A character may value, hate, ignore, conceal, or reinterpret a scar.
Do not assume every magical healer removes scars unless an exact spell says so.
/DISEASE
Healing magic does not automatically cure every disease.
Diagnosis matters.
Contagion matters.
Sanitation, quarantine, nutrition, environment, and public health remain necessary.
A spell that reduces symptoms may not remove the cause.
A magical cure may be expensive, rare, or unavailable outside major centers.
/POISON AND TOXINS
Poison requires identification, timing, dose, and treatment.
Healing may support the body without neutralizing the substance.
An antidote may still be required.
Unknown toxins remain dangerous.
Do not let a generic healing spell solve every poisoning instantly.
/AGING
Aging is not an injury.
Healing magic does not routinely restore youth.
It may treat illness or support function without reversing the passage of time.
Immortality is not an ordinary result of healing practice.
/DEATH
The default rule is that death is final.
A dead person cannot be casually restored by an ordinary spell, healer, priest, magical item, or emotional plea.
No public resurrection service exists.
No temple routinely returns the dead.
No caster may invent resurrection because the deceased character is important.
Any exception requires explicit creator-approved canon and must remain extraordinary, limited, and consequential.
/THE MOMENT OF DEATH
Medical uncertainty may exist near the boundary between dying and death.
A healer may restore a person whose heart or breathing has only recently stopped if the body remains recoverable and an exact spell permits stabilization.
This is emergency restoration of life processes, not resurrection after established death.
The distinction must not be exploited to revive someone hours or days later.
/THE BODY AFTER DEATH
A corpse remains physically present and may be preserved, examined, buried, cremated, honored, or used as evidence according to culture and law.
Bone magic does not automatically call back the person.
Blood magic does not recreate their life.
Heart magic does not force their return through love.
Hollow magic does not retrieve them from oblivion.
The dead continue through memory, relationship, work, descendants, law, and grief rather than ordinary bodily return.
/MEMORY RESTORATION
Memory may be supported, organized, protected, or partially recovered when traces remain.
No spell can guarantee perfect restoration.
A memory may return without full context.
Details may be distorted.
Emotion may return before images or language.
A recovered memory is not automatically objective proof.
Restoration cannot create a lived experience that was never retained.
/FALSE MEMORY
Magic must not casually implant false memories.
Any exact spell capable of influencing memory requires strict limits, resistance, legal consequence, and ethical weight.
A magically altered memory does not become historical truth.
Other evidence and witnesses remain important.
/IDENTITY RESTORATION
A person whose identity has been magically damaged may recover through memory, relationships, records, familiar places, bodily habit, care, and exact restorative magic.
Restoration should not be instant merely because loved ones are present.
Family and friends can support identity without owning it.
A person may change through the process and still remain themselves.
/HOLLOW DAMAGE
Hollow effects may remove access, meaning, trace, or connection.
Restoration may be incomplete because the missing element cannot be recreated from nothing.
Records, witnesses, Blood connections, Bone continuity, and Heart covenants may help preserve what remains.
Do not use Hollow damage as a convenient reset of personality or plot.
/GRIEF
Magic does not eliminate grief.
A Heart spell may support mourners.
Bone practices may preserve memory.
Blood rituals may honor connection.
Breath traditions may mark transition.
None make loss unreal.
Grief may change over time without disappearing.
/MEDICAL ETHICS
Treatment requires consent whenever possible.
Emergency care may occur when a patient cannot respond, according to law and professional ethics.
Class, wealth, race, location, faction, and political status affect access to care.
Healing magic may be exploited, rationed, monopolized, or withheld.
A healer’s ability does not give them ownership of a patient’s body or memories.
/GENERATION RULES
Identify the injury or illness.
Use an exact established spell.
Distinguish stabilization from cure.
Preserve recovery time.
Allow permanent injury.
Do not erase disability automatically.
Treat memory evidence as limited.
Keep death final unless explicit canon establishes an exception.
Preserve grief, law, inheritance, and social consequence.
/FINAL RULE
Healing protects life without making life cheap.
Restoration is meaningful because it is incomplete.
Death remains consequential.
Memory remains human rather than mechanically perfect.
Valeune’s magic can offer extraordinary care without removing mortality.