BINDING · BANISHING · DECISION
Binding Spell Versus Banishing Spell: Restrain or Remove
Binding says a named action may not continue. Banishing says a named presence may not remain. The right choice depends on whether the harm must be restrained within a shared field or removed beyond its threshold.
STAR & SIGIL
Choose whether the line restrains or removes
Enter a boundary working that gives confinement and departure different signs, durations, and visible proofs.
Set the right boundary
Binding and banishing answer different geometries of harm. Binding leaves the target in the field but narrows what they can do. Banishing changes distance, access, or presence so the target no longer occupies the field at all.
The dramatic choice is not always the precise one. A person may need to remain in a shared legal, familial, or communal structure while one harmful action is restrained. Elsewhere, restraining conduct leaves too many routes open and removal is the honest aim.
Bind the act that must stop. Banish the presence whose access must end.
01 / NAME THE UNIT OF HARM
Restraint fails when the target is broader than the conduct
Suppose Saira coordinates a cooperative community kitchen. Her former lover Deme remains a voting member and begins issuing magical commands during meetings, threatening volunteers, and appearing at Saira’s private prep room after being told to stay away.
One operation cannot describe every problem. His vote belongs to the cooperative’s rules. His commands can be bound. His threats can be restrained. His access to Saira’s private threshold should end. Treating all four as “negative energy” would erase the decision the magic needs to make.
For commands aimed at Saira, she can cast The Final Syllable Imprisons the Order, binding each command inside Deme’s final syllable. He remains able to speak; the coercive order cannot travel into her will.
ILLUSTRATIVE CASE THE DOOR BEHIND THE COMMON TABLE
A shared institution contains both a public seat and a private threshold
Deme insists that banishing him from Saira’s prep room is equivalent to removing him from the cooperative. The building’s plan reveals two different fields.
The common table is governed by membership and vote. The rear prep room stores Saira’s personal tools and is entered only by invitation. Binding protects conduct at the first; banishing ends access to the second.
Specific restraint
Commands and threats lose their action.
Remaining relation
A legitimate institutional role is not magically erased.
Private threshold
Access can end without rewriting public membership.
Evidence
Success is measured by which route no longer opens.
THE TURN
Saira does not need to choose one operation for the whole person. She needs separate magic for separate jurisdictions.
02 / RESTRAIN OR REMOVE
Target, distance, duration, and evidence expose the difference
| Question | Binding | Banishing |
|---|---|---|
| What changes? | A named action or capacity | Presence, proximity, or access |
| Where is the target? | May remain inside the shared field | Moved beyond a named boundary |
| What proves success? | The restrained act cannot occur | The target no longer arrives or enters |
| What ends it? | Release condition or changed conduct | A revised boundary or chosen return |
| What can go wrong? | Restraint expands beyond the harm | Necessary evidence or responsibility disappears |
03 / THE THRESHOLD QUESTION
Banishing becomes exact when distance is the desired result
Deme’s presence outside the prep room forces Saira to organize every private task around possible intrusion. No narrower speech binding solves that spatial occupation.
She can cast The Door No Malice Can Remember and bar Deme, the named adversary, from finding or crossing that chosen threshold. The spell does not punish his vote or erase evidence of his conduct. It makes the private room unavailable to his malice.
The result is legible: meetings remain public, records remain intact, and the rear door ceases to be a route through which the former relationship enters Saira’s work.
04 / RELEASE AND REVIEW
A binding needs a stop condition; a banishing needs a boundary
If Deme leaves the cooperative and loses every legitimate reason to attend, restraint inside meetings may no longer be the relevant operation. If he demonstrates changed conduct, members may review institutional limits without reopening Saira’s private threshold.
Precision prevents magic from becoming permanent simply because the original fear was intense. The operation remains answerable to the harm it was appointed to change.