Gate takes a piece of your soul? Huh?!

[TooSoon]

I'm a but perplexed by the latest comic, where Redcloak claims that using Gate will take a piece of his soul. As I understand it, this is not how Gate works. It just takes some XP, and a trivial amount at that. Is there some special summons from some obscure sourcebook that requires a piece of your soul that I am not aware of?

I hate to be the rule Nazi, but barring clarification from the author this is going to bug me. The story, even though it has diverged from being about D&D mechanics, does exist within that framework to some extent. The author uses it all the time to their benefit, quite wisely, to save explaining how certain things are happening or working. Certainly less confusing than carving a magic system from nothing to be sure.

The thing is we have seen people use Gate, including to summon things, and there is nothing about it taking some of their soul (and if that is a bad thing why did good characters like Dorukan use it, and why does his soul seem intact and fine inside Xykon's gem?). I'm hoping I'm wrong, but this feels like a Chekov's gun that is going to be used to save Redcloak after the Snarl destroys his soul or some sort of twist, which feels like a plot cheat tbh. I doubt the author said soul as a shorthand for XP, because he has referred to XP for other summons like Durkon's Divas. Can someone provide some kind of source basis for this soul thing so it stops bugging me? I also don't get how the MiTD says he hasn't seen the spell before, when he has legit seen him cast it. I guess it's just him being slow? I thought it wasn't impossible Redcloak has already used Gate to summon the crew who helped take down the Azure City resistance tbh. This just feels really out of left field. Is it being done to Nerf Gate or something? But we already saw people use Gate no problem.