Wow, thanks for all the replies. I'm relatively competent at the mechanics of D&D, but I've limited exposure to all of the various things that people who have been around the block have been made familiar with.
Alright, this is the lowest of the low. Why are you gaming with these people? Are they the only options? Or were you in on it? Because if someone did this to one of my characters, I'd be out of there instantaneously.
There really isn't much of a unified D&D community in my area (that particular concept is limited to Magic: TG), only lots of small isolated groups that neither need nor are looking for more. I've tried multiple times to create my own, even having them put on the FLGS's calender, but after the last attempt I swore off it, even sold most of my 3.0/3.5 books. The game is an actual store event, and so to some extent even the DM's hands are tied, he can't just tell them to get lost.
Since originally posting this, I've come to learn via my character that after the central story to the campaign has been accomplished, there will be retribution against all who participated. In other words, the DM has told me that while they will think they got away with it for now, eventually their collective asses are going to be toast. That's enough for me to keep me in, for now.
I agree with you on the sentiment, and it took me a while to make a new character; in fact, it wasn't clear that I was going to even do that. Since then, I think they've kind of realized that it transcended the realm of character-vs.-character and rose to the level of actual inter-player resentment. While they knew that I wasn't really happy with my character at the time (albeit, that was because they wouldn't let me play him as I wanted and instead wanted their ideal healer-cleric) and I wasn't allowed to change my character without him dying, and perhaps it helped justify it to them at the time, I think they've tried to make amends, so I'll play along, for now. However, I see little point in tempting anybody, and I won't deny it, I'm still a little bitter. The thought of them searching my body and finding both more and less than they expected gives me happy thoughts.
Besides that, these are (mostly) people I know from previous games and from around the shop, so I can't just shun them.
The Tattoo magic items sound like a good place to start, and while I don't have the Craft Wondrous Item feat needed for the nasty magical traps (yet), I just got Permanency, so hopefully in a few levels I'll have all I need. Evocation, Enchantment and Necromancy are the banned schools for my Focused Specialist, but I figure I know enough fellow mages at the Arcane Order Academy to help out with that.
The possible difficulty may arise from the fact that a lot of the reasoning behind the whole issue is out-of-character and not in-character, so he doesn't have all of the, well, baggage that I have, although the situation was explained to him by the aforementioned Sanctified High Battle Cleric of Helm, so there is some in-character precedent. I suppose it would be in his character to have more faith in his own abilities than in magic items, with the tattoos being justified as a way of improving himself.