> [!infobox|right] > # Blood Sorcery > ![[4ee54bfc-0263-4d42-89a6-07c533274749.png]] > **Also Called**: The Scarlet Path, Bloodbinding, Redcraft, Veinchanting (Circle), Flesh-Witchery (derogatory) > > > > > > > > >
General Information
Practiced ByThe Circle of Magi, Tlaxcaltec priesthoods, Temerian Blood-Legions, fringe cults, outlawed sorcerers
RegionsWidespread, especially in the [[Mentralian Kingdoms]], [[The Reaches]], [[Tlaxcaltec City-States]], [[Temerian Empire]]
Spirit InteractionBinding, Appeasement, Channeling, Pact
Associated DominionsFlesh, Death, Fire, Hunger, Transformation
Moral PerceptionFeared, Forbidden in many regions; Revered in Tlaxcaltec lands; Tolerated in Temeria
Typical CostBlood, physical decay, spiritual wounds, risk of possession or madness
## Overview In the world of Vaelora, where spirits lurk just beyond the Veil and magic is a matter of bargaining or will, **Blood Sorcery** stands as one of the oldest and most brutal traditions. At its core, it is the art of **manipulating spirits through offerings of life force** - chiefly blood. Whether it is the **deliberate prick of a ritual blade** or the **violent outpouring of a sacrificed life**, blood draws the spirits like wolves to a fresh kill. Some come offering power in return. Others, darker or desperate, take more than they give. The practice does not demand faith or virtue - only **willingness to bleed** and the **resolve to command**. In much of Vaelora, blood magic is **feared**, even **outlawed**, seen as barbaric or corrupting. But in certain cultures - particularly among the **Tlaxcal city-states**, the **slums of the Free Cities in the Reaches**, and the ritualized orders of **Anderon's Circle of Magi** - it is accepted, even **revered**. Where hardship is great, and the line between life and death thin, the ability to **call spirits with blood** can mean the difference between survival and oblivion. Blood Sorcery is not subtle. It is not safe. But it is **effective**, and it **works when other magics fail**. ## Origins Blood Sorcery's birth is shrouded in wounds and whispers. In the ancient highlands of **Anderon**, the tale begins with desperation: a dying member of the early **Circle of Magi**, left for dead after a failed summoning, carved a plea into the dirt with their own blood. But instead of a divine answer or healing light, **something older** stirred - a presence that did not speak, only hungered. It drank the pain, devoured the blood, and in return, bent reality for a moment. This event, quietly recorded and studied in the Circle's black archives, became the first known pact of Blood Sorcery in the west. Among the **Tlaxcal people**, however, there was no “discovery.” Blood has always been the **first language** - the only language the gods understand. In the verdant, mist-choked jungles of the **Tlaxcaltec city-states**, every city holds its own god-spirit, a patron shaped by the needs and fears of its people. These are no distant deities, but **living powers** - hungry and near. Each spirit thrives on sacrifice, and in exchange grants blessings: crops that grow despite ashfall, safe passage through cursed forests, health in disease-ridden lands. To the Tlaxcal, this is not blasphemy - it is **reciprocity**. > _“We bleed, and they listen. We feed them, and they protect us.”_ Each city's rites differ - some prefer voluntary offerings, some demand captives, some take blood only from the noble caste, believing it stronger. But all agree: blood is sacred currency. The temples are often red-washed stone pyramids where rivers of life flow downward, and **ritual sacrifice is as old as the stones themselves**. From Anderon, Blood Sorcery crept outward like a slow infection. As scholars and defectors fled the wars that fractured the Circle, they carried fragments of the tradition into the expanding **Temerian Empire**. There, it found fertile ground: an empire swollen with slaves, where life was cheap and power absolute. Blood Sorcery was perfected not as desperation, but as **discipline** - codified, industrialized, and often hidden behind state-sanctioned euphemisms like "vital theurgy" or "essence binding." From Temeria's dark heart, its tendrils spread again. Black-market grimoires, freed slaves turned whispering conjurors, and renegade magi all helped smuggle blood rites into the **Free Cities** of the west. In these merchant-states, blood sorcery is both **fetishized and feared** - practiced underground, in cults and hidden salons, where power is bought with coin and blood alike. Though outlawed, its presence lingers like a stain behind silk curtains and locked doors. No matter the place or name, its origin is always the same: **where life ends, power begins**. ### Philosophy of Sacrifice ![[1376db0f-e4bf-4df8-a2bf-2bce648b236e.png|hmed left]] **Blood is power. Pain is a prayer.** Every drop shed with intent becomes a call across the Veil - a beacon to spirits who hunger for the living essence that sustains them. Blood Sorcery does not beg; it **bargains**. It does not invoke gods; it **feeds** spirits, and in turn, is fed with power. Among the **Circle of Magi**, the practice is often ritualized and academic. They see blood not merely as fuel, but as a **binding medium** - a bridge that forges temporary covenants. Pain, when measured and applied, sharpens the will and focuses magical intent. Circle grimoires are filled with precise diagrams, recommended arteries, and guidelines on what volume of blood is required to summon or compel a given spirit. In contrast, for the **Tlaxcaltec**, the spilling of blood is **devotional**, an act of communion. Their priests describe it not as coercion, but as **nourishment** for the divine. In Tlaxcal cities, public sacrifice is seen not with horror, but with reverence - like feeding a family member who cannot feed themselves. The more worthy the offering (a noble, a warrior, a willing priest), the greater the blessing that follows. Yet across cultures, the underlying belief remains constant: **Power comes not freely, but through loss.** The body is the gateway, and blood its toll. Even minor workings - summoning a guiding whisper, warding a child's cradle - require a price. > “To bleed without purpose is waste. To bleed with purpose is prayer.” > - _High Magister Vaellan, Circle of Magi_ > “Every city stands because someone fed the god.” > - _Tlaxcal saying_ ### Moral Tenants Blood Sorcery is governed less by universal codes and more by **localized doctrines of sacrifice, restraint, and intent**. Yet across its many forms, certain moral axioms have emerged - shaped by suffering, discipline, and the reality that every spell leaves a scar. - **Sacrifice Sanctifies** No act of blood sorcery is morally neutral. Every drop spilled, whether one's own or another's, **consecrates the act** - imbuing it with weight and consequence. Sorcerers are judged not by what they did, but **what they paid** to do it. - **The Worth of Blood Matters** Life has **hierarchy**. The blood of a warrior sings louder than that of a coward. The innocent draw forth gentler spirits, while the blood of murderers may rouse vengeful or wrathful entities. Among the Circle, this is an alchemical formula; among the Tlaxcal, a divine truth. - **Purpose Over Cruelty** Unfocused violence is **wasteful and corrupting**. Many sects view cruelty without purpose as a path to spiritual rot. Even the Anderonian blood-chambers, infamous for mass sacrifice, ritualize their executions in accordance with precise celestial calendars and spirit classifications. - **Excess Breeds Corruption** Blood sorcery often skirts the edge of control. The more blood spilled, the more **hungry spirits gather**. Without discipline, what begins as communion may end in possession, or worse. As such, many traditions emphasize mental clarity, ritual purity, and emotional detachment during major workings. - **Power Must Be Repaid** Spirits do not forget. Power borrowed through blood must be **paid back**, whether in kind, in deed, or in soul. Debt, among blood sorcerers, is feared more than death. > [!quote|author mark] Yena of the Glass Veil, renegade pact-mother > Each cut is a vow. Each scar is a receipt. ## Mechanics of Practice Blood sorcery is not a single tradition but a spectrum of practices united by one truth: **spirits crave the essence of life**. Across Vaelora, cultures have discovered this power through different means - some through ritual refinement, others through divine covenant or sheer necessity. Though the core remains the same - offering blood to draw forth the unseen - the forms it takes are shaped by history, philosophy, and survival. ### One Tradition, Many Faces In the scholarly towers of **Anderon**, the Circle of Magi turned bloodletting into a disciplined science. Here, the act of sacrifice is precise and codified, governed by the seventy-seven **Glyphs of Power** devised by the First Circle. Each glyph is a sacred shape etched into flesh or traced with drawn blood, calibrated to summon, bind, or bargain with a specific class of spirit. Their methods prioritize efficiency over death - human blood is most potent, but killing a vessel is seen as wasteful unless the ritual demands it. Instead, trained acolytes and bound donors supply the Circle's needs, and grand rituals requiring a life are reserved for rare events of political or magical significance. In Anderon's rigid and secretive society, the magi are both feared and revered, and their secrets are guarded with occult ferocity. In contrast, the **Tlaxcaltec city-states** consider blood sorcery to be a sacred language - older than speech and more honest than prayer. Their great ziggurats, relics of the vanished Tul-Dar, stand as centers of power where sacrifices are offered to **city-bound spirits** who grant protection, fertility, and strength in exchange. Every city believes it is watched over by its own god-spirit, and sorcery is the act of feeding that divine presence. Rituals are not delicate affairs but visceral performances: hearts are cut from living chests, blood is poured in rhythmic torrents down sunlit steps, and frenzied dances echo through plazas. During the “flower wars,” neighboring cities engage in staged conflict to secure sacrificial captives, while animal offerings are used for more routine rites. Though their magic may seem chaotic to outsiders, it is deeply meaningful - each act of sacrifice affirms the bond between people and spirit, city and god. The **Temerian Empire** came to blood sorcery more recently, having imported its principles from the Circle of Magi some two centuries past. Yet, in typical Temerian fashion, the Empire stripped away the spiritual and scholarly trappings to harness the power as a tool of domination. Within the Black Colleges and military forges, blood magic has been streamlined, weaponized, and repurposed for conquest. Where Anderonians make glyphs with ceremony, Temerians burn them into the flesh of slaves. Where the Circle draws upon blood with care, Temerians spill it freely - often in front of terrified crowds or across battlefields soaked in gore. Spirits are bound into banners, blades, or even living generals. Rituals are public, brutal, and performative, intended as much to intimidate as to empower. Theirs is an industrial sorcery, a younger, crueler sibling of the Circle's discipline. On the margins of society, in the **Free Cities and hidden chambers of the Mentralian Kingdoms**, blood magic festers in the dark. Forbidden by law but impossible to erase, it survives in fragments - torn pages, whispered rites, and half-remembered instructions passed between the desperate and the damned. Here, blood sorcery is a dirty art, practiced in basements, alleyway shrines, and old crypts. Crime lords, gang leaders, renegade nobles, and black-market scholars employ or become blood sorcerers, cobbling together rituals from whatever scraps they can find. Most of them are self-taught, relying on instinct and hearsay. Their magic is dangerous and inconsistent - sometimes effective, often volatile. Spirits summoned by these rites are wild and malformed, drawn by unsteady hands and botched incantations. Yet, in the right hands - or wrong ones - this chaotic power can still change the course of fate. ### Spirit Dynamics Blood sorcery does not _command_ spirits so much as _summons_ their attention - through the most primal medium imaginable: spilled life. Spirits, whether minor or monstrous, are drawn to the scent and pulse of blood. Unlike the sterile rituals of runework or the slow communion of soul-speech, blood is immediate. It is desperate, visceral, intoxicating. Minor spirits are easily stirred. A pinprick or ritual cut may bring them forth, fluttering at the edges of vision, eager for scraps of pain and promise. These small spirits can be coaxed into service: carrying whispers, unsettling foes, igniting small fires, or lending fleeting strength. Such interactions are often instinctual and require little beyond a token offering. Greater spirits, however, demand more. Their power is vast and their will is not easily swayed. They require true **sacrifice** - blood given freely, or life taken with purpose. Some rites involve solemn bargaining, where names and signs are exchanged and the spirit grants aid for a price. Others are brutal: **acts of domination**, where spirits are forcefully bound through layered blood glyphs, engraved into skin or soil. Each tradition interprets this relationship differently. The Circle of Magi sees it as a calculated exchange, a system of cause and effect to be diagrammed and dissected. The Tlaxcal view it as worship, as communion with god-beings housed in pyramid hearts. The Temerians industrialize it, treating spirits like volatile tools. But the truth remains constant: **spirits are drawn to blood, and they are hungry**. ### Spirits of the Red Path The spirits most responsive to blood sorcery are those attuned to life, death, suffering, and desire. These are not the serene guardians of rivers or the whispering windsprites of forest glades. The blood-drawn are older, hungrier, and more volatile - beings of the liminal spaces between agony and ecstasy, death and power. They are sometimes called **Red Spirits**, or **the Kindled**, and fall into several broad categories: - **The Famished** Weak, fluttering spirits drawn to even a shallow cut. They are small, almost mindless things - hungry gnats of the spirit world. They can animate dead insects, rot food, twist light, or stir dread. Often used in minor hexes or distraction rites. - **The Bound** Spirits that have been tied to sites of long ritual - temples, ziggurats, battlefield shrines. These spirits often grow **symbiotic** with a location, especially if fed regularly. The Tlaxcal city-spirits are prime examples: immense, half-aware entities coiled beneath their pyramids, hungry for blood and willing to empower those who feed them. - **The Exultant** These spirits are drawn not just by blood, but by **willing sacrifice** and **ritualized pain**. They resonate with intense emotion - grief, fury, ecstasy. Often used by the Circle of Magi in passion-imbued rites, they excel at amplifying magic tied to emotion: charm, despair, rage, and fear. They may whisper secrets or offer temporary possession in return for deeper offerings. - **The Butchers** Predatory spirits that answer only to violence and death. They do not bargain - they **consume**. Tempting to desperate warcasters and certain Temerian blood generals, Butchers grant horrific strength, heightened senses, or battlefield frenzy, but often at the cost of memory or control. Some are kept caged in ritual brands, released only in dire need. - **The Whispering Host** Not one spirit, but a **chorus** - a network of blood-drawn entities that ride the currents of shared sacrifice. Often courted by underworld blood sorcerers and cults in the Free Cities, they spread influence like infection. Members of the Host share knowledge, impulses, and even dreams. But each voice added to the chorus means more self lost. - **The Forgotten** Rare and perilous, these spirits are echoes of things that were once worshipped but are no longer remembered - gods, ancestors, horrors. Blood calls to them like a beacon, especially blood offered in isolation or despair. They offer **strange gifts**: tongues that speak dead languages, the ability to see lost paths, or to bind shadows. Their price is steep, and their presence warps reality. These spirits are not summoned at random. The **intent**, **method**, and **emotion** behind the bloodletting shapes what comes. A desperate cut in a back alley draws a different entity than a sacred offering atop a sunlit ziggurat. The more precise the rite, the more aligned the spirit. But in all cases, blood is the bell - and the things that answer it are not kind. ### Consequences of Blood Sorcery To open one's flesh is to open a gate - and every gate swings both ways. Blood sorcery always exacts a cost. Even the smallest rite drains something, beginning with the **body**. Fatigue is the first sign. Dizziness follows. Deep or repeated cuttings may cause tremors, blackouts, or loss of coordination. Long-term practitioners often suffer from anemia, chronic pain, or weakness in their limbs. Scars are common, and many bear more than just physical marks. Certain glyphs, once cut or burned into the skin, resonate spiritually. They may twitch during storms, or glow under moonlight. Some claim the glyphs _whisper_ at night. These signs are more than ceremonial; they are **lingering threads** that tie the sorcerer to the spirits they have called. But the toll extends further. Spirits do not forget those who feed them. Casters may become **marked**, spiritually stained by the rites they perform. This mark can attract attention - friendly or hostile - from entities beyond the Veil. Some sorcerers hear voices. Others begin to see visions of the spirits even when not in ritual. A few go mad. Many simply vanish. The worst consequences come when the balance is broken - when too much is taken, or given without care. Violent or unwilling sacrifices often draw the attention of **unstable**, predatory spirits: beings that feast not just on blood, but on **identity**, **memory**, and **soulstuff**. Such entities offer power at first, but demand more with each use - until the sorcerer becomes little more than a vessel, their will hollowed out and replaced. Blood sorcery is a blade with no hilt. To grasp it is to bleed. ## Style & Manifestation Blood sorcery is unmistakable. Where it is worked, the air thickens with tension, the world tightens like a held breath, and reality warps at the seams. Practitioners become marked in body and soul, and their workings leave behind unmistakable signs. ### Expression Blood sorcery is not subtle. It does not whisper - at least not quietly. It rends. It stains. It _hungers._ To witness it is to feel the world hold its breath, to watch reality warp at its edges. The very air thickens when a working begins, heavy with iron and dread. Blood does not behave as it should. It lifts itself from the skin in slow, unnatural spirals, curling into tendrils of smoke, whispers, or coiling shadow that vanish into the aether. Wounds opened by intent - not accident - may glow with a dim, heatless fire, casting sickly red light upon the practitioner's skin. Where blood is shaped into glyphs or sigils, the lines bleed _light_ as well as life, pulsing with ancient rhythm like veins beneath parchment. Sound twists too. As the rite deepens, faint murmurs drift in from unseen corners - broken phrases, guttural chants, or weeping in languages older than mortal memory. These are not hallucinations; they are echoes of the spirits drawn near, brushing against the Veil like moths against a lantern. The spirits themselves are no less unsettling. Rarely do they appear in their true forms - if such a thing even exists. Instead, they manifest in symbolic shells: creatures with wings of bone and hollow eyes, children with blood-smeared masks and too many teeth, pale faces that drift just beyond reach, expressionless and staring. These visions linger, sometimes even after the rite has ended. At the height of a working, the world bends. Gravity slackens. Time grows slow and syrup-thick. Light dims unnaturally, not from any candle or sun, but as if reality itself recoils. In those moments, the sorcerer is utterly _elsewhere_, standing at the threshold between flesh and spirit, blood and shadow. It is awe. It is terror. It is power made visible. ### Common Effects & Applications Blood sorcery excels where the body meets spirit - where flesh becomes symbol, and life becomes currency. Its applications are varied, its logic ruthless. Across cultures and castes, its expressions differ, but the underpinnings are always the same: **life is power**, and blood is its language. At its simplest, blood magic is a tool of **enhancement and affliction**. Glyphs daubed in fresh blood become wards or hexes, repelling spirits or cursing those who trespass upon their lines. A practiced hand can etch a curse into flesh or stone, often still pulsing days later. Through ritual bloodletting, sorcerers may flood their veins with borrowed strength, dull pain, or heighten endurance - rites often employed by the blood-bound soldiers of the [[Temerian Empire]] and the gladiators of [[Kyros]]. But these are merely its surface forms. The true strength of blood sorcery lies in its **intimate manipulation of the body and soul**. Hemophage rites - turning blood directly into raw arcane force - are widely practiced despite their volatility. With them, a mage might incinerate an enemy, shatter stone, or perform a rite far beyond their usual means, at the cost of their own strength… or someone else's. Some specialize in **altering flesh** - reshaping bodies to suit new forms or needs. Skin hardened like bone, eyes that see in darkness, lungs that breathe smoke, wombs made fertile or sterile by will alone. These transformations leave lasting marks and often carry hidden costs, but the power they grant is undeniable. Spirit interaction goes further still. Blood is not only a lure but a vessel. With proper rites, a spirit can be _bound_ into a living host - a beast, a thrall, or the caster themselves. These **living hosts** share will and body with their spirit, gaining unnatural resilience, instinct, or insight. But cohabitation is dangerous; over time, will may erode, and identity blur. Some hosts are little more than empty skins with bright eyes, their minds lost beneath the spirit's hunger - the became [[The Hollowed]]. Others pursue control through **blood chains** - a practice of spirit enslavement that brands lesser willed with parasitic glyphs and runes etched into the practitioner's own flesh. Though outlawed in most known lands, these methods survive in hidden orders and black shrines, where spirits wail in voiceless fury beneath painted altars. The most feared rites involve **soul sacrifice** - the complete consumption or binding of a sentient being's essence. These rituals grant terrible power, drawing hostile or ancient spirits in their wake. Though rare and dangerous, they are not myth. Every warlord who ever bartered an entire village to summon a war-spirit, every Circle adept who bled a child for forbidden insight, proves their grim utility. In the end, blood sorcery is neither art nor science - it is appetite. It is the molding of the body, the binding of spirits, the trade of life for control. It is a discipline shaped by those willing to bleed for their power… and to make others do the same. ## Consequences on Drawing on the Blood Blood sorcery is not merely a tool - it is a transgression. Every cut is a bargain, and every ritual leaves something behind. Even the most disciplined practitioners bear the cost in flesh, mind, and spirit. Over time, the toll becomes impossible to ignore. **Physical decay** is among the earliest signs. Practitioners often suffer from chronic blood loss, their bodies slow to heal, their skin pale or bruised, their veins darkened by repeated invocation. Many become reliant on stimulants, tinctures, or stolen vitality to maintain their strength. In advanced cases, the body begins to rebel: blood thins, organs weaken, and wounds refuse to close. Some bloodmages resort to grafts, binding foreign tissue or enchanted fetishes into their bodies just to remain functional. The **mind** fares no better. Hallucinations are common - often dismissed as side effects of fatigue or exposure to spirits. Blood sorcerers report visions of rivers flowing uphill, whispering shadows, or faces in mirrors that do not reflect their own. These experiences may begin subtly, but they often intensify, blurring the line between reality and spirit. A persistent sense of being watched, even when alone, is considered an early warning sign. With time, **emotional degradation** sets in. Those who regularly deal in pain and sacrifice frequently detach from ordinary empathy. Mercy feels dull. Compassion erodes. Many become cold, obsessive, or ritualistic in behavior, often more attuned to the hunger of the spirits they call than to the people they once were. This spiritual dependency can evolve into a kind of addiction - an urge not just to cast, but to _offer_. Worse still are the **ghost-lures**. Blood, especially spilled with intent, calls to the dead. In grave-sites, battlefields, or old ruins, a single rite can become a beacon. Wandering spirits - lonely, vengeful, or simply curious - are drawn to such rituals, sometimes coalescing nearby for days. Practitioners often find themselves haunted without knowing it, their shadows stretching too long, their breath frosting in summer, or dreams full of eyes and whispers. Perhaps the most feared consequence is **spirit scarring**. This condition manifests as metaphysical wounds - tears in the practitioner's aura that draw hostile attention from the spirit realm. Seers and spirit-walkers describe these scars as glowing fissures, or blood-colored halos that flicker when magic is near. Once marked in this way, even passive spirits will sense the sorcerer's presence, and more aggressive entities may follow them across realms. In all things, blood sorcery demands balance. Those who fail to manage its costs risk becoming not masters of magic, but vessels of consequence - haunted, hollowed, and hunted. ## Traditions, Orders & Subdisciplines Though unified by the principle that blood is the conduit to spiritual power, the practice of blood sorcery splinters into distinct traditions - each shaped by culture, history, and necessity. Across Vaelora, practitioners may belong to ancient orders, serve urban cults, or operate as solitary renegades, drawing on a range of methods, beliefs, and spiritual compacts. ### The Circle of Magi The oldest and most systematized tradition, the **Circle of Magi** first codified blood sorcery into a disciplined arcane science. Founded in ancient Anderon after the First Invocation, the Circle's practice revolves around the **77 Glyphs of Power** - complex sigils etched in blood and activated through pain and precise incantation. Rituals are often slow, exacting, and heavily layered in occult symbolism. Within the Circle, knowledge is stratified and zealously guarded. Senior magi monopolize rare glyphs and rites, while apprentices often serve as both scribes and sacrificial proxies. Human blood is standard, though lethal offerings are reserved for the most consequential workings. The Circle values control above all; waste is taboo, and unlicensed bloodletting is punishable by death. Still, the upper echelons practice terrifyingly potent rites - some whispered to rewrite fate, though never without irreversible cost. ### The Blood Pyramids of Tlaxcaltec In the **Tlaxcaltec city-states**, blood sorcery is not academic - it is divine. Every city is bound to a **“City Spirit”**, a godlike entity slumbering in the heart of a Tul-Dar ziggurat. Blood is their worship and their fuel. The Tlaxcal do not seek hidden glyphs or secrets - they seek _glory_, _sacrifice_, and _alignment_ with their sacred patrons. Rituals here are visceral and communal. Victims - be they prisoners, animals, or even rival Tlaxcal - are sacrificed atop the ziggurat altars in dramatic rites that bind communal energy to divine will. These rites are less precise than those of the Circle, but far more powerful in scale. Their magic often manifests in city-wide blessings, natural disasters cast upon rivals, or the awakening of spirit-warriors called **Red Masks**. Tlaxcaltec priests are often warriors as well, trained to bleed and die beautifully in service of their god. ### The Temerian Blood-Legion Imported from Anderon two centuries ago, blood sorcery was rapidly adapted by the militaristic **Temerian Empire**. Stripped of its sacred trappings and repurposed as an **instrument of statecraft**, it found fertile ground in the Empire's brutal hierarchy. Here, blood magic is an industry - applied in laboratories, military camps, and execution chambers. Temerian sorcery emphasizes **functional enhancements**: strength, endurance, fear-resistance, rapid healing. Bloodletting is performed mechanically, with ranks of captives bled for the empire's glory. The **Blood-Legion** - elite troops empowered by augmentation rites - are feared across the continent. While still reliant on glyphic formulas, Temerian practitioners have begun experimenting with **alchemy and medicine**, giving rise to grim hybrids of flesh and spell. Subtlety is rare; efficacy is everything. ### The Hidden Orders of the Free Cities In the fractured and lawless **Free Cities of the Reaches**, blood sorcery survives underground - proscribed by law, yet thriving in the shadows. Here, it is a **forbidden art of desperation**, practiced by outcasts, heretics, crime lords, and desperate hedge-mages. Without academies or temples, sorcerers rely on **fragmentary tomes**, **copied glyphs**, and whispered traditions. Their methods are crude but adaptive. Many rituals are improvised, mixing various magical systems with blood as the core fuel. Some form pacts with minor spirits, others trade services for stolen glyphs or techniques. While most lack the polish or scale of other traditions, their creativity and ruthlessness make them unpredictable. Fetish-binding, gang tattoos powered by curses, and _“spirit-stitching”_ (melding spirit and flesh in alleyway surgeries) are not uncommon. Rumors speak of **The Crimson Writ**, a hidden cult that offers structured training to a select few - at terrible cost. ### Hybrid Practices - **Chirurgical Bloodcraft**: A blend of alchemy and blood sorcery focused on **surgical transformation**, bodily repair, and enhancement. Practiced secretly in Pharos and the underlevels of Temerian medical bastions. - **Sanguine Geometries**: Advanced glyphwork based on **patterned bloodletting and movement**, creating living runes that change in time and space. The Circle guards this art jealously. - **Spirit-Weaving**: A technique focused on embedding spirits directly into organic material - **blood, bone, sinew** - often used to animate constructs or possess living vessels. - **Anima Communion**: Considered heretical by many, this method seeks _union_ with spirits through shared pain and bleeding, rather than domination or sacrifice. Practiced among certain fringe Eldsingers and wandering madmen. ## Notable Practitioners Though many wield blood sorcery in secret or service, some names echo through history - carved in gore and flame. These individuals shaped, shattered, or redefined the art in their time. Their legends are whispered in classrooms, sung in war-camps, and etched in prison walls. ### Sareth the Red Almoner Once a wandering healer during the Pale Plague, Sareth revolutionized blood magic through **sanguine transference** - sacrificing his own lifeforce to purge corruption from others. Though initially hailed as a saint in southern Velthane, his methods grew increasingly extreme: whole villages were bled to “cleanse” the land. Declared a heretic by the Church of the Veil, he vanished into the wild lands. Sightings persist of a pale figure wandering the borderlands, his hands still dripping red. ### High Glyphar Aszharon of Anderon The first to unify the 77 Glyphs into a formalized system, Aszharon's work laid the foundation of modern blood glyphwork. A tyrant-savant and founder of the First Circle Conclave, he allegedly bound six spirits into his own circulatory system, creating a perpetual conduit of magical power. At his death, the glyphs etched into his bones were used to seal the Vault of Unspoken Rites - several of which have since been stolen. ### Ix'Lareth of Tlaxcal A blood-priestess turned war-goddess in the Tlaxcaltec highlands, Ix'Lareth led a rebellion by awakening a sleeping **City Spirit** and feeding it the hearts of a thousand captives. Her rites raised rivers, blackened the sun for three days, and birthed the Red Mask Host - wraithlike avatars bound to her will. After her apotheosis, she vanished into her ziggurat-temple. Some say she became her city's new patron. Others claim her spirit still demands sacrifice beneath the blood-stone. ### Varek Termenus, the Bone-Scourge A Temerian warmaster and founder of the first Blood-Legion battalions. Known for leading the Siege on [[Tor Amras]], where he drained over a thousand prisoners to power a single, sustained augmentation rite. Varek pioneered **hemografting**, fusing bloodbound glyphs into living bone. He was later executed for attempting to bind a greater spirit into his own warhost. His rites, however, are still studied - illegally - by the ritualists of the Blood Legion themselves. ### Aelwen, Mirror-Blooded Rumored to have been born under a rare **veil-rift**, Aelwen is a spirit-medium and fugitive sorceress said to carry **a bound twin-spirit** in her veins. Both hunted and sought by multiple orders, she practices a hybrid art of blood sorcery and spirit-channeling. Her trail is marked by strange phenomena - talking animals, reversed deaths, and crimson lotus blooms in winter. Some claim she is creating a **new discipline**, one that binds rather than bleeds. Her enemies call it blasphemy. Her followers call it mercy.