Commands the Blood
Blood is memory, kinship, and power in a form the body can still understand. You learned, somehow, to work with it directly: to read it, to still it, to stir it, to pay with it and be paid in it. Every significant working you perform requires blood, and the most reliable source of blood is always your own. This is not an aesthetic preference. It is the structural shape of the bargain that answers when you call.
Connection: Choose one of the following.
- Pick one other PC. You share blood with them, whether through kinship, transfusion, or a deliberate ritual mingling. Your workings can draw on their blood as well as your own, with their consent; they feel the draw each time.
- Pick one other PC. They bled for you once, in an emergency, and the working that followed saved a life. That debt runs in whichever direction feels accurate to the table.
- Pick one other PC. They find your practice unsettling on a level they have not yet been able to articulate, and have asked you to keep the details away from them. You have agreed.
- Pick one other PC. When they stand within immediate range of you, any working you perform using your own blood costs 1 fewer Might point, minimum 1.
Additional Equipment: A working kit suited to hemomancy: a consecrated blade or lancet, clean cloths, a small vessel, and an implement for catching and measuring (a glass, a bowl, a marked phial). The kit is personal to you; other practitioners’ kits will function, but less reliably.
GM Intrusion: A working draws more blood than intended. A creature reads the residue of your last working and follows it back to you. Blood you used without strict consent, however justified at the time, calls in a debt.
Geas: Every significant working requires a blood offering. Each use of an ability from this focus costs you at least 1 point from your Might Pool that cannot be prevented by Edge, representing the blood drawn for the working; this cost is in addition to any listed point cost. Blood freely given by another, with their full and informed consent, may substitute, but the practice of doing so is watched closely by the Sanctuary and by older things than the Sanctuary. Blood taken without consent will power a working once, and afterward the working remembers where the blood came from, and the creditor of your practice remembers too. You have an inability on tasks involving concealing your practice from anyone who has witnessed its residue, and on tasks involving performing any ability from this focus while you have no points in your Might Pool.
Minor Effect Suggestion: The working leaves an unusually clean scar on you rather than an open wound; you recover the Might cost faster, regaining 1 Might point on your next recovery roll in addition to its normal effect.
Major Effect Suggestion: The blood offering is partially returned: you regain 1d6 Might points at the end of the round in which you performed the working.
Tier 1
Blood-Sight: You read blood that you can see: how fresh it is, whether it is human or otherwise, whether two samples share kinship (immediate family, broader relation, or none), whether the bearer is under the effect of a working, and whether it was shed willingly. You are trained in medical tasks involving blood, in identifying the Hungry and those who have recently fed upon them, and in reading the blood-signature of supernatural beings. Enabler.
Blood Rite (1 Intellect point, + 1 Might from the Geas): You perform a small hemomantic working using a drop of your own blood: a minor concealment that lasts an hour, a calming pulse that eases one social task, a faint warding mark on a surface that lasts a day, a brief invigoration that grants an asset to your next physical task, or a similar minor effect of limited scope (GM’s discretion). Action.
Tier 2
Staunch (2 Intellect points): You touch a bleeding creature within immediate range and either stop the bleeding entirely, stabilising them and restoring 4 points distributed among their Pools; or, used offensively against an unwilling living target, open a bleeding wound that inflicts 3 points of Speed damage now and 2 additional points at the start of their next turn unless they or an ally takes an action to close the wound. Action.
Tier 3
Ability Choice. Choose either Blood Bond or Sanguine Wound as your tier 3 ability.
Blood Bond (3 Intellect points): You tie your working to a willing participant by mingling a small amount of your blood with theirs. For the next 24 hours, you are each aware of the other’s approximate location and general condition, your Half-Step Intuition and similar reads on each other are eased by two steps, and you may share or redirect up to 2 points of damage per round, by mutual agreement, between your Pools. Action to initiate.
Sanguine Wound (3 Might points): Your next attack this turn against a living target, on a successful hit, opens a bleeding wound that deals 2 additional points of damage at the start of the target’s next three turns unless closed by a healing action or appropriate medical task. Against creatures that do not bleed (some Hollow, most constructs), this ability has no additional effect. Enabler; applied to an attack.
Tier 4
Ability Choice. Choose either Sympathetic Strike or Sanguine Ward as your tier 4 ability.
Sympathetic Strike (4 Intellect points): Using a sample of a target’s blood (freshly drawn, no older than 24 hours), you inflict 5 points of damage to that target regardless of intervening distance, provided the target is on the same plane as you. Armour applies. The working leaves a signature that a practitioner who inspects the target can read; repeated use increases the strength of the signature. Action.
Sanguine Ward (4 Intellect points): You inscribe a ward in blood on a surface you can touch, defining an area up to a 10-foot radius. For the next hour, or until the ward is physically disturbed, any unwanted supernatural presence that attempts to cross the ward is hindered by two steps on all tasks while within the area, and a creature bound or obligated to something you specify (named in the inscription) cannot cross at all without succeeding on a level 5 Intellect task. Action to initiate.
Tier 5
Crimson Memory: You read the last hours of a creature’s life from its fresh blood. By spending one minute of concentration and at least 1 Might point of your own as offering, you learn, from blood no older than one day, significant events involving the bearer in the eight hours prior to it being shed: a face seen, a place visited, an emotion felt strongly, the manner of their injury or death. The GM shapes what comes through as a sequence of clear fragments rather than a full recording. Enabler.
Tier 6
Ability Choice. Choose either Vessel’s Due or Life for Life as your tier 6 ability.
Vessel’s Due (6+ Intellect points): You call upon the full weight of your practice. Choose one: a single living target within long range takes 10 points of damage that ignores Armour, with a matching blood offering of 4 Might from yourself; or, a creature of up to level 6 is bound to a single task of reasonable scope for the next hour, with a matching blood offering of 4 Might from yourself and a willingly provided sample of the target’s blood; or, you suspend the bleeding or ongoing physical decline of a creature you can touch for one hour, during which they function as though fully healthy, followed by a full moderate wound (no Armour) when the hour ends. Action.
Life for Life (0 Intellect points, 6 Might): In the moment that an ally within immediate range would die, you transfer the killing wound to yourself. They return to 1 point in the Pool that would have been reduced to zero and are stabilised. You take a major wound that ignores Armour and any other protective effects. If this kills you, the working holds nonetheless; your ally survives. The creditor of this practice attends the working closely. Action, used in response to an ally’s imminent death.