"...blood magic taps into the raw, vital essence of the body, tapping it and shaping it for other purpose. The most skilled blood magi can extend their power beyond the body itself, extending their essence into the shape of a tool or weapon."
—Worth the Candle Chapter 9: "Making Magic"
Blood magic appears to consist primarily of personal-only buffs (see Spells , below), but a skilled user can also use it to heal themselves or others[1], or to burn out infections via blood transfusion.[2]
Blood magic is taught at the Athenaeum of Quills and Blood, and blood mages can be employed as healers[1] or combat mages.[3] Multimages with access to blood magic can extend the range of their touch spells by getting a target to touch their blood, as the caster's blood counts as them for the purpose of using magic.[4]
Spells
Edit
Aarde's TouchEdit
Channels the warmth of your blood to create a small fire at your fingertips, which does not burn you. Objects set on fire or heated may still harm you. Saps heat from your body and may leave you feeling chilly if used too long. Consumes 0 drops of blood.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 9: "Making Magic"
Aarde's touch is the first blood magic spell that Amaryllis teaches Juniper. It uses the caster's body heat to power a flame, which can be used for light or to burn things.
Bare AugmentationEdit
Blood magic spells that directly increase physical power are called bare augmentation[5]. There are several spells in this group, all of which provide a short burst of strength (without increasing resilience) for the price of a few drops of blood.
Crimson FistEdit
Channels the force of your blood to gain kinetic energy in the form of a punch. Your fist is in no way protected by this spell. Drawing on this spell too often may leave you feeling sluggish. Consumes 3 drops of blood.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 9: "Making Magic"
Despite the name, Crimson Fist can do more than augment punches. It appears to be able to augment almost any arm movement. Juniper, in particular, appears to use it with sword blows.[6]
Crimson FootEdit
Channels the force of your blood to gain kinetic energy in the form of a kick. Your foot is in no way protected by this spell. Drawing on this spell too often may leave you feeling sluggish. Consumes 3 drops of blood.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 15: "Whys and Wherefores"
Crimson Foot, like the rest of the bare augmentation spells, can presumably do more than enhance kicks. However, the distinction between places where Crimson Foot or Sanguine Surge are applicable is somewhat unclear, as both work with leg muscles.
Sanguine SurgeEdit
Channels the force of your blood to gain kinetic energy in the form of a leap. Your body is in no way protected by this spell. Drawing on this spell too often may leave you feeling sluggish. Consumes 5 drops of blood.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 15: "Whys and Wherefores"
Like Crimson Fist, Sanguine surge is more broadly applicable than the description seems to imply. For example, Juniper uses it to run faster.[7]
Transfusion Spells Edit
Blood magic revolves around manipulating the caster's vital essence. How, then, can they use it to influence other people? The answer is apparently transfusions.
While Bloodline is the only spell in this category that Juniper uses, it is theoretically possible to apply the Aarde's Touch or Bare Augmentation spells via transfusion,[8] as well as to create more exotic effects like burning out nascent infections.[2]
Bloodline Edit
When you have forced your blood into another person, you can use it to heal or harm them. Apply a bonus or malus of up to your POW/SPD/END to them, at the cost of your own, with five factor modifiers.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 51: "Blood in the Water"
Bloodline is the spell that blood mages use to heal other people. The healing presumably functions in a manner similar to bone magic's healing, with a temporary boost in END resulting in more lasting healing.
The five factors mentioned in the description are all binary,[9] and are Aerb's equivalent of blood types.[10] Unlike Earthly blood types, the five factors are almost entirely determined by species[11]. Transfusions appear to have non-fatal side-effects as long as at least three of the five factors match.[12]
An interesting note is that Aerb has more sapient species than there are possible 5-factor alignments, meaning there are different species that can reliably serve as a perfect match to each other.
Blood Control Edit
Blood mages gain a limited amount of telekinetic control over their own blood,[13] which is the basic skill behind their ability to create blood objects.[14] In addition to the spells listed here, a blood mage with enough skill can control the flow of their blood to stop their injuries from bleeding,[15] or to stop themselves from blushing.[16]
Blood Hardening Edit
Channels the force of your blood to minimize damage from attacks. Bludgeoning attacks are reduced by three orders of magnitude. Piercing and slashing attacks are reduced by one order of magnitude. Only applies to parts of your body that have sufficient blood flow. Consumes 5 drops of blood.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 152: "The Time to Talk"
Blood Hardening, despite the name, appears to operate by using telekinesis to apply a counter force rather than actually hardening the mage's blood.[17] Between this spell, the ability to stop themselves from bleeding, and the ability to heal themselves blood mages are actually reasonably durable.
Claret SpearEdit
Channels the force of your blood into a pointed weapon. Damage and attack are dependent upon your Blood Magic level. Blood cost is dependent upon blood loss and your roll on the blood recovery chart. Complex variant shapes require higher Blood Magic.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 152: "The Time to Talk"
The most common blood weapon is a spear.[18]
The spell is difficult to use, requiring concentration to maintain the form. It's also hard to use because it doesn't really obey the laws of physics like normal, resulting in somewhat counterintuitive movement.
There are also difficulties associated with pulling a large quantity of blood from the mage's body. In addition to the obvious symptoms of blood loss while the spear is active, if the mage wants to return the blood to their body it needs to be purified as it's potentially been exposed to infections or toxins that they don't want inside of them.[19]
On the other hand, the claret spear is good because of its interactions with other spells and magics. Stabbing someone with the spear allows the mage to force blood into their opponent, which counts as an infusion for the purposes of Bloodline.[20] Considerations for multimages with regards to touch spells presumably also apply.[speculation] Finally, the Claret Spear can be thrown as long as the mage is willing to eat the blood loss,[21] which can combine well with the above.
Blood Magic in the Game LayerEdit
Blood magic's primary stat is WIS, and its secondary stat is probably END [22]
Known virtues include:
- Hypertension (level 20): doubles Juniper's blood volume[23]
Blood magic is affected by two of Essentialism's virtues- Soul Saturation allows Juniper to use blood in place of ink (for ink magic) and infusions (for pustule magic), while Soul Symbiote doubles his effective skill in Blood Magic, up to a cap of 75.[24]
Known PractitionersEdit
- Amaryllis Penndraig studied blood magic at the Athenaeum of Quills and Blood. [25]
- Juniper Smith is an unlicensed blood mage
- Lisianthus Penndraig is a combat blood mage[3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 For healing themselves:
"The blood in your body provides nutrients and oxygen, it clots your wounds, and it provides the basis for a whole host of other healing when you’re injured. So in a similar way to how you use the heat of your blood for Aarde’s Touch and the pulse of your blood for the Crimson Fist, you need to focus on the healing property of your blood."
—Worth the Candle Chapter 18: "Communal" For healing others:
"We need healing, probably sooner rather than later....I asked around, we have our choice of a disreputable bone mage or a disreputable blood mage."
—Worth the Candle Chapter 15: "Whys and Wherefores" - ↑ 2.0 2.1 "a sufficiently skilled blood mage might have been able to burn the disease out through transfusion if it was caught within the first forty-eight hours"
—Worth the Candle Chapter 39: "Strategic Reserves" - ↑ 3.0 3.1 "I’m already a combat mage. I was trained at Quills and Blood."
—Worth the Candle Chapter 145: "Freshman" - ↑ Unfortunately, it’s touch or near-touch, which limits it, a limit which can be overcome by spraying blood onto opponents in the course of battle, or delivered with extensors in at a distance.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 147: "Good Vibrations" - ↑ "I’m capable of doing bare augmentation"
—Worth the Candle Chapter 145: "Freshman"
Note that at this point juniper only knows aarde's touch, crimson fist/foot, and sanguine surge. Aarde's touch obviously isn't bare augmentation, so at least one of the other three is. Since they're so similar, it seems likely that they all are. We also know that the Claret spear *isn't* bare augmentation from Lisi's reponse earlier in the chapter. - ↑ I thrust the sword up, narrowing it to the thinnest possible point, and pierced the armor where the helmet joined to the gorget, putting my entire weight behind it, including a rush of force from the hammering pulse of my blood
—Worth the Candle Chapter 58: "Panopticon" - ↑ I swore and booked it, making each step a Sanguine Surge timed to my racing heart
—Worth the Candle Chapter 38: "Don't Split the Party" - ↑ "I could see all the other avenues of this link that the game hadn’t told me about, how I could channel the blood magic through her to light her fingertips up like I could light my own, or how I could use her pulse in combination with my own to add force to her movements, if she had any movements to speak of."
—Worth the Candle Chapter 51: "Blood in the Water" - ↑ the five factors were treated as binary in their letter designations
—Worth the Candle Chapter 51: "Blood in the Water" - ↑ “Juniper, do you know how compatible your blood types are?”
“I -- I’m B+, but --” I stammered out.
“On the five factors,” said Amaryllis.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 51: "Blood in the Water" - ↑ People of the same species were assumed to be compatible with each other, with deviation along a single factor being ‘uncommon’ but not rare.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 51: "Blood in the Water" - ↑ "Blood mages were ordered to work within a single factor of misalignment, because that made two factors of misalignment ‘uncommon’, and presumably it wasn’t ‘uncommon’ for a blood mage to kill someone through transfusion, which meant that was the zone of safety"
—Worth the Candle Chapter 51: "Blood in the Water" - ↑ "I tried to imagine the flow of blood like a river whose course I was changing, so that which is the basic skill behind their ability to form blood objects.from my wrist before losing control of it and getting blood everywhere."
—Worth the Candle Chapter 94: "Grayscale" - ↑ “Blood hardening is a necessary prerequisite to the Claret Spear,” said Lisi.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 152: "The Time to Talk" - ↑ Lisi glared at me, then gave a fractional nod. “Blood bypass means altering the flow of blood such that it doesn’t exit the body from a wound, or, more difficult, altering the flow of blood to prevent internal bleeding. Can you do that?”
—Worth the Candle Chapter 152: "The Time to Talk" - ↑ <Har har,> I replied again, as I used blood magic to slow my heart rate and suppress my blush.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 149: "I Have to Hand it to You" - ↑ “I don’t want to get tired. Now, when I hit you, I want you to use your blood for a counterforce. It’s likely and expected that the skin might break. Ready?”
—Worth the Candle Chapter 152: "The Time to Talk" - ↑ spears are the most common
—Worth the Candle Chapter 9: "Making Magic" - ↑ “There are four difficult aspects to the technique,” said Lisi. “The first is operating while light on blood, though there are techniques to increase the blood volume of the body and magically compress blood to have a greater natural store. The second is that concentration must be maintained on the Claret Spear at all times, even in the heat of combat. The third is that the spear must be retracted back into the body, unless you want to spend an enormous quantity of blood with every use, and the blood outside the body will have contact with foreign particulates, air, and germs, which means techniques have to first be mastered to purify blood, either inside the body or outside it. Fourth, you have to come to the counter-intuitive understanding that the spear is maintained in its shape by pure will, and does not obey the laws of physics as such.”
—Worth the Candle Chapter 152: "The Time to Talk" - ↑ “Yeah,” I said. “There are other advantages with it, aren’t there? If I can force my blood into someone --”
“Yes,” said Lisi. “We call it the bloodline.”
I had already learned that aspect, back when I had given Fenn a quick and sloppy transfusion, this was just a fast, easy, and effective way to do it against an opponent. All I would need to do was stab them once, push my blood into them, and then use it against them.
—Worth the Candle Chapter 152: "The Time to Talk" - ↑ “And it can be launched?” I asked. “If I wanted it to be ranged?”
“Yes,” said Lisi. “At the cost of a fair amount of blood. Easier, with more blood to provide pressure. You learned the technique in the span of a moment?”
—Worth the Candle Chapter 152: "The Time to Talk" - ↑ my strongest candidate for Blood Magic’s secondary was END rather than CUN or KNO
—Worth the Candle Chapter 36: "In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet" - ↑ "which seemed to indicate that my body could or would hold twice as much blood as it could before"
—Worth the Candle Chapter 39: "Strategic Reserves" - ↑ Essentialism
- ↑ "I had the best teachers in the world and literally centuries of institutional knowledge on how best to coax someone into understanding"
—Worth the Candle Chapter 9: "Making Magic"
