The Path of Blood
“We pay the price of knowledge and reap the reward that is our due. Your envy does not damage our ambition. It only makes us stronger.” — Nixx Ignatius, Tremere Pontifex
The Path of Blood is considered to be the foundation of hermetic Thaumaturgy. It leverages the concept of sympathetic magic to allow you to alter the properties of the vitae within your system or to discover secrets of others through divining with their blood. All Tremere learn this path of magic, basing the rest of their studies on these principles.
Contents
• A Taste for Blood
Initiates in the Path of Blood are taught to quantify and evaluate unique elements present in a drop of vampiric vitae. By tasting a drop of your target’s blood, you can determine important information about her nature.
System: Ingest a drop of your target’s blood and use your simple action to discern information about the target. A Taste for Blood requires you to physically ingest the vitae that you test, and, therefore, consumes the sample of blood. This power can be dangerous if the blood is tainted with disease or other effects. Fortunately, the magical nature of A Taste for Blood shields the thaumaturge from being bound by the blood ingested when activating this power.
A Taste for Blood provides all of the following information:
• Medical information, such as blood type and state of health
• How much blood is currently in the subject’s system
• What type of creature the blood came from. If the creature is not a mortal, ghoul, or vampire, the Storyteller may require a Lore challenge to identify the exact creature type.
• If the subject is a vampire, the thaumaturge may also determine:
- The subject’s generation
- Whether the subject has ever committed diablerie
- How recently the subject has fed
Focus [Perception]: You can gauge the strength of any blood bonds or partial blood bonds the target has, including the bonds created by participating in the Vaulderie. You do not know to whom the subject is bound, nor whether the bonds are mutual, but you do know the number and severity of the bonds.
•• Blood Rage
You can mystically manipulate another vampire’s blood while it is still within her system. A vampire affected by Blood Rage feels a rush, much like a surge of adrenaline, and automatically realizes she has been affected by a power.
System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to make an opposed challenge using your Mental attribute + Occult versus the target’s Mental attribute + Willpower. The target must be within one step of you. If you succeed, the target must spend a single point of Blood in any fashion you wish. This expenditure can exceed the limits of Generation. By using this power, you can force a vampire or ghoul to spend Blood in one of the following manners:
- Increase her Physical attribute
- Activate a discipline power, such as Rapidity
- Heal wounds
- Awaken from torpor
- Sweat blood through her pores
Blood Rage cannot be used to force the target to activate a power that requires her to spend an action, unless the target willingly uses that action. For example, you might force your target to spend 1 Blood to activate Tenebrous Form, but the target does not actually transform unless she chooses to spend the required action.
Focus [Perception]: You must be within 10 steps of your target in order to activate Blood Rage, as opposed to the standard one step.
••• Blood of Potency
You have mastered your vitae to the point that you can command it to temporarily thicken, causing your vampiric form to manifest a more potent generation.
System: Spend 1 Blood and use your simple action to activate Blood of Potency. This power lasts for the next hour. While Blood of Potency is active, your maximum Blood pool increases to half again its normal size (rounded up). In addition, you can spend 2 additional points of Blood per turn while the power is active. You are considered to be three generations lower than normal for the purpose of waking another vampire from torpor. You can use Blood of Potency once per night. Once this power ends, any Blood you contain over your natural Blood pool dilutes, leaving you at your regular Blood pool maximum.
If you are diablerized during this time, or if you Embrace childer, your real generation is used to determine the results for those actions, not your virtual generation.
Focus [Intelligence]: You can utilize Blood of Potency twice in the course of a single evening.
•••• Theft of Vitae
One of the basic principles of sympathetic magic is the concept that like is attracted to like. By mystically attuning the vitae in your body into a thaumaturgical magnet, you can literally siphon blood from your target, causing it to cascade out of your enemy’s pores and into your hand, to be absorbed instantly into the caster’s system.
System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to make an opposed challenge using your Mental attribute + Occult versus the target’s Mental attribute + Willpower, targeting a character within 25 steps of you. If you succeed, you can mystically draw forth 3 points of Blood from your victim. This blood bursts through your victim’s pores, soaring through the air into your hand, and is then mystically absorbed into your own flesh. Blood stolen in this fashion has all of its normal properties — ingesting blood from a vampire creates a blood bond, poisoned blood still sickens you, diseased blood passes on its infection, and so on. Needless to say, this rather unsettling power is considered a breach of the Masquerade when used openly.
You may use Theft of Vitae on consecutive turns even if you fail a challenge. This is an exception to the rule that prevents you from immediately reattempting a Mental challenge on the same target.
Exceptional Success: You steal 4 points of Blood from your target, rather than 3.
Focus [Intelligence]: When you use Theft of Vitae to steal blood from a vampire, your power neutralizes the blood to a certain degree. Blood drawn with this power cannot induce a blood bond in you, sicken you, or carry diseases. Supernatural powers affecting vampire vitae, such as Vicissitude’s Acid Blood, remain in effect.
••••• Cauldron of Blood
By touching your opponent, you can boil the blood within your enemy’s veins, causing her to suffer incredible pain and agony. Red mist rises from the victim’s body as bubbling blood seeps from her pores and orifices. Few vampires can withstand this internal furnace, and mortals are inevitably killed by such an attack.
System: Use a standard action to Grapple a target. If you succeed, spend 1 Blood to inflict Cauldron of Blood on the victim, as well as inflicting all standard effects of a Grapple. Cauldron of Blood boils 2 points of Blood within your victim’s body, destroying the affected Blood and causing 2 points of aggravated damage. Damage caused by this power cannot be reduced or negated.
The first time you use Cauldron of Blood on a target, you must succeed in a Grapple combat maneuver against that target. If your target is already Grappled, you can activate this power by spending 1 Blood and using your standard action.
This power does not convert the normal damage dealt by a Grapple to aggravated damage, and that damage can be reduced or negated normally. The Grapple combat maneuver does not reduce the damage dealt by Cauldron of Blood. Mortals affected by Cauldron of Blood die instantly.
Focus [Intelligence]: You can affect 1 additional point of Blood, boiling up to a total of 3 Blood and causing 3 aggravated damage per use.
