Blood Mana

Of Mana and Blood

In the earliest days of study, the first mages discovered that the blood of living creatures contained the mana required to make magic work. Some of the founding mages studied the concentrations of mana in the blood of as many animals and people they could find and convince to donate. There are even cases where desperate mages took blood samples from prisoners in castle dungeons to complete their research.

This study formed the basis of knowledge for all other mages at the time. It was believed that a certain amount of mana was required by the mage in order to manipulate mana and use magic, because the mana from a mage's blood was used to augment mana in a spell or provide all the mana required to cast a spell.

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Progress

In the last 1000 years great progress has been made in sourcing mana. Many plants are either used in their raw form or distilled to be used at a later date. Blood as an exclusive or preferred source of mana dropped out of use around 500 years ago when a particularly gifted scholar was given a tome despite his low mana level. He used plants to supplement the mana in his blood and developed some of the most common methods used by mages today.

I ran into a mage who still bleeds themself for their spells. It was bizarre to see, like watching an ancient mage at work in their outdated lab.

— One journeyman mage to another on the roadside

Finding the Best Methods

Those who use their own blood in their spells are generally those with more mana in their system than plants readily available to them have. They are still seen as old fashion, and something of an oddity. Most young mages don't even think to use their own blood as it isn't even largely taught by maguses anymore.