Blood Magic

Blood Magic is home to many abilities that many people would regard as... unnatural. Beset by ill reputations and an infamous difficulty in practicing its talents, it's of little surprise that it's a very clandestine form of magic practised by precious few people, but should its great barriers of learning be overcome, it can easily become the most powerful form of magic around, able to ignore many of the foundational laws of magic for whatever reason.

— Shirahime, High Mage of the Kisupet Empire

Blood Magic is a truly ancient form of magic, and one of the few forms of magic that has little to do with the Hysilens at that. Its powers are versatile and more than a little unnerving, with the infamous ability to completely ignore several foundational rules of magic when at higher skill points in a blood mage's development.

History of Blood Magic

Ancient History

Blood Magic never found its purchase during the reign of the Hysilens, for a variety of reasons, but the biggest being that they didn't have any of the traits that proved vital to develop it. One race is known to have used blood magic in this time though; the Raqise. Many believe them to have initially developed it in the later years of their Confederacy, and in many ways it may have been the gateway to their fell studies.

Early History

Following the exploits of the Raqise and their fall, many of the survivors ended up contributing to the formation of the first Vampire Covens, and in so doing expanded their research of blood magic, notably discovering the odd reaction of Aether to certain blood types. This both gave rise to vampiric blood magic, but also to the first of those who could wield the magic professionally; initially, it could only be wielded by those with specific magical bloodlines with specific blood types, but over time arcane advances further increased these restrictions far beyond just that, leading to the modern situation of anyone being able to wield blood magic so long as they have a magical bloodline or a Shard Ritual for blood magic.

Modern History

Nowadays, blood magic is a quite clandestine magic, as it has always been, with few openly admitting to knowledge of it. This makes the tracking of the number of Blood Mages extremely difficult due to their secrecy, but it's believed to be one of the lowest number of magic users in general, owing to the rarity of blood magic bloodlines, the rarity of blood shards, and with the power of the vampire covens and their specific blood magic. The Tal'ayn vampire coven are perhaps the most infamous, blending blood magic with Necrotic Magic to create magical spells able to apply blood magic's law-ignoring properties to far more than just blood.
In many ways, blood magic is synonymous with the vampires, but they're far from its only practitioners.

Blood Shards

Blood Shards are some of the most complicated shards to find, not at all appearing naturally and only appearing following events with great casualties. What makes them rarer than Necrotic Shards is the fact that some of the entities involved have to be using blood magic themselves, which exclusively limits blood shards to sites of great battles which include Blood Mages or the Vampires.
These factors combine to make blood shards pretty much the single rarest shard type that can still appear as a result of events, making Blood Mages all the rarer.

Uses of Blood Magic

Blood Mage by Anne Isaksson

Blood Manipulation

At its most basic, blood magic allows for the manipulation of blood, as the name would imply. At this basic level, a Blood Mage cannot manipulate the blood of another being, making blood manipulation more of a theatrical magic that sees more use at this lower level of power in Vampire realms in Sirtan, to aid in the storage and manipulation of extracted blood tithes from the vampires' subjects.
That said, it's a very important building block for all budding Blood Mages, as its techniques allow them to move on to all of the other blood magic techniques.

Lifesense

A fairly self-explanatory blood magic ability, lifesense is an evolution of blood evolution that allows a blood mage to sense the blood of other entities at a great distance - depending upon their skill level - which allows them to accurately sense the presence and location of creatures around them, no matter their capability for stealth. This has proven to be the bane of many a spy, and many overconfident adventurers.

Vampiric Blood Mages

Sirtan is home to the famed and feared Vampire covens, most notably the Tal'ayn coven - but they are far from the only one - and their influence on blood magic has made it a far different beast to the world at large.
While the unique uses of blood magic by the vampires will be covered below, it's of note that pretty much every blood magic power is significantly more powerful when wielded by a vampire, with Blood Boosting in particular being a horrendously feared power capable of elevating a vampire Haemomancer to near godlike magical potential.

Haemomancy

The most famous and feared aspect of blood magic, haemomancy is the locus point where blood magic turns from a relatively banal form of magic with only situational value to the most feared form of magic in existence to mortal beings; once a Blood Mage learns haemomancy, all of their blood magic starts to ignore the second limitation of magic, which is why most cultures separate them at this stage into becoming a Haemomancer. Blood magic from a Haemomancer can be formed within the bodies of another creature, allowing them to manipulate blood within other beings.
Understandably, this makes them incredibly dangerous, and most blood mages fail to reach this point due to the famous difficulty in mastering haemomancy, but those that succeed truly have the world at their fingertips, though the power of traditional Haemomancers is limited, they can only manipulate the blood itself - which is still deadly - while the far more dangerous and powerful vampiric Haemomancers can do far more heinous things with their haemomancy magic.

Blood Matriarch by Marie Magny

Blood Boosting

The most advanced techniques of blood magic that are available across the world to the best Haemomancers, allow a mage to bolster their other magical powers with blood magical power; this has a few restrictions, namely that it must be used to bolster non-blood magic spells, making its use for a blood magic specialist... limited, at best, and it also has various effects depending on the type of blood used.
As an example, utilizing one's own blood is tantamount to sacrificing a minute part of one's self to bolster their magic, which can be quite a profound boost indeed, but few sources can match that of Virgin Blood - meaning the blood of those that have not themselves tasted sapient species' blood or dealt with blood magic yet - when it comes to the bolster of power provided.
As many might expect, almost all municipalities outlaw Blood Boosting using blood other than your own alongside Haemomancy and anything more advanced than these as well, making it a very risky proposition to utilise blood boosting indeed.

Coven Uses

As stated prior, Sirtan is home to the venerable and famous Vampire Covens, and all of them have pushed their facets of blood magic so far that they have myriad completely bespoke forms of blood magic to themselves. Listed below are just a few of their vast repertoire of bespoke blood magics, all of which require haemomancy prior to learning. Further examples and explanations will be covered within the articles on the covens themselves.

Blood Puppetry

To the covens, blood puppetry is a relatively banal form of haemomancy that they actively wield as part of their training. It's a relatively simple magic, allowing them to manipulate the blood of a being to effectively hijack their bodily functions and control them like a puppeteer would control a doll. Weaker vampires can do this to weaker individuals, but the clan matriarchs are capable of some truly scary feats of blood puppetry should they so wish.

Blood Bonding

Almost acting in opposition to blood puppetry, blood bonding is a favourite of the more benign San'ryn Coven, and its power as a haemomancy is that it can allow a vampire to link their blood with another being, whether that be a vampire or not. This process is simple, but a vampire is often careful, as the process can unintentionally infect a non-vampire with vampirism.
Once bonded, a vampire can share their blood magic capabilities - in lesser amounts - to their bonded being, as well as expend their own vital energy - which regenerates extremely quickly - to staunch and mend wounds suffered by the bonded being. Indeed, this works both ways, so two vampires bonded together is a truly scary force to be reckoned with, but the San'ryn are often viewed as the benevolent vampire coven who are the most likely to be friendly with non-vampires, making this a quite rare sight to see indeed.

Blood Control

A notably advanced version of blood puppetry employed by the ever-duplicitous Val'ayn Coven, blood control is an extremely powerful haemomancy indeed, targeting the mind of a target directly via manipulating the blood vessels and other facets of the being. This effect allows for a Val'ayn vampire to effectively take a weak mind under complete mental dominion via their blood magic, and it's far harder to disperse control over than Psionic Magic efforts to do the same.
Of course, the biggest issue with blood control is the requirement for a Val'ayn vampire to remain close to their prey, but this generally doesn't prove massively problematic for the goals of the vampires.

Blood Sacrifices

Not so much a power, but an important discussion point of the vampiric covens, is their mastery of the magical rituals required for blood sacrifices which allow them to further empower their magic with empowered Blood Boosting and other blood sacrifice rituals.
These rituals are some of the most closely guarded secrets of the vampire covens, and are seldom used to begin with, making any information on them... dubious, at best.