Blessing of the Hunt
The Source of the Hunter's Power
You and your sister have power, Mehrak. Power that can help us hurt these beasts. My brother and I are old now but those who come after us need more to fight. They need you.
The Blessing of the Hunt is an ancient ritual, nearly as old as the hunter clans themselves. As with all things, it took time to perfect the nature of the magic and there were several long centuries where the rite was more curse than blessing. Thousands of witches over that course of time had their hands in the spellwork, working to perfect its nature and give their allies the advantage that mortals needed to be certain that vampire kind could not simply overrun them.
Centuries of Failure
While many who took on the Blessing in the early years were blessed with the heightened strength, speed, reflexes, and senses that they needed to combat their immortal foes, there were many more who did not. By modern estimations from what few records remain in the archives of the Neruĝal and Alkina clans, roughly sixty percent of those who first undertook the ritual survived it to gain heightened abilites. Of the estimated forty percent that remained, thirty percent were either permanently crippled or received only half of the benefits of the Blessing and the final ten percent died of the strain. These statistics are estimated to have held relatively steady for the first hundred years or so.
As further centuries passed by and more witches put their knowledge into the ritual, the complexity of it grew. With this complexity and knowledge of it, the success rate fluctuated over the next roughly two hundred years. There is one period of some fifty years in an Alkina record where the failure rate of the Blessing ritual was an estimated eighty percent - that is, at least, the assumption from large scores of deaths that were accounted for in those years, far more than a clan had had before in such a timespan.
Eventually, of course, the ritual that brought forth the Blessing settled fully into place and the magic solidified. It helped that over time the witches realized that the magic in parent passed on to child and then simply needed to be activated through a more minor version of the ritual.
Blessed Protection
Over the millenia that has passed since Neruĝal and Alkina asked Mehrak and Ghazal to help them in their fight, the Blessing of the Hunt has been solidified into a ritual with a ninety-nine point nine percent success rate. Hunters who are born of hunters are almost guaranteed to inherit the magic through the blood of their parents and, even if they don't, the latent magic imbued into the bloodline will make them going through the process easier. Largely the only ones who sometimes fail in the ritual are those who are being adopted into the clan without any magic in their veins at all.
The Blessing Provides
- Heightened strength (5 to 10% increase from previous)
- Heightened speed (5 to 10% increase from previous)
- Heightened senses (1 to 5% increase from previous)
- Heightened reflexes (1to 3% increase from previous)
The Ritual
The ritual itself must be cast by a witch of some decent modicum of power in order for it to be successful. In ancient times, there would be a wait of months or even years for a witch to be available to cast the ritual. Thankfully in modern times, it is as simple as boarding a plane to get a witch to where they need to be, even if it is only to cast the ritual for a single participant.
When a hunter of the bloodline enters training around the age of twelve, a more simplistic version of the ritual is cast upon them. This version of the ritual involves the witch - usually from the sect allied with the hunter clan - drawing witchwords on their body in specific locations with whatever is handy (be it pen, marker, sharpie, or even paint). These words are drawn on the forehead, back of the hands, tops of the feet, and on the chest over the heart and then magic is forced through them, drawing out the latent power of the ritual used year after year, century after century.
The process of bringing one of the uninitiated into a hunter clan is a much more intricate process for the ritual. In fact, this version of the ritual is essentially the original version of the ritual that was figured out over centuries of trial and error in order to make the hunters what they are. This process also involved witchwords but requires them not simply on four parts of the body but on almost all major surfaces of the body in order for the magic to envelope the whole of the subject and enhance their abilities. It is a long and arduous process and usually involves multiple witches for such a casting. Going through the ritual in this way is also not done idly and those going through it are put through rigorous trials before they are given the go ahead to be fully adopted into the clan in the most intimate way they have.
History
The mortal body is naturally not capable of keeping up with the enhanced form of a vampire. Before this gulf of difference between the two was crossed, the first hunter clans had to rely purely on surprise attacks in order to stand a chance against any vampire that they chose to pursue. Both Neruĝal and Alkina lost several members of their family as well as friends and allies in the first years of their pursuit of fighting the monsters that were stalking mortals and sought multiple methods of combatting their weaknesses.
The answer, in the end, came in the form of Mehrak and his sister Ghazal, two witches that had been brought to the attention of the half-brothers by one of their hunters. Originally there was some talk of adding the witches to their hunt as there was fear of what their power could do but Alkina had a different prospect. He suggested that they make allies of these two witches despite there being laws against using such things. If the pair were true practictioners and not merely playing at power, they could perhaps convince them to help them. Such application of their power would surely be towards the good in the world and therefore not done with evil intent.
With that one choice, the allegiance between hunters and witches came to be.
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