Blood Sorcery Mechanics
“Blood remembers. It burns, it dreams, it speaks. The wise merely learn to listen.”
The Art of the Vein
Blood Sorcery — also called Thaumaturgy, Dur-An-Ki, or the Crimson Path — is the rare Discipline that turns the Blood inward, forcing it to obey thought and symbol.
It was not born from any single clan, though the Tremere claim invention and the Banu Haqim call it heritage. The Discipline survived inquisitions, shattered pyramids, and the fall of chantries; now it seeps through Kindred society like ink through water, spreading from occultists to rebels and even artists.
Unlike other powers, Blood Sorcery cannot be inherited by instinct alone. It demands tutelage, sacrifice, and time. Teachers barter lessons for loyalty or Blood Bonds; solitary practitioners risk madness or worse. To twist one’s vitae into a weapon or ward is to unmake one’s humanity a little more each night.
Theories of Blood
No two sorcerers agree on what the Blood truly is.
To the Tremere, it is Hermetic command, a formula of symbols and words.
To the Banu Haqim, Dur-An-Ki is covenant — a contract between vampire, spirit, and God.
To the Setites, Akhu is divine revelation through blood’s hidden language.
All agree on one truth: the Blood obeys only those who accept its hunger.
The Practice
Each sorcerer’s art is defined by Rituals — codified acts of will.
Rituals are not spells; they are negotiations. They demand ingredients, time, and emotional resonance. Some require relics of faith, others the screams of victims.
A single drop of vitae might corrode steel, boil another’s blood, or whisper secrets from centuries past.
Even the weakest Ritual takes weeks to master, its effects limited only by imagination and conscience. A sorcerer may learn or invent new rites, though each discovery risks attracting something ancient’s attention.
Blood Resonance
Sanguine blood — joyful, inspired, or fervent — strengthens the art. Blood from priests, occultists, scholars, or lovers burns brightest in ritual circles.
Many Kindred now trade in such blood as contraband, its taste laced with the promise of revelation.
Tenets of Blood Craft
Blood Sorcery carries moral gravity. The craft itself warps the sorcerer’s relationship to the Masquerade and to Humanity. Common oaths whispered in chantries and divans include:
Do not summon what you cannot banish.
Never humiliate a fellow practitioner.
When drawing blood, cause no suffering.
Seek power only when it’s offered.
Each violation leaves Stains upon the soul, and each ritual tempts the Beast with its own form of ecstasy.
— GM/Franz Directives —
When invoking Blood Sorcery in play:
Portray it as intimate horror, not fireworks — chanting over corpses, bleeding sigils into marble, whispering to jars of preserved hearts.
Every ritual requires symbolic ingredients (personal item, resonance sample, or moral transgression).
Describe the price as much as the effect. The smell of burning vitae, the tremor of power in the air, the whisper of something ancient taking notice.
Sorcery should carry Masquerade risk proportional to spectacle.
Tie Rituals to themes of obsession, isolation, and control; they erode Humanity through knowledge, not violence.