Blood

Half necromancy, half frenzied revelry, the Blood Arts empower their wielder with awesome strength and speed by drinking and feeding upon other creatures. Often associated with vampires and lycanthropes, the Blood Arts are also often used by brutal warriors, cannibals and monsters.

Traits

Unlike other Arts, the Arts of Blood manifests visually upon your skin and in your eyes as soon as you tap into its power. Your eyes fill with a crimson hue and veins become visible as your muscles pump with life. At Level 3, your body changes when you engage in combat. Your fingers might lengthen into claws or your teeth may grow instantaneously into fangs when necessary. These transformations become more and more extensive as your reach Level 6 and above, resulting in brief but powerful mutations. Around the same time, you learn to control blood itself as a weapon, and are often awash in gore during combat. Masters of the Blood Arts are terrible to behold as their blood awakens into a mobile liquid muscle at their command. Strangely, after Level 7, users tend to look more and more comely as their body adapts to its own power.

Associated Colors

Blood red and rusty black.

History

In 200, with the coup d’état of Vlad and the rise to power of the Draculeans, the Arts of Blood saw a new dawn. In centuries before the Art had been almost lost to diffusion. The new prince and his menagerie of veritable fiends revived the almost dead Art and instated it as one of the primary Arts of the State. It has seen popularity on and off since, often waxing and waning with the power of the Draculeans.
Notable Individuals
Vlad,

Blood Abilities
Level 1: Excitement

You may not know it at first, but the earliest stage of the Arts of Blood is a riled thrill that runs through you. You begin to revel in combat, pleased at the tang of blood in the air. The excitement tingles and causes you to react faster and harder than you might have before.

Level 2: Drinking the Lifeblood

Your revelry reaches a new level when you begin partaking in the blood of those you fight. It is said that this grants you power, and you begin to feel that effect. It may not even necessarily be in a frenzy of killing; some are drawn simply by the sensual power of the drink.

Level 3: Fiendclaws

Dark revelry begins to take its potent toll on your body as your fingers and teeth sharpen into vicious claws and fangs at the mere suggestion of combat. While these mutations last only moments in most cases, they sometimes fail to go away for a while after a good gorging.

Level 4: Devouring

Powerful muscles grow permanently along your jaw, giving you the ability to snap bones in half and chew through armor if necessary. You develop a habit of partaking of your opponents before they fall, as much out of excitement as intimidation.

Level 5: Adrenal Speed

The blood flowing in your veins and arteries feeds the primal parts of you, drawing out your inner beast. Fear no longer grips you in combat; you are driven by pure, hot, pumping blood. Almost unable to contain your glee, you flick from meal to meal in combat, lingering only briefly before disappearing from sight again.

Level 6: Bloodspell

Enough blood can drown someone. You’ve drank so much now that you have a mystical connection with the thick red liquid. You can summon it forth from nowhere briefly as a flat spray, to be used as a blade or even a shield. It not only absorbs the shock of attacks but also maddens opponents who are fooled into thinking their blows are connecting.

Level 7: Liquid Leap

Your control over your body is almost absurd. You’ve broken the normal limits of strength and can now hurl yourself into jumps, bounds and charges that would be impossible for others. Perfectly toned, you often lounge like a predatory cat, exuding fitness.

Level 8: Liquid Speed

Your control over your body is now totally absurd. Shifting muscles, sinew and bones around as necessary, you are astoundingly attractive when at rest, and shatteringly terrifying while roused to fight. Opponents are only awarded the briefest of glimpses of you before they meet their end at your slender but powerful claws.

Level 9: Fellblood

Not only have you gained total control over your own biology, but you have now reached the pinnacle of power in the Blood Arts. You can summon forth tides of blood for any purpose, in almost any consistency from mist to steel. You use this capability in combat, changing between stationary ranged attacks to brutal melee feeding to keep your opponents off guard. You are a Master of Blood.

Icegut

Very hard to detect, but fortunately rarely deadly, icegut is a disease that can arise during durations of cold longer than a month. The guts of the victim begin to freeze, causing great pain to the victim. If sudden motion or trauma occurs to the abdomen in this condition, it can kill.

Icegut is very easy to cure. Warm baths and naps with heated pads on the abdomen can often cure the victim after only a few attempts.

Shadow Plague

Transmitted most often by contact with the dreaded Irue (page 48), this disease causes small black marks to appear on the body. The victims often show signs of heightened interest in magic and sometimes become aggressive. The black marks move and spread across the body as time goes on. Once the marks have covered approximately a third of the body, the subject disappears from society. Very few cases indeed have occurred where the victim has been captured and detained for the full duration of the disease, and these individuals appear to begin taking on traits of the Irue.

I’ve heard countless attempted cures for the shadow plague. Some have tried excising the marks. Others have tried sedative drugs. Still others have tied the patients down or otherwise restrained them. None of the proposed cures seems to work with any kind of reasonable success rate, but I have heard of miracles removing the disease.

The Shadow Plague
Virility: 9 (Special: To cure the disease, one must roll both Religion and Aid against the Virility)

Sparkleskin

Marked by silvery sheens of dustlike flesh, sparkleskin causes tremendous magical flow in the victim at the cost of bodily health. This bizarre disease is an exotic virus originating from the mountains of Opir . Rashes of sparkleskin occur on the hands, feet, face, and chest, and these rashes grow until they cover the body. The rashes cause the flesh there to slough off painfully, until raw muscle is exposed, at which point the victim is usually dead.

Experience has told me that the safest way to cure sparkleskin is to deprive the victim of magic. If the victim does not experience the flow of magic (most often by using spells or incantations) the dust cannot advance. Given enough magically stagnant time, the victim’s body with recuperate from the rash.

Waterfear

When a victim is seen foaming at the mouth, or appears nervous, delirious, or paranoid, the victim is probably suffering from waterfear. Waterfear causes pressure in the skull that will eventually expand and kill the victim. Once the disease progresses to paranoia or delirium, there is little hope of saving the victim.

Occasionally, survival is reported by extreme measures such as total immersion, concussion, and forced drinking. These options kill the victim immediately more often than curing him or her.

Athon

Description: Three hundred and seventy years ago, the city of Athon was a bustling planar metropolis. It was home to millions of people of all races and kinds. It was a shining gem in the crown of the Aeon Emperor Aegon. That has changed.

The mysterious forces that roam Skystone seem drawn to this ancient site. History books tell of the dawn of the Empire and the vast eternal magics that made the city possible. They speak of lost castles in the sky, mythical beasts, and spells that reach across worlds. Now, those magics seem corrupt and twisted, forming an almost unbreakable blockade around the ancient capital. Fell aberrations circle its environs, apparently preying on the latent magic of the place.

People who survive travel through Skystone are almost invariably those who have not tread too close to Athon City. It is a place that evokes horror from even the most potent warlords. In some places, the name of the city is a forbidden word.

In reality, Athon City still functions, much as it did in centuries past. It is home to all kinds of people, and it is still a bustling metropolis. It links the Fifth Kingdom to the Realm and provides the necessities of adventurers beyond mortal ken. Athon City is not a place heroes go to die. Athon City is a place where heroes go to live.

Despite the vicious predators and fell magics surrounding the city area, Athon is full to the brim with powerful mages and warriors from all over the world, and even from outside it. Its unique atmosphere of ancient ruins and floating castles the size of mountains draws many of the individuals who ascend to power higher than most people can imagine. It houses the most expensive shops, the most powerful organizations, the strongest warriors, and the oldest beings in the entire Realm. It is the Realm’s best kept secret.

Capital: While Athon City is the size of a small nation, it was itself the capital of the Empire. That said, the capital of such a city has to be the central Imperial Castle. In recent days, the Aeon Emperor Aegon has risen again, and has rebuilt the seat of his power over the rubble where his castle stood before the Fiendwar. The official address of this site is 1 High Street, Noble Court, Athon City, and variants of this address are used in coded messages between people “in the know” about the truth at the center of Skystone.

Population: At its height, Athon City was home to almost six million people. Only three hundred thousand or so live there now, but because of the difficulties of getting there, and the intentionally kept secret of Athon’s existence, this number only grows when an epic character arrives to make residence.

Government: Athon City operated under a constitutional emergency group called the Closed Council during the time that the Emperor was away. The Closed Council was composed of the senior leaders of each of the most powerful groups in Athon. Now that the Emperor has returned, he is slowly shifting control back over to the old imperial system. He is yet unsure whether he will reinstall the Empire as the government of the entire Realm, but while he researches the recent events of the Realm, his councilors are working to understand the ramifications of such an action. The Emperor receives people with something to say on this matter, and considers well what citizens of Athon tell him.

Religions: Athon City has practitioners of every religion possible within its walls. The official state church of the Empire was the Shining Crown, but there has never been a point at which the Empire has forced its religion on its people. There are definitely large followings of the Divine Blades, the Shining Crown, and the Hateful Kings in Athon, and several more religions have large churches there, but no church in the Realm compares to the awesome Grand Imperial High Church of Iain which is situated across the court from the Capital Building.

Alignment: Just like religions, anyone who can pass the tests can live in Athon. Because the chance of fights turning into world-shattering battles in Athon is so high (because of the relative power of the inhabitants) people tend to keep their thoughts and actions to themselves. Athon as a whole can and will rise up to put people who are to aggressive in their place. It has been seen on several occasions that evil worshippers of the Barbarous Gods fight alongside paladins of the State to protect the city. In this way, it is largely neutral, so long as one doesn’t stir up trouble for others.

Geography: Once upon a time, ten thousand years ago, a man named Kanorane came to a mountain range. In it, like a great sculptor, he saw his city. He set about building the capital of his new Empire. He carved its castles from the stone and enchanted them to fly. He set the mountains upside down to be parks and gardens. He and later Emperors carved Skystone from the Great Mountains that once covered the center of the continent. Now, the land around Skystone is largely flat, with rolling planes and low forests. Athon City is surrounded by the Fallen Shells, remnants of the Great Spells used to protect the city during the Fiendwar. Many castles still float, but some have fallen. In many ways, Athon is a three dimensional city. Few people of any sort stay on the ground level of this massive place, and in some areas, the sky cannot be seen for all the floating buildings and flying creatures in the air.