Proof it is real.

	At the constant demands of my apprentices, I've started writing down my knowledge of blood magic.  I've told them time and again that what we do is far too dangerous to write about, and in the wrong hands... I don't want to think of the consequences. But they have made one good point: if more people are going to learn blood magic, word of mouth is far too limited. But I'm getting sidetracked, back to what this is all about. Following their example, I will introduce myself.

	My name is Magus Arcana, and I am the founder of blood magic. I have lived a long life, studying more fields of magic then one could count. When I was younger I moved to the outskirts of a village to start my journeys into the arcane. After several decades of study, I realized there was one source of power few had ever touched: Blood.
Many mages claimed that the use of blood in magic was taboo, yet gave no reason as to why. Eventually, my curiosity grew beyond my reluctance and I started experimenting with the art of blood magic.

    Weak Rituals

	My first breakthrough was with a simple device that used the power of whatever was above it as a template, along with a great deal of blood(25 hearts, or 5k LP if you go by the system one of my apprentices made years later) to perform small miracles. I must also note that at the start of each of the rituals lightning strikes the ritual stone setting it alight, as if the cost of activation wasn't deadly enough. After two weeks of meditation to strengthen my soul to the point where I could handle the strain of these rituals, I started experimenting with different templates to discover their effects. At that point, I only had the strength to test one template per day before I felt weak. I decided to start training my body and mind again like I did when I was younger, while using a few tricks I had learned over the years to help speed up the process.

	With some work I found that water creates a rainstorm with so much lightning that I couldn't sleep that night. A somewhat rare mineral block by the name of Lapis had the very interesting effect of turning day into night. Needless to say, everyone in the village was very confused when the sun suddenly vanished and they couldn't see anything. I was shocked when I found that a coal block summoned a zombie stronger than any other I've ever fought in the night. I also lost the coal block to fire from the lightning strike when I was dealing with said zombie. The final effect I found was with bedrock I found at the bottom of a local mine, hardening my skin temporarily. While I looked no different, I could shrug off a blow from an iron sword without a scratch.


    Rituals

	I soon decided that those rituals were far too weak and costly, so I started working on a much larger version. By mixing my blood and a little bit of Mana with an item that was naturally attuned to an element(I found that magma cream worked for fire, a Lapis block for water, obsidian for earth, and a ghast tear for air) I created powerful scribing tools that used blood (100 LP's worth per use) as ink. I used stone fused with blood and obsidian to create stones strong enough to withstand more powerful rituals. It took me over two years to perfect the ritual stone. Trust me, you don't want to see what happened with some of the earlier tests. Let us just say they made the holes creepers leave look like potholes, and leave it at that. I also designed a “Master” stone to be what really controls the rituals, with the powerful dust called “Redstone” able to deactivate rituals and putting in a few safeguards so that if some fool tries to activate a ritual they don't have the strength or the blood to handle, it doesn't kill them outright. While I was able to weaken the pull that rituals carried on the user’s life force to not cause any lasting harm, I could not quite get rid of the feeling of nausea and unease an unattended Ritual would cause
. I eventually got tired of trying to stop it and marked it down as an occupational hazard.

	Once I had the stones, I realized that there needed to be a bridge between myself and the “Master” stone of the rituals. I found an old, red crystal in my attic that I bought months ago on the villages market. The trader claimed to have gotten it off the corpse of a demon after a brother of his killed it when it attacked their caravan. I don't know if his story was true, but I could tell it was magic. After shaping it a little, I found it made the perfect catalyst for linking my soul into the ritual stones.

	Among the first rituals I made with these stones was the one I dubbed “The Ritual of Full Spring”. I'll be the first to admit that, in terms of magic, it was nothing special. All it did was create an endless spring of water by using a few tricks from other magics and my soul as a fuel source. But when you are pioneering a new form of magic, you take what you can get. And it was cheap, 500 LP to start it and 25 LP for every bucket of water I got out of it. Luckily I made this ritual before the well outside my home dried up.

	The next ritual I created was “The Serenade of the Nether”, where I tried to make something a bit more useful. I found that the ritual used a large activation cost of 20K LP, to link itself to the nether, then used a much smaller fee of 500 LP to pull a bucket worth of lava to the ritual. I am not sure what part of the nether it is getting the lava from, so it is probably best if we don't think about it too much.

	The next ritual I made was the first I dared to show the villagers. After a horrible harvest due to bugs the villagers didn't have enough food to outlast the winter, and the last of the leaves were falling from the trees. We might have had a rocky relationship, but I wasn't just going to sit back and watch them die. Without enough herba essentia stockpiled to use lamps of growth, I quickly created what I now call the “Ritual of the Green Grove” to mimic its effects. After persuading two of the farmers to at least hear me out, I showed them the ritual and told them what it does. At first they thought I was trying to trick them, but instead of continuing my attempts at convincing them I planted a handful of seeds on the tilled soil I put atop the ritual. Within a minute the wheat was grown to maturity and both of the farmers were awestruck and speechless at what they had just seen. They ran back to the village, fistful of wheat in tow, returning within the hour with a dozen men, bringing their last batch of seeds and half a dozen carts. That evening pushed me to my limits, but we managed to get more than enough food to last the winter and live till the next harvest. And while only the two I first talked to thanked me in person, I knew that all of them were grateful for my help.

	In my studies I heard of an item created by alchemists of yore called the “Interdiction torch”. While replicating its effect was tricky, I eventually created the “Interdiction ritual” as a tribute to them. What it does is “Repel” any living thing that gets within its range. After realizing a small error, I changed it to where humans are the sole exception to its effect. I found being flung back by your own ritual has a tendency to make you want to tweak it. While I couldn't make it “free” like the alchemist's of yore, it only costs 1k LP to start and 10 LP per second while it is active. Rather cheap, all things considered.

	After experimenting with the effects of the interdiction ritual, I decided to try and reverse the polarity.  It created a sort of “vacuum ritual“, that I call “Ritual of containment”. The cost is the same as the interdiction ritual, due to it using such a similar process. I found this ritual very useful for catching the odd wild rabbit when I wanted a nice dinner.
 Unfortunately, I caught as many creepers as I have rabbits with it. But a man can try, can't he?

	Over the years I've heard legends of a place called “Tartarus”. Most other mages claim that the nether is what they are referring to, but I'm afraid the nether might just be the front yard while the real Tartarus is something we have never seen.

To test my theory, I created a ritual to drag the soul of one of Tartarus's inhabitants to our world, then seal it inside an item. My research showed that few materials had the strength to withstand having a soul bound to them, much less a demon’s soul, but I eventually found that diamond was the perfect material for the task. I activated the ritual (needing 5k LP), then dropped the diamond sword I had made years ago on the master ritual stone. Lightning flashed and struck each of the rituals pillars in turn as I quickly jumped to a better observing spot behind a large boulder. When I returned, the sword gleamed red like blood. Once I picked it up it turned into a shapeless goo, but by running a bit of my power through it the goo returned to its normal form. It was far sharper than any blade I had seen before, seemed nigh unbreakable, and as I was testing it on the common monsters that stalk the night I noticed something strange: As I killed them, I would find little red shards dropping form their bodies from time to time. It was rare, but a noticeable change. I made a note to investigate them later as I gathered them. Because of the ritual’s function to bring a demon’s soul for the sake of tying it to an item, I dubbed this the “Ritual of Binding.”

Shortly after this, I got my first apprentices in blood magic. Little farmer boys named Fenn and, his older brother, Way Chronos. I showed them whatever I could over five years, then they left to spread the word of blood magic to other mages. They still stop by from time to time, and I am always glad to show them what we have discovered while they were on their travels.

	When I was teaching Way and Fenn we experimented with binding the souls to various items. We found that along with the sword, diamond pickaxes, shovels, and axes could have souls bound to them. All of them needed LP to be used, and they had an interesting distinction to the sword. The seal on the tools could be opened temporarily, for less than the blink of an eye, to unleash a powerful effect. The terrain around the wielder will be destroyed, if the right tool is used (pick for stone, shovel for dirt, axe for wood. Do I really need to spell it out?). This uses a massive 10k LP per use, but the power seems worth the cost. Much later, when I had Tiberius as an apprentice, I did discover that an apprentice blood orb can be turned into the “Energy Blaster”, a ranged weapon with the same ability to create blood shards as the bound sword.

	The next ritual I created was an idea I had during the few years I taught Way and Fenn. The concept was a ritual that would remove souls from items, namely from the bound tools. Strangely, the souls seemed to become fond of their new homes and really don't want to leave those tools. While lesser souls bound to items as curses by necromancers and the like wither at this ritual’s power,  the souls of those who dwell in Tartarus seem far sturdier.  It was over a decade later when Tiberius discovered that it was great at un-binding items from one and other. His first used it to recover a sigil from his sigil of holding (I still tell him to give it a better name, but I'm hardly one to talk about lazy naming), and again when he wanted to experiment with his sigils in bound armor. It seems it uses 30k LP, regardless of the number of items unbound from the original item dropped in.

	The next ritual I recall making is the “Ritual of the High Jump”. It... well... it does exactly what is says on the tin. When activated, any entity on top of the master ritual stone will be flung strait up. After watching a cow use the ritual before me (I had to deal with a mess Fenn made, involving a bottle of ink, Way's hair, some dropped parchment, and a wobbly table. I returned to the ritual just in time to see the poor cow get airborne.), I added a secondary effect where anything that gets flung up can safely land back on the master ritual stone. On the bright side of that incident, we had fresh beef to cook for the next few days and a new batch of ink from some passing traders a week later. I almost forgot to add the cost, 1k LP for activation and around 15 lp per use.

	It was at this point that I realized that I was reaching the limits of what I could do with the four inks I had, and spent the remainder of my time teaching Way and Fenn to find a new type of ink. It took four years, but I found it. And it was worth every second.

	By mixing my blood and Mana with a coal block I created a scribing tool that turn blood into an ink so dark it seems to absorb light. I went on to call this new scribing tool “Dusk” as a result, and rituals far more powerful became possible.

	The first ritual I made after creating that ink, strangely enough, didn't even need it. I had such a rush of new ideas that I didn't care if it used the dusk ink or not. Anyway, I based this ritual off of a small stone I saw the children of the village play with that had magnetic properties. By creating a ritual that mimics this attraction, I made the “Ritual of Magnetism” to pull ores out of the ground and place them in a three by three by three meter cube at the heart of the ritual. It seemed to pull from a seven  by seven meter area centered on the master ritual stone, and I managed to tweak it to pull up almost any ore, metallic or not. I offered to help the miners in town with this, but they didn't want anything to do with my work. After realizing I forgot the cost again, I started leaving spaces at the end of these entries for them. This ritual has an activation cost of 5K, with 50 LP for every ore pulled up.

	To pair with the ritual of magnetism, I created the “Ritual of the Crusher.” It will break any block in a three by three by three meter cube below the master ritual stone. Instead of having the crushed blocks fly off, I made the ritual push them up into an inventory above the master ritual stone. It doesn't really care where you want it, whether it be a simple chest or a barrel or something else. 2.5K activation cost, 7 LP per block broken.

	As a variation of the “Ritual of the high Jump”, I created the “Ritual of Speed”. It was a simple task to modify an effect I already knew well to fling things at an angle instead of just up. What must be stated is that the direction, where the dusk ritual stone is, is the direction the ritual will send you, at a very rapid rate. You may want to have a way to slow down, as I discovered the hard way. 2k activation, 15LP per use.

	Remembering the success of the ritual of the green grove, I wanted to test myself by creating a ritual that could transfer the effect from plants to animals. The “Ritual of the Shepherd” was just that. Any animal in the ritual’s area of effect will grow at an alarming rate, what would take weeks just took an hour. After several tests, I concluded that if an animal took twenty minutes to grow from an infant to an adult, this ritual would cut that time down to three minutes flat. So far, I have found no side effects of using this process on animals, and I hope this remains the case as time goes on. 10K activation, 2LP every time it speeds up growth (about once every second).

	The next ritual I created was one I'm not proud of. But after over three months of constant bandit attacks on the trade routes around the village I decided to take action, and anything I had at hand was far too merciful. They had earned a slow, painful end for all their crimes and I intended to deliver it. I created a ritual to use as a trap, laying it just off one of the largest trading routes, behind a thick group of trees. I then dressed as a merchant and bought a horse and cart to lure the bandits out. Like moths to a flame they came for me, riding on horses of their own. They expected me to either surrender or stop and put up a fight, so they only sent out two from their group behind the tree line. Once they saw I had no intention of stopping, they all gave chase, thinking I had something of great value, worth running from bandits for. I turned a tight corner into the tree line, the cart beginning to tip as I did, and went off the road to where I had set up the ritual overnight.

	By the time they saw it, it was too late for them. I stopped at the base of the ritual, knowing they couldn't get away in time. “What is this, where is your treasurer?” one of the first bandits there said. “I thought you had something, but now you stopped.” I gave him a bitter laugh, he's more concerned about looting me than the reason why I brought them here. “I don't have any treasurer on me or in here, I came out here for you.” By then all twenty of the bandits had arrived, some filled with blood lust, others full of greed. “Then why did you run? What is that thing anyway?” By now the head bandit was straining to keep ahold on his sword, so I kept him taking. “Oh, nothing much. Just a ritual built by a blood mage. I wanted to make sure and bring you here, just to test it out.”

Now all of them were pale, and their leader was having a hard time staying on his horse. “Blood magic? Are you the mage who built this? What are you trying to do to us?” He bellowed as he was trying to turn fear into anger. He was getting nervous now. Good to see the title “Mage” still sends a little fear into scum like him. “Nothing much. Well, to me anyway. To someone like you, who has cast aside his humanity for a quick bit of coin? A slow and painful death.”

At that point, most of the bandits were already lying on the ground while their horses started backing out of the clearing due to the panic and confusion. “Why... Why are you doing this?” The leader managed to spit out with his face in the dirt and far too weak to stand.

“Because I have heard what you have done. How many you have killed for the few coins in their sacks. I know that you are slowly killing the village I call home, and while I am not someone who they like having around just outside their homes, I still feel obliged to help save them from any mortal danger they might face.” At that point, none of them could move. After about five minutes, the last of their life essence had drained away. I tore the ritual apart, then went back to the village with all of the bandits' horses. I gave them and the cart to the “Mayor” of the village, if you'd call him that. He pulled me back into his office and asked where I got them from. I told him the truth, part of it anyways: “It seems like those bandits we've had for the last few months earned the ire of the wrong mage.” He didn't ask any further questions, nor did he ever bring up the topic again. All I know is that I found a large pile of gifts from the village on my doorstep the next day, from fresh bread and milk to fine fabric. After a few rumors spread about what happened, we never has bandit troubles again.