The Blood College
Hello everyone, and welcome to Nefarious Knowledge. In this column, we dish out the goods on various places, people, and things you’ll find referenced in our products. Those of you who’ve taken time to peruse Liber Vampyr—our premiere supplement for 3.5/pathfinder which makes vampire characters more accessible to your players, while keeping them balanced and fun to play—may have noticed it mentioning some people, places, and things you’ve never heard of before. If you haven’t read it yet, well, you really should. It’s free, and this article isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
There. Wasn’t that a fun read? Great. Now then, about that flavor text in the book. If you found yourself wondering who Illiana Solomon is, or why anyone would want the opinion of Marosh the Black, then you’ve come to the right place, because that’s exactly the sort of thing this column is designed to cover. Unfortunately, you’ve come at the wrong time, because this week’s topic is the Blood College. This article, like future articles in this column, will mention details like the country and region the Blood College is in, and other “hard facts” which may make incorporating it into your game difficult. It’s your game, and if you only like some of what you see, feel free to change the rest. And so, without further ado…
History and Environs
The Blood College is situated near the northern border of the county of Werimar, a province located on the northern edge of the Immortal Empire of Kyldor. Werimar is primarily dominated by vast moorland, but in its furthest northern reaches the ground erupts suddenly into the Lurich heights, a range of particularly treacherous mountains with only a handful of viable passes. These heights are inhabited by the Tevijan, an indigenous human people comprised primarily of barbarians and shamans. The largest of the range’s passes is guarded by Werimar Keep, a relatively poorly-supplied border keep which is the moorland’s first and only defense against the raiding parties the Tevijan regularly send to pillage and loot the region.
The College itself is situated about a day’s travel into the Lurich heights, a thirty-story tower made of blood-red stone which can be seen for miles—on a clear day, from nearly anywhere in the entire county. Each progressive story of the tower is slightly smaller than the one below it, creating ring after ring of crenellations and walkways along the outside, with the very top floor of the tower being only a single room. The tower is incredibly well-defended, with only one pass leading to it, the last 200 feet of which is a series of narrow switchbacks almost directly beneath the tower, where any attacking force would be incredibly vulnerable to attacks from above. The origins of the tower are unknown, as records indicate it was present when the first settlers arrived in the area. There had originally been plans to occupy it as a border defense, but there were extensive rumors that the imposing structure was haunted, and Vanos Werimar, then commander of the 7th Exalted Legion, is reported to have taken an intense disliking of the place, and it was abandoned as a fortress as soon as the building now known as Werimar Keep was built. The tower remained unoccupied for some twenty years until, about 260 years ago, the Blood College was driven out of Kyldor’s capital city (also called Kyldor), and decided to move far to the north, just outside of Kyldor’s effective reach.
A place like the Blood College has heavy upkeep costs. As a gathering place for cruomancers and an organization devoted to the study of cruomancy, the Blood College goes through ridiculous amounts of blood each year. As conspicuousness was what got the College exiled from Kyldor in the first place, and the new location wasn’t quite remote enough as to be unreachable if they chose to make enough of a nuisance of themselves, the College needed a means of gathering blood that was subtler than simply terrorizing the countryside.
While a fair amount of their blood comes from elsewhere (see below), Durotan, one of the College’s Council of Seven (then and now), devised an ingenious plan. Knowing that Count Werimar was poorly equipped and undermanned, he secretly offered to lend the College’s aid in defending the region from the Tevijan, in exchange for an annual sacrifice of a small portion of the region’s population. The Count was certain that he would be unable to maintain the border for more than a year without the College’s aid, and fearing that the Tevijan would cause far more loss of life than Durotan’s tribute, he reluctantly agreed. At the same time, a similar offer was made to the Tevijan, where in exchange for the sacrifice of a few each year the College would weaken the defenses at the keep. Having weakened both sides of the conflict, the College had to do very little to demonstrate that they had upheld their end of the bargain, and for the most part enjoyed free tribute from both peoples, a practice which continues to this day: openly with the Tevijan, who send their strongest warriors in what has become an almost religious rite of passage, and secretly with the people of Werimar, where soldiers and townsfolk occasionally go inexplicably missing, with only Count Kalos Werimar and his inner circle aware of where the missing people go.
Leadership
The Blood College is headed by the Council of Seven, a group of seven powerful cruomancers who oversee the day-to-day affairs of the College and plan its long-term political moves. Appointment to the Council is for life, which in the case of many Council members is a very, very long time. In fact, three of the current members have been on the Council since it moved to its current location, and one of them has purportedly been with the College since its founding, the date of which has long been lost to the depths of history.
The identities of the Council members are a closely guarded secret, and even within the College very few people actually know who serves on the Council. All Council meetings are secret, and take place in a room on the sealed top floor, or so say the rumors, at least, for no one has ever been seen entering or leaving the place. The only known member of the Council is Durotan, an ancient revenant mage who has guided the College since long before it came to its current location.
Services
The College serves primarily as a place of learning where one can go to study cruomancy. It caters mostly to revenants, who have a natural talent for cruomancy, and also to other vampires. Though it isn’t unheard of, few mortal cruomancers attend the College, because while attacking other students is strictly forbidden, in actuality few members will worry themselves overmuch if a mortal student suddenly goes missing: after all, blood is a highly sought-after commodity at the College, and most revenants don’t see much difference between a mortal who’s a cruomancer and a mortal who isn’t.
Still, the Blood College is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the study of cruomancy. It boasts the largest community of cruomancers in the known world, with something like 300 on the College’s campus at any given time, with another 100 or so away on errands of one sort or another. Their libraries contain more information on blood powers and the nature of cruomancy than anywhere else by far, and many of their professors have been teaching the art of blood magic for over a century.
Entrance to the College is not easily gained, however. While the College is interested in the proliferation of cruomancy to a certain extent, they are also paradoxically jealous of its secrets, and not particularly interested in teaching “the art,” as they call it, to someone who may use it against them later. Then, of course, there is the fact that cruomancy is not free: in order to use even the least blood power, one must draw life essence from somewhere (usually the blood of a victim). As the College is always struggling to maintain a supply of blood which can satisfy the hundreds of active cruomancers the campus must support, they are very strict about allowing new students to enter their unhallowed halls. In order to become a member of the College (and only members and their retainers are granted access to the inside of the tower or given access to any services), one must begin by demonstrating their potential aptitude for blood magic. This is usually done by making the transformation to a revenant, or at least mastering a few minor blood powers, but in some rare cases exceptions can be made, such as in the case of individuals with a family history of cruomancy, or if an existing member vouches for the applicant, especially if the applicant is offering exceptionally impressive tribute. The second thing one must do to join the College, then, is offer tribute. Theoretically, according to the College’s by-laws, one must offer up an artifact, scroll, or an important piece of lore related to cruomancy and not currently possessed by the College in order to gain entrance. In practice, however, finding anything to do with cruomancy that the College doesn’t already possess is an almost impossible task. Instead, the most common tribute is in the form of slaves, either brought legally from nations such as Megiros or Nitra, or taken illegally either by force or as thralls. The typical number is 30 slaves in good health to gain admittance, with another 5 or so a year to remain in good standing with the College. In some cases gold is accepted as tribute, typically in sums in excess of 100,000gp. Finally, the College has been known to waive the tribute requirement for “individuals who perform extraordinary services to the College,” which generally refers to performing dangerous missions on behalf of the College, including (but not limited to) recovering ancient artifacts from monster-infested ruins, assassinating the College’s enemies, guarding shipments of slaves and artifacts through dangerous places, hunting down rogue members of the College, and other nasty business. Depending on the nature of these services, a member may be forced to perform such a mission once a year (in the case of missions of relatively low import) or only once (in the case of exceptionally dangerous and vital missions).
The College has a ready supply of blood for all its members, and students are entitled to a supply of 4 blood points per day. The blood is distributed via blood chalices, magical cups which, when commanded, fill with fresh blood each day, and are located in each student’s room. The blood fountains do not actually generate the blood, however, but simply receive it from a source deep within the tower, where most students are not allowed to go. Though the fountains work when removed from the tower, the Council of Seven frowns heavily upon students who continue to collect their blood rations outside the tower, preferring that they find their own food while abroad, where they can do so without overtaxing the region. They typically express this displeasure by slaying particularly onerous offenders, so most members of the College know only to use their chalices when absolutely necessary.
The College, of course, also offers lectures and instruction on cruomancy theory and practice, as well as access to the world’s most impressive collection of books on the subject, and on vampiric lore in general. Though some tomes are restricted from being accessed by most students, and rumors abound about additional, secret libraries, the collection is quite impressive, and any Knowledge check involving cruomancy is made at a +5 bonus while in the library, while Knowledge checks relating to vampires, including those made about the Sanguine Path, receive a +2 bonus.
Rumors
Anyone who tracks the intake and output of blood in the College (and few people are able to, considering the secrecy involving the former and, to a lesser extent, the latter) can easily determine that the various tributes can’t add up to more than 1/3 of the total blood the College uses. Where the rest of the blood is coming from is hard to say. Any higher-ranking member in the Blood College will tell you that they are simply careful about using up their resources, rotating the slaves they drain and allowing them to recuperate. Though this explanation makes some amount of sense, it hardly accounts for the rate at which new slaves are taken in by the College, leading many to speculate about another source of blood deep within the restricted areas of the tower. Some claim that the Council of Seven have unlocked some secret means of draining even more life essence than is currently thought possible, and the slaves are simply being drained for notably more than anyone would imagine. Others insist that there is a magical source of blood deep within the tower, and that this artifact was the real reason Durotan chose the tower as the location for the College. Still others speak of some kind of massive creature—usually a dragon—imprisoned beneath the tower and constantly drained for massive amounts of blood.
Some rumors insist that Durotan, the only publicly known member of the Council of Seven, and a powerful revenant mage, is currently working on the finishing touches of a spell capable of draining blood from every creature in a several-mile radius. Exactly what Durotan intends to do with such a spell varies depending on who is telling the tale, but the most common explanation is that he is preparing to march on Kyldor with an army of revenants.
At the same time, something seems to be scaring the Tevijan out of their ancestral hunting grounds. Where they are going is not quite clear, but it clearly isn’t Werimar, for incursions upon the border are becoming few and far-between. Kalos Werimar doesn’t care where they’re going—he only cares that with them gone, he may finally be able to put an end to the blood tribute his family has been paying the College for generations. This loss of blood supply would cripple the College for years to come, and rumor has it that the Council is working feverishly on a scheme to solve the looming crisis.
The Blood College as an Affiliation
If you are using the optional rules for affiliations (found in Player’s Handbook II and Complete Champion) in your game, you might represent the Blood College in the following manner:
Type: College
Scale: 10 (regional/march)
