Blood Magic

"“Did ya see what happened to poor Riki? Idiot nearly killed himself wasting all his damn blood on some magic spell!” -Concerned Sorceror"

Overview
Blood magic is a particularly uncommon form of magic, often considered taboo among mages. It consumes the user’s blood, and often other’s blood as a medium for magic, rather than mana in all of it’s uses except blood manipulation. As an unfortunate side-effect, blood mages may find themselves woefully fatigued and pale due to blood loss (usually) after use; casting willy nilly with it can even kill you if you’re not careful. Long term effects can be anything from anemia to loss of sleep.

Empowerment
A simple empowerment use of blood, you can strengthen a single aspect of your own or another’s repertoire- magic, strength, even willpower. (Any of your stats, essentially, by a full level.) This requires a fairly significant amount of anyone’s blood.

Blood Ritual
Rituals drawn in blood, they can do various things- such as controlling someone should they step or be forced into the circle, having a greater control of blood as a whole should you be inside the circle, or even summoning demonic or unnatural beasts etc. Blood ritual can vary to just about anything, but requires a significant amount of blood. This does, however, require a significant amount of time or the assistance of other blood mages.

Blood Manipulation
Simple as it sounds, you use mana to manipulate blood and use it in whatever way you wish- however, blood can also be used as a power source, it is simply less efficient, with an exception being that you are unable to stop blood fully within anyone else’s body. You can, however, do this in your own! Not.. that it’d do anything besides hurt you.. And probably kill you, if you’re alive, that is. You can also alter someone’s movements to a minor extent. A minor extent does not include forcing them to kill themselves. Survival instinct will always outpower the mage’s actions.

Blood Restoration
The most costly and unique form of blood magic, it’s rarely used and uncommonly known about (or at least cared about) by blood mages. You can use your own blood, and only your own blood to quickly and efficiently restore other’s wounds and lifeforce directly. This is not a very powerful form of healing magic (as none really exists), but it does interact as a direct form of healing. It is simply very costly, as mentioned above.

Learning Process
Anyone can learn blood magic. Some will possess more talent for it, but overall there’s no “potential” that must be had for it like most other magics such as fire, ice, etc, even things like psionics. And it isn’t even terribly hard to use- you just have to figure out that you can will your mana to move, well, blood. Well, that’s only part of it- in order to become a more powerful blood mage you may permanently mark yourself with the mark shown above. This drastically increases your power, at the downside of greater necessity for stealth and secrecy. Marked blood mages can be described as having a significantly better control of blood magic and blood as a whole. (Essentially two times as powerful, overall.)“Permanently” because while the mark can technically be removed, it requires a significant amount of magical effort on whoever wishes to do so.