(04-22-2015, 11:46 AM)Mae Wrote: This is purely me speculating, so... take it as you wish.
"Blood magic" in a lot of places is a bit of a misleading term -- it has little to do with an actual magic type, and more of a system on how to augment magic. The use of blood (from a few drops from one's own finger to the sacrificial slaughter of hundreds) is a powerful boost to magical workings - it's an offering of life's energy/force that can have an influence based on where, what, and how it was collected. The old 'Blood Rite' ability Sounsyy linked sort of reinforces the idea to me.
A CNJ/WHM pricks their own finger as a 'sacrifice of self' to boost a healing spell, or similarly a SCH uses their own blood/blood from willing donors for their healing formulae. Â A THM/BLM uses blood collected from a sacrifice as an 'offering of destruction' to boost their own spells/rituals, and Void-based magic requires some quantity of Void blood. An ARC/SMN could even get particular when it comes to collecting/sourcing based on their spells: Bio uses formulae inscribed with the blood of a carrier of a particular disease, Egi- formulae use blood from sources that have a particular affinity to aether or devotees (Egi-Titan requires blood from some animal that's particularly 'Earth-y' in nature, or from Kobolds)...
This has sort of been how I've interpreted blood magic in XIV: an augment. My character either has very poor aether control or very low aether sources so she has been using blood (chiefly with arcanima as of now but I really want to delve into THM/BLM territory for 3.0) as an additional source to give what she can do a some much needed OOMPH.
The bit with the Egi is really intriguing to me as well. Originally when I had thought about letting SMN be sort of an IC thing, I wondered if it would be feasible for someone without echo to be able to call one up, and I had toyed around with the thought of using blood sacrifice as a means to accumulate the crystals/aether/aspect rather than having to go and wreck a Primal.
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