Proposal by Magi Hewar Ingran to the Archcouncil of Erabask:

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While many of my colleagues are disgusted by the Iaxi’s practice of what they decry as ‘disease and blood magic,’ refusing to learn more of the manner in which they cast their spells, I find their methods to be quite fascinating and, if not directly integrated as-is, at least worth considering minor adoption into the Standard Discipline.

Accordingly, this letter is targeted to explain the origins and benefits of their Discipline, as to hopefully engender at minimum some discussion, even if partial adoption may be not yet an option.

Iaxin magic has always been based in blood sacrifice. While most cultures relied on their own might, Iaxin mages developed the tools needed to harness and direct life energy and souls incredibly early. The reason for this is lost to time, alas, but I suspect it may have been due to local mana confluxes being hostile to mortal life, sharply curtailing any mage which drew deep upon their own reserves.

Regardless of the reason, their rituals and spells focused principally upon directing the incredible power they could call to bear through the death of even the meanest creature. Unlike what their current reputation may lead you to believe, most of their sacrifices did not rely upon civilized, let alone sapient, deaths. Instead, they most commonly utilized rats, pigeons, even plants for their minor workings, using human, elven, or orcish sacrifices only for the grandest of rituals. Yes, they did indeed use blood sacrifice of individuals, but evidence suggests that it was usually only done with condemned criminals, not dissimilar to how necromancy was historically treated in Erabask.

Now, any mage who has utilized the life of a sacrificed creature can inform you of the problems with this approach. Utilizing the mana of another is difficult enough, but shaping death into anything even remotely sophisticated is nigh impossible. Thus, Iaxin mages also developed the tools to sacrifice themselves to work intricate workings. After all, your own life-force and soul are perfectly matched to your mana, and is therefore far more responsive to direction than the same amount of power from another is. Of course, they rarely killed themselves in these self-sacrificial spells, but even still inflicted damage upon their very soul, leaving them with all the associated health issues.

I also wish to disabuse the notion that Iaxi was unaware of mana, or how to call upon the mana that they produced in a non-harmful manner. They did eventually develop similar tools as Verdur and Bosin, but never managed to develop the artifice and structure required for standard focus-based casting. Instead, they used their mana as their focus, shaping incredibly complex magical patterns and pushing the life-mana of their sacrifice through the pattern, enacting their will with far less tools than a corresponding Verdurian mage would require.

However, all of the classical issues with their magic was solved by the person they call ‘Zabe.’ Whether Zabe was a man or woman, human, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, or what depends entirely upon who is telling the story, and it usually matches the species of the teller. However, what they generally agree upon is that Zabe created the first bloodworms and bestowed them to their chosen people, a self-sacrificial creature purely existing to empower Zabe’s ‘true inheritors.’

Insofar as I have been able to determine, Zabe was a real person in some form, though all details of their life has been fully obscured by incredible amounts of propaganda and mythologizing. What most records agree upon is that Zabe was the first to actually utilize bloodworms as a source for magic.

Now, all of the details that follow are purely my own hypothesis, based on several historical sources I could find, as well as ancestral divinations of bloodworms, coupled with the expertise which I and several others have with blood and medical magic. Thus, it may be utterly incorrect.

Zabe was a mage-healer in the jungle region of Etrix, where a peculiar wasting disease wreaked havoc upon the native population, caused by a bloodborne infection of nigh-invisible parasites and transmitted by blood transmission, such as through biting insects.

Normally, magical and divine healing managed to keep the plague in check, but like some parasites are wont to do, a particular strain of this ‘Jungle Fever’ managed to hide itself perfectly within the patient’s soul-pattern, rendering it almost invisible to many diagnostic spells and even most cures. It wasn’t even considered a proper disease by the natives, merely one of the ways in which the body could fail, until Zabe caught it.

As a (blood) mage, Zabe was able to identify the foreign bodies streaming through their bloodstream, and in a single stroke, killed the tiny parasites within their body and used the life of the disease itself to power their spells.

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Because of how the parasite’s soul blended so perfectly with the body’s soul, the mana drawn from their death perfectly matched Zabe’s mana, and meant that the spells responded in a way previously only seen in self-sacrifice workings. It veritably leapt to its usage, and Zabe knew that it was a massive development.

They didn’t go public with their discovery right away, no. As part of their healing training, Zabe knew minor biomancy, and persuading the previously far-too-small creatures to grow to be large enough to see with the naked eye, and gather a correspondingly large amount of life energy, was well within their capabilities.

This first generation of bloodworms, while incredibly potent, carried with them a fair number of problems. Firstly, it carried with it all of the same symptoms that Jungle Fever did, including lethargy, fever, and a susceptibility to other illnesses. However, a skilled healer, such as Zabe, was well able to counteract these symptoms, utilizing the life of mature bloodworms to continuously heal and empower their body.

Using this power, Zabe formed the Zabetan Dynasty, a direct predecessor to the recent Itraic Dynasty, and eventually passed along the secrets of bloodworms and their usage. What species the Zabetan Dynasty was is weirdly controversial, though it is perhaps unsurprising given the amount of authority it can bestow. I’ve found no less than five mutually contradictory reports on their identity (usually coinciding with the identity of the ruling class of the time), and several sources insist that the Zabetans bore no actual blood relation to Zabe themselves, but were instead mere apprentices to the ‘greatness of Zabe.’

This secret was passed along for generations, and with centuries of skilled alchemists dedicating their lives to slowly modifying the bloodworm, it eventually settled into something more closely resembling its modern form. This more developed bloodworm carried no symptoms beyond an increased appetite (as the bloodworm consumes nutrients for itself). While the Zabetan dynasty eventually fell, and the secrets of bloodworms were released accordingly, it still served as a potent tool, being able to on a whim call upon magic perfectly attuned to one’s self, with no lingering health damage.

That leads us to today, and the ‘modern’ usage of Iaxin magic. Bloodworms are a mostly-benign harmless symbiote with mages, growing in their bloodstream and reproducing predominantly harmlessly, having been magically altered to only consume any nutrients which the body does not require itself, and even helps produce some important nutrients which the body is unable to produce on its own. Most incredibly, the nutrients it consumes and produces are not only tied to one another, but also variable, seamlessly suiting whatever species it is inhabiting, consuming excess and producing what is required. In that way, bloodworms are very nearly a health boon to even nonmages, resulting in resistance to a number of diseases and malnourishments, with correspondingly longer lives (assuming the bloodworms do not die of starvation, as they will die far sooner than their host). They reproduce and die all on their own, their bodies dissolving almost supernaturally well, preventing any interruption of the blood flow from the corpse of a sacrificed bloodworm.

Passing them from one host to another is a matter as simple as extracting a small measure of blood from a mage and bestowing it to another (though I advise a basic cleansing should this practice be adopted into the Standard Discipline, as the bloodworm would survive it as long as the blood remains attuned to the original host, while other diseases would be removed). Newborn bloodworms are invisible to the naked eye and can be found in every drop of an Iaxin mage’s blood, after all.

Some families of bloodworms, lost after the fall of the Itraic Dynasty, were said to protect their host from toxins, consuming poison and creating healing elixir, but that may well be apocryphal. What is not apocryphal is the incredibly robust souls that bloodworms possess. When I first heard tell of the discipline, I will admit to being disgusted, yes, and skeptical that a mere parasite could provide sufficient power, even in death, to be superior to current methods. However, after studying a specimen myself, I can firmly put this question to rest. They, gram for gram, possess nearly as much power as a dragon. A mature bloodworm has nearly as much life-mana as a reasonably healthy adult mundane dwarf does.

Sacrificing a bloodworm is not terribly challenging either, contrary to my expectations. Historically, Iaxin mages used an array of various internal spells meant to kill their symbiotes. One particularly curious method I found was a self-contained constriction spell, which momentarily tightened their blood vessels so quickly and powerfully as to cut a bloodworm in half. I cannot say I would advise this method, but it certainly does paint an amusing picture.

Shortly before their fall, however, Iaxia developed a new method which uses the incredible life-density inherent to the worms to simply ‘poke a hole’ in the soul of a mature bloodworm, and like an overfull flask, gushes forth a stream of power. Immature bloodworms were still slain through more traditional methods, but I am certain with even a minor amount of research, modern necromancers could find a cantrip suitable to selectively killing a single bloodworm, and thus utilizing their incredible potential with the modern mage.

I trust that the Council is willing to look past the instinctive rejection of Iaxin magic to its potential as a manner for mages to cast powerful magics nigh-endlessly, a way to improve the health of mages and mundanes alike, and generally supplant current unsafe and unethical sacrificial magics with one that is more effective and less morally repugnant.

Your humble servant,

Hewar Ingran.