Blood Golems, Blood Runes and Vampyrs Oh My!

Lore Story
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Recently in my guild we were discussing what exactly ‘blood magic’ is. It seems to have very little clear lore on it compared to a lot of other types of magic (we could spend hours talking about light, shadow, shamanism, chi, arcane, fel, etc…)

So I pose the question to the forums.

What exactly is blood magic?

From what I can tell there seem to be about four or five different types of spellcasting which all fall into the rough idea of ‘Blood Magic’.

(Side note - I normally hate using mechanics and spell descriptions for this kind of thing but what I’ve written below uses them a bit to form my ideas, mainly because I am struggling for better sources right now. I tried to stick to wowpedia where I could however.)

  1. Blood Runes - Death Knights have access to Blood Runes, which seem to manipulate the physical blood (Blood Boil), bone (Ossuary, Bone Shield) and body (Death Strike - though all specs get this, it seems to be blood-themed). This both drains the life force of others and repairs their own body with what they stole. It’s worth noting that this type of runic magic is unique to Vrykul culture and not something anyone ever got up to speed with.
  2. Blood Rituals - Trolls (Blood Trolls, Sandfury), Orcs (Bleeding Hollow) and some others seem to use a sort of ritualistic blood magic distinct from rune magic. It also appears to be able to both give and take life, and twist the body.
  3. Blood Golems - Mogu (And, later, Blood Elves) practice a sort of Blood Magic revolving around a magical force named ‘anima’. Anima appears to be a sort of lifeforce-y sludge related to the titans… maybe their blood? It does seem distinct from the blood of mortals in some way.
  4. Blood Mages - Not the Sin’dorei ones, but there do appear to be some enemies (such as Defias Blood Wizards) who use blood as a sort of fuel for their magic in the same way that Warlocks can drain things for souls/life to burn. Are they just warlocks with red spell effects? Who knows.
  5. Freakin’ Vampyres Man - San’layn and Vampyrs (of the sort that appear in Stormheim) appear to practice a sort of blood magic that is extremely similar to that employed by Blood Death Knights however I am listing it distinctly because they don’t use runes to do it. It too seems to be linked to some kind of undeath, and the idea of stealing life from the blood in order to hurt others and nourish oneself.

So with all that put together, the basic conclusions I can reach about Blood Magic is this.

  1. Blood has some kind of power and/or lifeforce in it capable of being used as fuel for spellcasting.
  2. Blood magic seems to be consistent in having the idea of “take-your-life-and-give-it-to-me”, capable of both damage and healing.
  3. Blood magic is not culturally specific, however some methods of accessing it are. Rituals and channelling methods vary.
  4. Titan blood is wack yo.

What do others think? Are these all the same type of magic, or are there many magics here all being mislabelled ‘blood magic’ just because they have blood as a key component in the spells being cast? Are DKs vampiric just because they slap down a few runes, and where does the line blur between life and death?

2 Likes
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IIRC Blood magic is tortured life magic, which as you said, mainly uses blood, either of oneself or others, as a fuel for spells.

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When you say “Life Magic” what type of life magic do you mean, specifically? I have heard Light, Nature and Spirit/Chi all referred to like that before.

I am guessing you mean Spirit/Nature sort. The magic of your lifeforce.

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In the Chronicles magic chart, Life is it’s own thing, along with Fel, Arcane, Death, Light and Void.

Spirit magic is not listed and is considered separate IIRC

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I think, based on the first blood magic spells, such as the Death Knight spells, they are based on the concept of “blood sacrifices” which are quite common in our history. The idea being giving up something of value (not necessarily to the party making the offer) for something of greater value (usually power), the offer being made to a deity.

So, that being said, you can often see the mentality behind each type of warcraft spell involving blood.

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I think we need a new class with an Healer / DPS / Tank to fiogure it out :smiley:

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