Hi this is my first Day on this forum and I made my account, because I want to ask if anyone knows, what the "Blood Mage Gestalt" really is.


Yours
Saatsch

Afaik It is a nasty nasty Aztechnology trick where they get a bunch of initiated mages with the same blood type, connect their veins with tubes, so they are all sharing blood, and then they do a ritual using an initiated mage as a "normal" blood magic sacrifice. This generates a realy seriously powerful "blood mage gestalt" that is kind of a blood spirit, and kind of the conjoined astral forms of the mages doing the ritual.

One of the game rules of this blood mage gestalt is that it can reach out and kill anything, anywhere. It is rare for this much magic to be used where a couple of .44's would do, usually the Azzies pull this stunt when they have some seriously big magic to do. Note it rapidly burns out the mages involved in it. (Guess where they get the sacrifices).

If you read the Dragon Heart Trilogy you get a few really gruesome discriptions of these rituals. Those episodes are pretty strong writing in a pretty mediocre series. Perhaps I'm just amazed at the level of gore that the writer premits himself, but it does have the advantage of being truely horrible stuff that you can't shrug your sholders at.

In those books the ritual's objective is to cause a mana spike that lets unbelievably scary beings from a distant plane cross over to destroy the world.

Thanks alot, this is amazing.

I think it's time to tell you where I came across this. I read the "ancient files" which are right here on dumpshock.com
I think the guy who wrote this has read all Shadowrun and Earthdawn material out there. Any one know who he is ?

So why would the Azzies want to open up such a portal ?
Surely the responsible guys are themselves possessed by insect spirits and the like !



Greets
Saatsch

The guy is Ancient History - and he has absorbed all SR & Ed sourcebooks, not simply read them ;D

Aztech had been under control of a horror-marked (?) indivual iirc. But he left Aztech a few years back. AH, help me out, please My Aztech-Fu is weak at the moment.

Or they are "Horror Marked" or something similar.

The author of the ancient files goes by Ancient History, and most of us seek him out for his encyclopedic knowledge of the 4th and 6th world from time to time. Someone even devised a signal to call him......AH Symbol

Which seems to be broken

The link doesn't work.

Yeah I just noticed that too, I don't remember who made it. Whoever made it please update the link!

Ancient History Presents: Blood Magic

Everyone else has pretty much answered your queries, though you may find the Annotated Aztlan Annotations interesting.

How's the ghost called who appears when you call his name three times in front of a mirror? Leprechaum?

Why don't you download the original Aztlan sourcebook while you're at it? I just love these pdf books, I gotta tell ya. It has increased my impulsive rpg purchases by 50% at least

Oh, and there are other companies destributing the files, but I'm not affiliated with DS in any way so I just shamelessly link to my chosen retailer.

The Blood Mage Gestalt is pretty simple—a collection of Blood Mages that is greater than the sum of its parts

~J

Why would they do this? This decreases their power, which is what I'd think is what they're after.

They were promised great power by Oscuro, when in fact they were giving theirs to him.


... is the short version. Basicly you could just as well ask yourself why anyone would sacrafice themself for a cause.

<supposition removed>

And as we all know, the best blood mage is in the parts.

AH, you continue to amaze. Are you sure your dice aren't rune-enchanted?

Well, I can't speak for the rest of them, but the ones from q-workshop might be.

AH, your page mentions that the Gestalt weaves threads of evil between the temples. Beside the Blood Wood, was there anything nearly as big in Earthdawn?

well, there is always the massive orichalcum obelisks around Thera. It's my theory that these were basically massive mana batteries, and were basically what the Theran's used to stabilize the magic level to maintain their power.

There's also the Orissa Traingle. Go get SoA for that one. Covers an area probably bigger than the Aztlan network, or at least close give or take...

We're happy little mage gestalts,
as bad as bad can be
We all enjoy our blood magic,
for breakfast lunch and tea
the horror bridge is growing longer, every single week
Because we love our blood spirits
we all adore our blood spirits
They put the scream, in every shreik
(with apologies to vegemite)

Kremlin, you are sick. But hey! I like it!

I think I can summarize anything that Aztlan or AZT does magically as Something that Should Not Be.

like Stuffer Shacks?

Guess it's not magical , but it's just scary how much normal stuff Aztechnology does.

They are THE number one "normal stuff" corporation.

Stuffer shack tops the nonmagical list of what Should Not Be, and on the cumulative list, falls in just below Toxic/Blood, and just above President Dunkhelzahn + Damian Knight slash.

oh bull

Nadja daviar/ryan mercury porn should be above the Dunk/knight slash stuff

hell Nadja Daviar/Anyone except me, should not be

Sounds like someone needs his simpr0n fix...

Is there anything bigger in Earthdawn besides the gigantic obelisks and the Blood Wood?

<shrug>

You... you don't know?

Well, it's a little hard to tell with some of it. Take the White Tree, for instance. Or Death's Sea. Or Thera's cache of city-level great-dragon-killing weapons. Or the unknown blood rites perpetrated in Aznan.

It is possible that there are larger and more potent magics out there...but we just don't know.

So.

<shrug>.

Do we know what the threading together of Aztlaner temples is intended for? I don't see how binding together their astral forms can be used to help power Oscuro.

The idea - at least, based on the material in Threats - is that at some point every teocalli in Aztlan will perform a sacrifice simultaneously as part of a magical ritual to either bring the tzitzimine to our plane or to shield Aztlan from them.

From that perspective, the "web" serves as a means to enact ritual magic on a particularly massive scale. If the blood magicians are using traditional means of blood ritual magic, then the energies raised by the lesser teocalli will be directed to the main temple in Tenochititlan to support the magicians there.

Of course, there are other possibilities as well.

Does the gestalt still exist in 2070?

i beleive you were looking for theAH Symbol?

(sorry, that yahoo account got hacked and went poof)

Something...tingling. Could it be...the AH Sense? Hmm...tingle...

Save us, AH!!!!