Real Lich Hours 75: Elizabeth Rendezvous
Added 2025-06-29 16:14:56 +0000 UTCIn this episode we meet a wicked lil pisha and get engaged to Elisabeth Dane.
The Chronicles of Darkness: Pisha and the Antedeluvian?
Handbook for the Recently Deceased: Thaumaturgy
How to Cheat in Bloodlines and Why to Cheat in Bloodlines
Comments
I’m not going to pretend to be the be all end all on clearing this stuff up, because the noun space is very cluttered, but essentially, thaumaturgy and blood sorcery are interchangeable for the purposes of Vampire. At the table, blood sorcery/thaumaturgy is a discipline like any other up to a point. Each level you take also equals a level in the *blood sorcery path* the “path of blood” (this is the default “path” of blood sorcery, and what the character in bloodlines is stuck with). As you play, you may find access to other *paths of blood sorcery* which are all of the ridiculous things you both saw on that wiki page. Weather manipulation, alchemy, electricity and fire powers, divination, conjuring, there’s even a path that gives you nightcrawler’s powers. It is quite silly, but it can also be fun. I’m personally glad these were stripped away for V5 blood sorcery, reframing the focus of blood magic to be on sweet sweet blood again. Re the question, what is the magic mages do called, that’s just magic. If specificity is absolutely required, you call it sphere magic (Spheres are the various realms of influence mages have). A note on vocabulary before this next little bit, when you’re playing a Mage, you choose a “tradition” for your character at creation. These various traditions reflect different philosophical approaches to the magic that mages perform. If that sounds complicated, one way to simplify it is that they’re quite analogous to Clans in Vampire, with there even being a tradition equivalent of the Caitiffs. The “Order of Hermes” is one such tradition. Kaye mentions Mage magic being called hermetic magic, which is a squares and rectangles issue. In the world of darkness, hermetic magic™️ is magic practiced by the Order of Hermes specifically. It involves a high degree of, shall we say, specificity in what the mage wants to do with their magic. But what this hermetic mages do is still considered sphere magic. And now moving on to the fascinating subject of HEDGE MAGIC and all that entai-*a giant cane comes out and pulls Eli off the stage*
Eli Leslie
2025-07-01 17:54:05 +0000 UTCTremere Thaumaturgy is just that expansively bullshit. The years and editions did a lot of wacky feature-creep things to various clans and disciplines, but Thaumaturgy was kinda nutty out of the gate and got so, so much worse. I think it might be the only discipline that had consistent houserule nerfs at every table.
James Lloyd-Jones
2025-06-29 19:52:41 +0000 UTC
