Find The Truth of a Bloodline with The Sangueous Ritual

In the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons, things are different to our lives in our world. Things are unclear in a world without the clear answers of science. Magic is able to find analogues of these things, and it works well. GPS can be covered with Divination, and researching the past is handled masterfully with the Legend Lore spell.

An issue that has occurred in the stories I GM and the fiction I write is that of blood. The sanctity of a royal blood line and the credibility of an heir is always an interesting source of drama for any slice of fantasy or historical fiction, and it can be relevant here. Or it can make for a great paternity test for the lusty Bard.

The Sangueous Ritual

Derived literally from blood, this simple ritual can determine if any two individuals have a direct genetic relation.

The oldest forms of magic involve blood or some manner of essence sacrifice. It's believed that harming the caster makes them more willing to be truthful. In the case of The Sangueous Ritual, the drawing together of like with like blood is usually the confirmation that the relation is strong.

Photo by Fine Vintage Design

Conducting the ritual is easy enough. It requires a simple bowl with two channels, one for a drop of blood from each concerned party to run down. The two involved in the ritual both take 1 necrotic damage, which cannot be avoided or redirected in any way. The blood flows down the channels in the bowl. The channels, have enough of a dip that the droplets of blood will collect nicely and not spill, but this happens only if they're blood relations. If they mix in the centre as one liquid, then they were magically drawn together through the ritual, making the two participants blood relatives.

The conduction and use of this ritual varies greatly across the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons. Some consider the bloodlines of rulers so well curated that it doesn't even seem necessary. Others think it's an absolute necessity to ensure the safety of the kingdom. In high magic settings, certain street level magical healers offer it in their store to ensure whether or not the Bard needs to keep it in their pants (as personally annoying that trope is).

A Bowl of Answers

In lower magic settings, this ritual can decide the fate of a kingdom. In an ongoing campaign, the death of a ruler and the continued appearance of more and more heirs can plunge the adventurer's base town into chaos. Seeking out one of the Sangueous bowls and a mage that knows and conduct the ritual, can ensure a safe future. It can be anything between a short fetch quest to a nation spanning arc all of its own. The DM's inventive imagination will never be bled dry.

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Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, they write about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out themselves. On Youtube, they can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Find where they dwell by climbing their Linktree.