Blood of the enemy

Table of Contents

Blood of the enemy is the most potent weapon that can be handed to you... or that you can hand them! Never leaves your blood around, no matter how dire the occasion, as this is begging to be cursed and nothing can be done to protect against such stupidity!

— Sergeant

The power of blood

"Blood is power" is a truism that has been known to humanity since the dawn of our life on Earth. While most of our magic is stored in our bones, it is transported through the body via our blood before being taken up by our organs to be used as needed. As such sacrifice of blood is an extremely powerful fuel for ritual, whether that blood was voluntarily shed or not. The first example coming to mind is of course the Border Barriers that are powered through yearly sacrifices during regeneration ritual and a few human sacrifices here and there.
It is also through blood that binding magic can be exerted, such as by exchanging blood to seal a vow, a contract, or a marriage. Or by taking the blood of an enemy to bind them to your will or curse them. While this sounds wonderful in theory, in practice it is very difficult to take away someone's free will and to force them into unbreakable contracts or slavery bonds. After all, some of the fundamental laws of magic is that everything that has been made can be unmade, and that every bond that links two individuals goes in both directions.
What this means is that such bindings tend to be temporary and only survive so long as there is a balance of power between the two parties—in case of voluntary bond—or so long as the domination does not revert itself—in case of unequal bounds. This can occur when a person dangerously deplete their power levels, or when grave diseases or injuries forces the magic to be redirected towards the survival of its owner. In such cases, the bond is not powered by one of its two parties, and so the other person can use the occasion to attempt to take control of it.

All marriage bonds include a clause for fidelity, and we all know how well that works!

— Sergeant

Babylon and its border barrier by AmélieIS with Wikimedia Commons

Ritual blood dagger by AmélieIS

Types of bonds

The different types of bonds are:

• Marriage bonds. In their classical forms, they can only be formed when both parties are willing, otherwise they are just misnamed slavery bonds. During a marriage ceremony, spouses exchange vows and seal them by an exchange of blood accompanied by other ritual magic supposed to strengthen the bond and the vow, and insure the felicity of the marriage.

• Vows. They are a simplified form of voluntary agreement when vows are only exchanged orally and sealed by blood.

• Contracts. A written forms of the vows sealed by an exchange of blood. They tend to be much more elaborate than oral vows and to include a multitude of clauses.

• Slavery bonds. Any kind of binding magic that aims to constrain the actions of one party that is unwilling (the unwillingness is what differentiates it from a vow or contract).

• Curses. They can be understood as a form of contract forced onto another party.

Vows by AmélieIS with an image from Rose Vectors by Vecteezy

Willing bonds are powered by a small but constant drain on both parties' magic, although the drain is not necessarily equal. Indeed, social classes and power status dictate what is acceptable when forging such bonds and contracts, resulting in the weakest parties often bearing the greatest weight of the bond.
Unwilling bond has almost entirely powered by the person forcing the bond on the other, although particularly intricate bonds also include sections siphoning magic from the bounded to redirect towards powering the bond.

And you've all experienced the vows we have to swear while joining the army. Again, such vows have never prevented traitors, but there is no reason we have to make it easier or more comfortable for them! Rumour has, all traitors will feel their very blood boiling in their veins in revolt for their actions for the rest of their existence—which unsurprisingly tends to be rather short!

— Sergeant

Curses

Transmission of the curse to other family members and heredity is theoretically possible, although in practice this would require an enormous amount of magic and results in a weakened curse with every degree of separation from the person on which it has been cast. The most controversial example of such curses is the Curse of the Knights Templar, as debate is still ongoing as for its existence.
Curse transmission is a well-studied field as any advance on the subject would give an immediate advantage against unreachable enemies. Rulers have even tried in the past to capture members of an enemy country to use their blood to curse their whole family, so as to more efficiently kill or at least weakened enemy soldiers. In reality, this is hardly efficient and so this is not a common practice.

After an extremely long preparation, the last stage of cursing someone is the dramatic shouting of the terms of the curse by Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris

Can you just imagine how short wars would be? Of course, all European royal families are trying to convince us that this is a savage practice, only to be used against outsiders such as the Ottomans or the Mongols, since we all know their families are all related to each other and there is too much risk of a well-aimed curse catching them all...
And they are not terribly happy that we attempted to do that very thing before executing King Louis XVI. Such a shame we were so out of practice at the time! But I assure you, our armies have got a lot better since then...

— Sergeant

The casting

While using raw blood directly from the source is possible and certainly carries a symbolic dimension, this is reserved for very particular circumstances and is considered a savage practice. What civilised individuals do is use Leeches.
Leeches are commonly found everywhere in Europe, either in the wild in swamps or in every apothecary and physician's house, as they are used in medicine to purge bodies of harmful magic. When forging new bonds, it is this ability to filter magic that is exploited.
A leech specially trained is placed on the back of the hand on each party and they drink blood. A special organ inside the leeches then gathers the magic from the blood, concentrating it in a potent and purified solution that can then be extracted with syringes and added to an elixir to be drunk by the parties to be bond or added to ink that will be used to write a contract.
Beyond avoiding social stigma, using such purified blood also makes the bonds more powerful and difficult to break. Therefore, using leeches is seen as a sign of good faith and the representation of the bonded's intent to uphold their side of the bond.

A leech by EllWi on Pixabay

A good thing to know, so long as you're touching someone's blood you can attempt to impose your will upon them in a form of weak transient slavery bond—particularly useful during hand-to-hand combat provided that you're not weak-willed! And if you can find someone idiot enough to believe such a thing is possible, an even better way to trick an enemy into lowering their guard by pretending to be under their thrall!

— Sergeant