Bloatmage

Hemotheurges—more commonly and derogatorily referred to as bloatmages—are arcanists who believe there’s literal truth to the old aphorism that “magic runs in the blood.” By magically overriding their bodies’ fail-safes and producing more blood than they need, bloatmages are able to greatly increase their magical abilities, but at the cost of becoming grotesque, bloated masses of engorged flesh. Even more significant than any cosmetic changes, the stresses on a bloatmage’s body can prove dangerous to both them and those around them, for if the cephalic pressure on a bloatmage’s brain becomes too great, she flies into a murderous rage before falling unconscious and quickly bleeding out. Such obvious drawbacks keep most from walking the path of the bloated ascetics, but the bloatmages dismiss those detractors who lack the courage to follow in their footsteps, noting that in the pursuit of power and self-perfection, all other concerns are secondary.

Abloatmage can exert herself as a free action to instantly gain extra blood points, but doing so puts her at risk of a dangerous collapse. At 1st level, the bloatmage can bloat once per day to gain 1d4 points. At 4th, she can bloat twice per day, and the die roll becomes 1d8. At 8th, she can bloat three times per day, and the roll becomes 1d12.

At 1st level, a bloatmage gains a pool of blood points, representing an overload of her system with excess blood to extend her arcane abilities beyond their normal level. A bloatmage’s normal pool of blood points is equal to her level.

Blood points can be spent at the time of casting to cast a spell without using that spell’s spell slot. The spell slot remains unused (for spontaneous casters), or the spell is recalled as if it had not been cast (for spellcasters who prepare spells). Retaining a spell or spell slot in this manner costs a number of blood points equal to the spell’s level, and these points must be spent at the time of casting. Blood points do not give spellcasters access to spells they don’t already know or have prepared.

In addition, the bloatmage may push herself via her bloat ability in order to gain a number of extra blood points, but such exertion is a dangerous gamble. If the bloatmage’s current number of blood points is greater than her class level but less than or equal to twice her class level, she gains the sickened condition.

If her exertions push her beyond twice her normal blood point level, she immediately flies into a homicidal rage, striking out randomly with her most damaging attacks and abilities at friends and foes alike for 1d6 rounds or until her blood pool is reduced to 0 (whichever comes first). At the end of the rage, her blood points drop to 0, her hit points drop to –1, and she begins dying.

Each day, when the bloatmage rests to regain spells, she regains blood points up to her class level but not beyond (so if her bloatmage level is 5 but she currently has 8 points, she remains at 8 until she spends the extra points). Some bloatmages conduct constant rituals involving leeches or exsanguination in an attempt to regulate their systems. These rituals, which must be undertaken daily during spell preparation, give the bloatmage the option of subtracting 1 point from any bloating rolls (see below) after the results are known, but at the price of a non-cumulative –2 penalty to Constitution. This penalty cannot be removed, save by the bloatmage abandoning the rituals for a day (also during spell preparation), which removes it immediately.

Bloatmages are particularly susceptible to bleed effects, and the DC of any Heal check made to stop a bleed effect is 5 higher than normal. In addition, anytime a bleeding wound is inflicted on a bloatmage, she loses 1 blood point. This loss of blood points is cumulative for multiple bleed attacks, but not each time she takes damage from the same attack.

At 3rd level, a bloatmage becomes so massive that her rolls of fatty, blood-laden flesh grant her a +1 natural armor bonus. At 7th level, this bonus increases to +2 but reduces her speed by 10 feet. This penalty stacks with the penalty from the Bloatmage Initiate feat. This reduction in speed can never reduce the bloatmage’s speed below 5 feet, nor does it affect magical flying effects.

At 10th level, a bloatmage can temporarily access all of the bloodline powers of a given Bloatmage Prestige Class sorcerer bloodline as if she were a sorcerer of a level equaling her total arcane spellcaster level (including bloatmage levels) by consuming blood tied to that bloodline. By drinking 1 pint of fresh blood (which inf licts 1 point of Constitution damage) from a sorcerer with the given bloodline or from a creature affiliated with that bloodline, the bloatmage gains the ability to use the bloodline powers (but not bonus spells, proficiencies, and so on) as appropriate to her level for 1 hour. This ability is usable once per day and drinking the blood normally requires a full minute, but bloatmages with the Brew Potion feat can distill the blood into a potion-sized draught that can be stored and consumed as a standard action.

Any bloodlines absorbed are in addition to the original bloodline of a bloatmage with sorcerer levels. Though the bloatmage gains no physical nourishment from drinking blood, this practice is likely responsible for many of the stories linking bloatmages and vampires.

In addition to sorcerers of the given bloodline, the following list presents a few examples of creatures whose blood is considered affiliated to a bloodline. There may be others who work equally well, at the GM’s discretion. Aberrant: any aberration.

Abyssal: any chaotic evil outsider.

Arcane: any arcane caster, or any creature with an arcane spell or spell-like ability of at least 3rd-level.

Celestial: any good outsider.

Destined: any creature able to cast divination spells. Draconic: any dragon or creature with the dragon type. Elemental: any creature with an elemental or energy subtype (air, cold, earth, fire, water), provided it has flesh and blood (such as a salamander, but not a fire elemental). Fey: any fey or gnome.

Infernal: any lawful evil outsider.

Undead: any undead creature with flesh and blood (such as vampires or ghouls, but not skeletons).

Pathfinder Chronicles: City of Strangers Caulborn This humanoid creature is hairless, its pale skin congealed into plates. A tight, smooth hood of skin covers the space where its eyes would be, and the bottom of its face expands into two mouths—the top one small and man-like, the lower an oversized monstrosity with split jaws that stretch out like mandibles. The first two fingers on each hand are hideously elongated and multi-jointed. A race of telepathic prophets and historians, the strange creatures known as the caulborn wander the planes in search of new ideas, memories, and concepts to add to the pulsating, bloated brain-sacks that serve as their collective memories. Habitat and Society While extremely rare, caulborn can be found all across the planes, towing their fleshy memory banks through the Astral and Ethereal realms or setting up colonies on inhabited worlds, studying the native inhabitants for millennia before moving on. This seeming lack of a native home has given rise to numerous theories about the creatures’ origin, from conjecture that they come from yet-uncharted worlds on the Material Plane to speculation that they’re actually angels from the far future, come back to survey and catalogue the multiverse before its eventual destruction. If the caulborn themselves know their origin, they refuse to weigh in on the matter.

On the surface, caulborn society looks much like that of other humanoids, as individual members go about the daily tasks of building structures and providing for the colony. Yet in many senses, a group of caulborn is a single organism. Members’ telepathic communication and thought-sharing are so complete as to make them individual avatars of a hive mind—albeit ones who can leave and join a new hive if they need to.

This ability to move between hives is crucial, as it allows the transfer of tremendous amounts of data. Any colony of substantial size contains one of the vaguely sentient brain-sacks that store the memories of individual caulborn and act as telepathic hubs for their colonies, and protecting this living library is colony members’ foremost priority. These brain-sacks, which are usually given names and treated with great respect, have a telepathic range of up to a mile, helping them to organize and unify their kindred.

Caulborn interactions with outsiders vary wildly. Though their alien thought processes and apparent transcension of morality make them unnerving and dangerous, their vast wealth of information and knack for prophecy position them as oracles of the highest order— provided the petitioners can offer something in return. Similarly, though the caulborn feed on sentient creatures, this feeding does not need to be harmful, and most caulborn prefer symbiotic relationships to predatory ones.

Ecology The caulborn are literally creatures of the mind: their bodies are self-sustaining, and they exist solely to record and catalogue new thoughts, concepts, and experiences, no matter how trivial.

Yet because of some evolutionary fluke, their own thoughts and experiences are unable to fill this need, as they lack the nourishing psychic energy possessed by other creatures.

To this end, the caulborn have New Monster: Caulborn grown into perfect parasites—master scholars with no work of their own, only the aggregated knowledge of a thousand sentient meals. A caulborn cannot even learn a new skill on its own, as its neural pathways are designed to receive information pre-digested by another mind.

All caulborn have two mouths: a human-sized, mostly vestigial mouth for respiration and vocalizing, and a terrifying, fanged set of split jaws for fighting and feeding. Neither is attached to a digestive system; rather, a caulborn’s fighting mouth and its over-long index and middle fingers are the areas through which thoughts are absorbed. All caulborn are blind; the shape of their heads suggests that the creatures possessed eyes earlier in their evolution, but such organs have since been rendered obsolete by the creatures’ psychic abilities, and they make no effort to remove the fleshy cowls that grow down over their faces. Reproduction for the caulborn is a hermaphroditic affair, with every colony member being fertilized by every other in a sacred, silent ritual to ensure genetic diversity. Their young are born inside large placental sacks, where they grow for months before emerging as adults.

When a colony finds reason to split, or a small group becomes large enough to warrant it, the caulborn construct a new brain-sack and seed it with every fact and record the creatures have collected since the dawn of time, usually copying knowledge over from previously established brain-sacks. These protoplasmic data centers are made by dismantling the bodies of several caulborn and melding them together into a single blob of fluid and curd. This process robs the brain-sacks of any senses or traces of identity but vastly increases their capacity for storage and information processing. It’s through these strange god-minds, fed by regurgitated psychic energy and left with nothing but the ability to store and analyze information, that the caulborn are able to extrapolate from trends and make connections that result in the uncannily accurate predictions other races see as prophecy—a foresight challenging that of the gods themselves.

When a new bloatmage level is gained, the character gains new spells as if she had also gained a level in an arcane spellcasting class she belonged to before adding the prestige class. She does not, however, gain other benefits a character of that class would have gained, except for additional spells per day, spells known (if she is a spontaneous spellcaster), and an increased effective level of spellcasting. If the character had more than one arcane spellcasting class before becoming a bloatmage, she must decide which class she adds the new level to for the purpose of determining spells per day.

Bloatmages gain no proficiency with any weapon or armor.