Intergalactic Summit

The Blood Raider Covenant - an organisation whose name and reputation strikes fear into the hearts of many space travellers. Pirates that board ships and drain the blood from the crew and passengers, leaving bloodless husks, using the stolen blood in terrifying rituals glorifying their God.

Such is the popular idea of what the Covenant are, but as ever, the Truth behind this organisation is quite different. Why are they obsessed with blood ? What is the meaning of the horned skull ? What actually is the Covenant ?

To clarify this mystery, I shall start by explaining the history of the Covenant.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, before Humanity left the Old World and made the journey through the Gate to New Eden, there was a planet, called Assyria, the capital city of which was Babylon, and in Babylon, there lived a queen. Named Lamashtu.

Now Lamashtu was not a human queen. Oh no, you see, Lamashtu was a demoness, usually appearing in the form of a winged horned woman, capable of terrifying magic acts, such as levitation, shape shifting, raining hellfire upon her enemies, and so on. These powers required Lamashtu to consume large amounts of human blood, consecrated through particularly arcane rituals.

Time passed, and Lamashtu made her way into New Eden, landing in what is now Sahtogas, although some mishap occurred and Lamashtu fell into a state of hibernation, for thousands of years.

Eventually, some human people, fleeing religious persecution by the Amarr Empire, settled on Sahtogas, and, thousands of years after it had crashed there, Lamashtu's sarcophagus was found, and she was awakened, though severely reduced in power.

Seeking to regain her status as a demon queen, Lamashtu made a bargain with the humans that found her.

And this, was The Covenant. It is not a covenant with the Red God, it is a covenant made with the demon queen Lamashtu.

This bargain that Lamashtu made with the first of the Covenant, is the ultimate source of the strange blood magic powers possessed by Covenant members or "Kindred" as they call themselves.

So, I shall now explain a little of Blood Magic, or, to give it its proper name, Haemothaumaturgy, which is an ancient word meaning, umm, blood magic. I shall also explain a little about the abilities of the Kindred.

Blood magic is the source of a Kindred's power, and why they must drink blood to sustain themselves. The primal essence and energies of blood is called Vitae, and is important in the process in which new Kindred, and their minions, are recruited.

The powers granted by blood magic vary, but several are common to all Kindred, such as increased strength, speed, resistance to wounds, ability to regenerate injuries, and a few other minor abilities such as being able to post so edgily on the IGS that even hardened posters may scream as they cut their eyeball looking at the post.

There are other powers, that not all Kindred possess, such as the ability to assume a "War Form" by haemothaumaturgic shape-shifting, that are dependent on that Kindred's bloodline, which is an artefact of how Kindred are recruited.

Recruiting a new Kindred is a process that is known as Embracing. With a capital E.

In the Embracing process, the candidate is drained dry of all of their blood. The Kindred then gives the candidate a small amount of their own blood, transferring some of their Vitae and the associated blood magic powers to the candidate, who then is instantly transformed into a new, hungry, Kindred. The older Kindred is called the Sire of the younger one, who is called the Childe of the older one. The Childe inherits the specific abilities of their Sire, which is why the different bloodlines exist - they all go back to the first Childes who were Embraced by Lamashtu, and given different abilities, depending on the role Lamashtu had for them.

There is another process, used by Kindred to create and control minions, called Blood Bonding, in which a living human drinks some of the blood of a Kindred without having been drained of their own. This causes a magic bond between the Kindred and the minion, who gains weaker abilities of strength and speed and so on, dependent on their Kindred's bloodline.

This is how the Covenant gains and controls its members. Through the process of Embracing and Blood Bonding, using the haemothaumaturgic powers given to them in the bargain made with Lamashtu the demon queen.

It is also why they drain blood from unwary travellers, and why they believe cloned blood to be superior.

Despite their blood magic powers, a Kindred, or their minion, can still be beaten in hand-to-hand combat by a normal human, if that human knows the special Kindred-hunting techniques.

First, it should be noted, that a Kindred that seems dead, may still be re-animated if given fresh blood, which is why Kindred and their minions retain the true Sani Sabik custom of wearing a blood vial on a necklace.

A Kindred or minion, may be stunned momentarily, by crushing their neck with your thighs. To successfully do this however, generally requires luring the Kindred into a suitable position, which may not be easy to achieve.

Once stunned, the Kindred should be immobilised by stabbing them through the heart with a silver stake, with the Wards of Banishing inscribed upon it. While immobilised, they may be interrogated, though their willpower is such that they can resist all but the most determined inquisition.

Finally, ultraviolet lasers, or fire, or decapitation, may be used to inflict a permanent Final Death on the immobilised Kindred.


It should also be noted, that few of the Kindred or their minions are conscious of the fact that the Covenant is with Lamashtu and not the Red God.

If necessary, I can explain more.

Please excuse me, but I believe that such sort of drawing is highly amoral and indecent. It shall be banned, even if it depicts something evil that shall be fought against.

Fixed it for you

I have annotated your guide:

Kill every Sanist, every Blooder and every Bleeder. Turn their colonies to ash and glass, use their writings as tinder, and smash their art into dust.

Nice article!

To answer your questions:

1. Only slightly

2. I think so

3. He mo thar mat orgy

I think I played a roleplaying game with the exact same plot not too long ago.

Confirmed.

..lulz aside. Apparently some of the Raiders do purposefully bodymod themselves to strike fear into their enemies and victims, so the "war form" thingy has a grain of truth in it.

...But obviously, it's not the Horned Skull that depicts a "war form", it's those who tattoo their faces in red and black and implant or grow horns, etc., shape themselves after the Horned Skull.

Well, ask yourself, do you really, really, want to stick a thing made by scary cultists, into your brain ?

At least wash it off before you do that, for heavens sake.

Blood Raiders suck!

1) No, bhaalgorns look like geddons.

2) maby...

3) "blood magic"

Thank you for your interpretation. It is always nice to see how others of the Sani Sabik Path discovering the hidden codices of our noble order.

I look forward to more of your work.