Bloodforge

A bloodforge was a mystical and mysterious artifact found in numbers in the Utter East. From raw magic, the bloodforge was able to create living golems and thus manufacture great armies with which powerful mages did battle. The bloodforge dominated warfare and society in the Five Kingdoms of the Utter East. "It's called the bloodforge. It needs blood. It feeds on blood."

- Artemis Entreri

Description
A bloodforge took the form of a large and heavy square slab with beveled sides and rounded edges. The entire surface glowed and shimmered with waves of magic, all in blue or red or some other color (with different hues to better distinguish factions in a battle). A bloodforge could not be damaged by any mundane means.

Powers
The bloodforge was both fueled by and a generator of a form of raw magic called "mana" by those of faith. Owing to its own magical nature, the bloodforge slowly generated mana and could store a large amount of it collected from other sources (though this had a maximum limit). With the power of a bloodforge, a mage could turn a portion of this mana into a kind of living golem called a basal golem, utterly loyal to the bloodforge's owner.

More mana could be generated in various ways. Most commonly, a basal golem that sat idle meditated in the form of an obelisk and gathered mana, which it then transferred to the bloodforge.

A friendly basal golem standing upon the bloodforge would be strengthened, but an enemy who did so would be harmed.

A golem transformed into a higher-level creature could be reverted back to its basal golem form when beside the bloodforge of its master.

Somehow, however, every use of a bloodforge steadily weakened ancient prisons binding fiends and undead beneath the Utter East.

Operation
To command a bloodforge, one had to be a mage and to have mastered the use of the artifact.

A bloodforge had to be transported and placed on a suitable terrain that was clear and flat and met certain requirements. There were typically only a few appropriate sites in a landscape where a bloodforge could be located, but these were usually somewhere on the outskirts of a soon-to-be battlefield. The bloodforge was then fixed into the earth.

Rather than stand on the battlefield, the mage who mastered a bloodforge took a place high above it, so they could survey the whole land (at least as far as they'd explored) and the disposition of their forces. They issued commands to their army via a marble "oracle" (created by the Great Mage).

Reputation
The bloodforge was naturally the core apparatus of a leader during the Bloodforge Wars.

The Great Mage taught a number of principles of warfare related to the function and philosophy of the bloodforge and its use in battle. His adherents labeled the bloodforge "the mother of battle", a thing pregnant with magic that gave life to armies, with basal golems "the children of battle" who would serve without question or doubt. They saw mana as a kind of food that fed their war effort. They saw themselves as masters of battle who would achieve greatness through conflict.

History
It was believed that the gods themselves created the bloodforges. They were known to be ancient engines of war.

The bloodforges were discovered in the Year of the Dancing Daggers, 648 DR, first by King Grewe of Konigheim and within tendays by Ffolk across all the Five Kingdoms. Being able to mass-produce entire armies of golems, they eliminated overnight the cost of mustering and maintaining armed forces. Losing all restraint, turning war-mad, the Ffolk rulers of the Five Kingdoms each manufactured great golem armies and marched them against one another, bursting into the Bloodforge Wars. A number of conflicts large and small raged back and forth across the Utter East, with all sides commanding bloodforges and basal golem armies. Their kingdoms throve on the arcane magic of the bloodforges and were governed by military might. Late in the Bloodforge Wars, the master inventor and mage Eldura Moreen worked within the Hall of Wonder to study a bloodforge and unveil the secret of its operation. However, the leader of the Legendary Campaign, who aimed to unify the Utter East through conquest, attempted to put an end to Eldura's research through bloodforge battle, feeling the gods' creation should remain a secret.

Eventually, this rampant use of bloodforges weakened the ancient prisons beneath the Utter East. Finally, in the Year of the Nine Stars, 657 DR, the horde of antediluvian horrors escaped and rampaged across the ruins of the land, killing without regard for kingdom or race. This was the Plague of Fiends. Grand Caliph Arash bint Sanjar of Zakhara sent an armada to the Utter East in early Mirtul of 657 DR. They launched a surprise attack on the Five Kingdoms, razing every village and slaying all they encountered, whether fiend or undead or human, in the Scouring of the Utter East. The Grand Caliph saw the land as infected and ravaged. Their bloody work done by the time autumn fell, they departed, leaving behind a wasteland of burned and ruined cities and slaughtered peoples.

Notable Owners

 * See: Category:Bloodforge mages

Appearances

 * Novels
 * Double Diamond Triangle Saga
 * Video Games
 * Blood & Magic