Bloodseers of Wermspittle

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Whispers echo softly from the damp walls of alleys even the ragged, leprous Refugees from Kerinam avoid. Soft, sibilant and insistent, few heed these minor nuisances. They are easy to ignore in a place rife with real threats and worse perils prowling about the streets freely. But occasionally, for whatever reason,  someone leans a little closer, takes that one little step further... 

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The Blodseers are not creatures of the flesh to be hacked or shot. They are subtle, insidious projections from some distant plane*. Their presence is barely felt, rarely recognized in Wermspittle. But every now and again some unfortunate soul wanders into contact with them, almost always by accident. More often than not such encounters appear to be random in nature, much like stepping on a land-mine in one of the cordoned-off ares of Greenflower Street Park. And always--always--the Bloodseers are only ever encountered in certain alleys well away from the abbatoirs and Killing Floors of the Butchers. No one knows why.

What is Known
The epithet 'Bloodseer' was first given to these beings when it was ascertained that they saw all living beings in terms of their circulatory systems--they literally only saw the blood coursing through veins and arteries. Aside from this bit of trivia, little else is actually known or confirmed regarding them. Very few people have any dealings with these entities, and those who have encountered them are loathe to repeat the experience.


Encountering Bloodseers
Coming into contact with the Bloodseers results in the contactee experiencing slight discomfort, typically a brief sensation of nausea or disorientation. The majority of documented reports insist on the experience having a 'strange sense of pressure that fluctuated throughout their bloodstream.' Most victims retain little, if any memory of what exactly occurred during their contact with these entities, a fact that has stymied many a would-be researcher.


Bloodseer Encounter After-Effects

1. Victim suffers effects of Fear (as spell) for 1d6 minutes. They suffer a permanent -1 penalty to Saves regarding all Fear-related effects henceforth.
2. The contactee's blood-flow has completely reversed itself. There seems to be no ill effect, but they now can Detect Mirrors at will and have to re-learn how to read again as 'all the writing appears backwards'.
3. Victim experiences Confusion (as spell) for 1d4 turns upon taking damage. They are also 'contagious' and inflict Confusion upon anyone they touch or come into contact with during the duration of their own confusion. This contagious form of hysteria fades over time, and the effect will be all but eradicated after 2d4 episodes. Those 'infected' with the confusion are not contagious. Usually.
4. Whenever the victim suffers damage they must Save or experience the effects of a Ventriloquism spell. they also harbor an unreasonable fear that the effect might become permanent.
5. After taking more than 3 points of damage through bloodloss, the Contactee experiences a period of ESP (as spell). This effect is extended by 1d4 additional turns per each point of damage by bloodloss they suffer while under the effects of the spell.
6. The victim's blood is now invisible.
7. Subject suffers effects of Feeblemind (as spell). The condition may be permanent, however, when they take damage, they come out of the spell's influence. Possibly, if they were to take enough damage, a little at a time, they would be able to throw off the Feeblemind effect, perhaps even permanently.
8. When exposed to blood, the victim must now Save or else enter into a trance and undergo a limited form of Contact Other Plane. They will be asked 1d4 questions in some incomprehensible language that gives them a lingering headache. If they do not respond, they suffer 1d4 damage. If they attempt to understand or to communicate with the entities impinging upon their awareness, they must Save or collapse into a stupor for 1d4 hours, after which time they will gain the ability to understand the language being used by these entities.

All who are 'contacted' by the Bloodseers suffer a permanent penalty of -8 to Morale whenever they contemplate re-entering the particular alley where they encountered these entities.


Rumors, Suspicions, and Peculiar Circumstances

1. There are never any Bloodseer encounters near any of the Butcher's Shops, Delicatessens, or processing facilities. Many believe this has something to do with the Butchers. Perhaps they know some way to ward off the Bloodseers. Or perhaps the act of exsanguination is distasteful, possibly even damaging to the Bloodseers? Inquiring busy-bodies want to find out, so they have kidnapped a few Refugess and/or Unfortunates and dragged them through various alleys in search of the Bloodseers in order to find out just what happens when they cause their victims to bleed out.
2. Eramikus Jarl, a minor academician of little standing, has put forth a mostly ignored hypothesis that the Bloodseers arein fact performing a highly esoteric form of divination, that they are in actuality 'reading people's circulatory systems in order to glean some meaningful information from the currents, eddies and flow of the blood.' So far Jarl's work has been silently ignored by the mainstream, which has forced him to go to outside established academic channels. His weekly column is now featured in several of the less reputable Low-Street Gazettes and other such scandal sheets and tabloids. His work in this area has also resulted in a rash of would-be test-subjects and others fleeing from the alleys. If this continues, it might spark riots as those exposed to the Bloodseers will not willingly return to the alleys.
3. A fragment of a document referred to 'X11-J' was recently recovered from a boarded-up old private archive by a small group of Foragers. This document seems to have something to say about the Bloodseers, but none of them can decipher or translate it. The Foragers are divided over whether to sell the thing, or to bring it to the Academy, possibly in hopes of a reward.
4. Ujjonima, an Expatriate Merchant-Duke from Androvia has given away all his prize possessions to a group of Refugees and taken-up the role of an eremite. Normally this sort of mental breakdown wouldn't merit more than a brief mention in one of the papers, but this is something more than just a rich man's collapse into some form of mania or madness. It is rumored that Ujjonima encountered a Bloodseer, and that he has now devoted his life to understanding the mystical implications of the communication that took place. He intends to leave Wermspittle and go out into the Plateaus and find a cave to spend the rest of his days in contemplation. So far he has not found a Guide willing to deal with a crazy, destitute beggar-prophet.
5. Junikor of Galeph, a defrocked surgeon reputedly involved in some sort of unnatural experiment or relationship with an albino penguin he keeps penned in his attic (the gossip gets ugly and crude fast), has just published a report of his recent effort to remove a particular gland from the brain tissue of a cadaver and by employing a combination of galvanic and other techniques, to make a sort of 'blood detector' from the lump of distressed tissue. In the course of his work, he claims to have stumbled upon a means to detect Bloodseers. With a bit of experiment and refinement, Juniko expects to be able to establish some form of communication with the Bloodseers. There are those who greet this news with some curiosity. There are others who are grimly determined not to let this happen at any cost. Some of those opposed to this line of research are cultists and their ilk, but not all of them. some sort of well-funded cabal is very determined to prevent any such effort to succeed.
6. A group of Butcher Boys have been spotted prowling along alleys known to be places where Bloodseer encounters have been reported. They are out hunting. They intend to capture a Bloodseer. they want to know how these things perform their divinations through skrying people's bloodstreams. such a trick would be very valuable to their masters.

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* Maundrey's Crypto-Apothecarium (First, Prijja Edition), carried a forty-six page appendix that covered the Bloodseers in extensive, some would say exhaustive detail. Sadly this section was removed by the editors for all subsequent editions. It was in this appendix that the plane of the Bloodseers was identified as Gulkaddra. A set of seven glyphs were also provided for contacting, binding, repelling, and warding against the Bloodseers, but it is rare indeed to find all seven glyphs intact any more, since the Great Library Purge under Commandant Montag. This expurgated 'Appendix M' has become a notorious bit of spurious apocrypha, with many forgeries and very few actual surviving versions available even to the most discriminating, and wealthy collectors. Copies of the First Edition that still retain the appendix intact go for considerable sums when they reach auction, though few ever make it that far. Agents representing various interested parties have been known to make discrete offers or even more convincing threats prior to any such public sale. Still and all, given all that, no one ever seems to ask what such a thing is doing in a medical treatise concerning banned formulas, contraband serums and the like.