Blood Bather

Blood bathers are Immortals who gain their power from the mystical power present in human blood through variations of the ancient occult practice of the Bathing Ritual.

Overview
Comprised of determined, willful, and usually egocentric humans afraid of death and the consequences of aging, blood bathers use the Bathing Ritual in order to remain indefinitely young, strong, and healthy for extensive periods of time. Through the Ritual they may also gain a number of additional benefits, such as healing and blood manipulation, alongside occasional drawbacks, including an addiction to blood or homicide. The process of becoming a blood bather is a difficult one due to the requirements of money, vast research on the very existence and nature of the Bathing Ritual, sources of which are often withheld in museums or the private collections of other blood bathers, and a strong enough resolve to allow the Ritual to function.

Blood bathers lack an organized society of their own, composed instead of individual cults of hangers-on surrounding a single blood bather, oftentimes shallow mentor-student relationships between practitioners, and coalitions of like-minded individuals. The majority of their kind are mass murderers by nature, each with their own, often unwittingly, unique and reinvented version of the Bathing Ritual.

The Bathing Ritual
The Bathing Ritual is an ancient and occult practice involving mass murder and bloodletting which allows ordinary humans, with the resolve and knowledge to make it work, to ascend to become immortal blood bathers by draining the living essence within mortal blood. Its origins are unknown to modern blood bathers, having roots in every culture that ascribed mystical properties to blood and practiced ritual sacrifice and bloodletting, ranging from ancient Aztec descent to Hungarian, Ugric, or even Roman origins.

The exact requirements of the Bathing Ritual can vary either subtly or wildly between individual blood bathers. The Bathing Ritual is based around five facets: blood, bath, frequency, effects, and preparation, with each facet being expressed differently between variants of the Ritual. Certain versions of the Ritual may work for some while also failing to function for others - the main keys to a functioning Ritual involve a combination of desperation, willpower, and personalizing the Ritual to suit the specific blood bather's preferences.