The Claret Orders
Overview
The Claret Orders are the oldest surviving institutional relationship with blood as both weapon and theological substance — a martial tradition of monster-hunters who turn their own life force against the things that prey on the living. They predate the Luxon by centuries, survived the Exodus and the thousand years since, and have never once operated with anyone’s sanction. Blood hunters and blood-domain clerics both come out of the Orders; they are the single thread that ties the whole discipline of hemocraft together.
Origin (pre-Exodus canon). The Orders were forged in the Marrow Valley of Wildemount, when a high cleric of the Julous Dominion struck a fiendish bargain and the countryside curdled with evil. Using forbidden skills — hemocraft, the turning of one’s own blood into a hunting tool — the Orders sealed away the source of the deal and cleared the valley. They were never thanked. The Dwendalian Empire swept into the purged valley, crushed the Julous Dominion, and blamed the Orders for inviting the fiends in the first place. Branded and hunted, no longer welcome in their own homeland, the blood-tithed hunters went into hiding and never stopped working the shadows, seeking and destroying the evils that crawled out of the Calamity’s scars. Splinter orders spread across Exandria; their very existence faded into rumor and myth.
In Nuxan (present). A thousand years later the Orders endure, still stateless, still outside institutional religion and outside the law. In a land where the Shadowfell leaks ungoverned dead into the living world and the ruins beneath Bassuras swallow survey teams whole, there is no shortage of work for people with their expertise — and no institution willing to claim them. They occupy the same legal gray zone as unlicensed wizards and hedge-god clerics, except they are harder to kill and considerably more willing to prove it. Coming into their training means coming into contact with the Orders directly; the knowledge is not written down where it can be stolen.
Doctrine & Methods
- Hemocraft. The core discipline: turning one’s own blood and vitality into a weapon. It costs the practitioner something every time it is used. This is exactly why the tradition outlasted the collapse of formal institutions — blood is always available, requiring no temple, no beacon, and no sanctioned supply.
- The Hunter’s Bane. Initiates undergo a rite that opens them to hemocraft and to the darkness they hunt — embracing an inner darkness in order to fight the outer one. It is deliberate, costly, and not undone.
- Secrecy and independence. The Orders keep their knowledge close and their keeps hidden. They hold no allegiance to any government and answer to nothing beyond the work.
What They Gate
The Claret Orders are the single in-world requirement standing behind three player options drawn from different sources — which is why they need one consolidated page:
- Blood Hunter (class — Blood Hunter 2022) — hemocraft warriors, the Orders’ fighting arm. A Blood Hunter character requires a Claret Orders connection in their backstory. Orders: Order of the Lycan, Order of the Mutant, Order of the Ghostslayer, Order of the Profane Soul.
- Blood Domain (cleric — Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn) — the Orders’ priestly wing, treating blood as theological substance rather than only a weapon. Available only to characters with Claret Orders ties.
- School of Blood Magic (wizard — Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn) — the arcane, wizard-adjacent expression of the same craft. Not widely taught; learning it means contact with the Orders.
Key Members
None currently established in Nuxan. The pre-Exodus figures — Claret Director Jette Brashan and the splinter-order leaders of old Wildemount — are a thousand years gone. The modern Orders are decentralized and deliberately obscure.