"My anger is a building storm. When it breaks, my enemies' blood will drench the ground like rain."

-Varand Thunderhand, bloodstorm blade

Other martial adepts rightfully look with wonder upon those who learn the bloodstorm style. Once a secret art jealously guarded by a sword-cult of githyanki warblades, bloodstorm techniques now find use in the hands of martial adepts of many races - most notably, the informal mercenary organization known as the Bloodstorm Guild. The style takes knowledge from the Iron Heart discipline and applies it to attacks with thrown weapons. A bloodstorm blade who masters these methods often becomes more deadly when a weapon leaves his hands than when he holds onto it.

BECOMING A BLOODSTORM BLADE

Almost all bloodstorm blades begin their careers as warblades, since that class offers the easiest and most obvious path to mastery of the bloodstorm style. A few bloodstorm blades find their way to the class through other routes, usually by means of the Martial Study feat. Other than warblades, fighters most often become bloodstorm blades, but barbarians, rangers, rogues, and monks can also be counted among their number.

Although the bloodstorm blade prestige class primarily features abilities that augment ranged attacks, a high Dexterity score is unnecessary because a character can make use of the thunderous throw ability. Alternatively, a character with a high Dexterity score and relatively low Strength score can forgo using thunderous throw and instead optimize by taking Combat Reflexes and using eye of the storm. Either type of character can take feats that increase prowess and attack power with a single melee weapon; the benefits of either approach apply to both ranged and melee attacks.

PLAYING A BLOODSTORM BLADE

Battle gives you a thrilling sense of lightness and the feeling that you command the very air that your weapon parts as it flies to and from your enemies. In combat, you need only cock your wrist in the right manner, and your consciousness seems to expand to encompass the whole fight. In that instant, your mind's eye clearly sees the angle and vector of your enemies' limbs, it detects the minute details and defects of their armor, and it knows with absolute certainty the distances that lie between. The moment you release your weapon, that queer knowledge leaves you, but when the satisfying heft of your weapon slaps back into your waiting palm a moment later, you know that knowledge will be yours again with your next throw.

Your skill with thrown weapons is unmatched except perhaps by other bloodstorm blades, and knowing that gives you tremendous confidence. You likely specialize in the use of a single kind of weapon, and with it in your possession, you feel unstoppable. Should you lose it, you still command amazing abilities, but you tend to be moody and irritable until you regain your weapon or another of its kind.

Combat

As a bloodstorm blade, you can fight at range and in melee with equal ferocity, but foes more than a stone's throw away can prove to be troublesome, so it's always best to move close. Once you stand among your enemies, it's time to unleash a storm of ranged attacks. If someone is brave enough to engage you in melee, you can battle him toe to toe, or step back and continue to rain blows across the battlefield.

At low levels, you fight much as you did before becoming a bloodstorm blade, but you have the added benefit of being able to attack a foe at range using your melee weapon. Often, the best use of this ability will be to throw your weapon at a foe as you close to melee range. Be sure not to leave yourself unarmed. Wearing spiked gauntlets presents a simple solution, but other options, such as the Quick Draw feat or shield bash, might be more advantageous.

As you gain more bloodstorm blade abilities, your tactics become more varied. You can use lightning ricochet to attack a foe as you move and still ready your weapon before the enemy closes to melee range. You can also use lightning ricochet after taking down a foe in melee, using a ranged attack to soften up an enemy you have not yet engaged. Using blood wind ricochet and eye of the storm, you become a deadly ranged attacker with ample defenses against your enemies' ranged attacks. The blood rain stance combines well with blood wind ricochet, but it truly comes into its own when combined with a blood storm strike. Adopt the blood rain stance and use blood storm as soon as most of your enemies are within range. After striking every enemy on the field of battle, you can maintain the blood rain stance to continue dealing damage to them while you focus your melee attacks on a single target.

Advancement

Many students of the bloodstorm style learn their art covertly, since the githyanki adepts who originally created this ancient tradition seek to kill anyone outside their sword-cult who passes on its secrets. However, one notable group practices its style in the open: the mercenary Bloodstorm Guild. These skilled warriors train any suitable applicant who asks them, in exchange for an oath of loyalty and a promise to never reveal the secrets of the technique to any who have not sworn fealty to the guild.

Once you become a bloodstorm blade, you might or might not try to keep that fact a secret. If you belong to the guild, the githyanki are not likely to single you out - the githyanki blademasters usually keep to an uneasy truce with the Bloodstorm Guild. If you learn your abilities from some other practitioner, you might find yourself dogged by githyanki blademasters intent on expunging all knowledge of this hidden tradition outside their own race, beginning with you. Of course, in combat you make full use of your abilities regardless of who might be looking on, but you rarely go out of your way to advertise your knowledge to the general public. You never know who might be watching.

Your bloodstorm blade abilities lend themselves to mastery of a single melee weapon. Feats such as Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization thus apply to both your melee and thrown weapon attacks. Even so, when you have the opportunity to take a feat, consider feats that improve your ranged capabilities, such as Far Shot and Precise Shot.

Resources

As a bloodstorm blade of the guild, your fellow members know you to be competent and reasonably trustworthy. Most members of the Bloodstorm Guild are helpful to you in whatever manner they can manage. However, more than a few members of the guild pay little heed to their loyalty oaths, and do as they please after they master the secrets of the technique. You can't always count on your fellows.

Other bloodstorm blades can often rely on the help of other illicit members of the class (especially those whom they trained, or those who trained them) to hide from or repel attacks from the githyanki. Even bloodstorm blades with a long history of hatred for one another band together against the threat of the githyanki blademasters.

BLOODSTORM BLADES IN THE WORLD

"Like storms, they provide no warning. When you hear their thunder, the lightning has already struck."

-Thaku Alzull, hobgoblin warblade

Bloodstorm blades and their githyanki nemeses can fill any of several roles in your campaign. Bloodstorm blades might form a loose association of heroic individuals seeking to share their knowledge despite the murderous attacks of the githyanki sword-cult. Alternatively, the practitioners outside the Bloodstorm Guild might be wicked individuals who stole the special knowledge that should have remained in the oath-bounded hands of the guild. Your campaign could instead host a blending of these ideas with virtuous and villainous bloodstorm blades and githyanki blademasters on three sides of a morally murky secret war. If you would rather not use the Bloodstorm Guild and the secrecy of the bloodstorm style, you can simply adopt the bloodstorm blade prestige class as a way to include a cool villain.

Organization

Not long ago, a secret society or sword-cult of githyanki warblades had sole possession of the bloodstorm techniques. Devoted to study and mastery of the Iron Heart discipline, the githyanki developed the signature abilities of the style over the course of generations. Naturally, the githyanki saw no reason to share their secret knowledge with anyone, and those who pried too much about it found themselves facing its lethal practitioners.

Then, about forty years ago, the secret got out. Some say a member betrayed the sword-cult by teaching the bloodstorm style to an outsider. Others say a brave human warblade stole scripts detailing the maneuvers and learned the art from them. Regardless of how the githyanki lost it, knowledge of the bloodstorm blade style spread like wildfire, and despite efforts by the sword-cult to quash knowledge and eliminate those who practice its techniques, many who study the Iron Heart discipline choose to risk the githyanki wrath by becoming bloodstorm blades.

The only nongith organization of martial adepts openly practicing this style is the Bloodstorm Guild. Founded by a renowned human warblade named Treyana di Vrada shortly after the secrets of the style got out, the Guild is a loose association of mercenaries and sellswords bound together by some simple, nonbinding vows. Bloodstorm Guild members rarely serve employers as a group, and instead tend to hire themselves out as specialists, enforcers, and bodyguards. Guild members in the same region often frequent the same taverns, arming grounds, and training arenas, and they might pass news of potential employment to one another. The guild has no true hierarchy of leadership, although more junior members usually defer to proven blades (those with more levels in this prestige class). Before a bloodstorm blade consents to instruct a potential student in the secrets of the technique, he usually confers with other senior blades in the area.

Characters who master this style without seeking out the Bloodstorm Guild usually do so through study of black-market texts describing its use, or by studying for a time with another bloodstorm blade. These master-student relationships don't often last long, but usually result in lifelong friendship and loyalty. Many teachers eventually build up a network of former students, and students of their students, who will answer a call for support or assistance of any kind.

NPC Reactions

Martial adepts who have heard of the bloodstorm technique regard all its practitioners with a little awe, but this attitude doesn't influence their reaction upon meeting bloodstorm blades. Bloodstorm blades typically regard one another with a friendly attitude. Githyanki warblades are hostile to all bloodstorm blades who do not belong to the guild, but are merely unfriendly to guild members. A years-long feud between the gith sword-cult and Treyana di Vrada and her followers left many dead on both sides, and the githyanki have grudgingly allowed a truce of sorts... at least until they have the strength to eradicate the nongith practitioners of the art in one swift strike.

BLOODSTORM BLADE LORE

Characters with ranks in Martial Lore can research bloodstorm blades to learn more about them. When a character makes a skill check, read or paraphrase the following, including the information from lower DCs.

DC 10: Bloodstorm blades have amazing powers with thrown weapons. Many belong to the Bloodstorm Guild, a mercenary fellowship of sorts.

DC 15: The techniques used by bloodstorm blades were known exclusively to the githyanki up until a few decades ago. Now scripts describing the style are available only on the black market.

DC 20: The secretive githyanki blademasters are responsible for the attacks on bloodstorm blades and those who traffic with them. The githyanki created the style and now seek to suppress knowledge of it.

A PC who wishes to learn about specific bloodstorm blades or the Bloodstorm Guild will have a difficult time. He must make quiet inquiries at martial adept training halls and places frequented by those with connections to the black market, and then succeed on a DC 20 Gather Information check. Publicly asking about bloodstorm blades likely results in the PC being rebuffed, and such queries might attract the attention of a vigilant githyanki blademaster.

BLOODSTORM BLADES IN THE GAME

If one of your players decides to play a bloodstorm blade, the prestige class should fit in as easily as any martial adept class. You can make the Bloodstorm Guild or the githyanki blademasters as large or small a part of your campaign as you like.

If the githyanki sword-cult becomes a part of your campaign, be sure that its involvement doesn't put too much of a spotlight on the bloodstorm blade. Too many githyanki attacks against the PCs will grow onerous, and the cult isn't large enough to repeatedly expend the lives of its members trying to kill a PC. Instead of adventures centered on the githyanki, consider having an NPC member of the Bloodstorm Guild occasionally help or advise the PCs as they go about other adventures.

If a player decides to be a member of the Bloodstorm Guild, you can use rumors of black market texts describing the bloodstorm techniques or githyanki assassin teams as adventure hooks.

Adaptation

Bloodstorm blades need not be attached to a fellowship of sellswords or a secret githyanki cult. The class's techniques might be a development of the Iron Heart discipline that anyone can learn, or the fighting style might have been discovered and used by another race.

For example, you could decide that the abilities of this prestige class are used only by a group of halflings who are specialists with the sling. Calling themselves stonestorm strikers, members of this prestige class gain Quick Draw instead of Throw Anything and have the ability to load a sling with one hand as a free action instead of returning attacks. The other abilities of the class would work with sling attacks instead of thrown weapons.

Sample Encounter

The PCs can encounter a bloodstorm blade as an ally or enemy in any manner you see fit. Bloodstorm blades might act as cohorts of a foe, or one could be the main villain in an adventure. The heroes might discover a githyanki text of bloodstorm knowledge during the course of their adventures, only to find that the githyanki blademasters will do anything to get the text back.

EL 15: Varand Thunderhand (CE male dwarf fighter 2/warblade 5/bloodstorm blade 8) is a member of the Bloodstorm Guild, but his actions hide a terrible secret: He is a spy for the githyanki blademasters. He betrays other bloodstorm blades to the githyanki, hoping to use the fanatical blademasters to remove rivals from the guild and pave the way for his eventual takeover. Varand intends to rule the guild with an iron fist, commanding a small army of loyal blades that he can use however he sees fit.

If a PC is a member of the guild, Varand approaches the party hoping to gain aid in exploring a forlorn citadel, in whose vaults bloodstorm texts are supposedly hidden. If the PCs help him, Varand sets them up by arranging for a team of githyanki warblades to ambush them. He intends to give the characters and the texts (if they're even present) to the githyanki, and keep the rest of the booty garnered from the adventure.