A small troupe of young elves known as the Bloodborne Players offers the darkest theatrical fare in Stormreach. Most of their performances lack any narrative but instead assail the audience with haunting illusionary images and morbid displays of lifelike brutality and violence. Even their more conventional plays culminate in a horrific blood sacrifice enacted with the aid of stunning illusionary magic . . . or so most spectators believe.
Although most of the sacrifices are fake, some are quite real. In these gruesome shows, usually before small audiences, the victim is eviscerated on a dais, and the heart and head are ripped and hewn from the body shortly thereafter. Mostly these victims are captured or duped bystanders, who believe it will all be an illusion. But on occasion the troupe holds secret performances for its most loyal fans, one of whom volunteers to be sacrificed, believing his or her soul will gain immortality and glory.
The leader of the Bloodborne Players, and always the actor wielding the sacrificial blade, is a rail-thin and black-haired elf named Vortras (NE male elf cleric 5), who sports an aberrant dragonmark. The backstage master of visual effects is his cousin Dammerund (CE male elf illusionist 5), though the two could easily be twins. These twisted elves believe the act of blood sacrifice, fused with the emotional outpouring of the enraptured audience, grants them great power. If this belief is true, the elves might have stumbled onto a secret of the ancient Qabalrin elves (SX 52). One thing is certain: Vortras seeks pages of the sanguineous tome (SX 153) and similar works on Qabalrin sacrificial rites. Many suspect the troupe is connected to the Blood of Vol or the Shrouds, yet the Bloodborne Players have recently clashed with bo