Wondrous Item

Very Rare

Prerequisites: 3rd level, a Weapon Dealing slashing damage and lacking the heavy property

This bundle of aged, snow-white parchment exudes a quiet unease. Its pages are dry and delicate, the technique written in rust-colored script that appears to be dried blood. Bound by faded red silk, its cover bears no title—only a circular stain like a crimson moon behind fog.
The manuscript records a rare martial art known as the Blood Moon’s Lament, a sword style born in the early wars of the fallen city of Tumeria. Once whispered of in noble dueling halls and battlefield tales, its practice now survives only in fragments—though it endures in secret among the Red Hunters and the champions of House Cainhurst, deep within the city of Yharnam, built over Tumeria's buried ruins.
This technique teaches its wielder to sacrifice blood for reach and force, turning pain into power. Through controlled self-inflicted wounds, the practitioner extends their blade’s reach and strikes in graceful, crimson arcs. Its forms are sharp yet elegant—a dance of death where blood shapes the blade, and precision is born from suffering.

Initial understanding of this technique grants the ability known as Bloodletting. As a bonus action, you may draw a deliberate slash across your own body, coating one or more melee weapons you are holding with your blood. When you do so, you take damage equal to the maximum damage die of the weapons used, plus your damage modifier. This damage cannot be reduced or transferred. While a weapon is coated in this way, it gains the following benefits:
- Its attacks count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity.
- Its reach increases by 5 feet.
- It deals additional slashing damage equal to half the damage you dealt to yourself when activating this ability (rounded down, minimum 1).
A weapon remains coated for 1 minute, or until it is dropped or you fall unconscious. The enhancements only apply while you are the one wielding them.

Moderate Understanding is available at 7th level and reinforces the users ability of bloodletting as well as teaching them the basics of the Crimson dance. While Bloodletting is active, your melee weapon attacks no longer target a single creature. Instead, they affect all creatures within a cone originating from you, with a length equal to the weapon’s current reach. Targets in the cone must be within range of the weapon. You make a single attack roll and apply it to each affected creature individually.
In addition, you gain a reactive step-and-strike technique. When a creature makes a melee attack against you, you may use your reaction to attempt a sidestep. Doing so imposes disadvantage on the triggering attack. If the attack misses, you may immediately make one weapon attack against the attacker as part of the same reaction. This attack is made with the same weapon currently affected by Bloodletting, but dose not apply the blood letting Cone.

Advanced Understanding is available at 11th level and enhances the users proficiency of the Crimson dance, allowing you to maintain its flow even in the heat of reaction. You gain one additional reaction per round. This extra reaction can only be used to activate the Sidestep feature granted by this technique.
Additionally, whenever you successfully cause an attack to miss using Sidestep, you may choose to apply your Bloodletting cone effect to the retaliatory weapon attack. When doing so, the attack becomes a cone with a length equal to your weapon’s reach, affecting all creatures within its area. However, each creature hit by this cone takes only half the damage rolled for the attack (rounded down).

How it Works
To learn a technique from a manuscript, a character must spend a total of 40 hours studying and practicing the contents described within. This time does not need to be consecutive but must be completed within a 1-month period. The manuscript must remain in the character’s possession for the entire duration of this training. Upon completion, the character becomes an Initiate in the given technique and gains its initial abilities.
A character may only have one technique memorized at any given time, unless they have acquired another technique through a different feature than this method.
At specific levels, as defined individually by each technique, a character becomes proficient enough to advance their training in the technique. Doing so requires 20 additional hours of training, following the same rules as the initial training. A manuscript is not required to use a technique, but it is required to progress it or to retrain a different one.
A character may retrain and replace their current technique by following the same rules as initial training. Upon completion, the previous technique is lost, and the character gains only the new technique's initial abilities. Any features granted by the replaced technique are no longer available.