The Five Tongues
In the beginning, there was a Voice that shaped reality. Today, there are only whispers.
Magic in Heretic Blood is not a tool to be learned, but a truth to be remembered. The Five Tongues are the divine languages of creation—fragments of the High God’s original voice, each holding dominion over a fundamental aspect of the world: Spirit, Mind, Truth, Time, and Life itself. To speak a Tongue is to command the very fabric of existence.
The Alderlean Empire built its foundation on controlling these echoes. Dominion, the Tongue of Order, became law. Aethermancy, the Tongue of the Mind, became a tool of control. But others were driven into shadow, their truths twisted into heresy.
One Tongue, however, was not merely suppressed—it was branded a heresy so profound, its practice is punishable by death. Silvimancy, the Tongue of Life, speaks to the untamed world of root and blood, a power the Empire fears above all else. Its reawakening is the spark that ignites a rebellion, flowing through the veins of our characters and marking them as heretics bound to a destiny they cannot escape.
Discover the sacred and dangerous grammar of creation, where speaking a forgotten word can either save a world or shatter it.
Dominion: The Tongue of Spirit
In the Alderlean Empire, there is one God, one Emperor, and one voice of absolute power: Dominion.
It is the First of the Five Tongues, the word of the High God made law. This is not the subtle magic of whispers and shadows; it is the sacred grammar of control, spoken in the thunderous choirs of cathedrals and the unyielding oaths that bind legions to the throne. It is the sanctifying flame that crowns emperors and the holy fire that purges heresy from the land.
The Dominion is more than a church—it is the spiritual arm of the state, wielding this power to enforce loyalty, sanctify rule, and hunt those who stray from its rigid doctrine. Its priests do not merely preach; they command, their voices imbued with the authority to bind souls and burn away dissent.
To challenge the Empire is to challenge the very word of God—a heresy that can only be answered with fire.
Aethermancy: The Tongue of Mind
Not all chains are forged of steel. The strongest are made of memory, and the most dangerous whispers are the ones planted in your own thoughts.
Aethermancy is the Second of the Five Tongues, the divine language of the mind’s inner terrain. While other magics shape the world of flesh and stone, Aethermancy touches the unseen landscape of thought, dream, and trauma. It does not command with fire and force; it entangles, using the delicate threads of emotion and memory to heal or to harm.
Within the Alderlean Empire, this power is a carefully controlled weapon. Wielded by sanctioned Mindseers and spies, it is the tool of silent interrogations, loyalty tests, and the subtle art of political coercion. An Aethermancer can mend a shattered mind or tear it apart from the inside, leaving no scar.
But to touch another’s soul is to risk leaving a part of yourself behind—or taking on their darkness as your own. Practitioners walk a razor’s edge, where empathy can become a poison and a forgotten memory can become a ghost that haunts the living. In a war fought over truth, the ultimate battle may be for the landscape of the mind itself.
Veritas: The Tongue of Truth
What is a truth if it can be unwritten? What is a person if their name can be erased from memory?
Veritas is the Third of the Five Tongues, and perhaps the most terrifying. To speak it is not merely to tell the truth—it is to create it. With a single, perfectly spoken phrase, a user of Veritas can rewrite the fabric of existence, altering not just the present, but the past.
Centuries ago, this power was unleashed in the devastating War of Names, where entire cities were not destroyed, but erased. Their people vanished from records, their names struck from the memory of the living, leaving behind only the soull-less, hollowed shells of those who were un-named.
Now, it is a globally outlawed art, a cursed Tongue spoken only in secret. In an empire built on a foundational lie, the power to erase a truth is the ultimate blasphemy. But the power to restore one might be even more dangerous.
Chronurgy: The Tongue of Time
Some wounds do not heal with time. Some wounds are time.
Chronurgy is the Fourth of the Five Tongues, the divine language of sequence and consequence. This is not the power to turn back the clock. It is the far more dangerous art of convincing time to forget its own order. A Chronurgist can accelerate the decay of a fortress wall into centuries of dust in a single breath, or glimpse the fatal echo of a choice not yet made.
But to pull at the threads of what was is to invite paradox into what is. Its rare and haunted practitioners often pay the price in their own years, their bodies bearing the weight of timelines that never were, their minds fractured by memories of a past that no longer exists.
In an Empire obsessed with absolute control, the power to manipulate fate is a profound threat. Chronurgy is a reminder that the past is never truly gone, and the future is a debt that always comes due.
Silvimancy: The Tongue of Life
The oldest truths are buried in the earth. The deepest heresies are carried in the blood.
Silvimancy is the Fifth and most forbidden of the Five Tongues. It is the language of life itself—the pulse in the root, the will in the growing branch, the ancient pact between humanity and the living world. It does not command with law or twist the mind; it speaks directly to the marrow of creation, drawing power from the untamed heart of nature.
For this reason, the Alderlean Empire branded it the ultimate heresy. An empire built on cold stone and rigid order cannot tolerate a power that is wild, cyclical, and uncontrollable. Centuries ago, they sought to erase it from the world in the brutal Root Purge, slaughtering its practitioners and burning the sacred groves, declaring the Tongue of Life extinct.
But you cannot kill what is rooted in the soil itself. Now, the old magic stirs. It awakens not in scholars or priests, but in the veins of outcasts and fugitives. A power thought long dead is resurfacing, and its re-emergence is a living truth that threatens to shatter the Empire’s foundation of lies.