[Agema]

Enough spare commanders hunting and you get enough of a trickle to eventually start empowering. Or, alternatively, if it's late on enough wish for blood slaves, you get plenty to empower and get going. You might get lucky with some indy blood mages, in which case go ahead.

Otherwise you've got two notable problems. Arch Theurgs have severe old age. That means not only do you need to empower them, but unless you've got the Chalice you'll also need to spend a lot of blood slaves rejuvenating them. The second is simply the effort you need to put in if you don't have indy mages: Pythium is a strong nation anyway, and it's a lot of effort it doesn't really need.