Bad Monkeys; Or how to jump-start the blood game?

[Carcaroth]

I looked around through the strategy thread, but nothing looked especially appropriate, so I thought I'd start this one: It's common practice to use the pretender to jumpstart expansion into new paths, and I've done this pretty effectively with death and nature.

But how can you manage it with blood? You have to have blood mages to hunt effectively, so you can't use turmoil or a site to eventually pay for empowerment or a booster item to really begin things. In particular I'd like to get blood going with Patala, because they have access to Lanka's summons, while they lack good thugs, but I can't quite seem to get things going without any national blood mages. Any help would be appreciated.