Looks like you're using additive blending (t0 + t1). You'll need combine the two textures using 0.5 * (t0 + t1). Check out how to do this in both a fixed and dynamic pipeline.

i was hoping there might be a way of not sending both textures to the shader and sampling from both in one pass.

the idea was to be able to move and combine about 30 quads in no specific order , but just give them the shader technique and it will do all the rest .

but if i have to send both textures then i would have to have a set distance from each other or they would have to know about each other and every thing else

You can still accomplish this using good old multi-passing, which will allow you to blend together as many textures as you want in which ever order you want. Draw the base texture and then draw on top of it. Do some googling - it's how stuff used to be done in the olden days. No shaders needed! :)