Resonance

<yambe:breadcrumb>Main_Page|Main Page</yambe:breadcrumb>

The Blood is the Life

Human blood powers a vampire’s body. Without fresh juice, a Kindred lies still, torpid, and powerless. Its dead heart beats only when fuelled by the stolen essence of life. Its eyes only work when the corona and the viscous body flows with Blood. All vampires know vital fluids consist of far more than plasma, blood cells, and platelets. Some unknowable link to a kine’s soul gives every person’s red rum its particular kick and effect. Perhaps it’s just hormones and the traces of the incessant bio-electrical current of mind, but a victims feelings profoundly affects the Kindred system.

Drink deep enough, and the Resonance of a victim rises to the surface: first as a sharp taste in the blood, then as images, whispers, and feelings; clots of unresolved trauma or clusters of rising hopes. Crisp memories, a ghost-like presence, or visions of heart-rending moments can occur just as blood loss nears the fatal amount. A kill always gives the strongest, most lasting rush, so the temptation is always there.

The rush of blood is not just a high, it’s a state where the blood changes a vampire’s own Resonance a bit. Plain melancholic blood is a good buzz to be on when Obfuscating, but that uniquely subservient dog-walker with deep mommy-issues owns a special breed of submission that makes Dominate possible without eye contact. That’s what Kindred call a Dyscrasia, licks call a clot, and players call a “must-drink” SPC.

Resonance

Blood type is expressed as Resonance. Unless looking only for survival or fuel, a drinker should care what prey they feed from and how. Vampires drink blood. Mortals eat food. Resonance flavors the blood, turning drinking into dining. It’s not about genetics, even if family often does carry a tendency toward a certain Resonance. It’s more about a combination of the vessel’s temperament and the victim’s state of mind in the moment of feeding.

Kindred employ dozens of different frameworks to describe Resonance, from Japanese adolescent bloodtype astrology to American business-school Myers-Briggs phrenology. Indian licks talk about ayurvedic gunas, decadent Toreador fans of Gurdjieff map their meals on the Enneagram; a Sewer Rat in Geneva claims to use Jung’s original notebooks to construct a “unified theory of Blutfunktion.” But the most common method, used by Tremere thaumaturges and Duskborn street cookers alike, relies on the four humors of classical medicine and medieval alchemy.

The Crucible of Alchemy, say the Warlocks, limns a metaphor for the vampiric body. The salts and metals in the crucible represent the elements of the blood, refined by the fire of the emotion in the moment. According to these Tremere, alchemy is all about scaring or inflaming kine in just the right way and drinking at just the right moment. It may be medieval mystification, but as the Mercurians can confirm, it does reliably get you high. To vampires whose Blood does in fact hold magical ingredients and shape personalities, these latter-day alchemists make a compelling argument.

The Four Humours

The four humors go back to ancient Egyptian and Babylonian medicine, but Hippocrates codified them for the West around 400 B.C. He described them as Choler or Xanthecholia (yellow bile), Melancholia (black bile), white Phlegm (not just modern phlegm, but also saliva, lymph, and the liquids of lungs and brain), and red Hema (blood). Thus, as the various humors predominate in the human system, people turn Choleric, Melancholy, Phlegmatic, and Sanguine. Modern alchemists point out that a blood sedimentation test demonstrates the existence of all four humors in the blood: black platelets and clots at the bottom, red blood cells above that, white cells governing them, and finally clear plasma coloured yellowish with bilirubin. Licks more thirsty than scholarly just break the four humors down as “angry, sad, lazy, and horny.”

Humour	Element	Jungian Function	Hormone	Emotions and Conditions
Choleric	Fire	Feeling	Adrenaline	Angry, violent, bullying, passionate, envious
Melancholy	Earth	Thinking	Thyroid	Sad, scared, intellectual, depressed, grounded
Phlegmatic	Water	Intuition	Pituitary	Lazy, apathetic, calm, controlling, sentimental
Sanguine	Air	Sensation	Testosterone/Estrogen	Horny, happy, addicted, active, flighty, enthusiastic