Talk:Distillation of Life's Essence

Distillation of Life's Essence

Bruce's Point of View

• Why call it "Distillation of Life's Essence" when in reality, its "Distillation of Unlife's Essence"?
• If there are multiple donors, how does the thaumaturge know to have the correct number of dishes ready for separation?
• While your mathematical proof seems pretty valid, its only an example, as a ghoul could have 10 blood points and just one point of vitae or he could have 4 points of vitae in his system instead. Does the ritual require a mathematical formula to function?
• It seems to me, if there are multiple donors (slutty little ghoul), then the difficulty of the ritual or the time per casting would go up; an example would be 2 donors = 30 minutes, etc.
• Why is the level of the ritual 3?
• And lastly, why can't the ritual derive the identity of the donor? If its powerful enough to separate out multiple donors, it should be able to determine the original identity of the donor or donors.

Some replies -Jamie

• Why the name? Because I couldn't think of a better one at the time. There's probably a better one waiting to emerge.
• (I'm making this up as I go...) A complicated alchemecal apparatus has many outputs for different end products. It might be possible to overwhelm it, leaving all "extra" products in a single dross recepticle, but it is unlikely in the case of a ghoul's blood.
• The math is not necessary: it is simply an aid to the storyteller to determine how much vitae could be extracted from a sample of ghoul blood. Whether or not a full blood point is extracted, there is still at least a little.
• I'm not sure: It could be that expansion of the time required could be a clue that extra recepticals are needed.
• I don't have a good answer for this. It seems about right.
• In a word, Brian. His reasoning is that when a ghoul consumes vitae, the vitae looses the identity of the donor: You can't become bonded to the donor by drinking the ghoul's blood. In general, he was pretty insistent that it is very difficult to determine identity mystically.

Incidentally, I disagree that the donor should remain anonymous, but I must accept limitations imposed by the Storyteller.

Bruce's Counter Point - in reverse order

• Actually Jamie, I believe it was you who originally suggested that once blood was consumed, that it lost its identity, but that was pretty early on and in your defense at the time it was a compelling argument. Today, I would disagree, in the case of mortal blood being consumed by a vampire that idea would make sense, but vampire blood or vitae is a different matter, the mages call it tass, so its is many order of magnitudes more powerful and would maintain its donor's resonance despite mortal consumption.

• Balderdash, it is canon, a vampire that feeds on another vampire's ghoul can become blood bound to the original donor, provided that the vampire feeding isn't already bound to another. Just as a blood bound progeny's ghouls are in turn bound to their donor's sire.

• I believe an increase in ritual level to say 4, would allow you to both separate out all the donors and learn all their identities, at most it would be a level 5, but then it would be a very useful ritual to a thaumaturge regardless of level.

More of Jamie's replies

• I'll address your first two together.
  

Apparently, there is strenuous disagreement on whether one can become blood-bound by drinking from another's ghouls. I rather think not, but as a character, I have never been willing to test the theory. I don't know of anything from canon, except in the very early stages of our gaming (in which one of Brian's characters became blood bound by diablerizing three of someone's childer - a proposition I find ludicrous) that supports either side. I do think that it should be possible to extract the identity of a ghoul's donors from the blood. I'm not specifically looking for identity, only the ability to extract the blood (which is quite useful even without a name attached) but Brian thinks the identity is wiped when the vitae is consumed.

• True Identity and much more (existing bonds and lineage) can be learned from vitae at level 2. I think that extracting that vitae from the ghoul's blood is all I need - this ritual does not need to independently learn the identity of the donors so long as that identity remains part of the extracted vitae and can be discovered separately. Simply unmixing a mixed solution is something I did in chemistry lab 1: I don't think that advanced magic is involved. Level 3 seems high to me, but reasonable.
• On a related point, (here I'm arguing with Brian) Level 1 Path of Blood can tell among several other things when the vampire (or ghoul for that matter) last fed. It doesn't seem to be too much an advance on that augury to determine who the ghoul has fed on, especially if the information is specific, not one of a number of questions. Of course, there are other ways to determine this, but I hate to resort to temporal scrying for everything.

Brian's Take

• The fact that someone could be bound by drinking from a ghoul is one of my base reasons for the addition or removal of Identity in this ritual. If feeding from a ghoul can bind you to the kindred who's vitae the ghoul has, then the blood has kept it's identity and the caster can get it, if not....I would be looking for a different example on Kindred vitae in a ghoul keeping identity....
• on that note, if it keeps identity it would be a higher level ritual.
• for both this and Jamie's new blood clone ritual i am worried about use in other rituals. Specifically the ritual to raise someone generation. Can you pull blood out of a ghoul and use it to clone(yes in my opinion) can you then keep cloning till you have enough to raise your generation(ouch, some game balance issues here)
• I would rather leave math out of it. Make a simple progression. You can get 1 blood point for every 2 you take from the ghoul up to what they have in their system. Does not address the fact that it should be easier the more they have but....

Two notes in response - Jamie (Ok, it was going to be only one).

• The possibility of using this ritual to extract blood and then clone it to make enough to raise generation is addressed in the mechanics of Sanguineous Duplication. That ritual requires that the caster already possess blood of equal or greater generation than the blood to be cloned.
• a 50/50 split for blood taken out of the ghoul seems pretty high to me. Among the many rules whitewolf presented for ghouls, I believe only one allows a mortal to essentially double his blood pool, and that one required that the ghoul be extremely old. There's no way that a ghoul with only a point or two of vitae in his system should yield even one unless drained to the point of death or beyond. As a ST, wing it if you want, or use the (relatively simple) formula. -Jamie