Playing by New Rules

I could handle myself in a fight. Not drunk barfight to blow self-steam. I can adhere to the rules of box or muay-tai, but I got the training meant to optimise my chances of survive the actual life and dead situation of having to fight another trained soldier in combat. If it happens to go down to hand-to-and fight. Plus everything your hands can grab and use as a weapon. I like sports like I like videogames, fictional and to expend time when there is time needing to be lost. Don’t really believe in sports, of professional kind.

Not any sport. My working theory is that: all fixed. Every single one.

When your life is on the table, that is another conversation. I never want to be in the situation of depend on my hands, boots, or a knife. Always better to shoot from distance. Preferable from cover, before the enemy suspect there is some reason to worry. Nevertheless, you must prepare yourself to suboptimal moments.

When I was turned into a vampire first impact that caused in me was the realization that now I would need to learn all again. From zero.

Some vampiric powers violate anything we think we know about how reality is supposed to work, physics, chemistry, and what not. This is not what I am referring to presently. I mean most the basic package.

As a three-dimensional object the vampire follows the same laws of physics humans follow. You realize you are now far stronger, some six, ten times stronger than any human. Your reflexes are faster. To brake a bone or injury yourself in any other way, you need really push yourself. Physical exhaustion takes a lot longer to start, you can push yourself beyond what is possible for humans using the most **** enhancing performance **** and not feel you are making any exercise yet.

However, at first your body wants to move as it was used to. Your memory is all from a live as a humans. Muscular memory. You retract too much, flinch, hesitate.

Besides, there is that one problem anyone who knew how to fight, or dance, as a human soon notices. Unlike in the movies, in real live no amount of extra-strength allows you to push someone back more effectively than you could before. Being fast helps. Because is all a matter of weight and speed. With the right angle you can push things up, if the ground holds, but not in any direction you would like.

Then also, move faster do not mean you can run as fast as you can move. Because to run in real life you need friction, which also depends among other things on weight. How heavy you are influences a lot your movements.

Good things about that is that once you understand that is how things work, you will notice than not all vampires share that practical understanding.

Vampire society is entirely made of predators, with supernatural sharp edge that gives us a disproportional advantage over our prey. This society is not all composed of soldiers, or any other sort of warrior. Many vampires have other things demanding their attention, and trust their social status to keep them safe most the time.

Even the best fighter can be pushed far away, down a precipice or something like that, by someone one thousand times weaker and about as slower as that. Simply because, as a general rule, a vampire weights as much as the human he used to be used to.

Catch the vampire by surprise, you can send him flying. Send him flying in the right direction you will probably manage to run in the opposite direction too fast for this vampire catch you.

Because we can only run as fast as the friction between our feet and the floor allows us. No matter how fast our legs can move beyond that.

My instructor in those things, following the sort of “elder-brother system” the Vampire Families practice since when Stonehenge was in early phase of sketch, is a fellow named Lucius. Nice fellow, used to be a military man in Rome, but was turned into a vampire before the Republic. Like most colleges of profession do not like politics much. I must agree with him about that, talk is great but at some point a decision has to be made and no longer under questioning. Otherwise, you cannot reach any goal.

One practical problem when we fight other vampires is that there are too many vampire powers. You should always make the best research possible, and test your foe carefully, but is always possible to end up dying for good because you didn’t knew something important about the enemy.

That gives you additional reason to not enter a fight unless you are sure you need to enter that particular fight, at that instant in time.

About the weight problem, you can gain extra-weight by wearing heavier clothes and accessories, like divers to. Is not very fashionable nowadays to walk around in heavy armour, but we have the marvels of extraterrestrial products, and some things made by a vampiric power named Artifex Seed. The idea of wearing heavier materials for the sake of extra weight sounds odd at first, but it is sometimes practical.

Lucius has a belt with a “personal ****-field generator”. Fancy name, the think creates a bubble of power around him that makes impossible to hit him with bullets or push him back. Lasts a few minutes and slows down movement considerably, you have to turn off when you need to run. No magic involved, just technology we do not have on Earth. I am not sure how they get stuff like that, but they have it.

Those toys are expensive, few can afford them and you do not carry one all the time risking to lose it. You use them when you have reason to believe circumstance ask for it.

The right vampiric power for the service is better, and once you have it you do carry it everywhere you go. Problem is, you cannot choose which blood-seeds you have in your blood.

There is a power named “Black Fire”, not related with George RR Martin, if creates something that burn anything, except the vampire who has the power. Used against the ribcage of a vampire it causes permanent dead, and can be used at distance of many meters. Makes hand-to-hand combat virtually useless. Also, is said to be the most painful sensation one can feel, if used against anything but the hearth. What makes it an interrogation took. Very debilitating for the client.

Another power, the one that I would like to have the most, basically makes the vampire able to move heavy objects at distance with the mind. What is great about, is that those who have this power can learn to fly. Superman style, like that Erick fellow in the True Blood TV show. With that, all considerations about weight change, they lose weight so to speak.

That is what I would like to have.

What I got instead is just as rare, and sort of nice too, I suppose. It is also the reason why the family took cousin Lucius from whatever personal project he was dedicating time to, so he could instruct me. Because he is the only other person in our family with this same blood-seed.

They call it “Ocean Seed”, I call it “Vicissitude”, in homage to that Vampire the Masquerade tabletop RPG. Because it is basically the same thing. Not in every detail, if I had to judge this Ocean Seed is better. They are similar in logic, however. The weight problem is considerably reduced, because like many vampiric powers this one declines the advices of thermodynamics. I can make myself heavier or lighter, by creating or eliminating mass in my body. In one instant.

I am not good in using the power, yet. I am improving!

Few vampires cannot change the shape of anything in their bodies by “magic”. Some few fellows have fangs that never grow, remain like those of normal humans. A larger percentage never learn how to do this voluntarily. Their fangs only grow when they lose control during the hunting. According to Lucius that it the norm among the lowlife vampires who exist outside Nocturnal Courts. And 1 in each 10 vampires lack the capacity to turn their fangs back to human shape. They are always in vampiric hunting mode. Oldtimers are often like that.

Most vampires can change the size of their 2 canine teeth at will. To sharp fangs, two or three times longer than human teeth. Is pretty.

Some vampires change all their teeth to a shark-like aspect. Some can change their nails into claws too. And for all that you find the variants that I mentioned previously. People who cannot change at will. Those who cannot ever change back to human appearance.

This “Oceanic” power is more flexible than all that. I can change the shape and size of anything in my body. And yes, of course, but drop that subject you pervert.

We are talking about survival skills here, life and **** situations. Not Recreation and Relaxation.

The most advanced development we can get from this blood-seed of mine is a royal treat. Any vampire can be burned into crispy or decapitated, or both, and came back to life. All you need it to drop blood in the remains. If the hearth of a vampire is destroyed, and any part of it is eaten by an animal, the vampire will consume the animal from inside, and reshape its body naturally, from that animal and any other that enters in contact with it. And, if you burn a vampire to ashes, disperse the ashes into wind or running water. There is a ritual that allow the family of that vampire to bring your victim back. Intact. It needs one drop of the blood of the vampire, and all families keep a vial with the blood of each family member.

However, that ritual to bring a vampire back is expensive, only a few master warlocks can perform it. Involves some politics to get one to do the stuff.

Lucius will never need it.

He can bring himself from ashes in the wind or in the water. Sooner or later one dry dead grain of ash that was him will find its way inside something that has blood or can be eaten by something else that has blood. He needs nothing more than that, to cover.

One day, if I keep eating my vegetables and saying my prays every morning before going to bed, I shall have the same tranquillity of mind.

Even before that, I will learn how to change the shape and consistency of my hearth. Make it harder to extract from my body intact. More fragile.

“Why would you want that?” We, because that is the best protection against being killed permanently available for any vampire. Will not work against that Black Fire power, but should work against any human vampire hunter. Because, to kill a vampire permanently a human must cut the hearth from the vampire, intact. And expose the cardiac muscle to direct sunlight. Without vampire powers, that is basically the only way to permanently destroy one of us.

Many new rules to learn. Stay alive, that is still my first objective, always was, that much has not changed. The ways to achieve this, my man! Those ways have changed a lot.