Dark Research

[prismaticcrow]

A fire crackles in the hearth of the sitting room of the Wyntir Estate. A dark mahogany table rests in the center of the room, two loveseats face it from obtuse angles. A brass chandelier hangs from the ceiling above, its candles of ever-burning flame throw soft shadows about the room and upon the chamber's lone occupant.

A pale woman in a simple black dress and sash sits on the loveseat, leaning over a table strewn with papers, parchment, and thick stained tomes. A diagram stretched before her, showing a naked human figure, spread eagle and suspended in mid-air. Arcane formulae and other odd scrawlings cover the diagram. The woman sits with a quill in the corner of her mouth, her expression thoughtful, when a silent shadow flickers behind her. Without looking up, she speaks.

"Good evening, my raven."

"My love..." The figure said in a soft tone as it detached from the surrounding shadows, coalescing into a petite and toned woman, a shock of wild black hair framing her pale face. The petite warrior draped herself over the side of the loveseat, gazing at the diagrams upon which the other labored. "Is this... the research you were discussing with Thrasius?"

"It is." The other woman answered evenly. The petite warrior frowned at this and studied the papers a moment longer before heaving a sigh and raising again to pace the floor behind the loveseat, her hands clasped behind her back. Somehow, the other women sensed this disquietude and she paused in her note-taking to turn her head to the side. "Lilene?"

Lilene continued to pace with a thoughtful expression of her own, her lips pursed in a frown. "Hm?" She murmured absently.

"You do not approve." Iosolde surmised easily enough, for she knew her counterpart well, her striking sapphire gaze boring into the pacing vampire.

Eventually, Lilene came to a halt and slowly turned to look at Iosolde. "I don't understand it." She said, looking at her lover with an apologetic face, gray eyes clouded with concern.

"It is simple, my dear. I will use a special form of temporal stasis to sustain a living body indefinitely, but with the added benefit that the body will not be utterly indestructible. Thus, we can siphon out the blood at our leisure without having to worry about tending to the subject's basic needs of food, water, waste removal, living space, or even breathable air. The body naturally regenerates blood over time, so as long as the processors are gentle and sparingly, the subject can be farmed indefinitely in a process that is agony-free. It will be as if they sleep forever, painless." Iosolde explained all this with a calm detachment, her azure gaze never leaving Lilene.

"That is not what I meant, my love," Lilene responded, her brows furrowed. "I mean.... why is it necessary? Why do the Elders ask this of you? This seems so.... ugly. Cold. Disgusting, even."

Lilene had brought this up before, though only in passing. Iosolde understood her revulsion perfectly. It was a cold and evil thing she labored over. They both preferred the warmth of life, the heady rush of powerful emotions in those they tasted, the taste of pleasure. This was something altogether different.

"I know how you feel, my raven," Iosolde said to her partner in unlife. "This project is not a pleasant one, but it is demanded by the Elders and it is a real chance to claim a bit of respect in their eyes. For what it is worth, I believe it will only be used in more dire circumstances. Also, I will work to see that only bandits, thugs, and other disreputables are targeted for... storage." She says this last word distastefully but continues.

"Can you deny that you would not use the method if we were starving? Would you risk becoming one of the ferals that roam the grounds outside?" Iosolde continued to watch Lilene as she spoke. Lilene's shoulder seemed to slump slightly and she glanced away, clearly not liking the idea but offering little argument.

"I suppose not," Lilene said in a subdued tone, rubbing her hands together thoughtfully. "But only in the direst of circumstances. And.... I will not like it."

"I would not ask you to, my love," Iosolde said, her gaze softening. "But we will do what we must to survive. This project is simply another step in the direction of a firmer foundation among the family, and the practical uses cannot be denied. I hope you understand that I do this for our survival in this family. I take no pleasure in this."

Likewise, Lilene's face softened and she strode back to the edge of the loveseat, bent over, and applied a soft kiss to her love's cheek. "I know." She said said softly and withdrew. "I will leave you to your work." Lilene offered a small but fond smile and softly stepped into the shadows again, vanishing almost immediately. Iosolde sat there for a long moment, staring after her into those shadows. Eventually she turned back to look at the diagram and released a small, unnecessary sigh borne of habit. Her quill still in hand, Iosolde bent down over the table again.

She had work to do.

[Vaelek]

Time had little meaning to the eternity that presented itself before the third generation.
As such, the constraints of a schedule did not fit well with Thrasius.

The work was boorish and uninteresting in comparison to his own projects, but moreso than that they were in effort to please his elders.
Had he the social standing to afford losing with a sabotage of the project, he would have done it without a second thought.
Unfortunately, he did not.

"Sloth, the next stack."

His grossly disfigured homunculus familiar shambled over, perilously balancing it's master's work over it's unusually large forehead.
The unfortunate creation sorted yet another mass of notes and arcane formulae over the meeting table, adding the pile weighing it down with the rest.

"If I could just borrow a transmutationist.."
His mind wandered off to his original theory.
Stasis fields were so very, very dull to theorize and plot over.
The true goal of their project was to sustain the properties of the life-giving vitae after extraction, the blood he and his vampiric kin preyed upon.
He felt he had more constructive plans.
Something that could be kept by an individual, something that required little to no nourishment, but produced new blood on a daily basis.
He wanted a creature of his own design, a blood pump to carry like a handbag.
Iosolde had chosen a path she considered humane, which in turn meant cautious and unexciting for the larger portion.

His own plan, formulated as an afterthought to their need, felt so much more daring.
'Cold storage', the term Iosolde had applied to her ambitions.
Live, mobile storage was his.
The thought of simply molding tissue into a more receptive, durable form to serve as blood cattle.. The thought was enough to send his curiousity spiraling through the roof of the estate.

Could it be done at all?
Had it ever been attempted?
Surely, to some degree, it was possible.
The question was how far could he push his knowledge of the arcane into an undeniably twisted application of high circle transmutation and enchantment.
If he only had access to a master in the art, perhaps a priest of the Blood Father to provide the support of the divine to their creation..

In the end, however unfortunate, it mattered little whether or not it was possible. The assignment had been given to Iosolde, and concealing his own project-idea from the Firsts would be simple for her.
He gritted his teeth, gave the homunculus a backhand to ease his tension and continued to pore over known examples of long-term stasis.

[prismaticcrow]

Iosolde sat hunched over the table in that very same study, her lips pursed in silent consternation. The table was now cluttered with papers, notes, and moldy old tomes stolen from the Citadel study room and library. She had been sitting in the Wyntir manor's lounge for several lengths of day, and a few nights now, and she was still no where closer to her goal. The research she was pursuing was proving far more complex than she initially anticipated.

She leaned back against the love-seat and released a slow sigh. Such a funny little thing. A sigh. Completely pointless to her, she did not need to breathe. Gentle exhalations were a idiosyncrasy of hers; a habit she could never seem to break. She would often sigh when things became overly complicated, and her current project was no exception. Were she mortal, her back would ache, her eyes would burn and water, her stomach would grumble and complain, her mouth would be dry. But she possessed none of these things, and so she continued her work tirelessly.

Behind her the door opens quietly. The harsh tread of booted feet and the gentle whisper of cloth presages the arrival of a figure clad in dull-colored fullplated armor. Iosolde did not have to turn from her seat to know who it was.

"Hello, Grann dear." She says lightly, her azure gaze still fixed on the papers in front of her.

"Iosolde." The other vampire said in a mild but mocking tone. "Busy, I see. Don't let me interrupt." Grann leaned casually against a nearby pillar, watching her with his gauntleted arms crossed. He struck a handsome figure, his bearing sure and noble, befitting his stature in the household. His hair was combed back and precise, his eyes shined in the dim light.

"Hardly." She releases another of her sighs and throws her quill onto the table. She leans back against the love-seat, staring at her research papers as if they had betrayed her. "I get nowhere so far."

"Ah, yes. I had heard something about this. Some project handed down by the elders. Lucky break for you, hm?" Again, that mocking tone, but Iosolde was far too used to it by now to take any offense.

"Indeed." She said wryly. "I had thought to make use of an alternative form of temporal stasis to hold our subjects."

"What is wrong with the original spell?" He said and then quickly held up a forestalling hand. "Go easy, I am a child in these matters." The emphasis on the word child was not lost on her, but she chose to ignore it.

"The original Temporal Stasis spell will hold a subject in suspended animation, literally frozen time." She explained. "They will not age or decay, breath or anything. It's like they are frozen in time. But that is also a problem. Those held in suspended animation are also completely unaffected and impervious to outside sources. You can't bend them, you can't break them. You can't harm them whatsoever. They are effectively trapped, but also completely invulnerable."

Grann quirked a brow at this. "Can you not take them out of stasis when you need them, then store them back in again?" He posited.

"Nay." She said. "It doesn't work that way. First of all, the spell is powerful and costly, so casting it over and over wouldn't be practical. Secondly, the spell traps the subject in time at the precise moment of the casting. Putting them back in stasis wouldn't do anything at all except store already drained subjects. When they were recovered, they be just as drained as when they were stored. They'd be empty."

Grann stared at her for a moment, unmoved, but Iosolde knew he was thinking. Unlike herself, Grann lost much of his human involuntary traits, such as sighing or pursing his lips, long ago. Eventually he spoke.

"So what are you trying to change?" He asked.

She motions to her papers, all of them full of arcane scrawl. "My goal is to work on a kind of stasis that still traps the subject, that they need not eat, drink, or even breathe. But they could live, be tangible, and regenerate blood as humans normally do. But it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination, and may in fact be impossible."

"The spell," She continues, "Freezes a subject in time. Having them in stasis, but still inside the normal flow of time so that they can be drained and regenerated, is proving to be rather difficult. It may not even be possible as it is, but require several spells working in tandem to succeed. I have been up for many days and nights working on possible solutions. So far, I am stymied."

Grann continued to watch her for a long time before the corners of his mouth turn upward into a smirk. "It sounds like your making things more difficult for yourself than necessary. Still, I am glad this is not my task. I, for one, do not fancy this idea of 'Cold Storage.' I prefer the heat of the vibrant living. The taste of those who refuse to offer and then attempt to fight me. Still, it is a project suitable for noble palates. I wish you luck, for what it is worth." Grann detached himself from the pillar and turned to stride from the lounge, his boot steps clomping loudly in the hall outside.

Iosolde turned away from the retreating vampire, frowning thoughtfully. Was she making things too hard for herself? Was there another way, quicker and easier? Perhaps Thrasius' way was better. Or at least more plausible. Was her single-minded focus proving to be a detriment instead of a boon?

She shook these thoughts away. She could not dwell on it for long. She had more work to do. As she leaned over the scattered papers once again, she privately wondered how Thrasius' own research was faring. Surely no better than hers. This thought brightened her just a little, made her smile for the briefest of instances, and then she fell silently into her work.