Why not get yourself a kennel or farm or something similar and pay the costs to have the animals transgenically altered so that they produce 'metahuman' blood? If animals can be used to grow organs and such that are human compatible, then compatible blood is possible too.

I'm just gonna laugh and y'all are gonna have to trust me that I deserve it.

Well, we do know that a typical dose can amount to the volume of a rather large spit, or an aerosol cone that extends to one-half Body in meters and can cover two metahumans standing within a meter of each other. That looks like a sizable amount, but proabably not a 1/2 liter. However, that's not the critical requirement since once you take this strategy you are going to sacrifice one Essence point anyway, so the true issue is, can one gland produce about 100-120 grams per dose ? Since most Infected are somewhat on the skinny/emaciated body type (true for banshee, vampires, goblins, and nosferatu), we can assume a typical body weight may be in the 70-80 kg range, which means 3.5-4 kg per week, or about 500 grams per day. Since a deltaware digestive expansion (which only banshees and vampires will needs) takes 0.25 Essence, an Infected can pack up to 5 chemical glands (combined Essence 0.75) without any real additonal essence loss. Therefore, every chemical gland only needs to be able and output about 100 grams of blood per day. Can it be done ? Goblins and nosferatu can package one gland more, since they are not hemovores and can eat normal food to uel their chemical gland normally. Dzoo-no-qua and Wendigo, with their massive bodsy builds, are SOL.

There is the simple fact that blood consists of plasma, which contains many chemicals, and three types of cells. There is no specific statement about which blood products are required to feed a vampire, but we can assume that whole blood is most nutritious. Even simple plasma is beyond what is capable with a chemical gland. But the blood cells and platelets, that goes far beyond what is reasonable.





Why not just have a metahuman farm where you breed metahuman foodstock? It's far healthier and more natural than transgenic animals. Your customers will thank you.

Are you gonna keep throwing off this infuriatingly cryptic remarks all the way to Running Wild ? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/question.gif)

At least as long as they keep letting me write, yeah.

Also known as clone factory. The one blood/flesh substitution strategy that is AFAICK foolproof. And can provide Essence also. Also IMO the main reason why some governments and corporations feel confident enough to legalize the Infected. It means that for an Infected runner, staying in good terms with their street doc contacts is all the more important.

Because you want to have at least one legal option that doesn't really involve feeding on people. If you're the corp that perfects the 'Manwich' produced from transgenic animals, then you've set yourelf up to legally supply health food to the Infected.

Of course, your transgenic animals might become vulnerable to HMHVV themselfves if they get too human. Bovine vampires may appear in a future supplement.

Understood, but we can only reason from the data provided in RC and from what is told there (especially in the Dietary Requirements sidebar) many of the ideas thrown around in the thread make sense (even if they may be technically difficult to implement).

Not a clone factory. I'm talking high-quality organic people, no artificial processes, chemicals, or preservatives. Who wants to eat a clone? It might be dangerous. Cloned meat might even mutate you and make you a clone, too.

Great. Thanks to you, I now know that there's such a thing as as granola-crowd vampire.

"I'll have that corpsicle there, the one frozen before the Sixth World became quite so radioactive."

no, finding a doctor who will work on a patient who is a walking biohazard doubles the availability time intervals. the special surgery requirements are why it takes a delta clinic, because they basically have to custom design the 'ware for a vampire to accomadate all the techniques to get around the regeneration problem, and if they're going to have to custom design it to a vampire anyways they're going to custom design it to the specific vampire that they're implanting it into, because they don't have a type-O vampire around to use as a basis for vampire bioware.

or, you know, they didn't until you were dumb enough to walk into their clinic and allow yourself to be anesthetized, that is (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Actually, upon further thought? Being Infected is gonna mitigate the main downside of Type O (people wanting to steal your organs) because no one's gonna wanna get infected with the virus. This amuses me.

Actually, for some people, that would be an extra incentive. I mean, sure, ghouls have it rough. But vampires? Lots of folks would be happy to live with the disadvantages in exchange for, you know, immortality and super-powers.

It wouldn't work for type I. You need essence drain for that.

then at the very least you become a carrier, or maybe a latent infected. Maybe one day you'll get essence drained to "death" and wake up the next day as a vamp you never wanted to be.

Depending on the GM, this could be a whole new reason not to tick off your street doc. You go to get patched up after a particularly nasty gunfight, and when you come to you are infected, just not turned. Next time you come in for surgery, he lets you die, and doesn't tell the group that you are... different. :evilsmile:

It's also worth noting that vampires are nowhere near as awesome as they used to be, given that the essence boost power is comparatively crappy. However, you don't have to devour nearly as much essence!

You can't be a HMHVV-I carrier unless you have the Infection Power and can only be infected through the use of the Infection Power, so that wouldn't work. Now, you could turn into a ghoul from infected parts.

You know, for just the dietary requirement (which as has been stated, is much much higher than the essence requirment)... why don't you just get a contact who works at a funeral home. They embalm bodies, which means draining the blood - which means some stale but still nutritious blood for you that they don't have to pay for bio-disposal for. If you're a ghoul, well, nothings to stop them from cutting up some steaks before cremating a corpse - and bodies in caskets rarely have the legs visible... so there is your flesh requirement.

Yeah... creepy... but it'd probably work so long as you greased the wheels of industry with nuyen.

- Scope

Interesting idea. Now, it is probably subject to some time limits, since the blood or flesh must come from a living source to feed the virus, but OTOH, tissues and blood cells take some more time to die than the brain, so probably fresh corpses or viable blood/tissues (such as those from blood banks) are OK.

Hence, Delivery Day.

Hmmm, ok - I can see the blood needing to be 'alive' to feed vampires... but do ghouls need living flesh? I was under the impression that they could eat it so long as it wasn't rotten. Anyway, didn't mean to derail into ghouls - but you made me curious now.

- Scope