Supernatural Blood?

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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Wild speculation time.

Does blood hold a magician's magic and Gift?

There is so much referring to blood - Pure Blood, Noble Blood, hot-blooded, blue-bloods, mixed blood
Castor and Pollux, one had the blood of Zeus.

Real world sci-fi is known to inject nano machines into the veins to grant powers.

Ars Magica has several V&F containing "blood" in the name.

Might it be that blood is the important bit whether a character has magic or not in ME?
Every spell requires a drop of blood, enchantments need blood worked in.
Spilled Gifted blood generates random magic/curses the spiller.
Magi need an iron-rich diet when doing a lot of spellcasting. "Life linked magic" becomes "blood linked magic"?

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I suspect that, no, the Gift does not reside in the blood, heart, or other part of the cardiovascular system.

Given the generally amoral approach of much of the Order, I imagine that if the Gift had anything to do with one's physical blood--hello, midichlorians!--some magus would have already noticed. I'm sure that the Flambeau, Tytalus, and Tremere would happily experiment on any Gifted hedge magician who refused to join the Order. And some of the Bonisagi would experiment on their own apprentices if the mood struck them. (As Bonisagus, they can always get more apprentices if their current one became unavailable.) Certainly, that daft Archmaga vivisectionist from Sinews of Knowledge would have drained every hedge wizard within 500 miles dry if she thought she could improve the longevity ritual a small amount.

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From an ethical storytelling perspective, I think "your genes make you inherently better" is a yikes trope to be avoided at best and the more we can do to steer away from that the better, but from a "things that people in the Middle Ages Believed" perspective, the idea that there is wonder working power in the blood of the mage is at least thematically/aesthetically coherent, and I can see a world where if you have a lot of Warping it gives your blood Weird Properties.

That said, mages do tend to pop up At Random so I don't think it's just a biological thing, though off the top of my head we do have at least one example of a family of mages, in Magi of Hermes; then again that family has a lot of Prophecy happening so that might be more of a Destiny thing.

I think it's more that everything has the potential for magic, and that blood is just one way in which magic can flow, along with place, and time, and portent, and word.

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The fertility ritual, if someone in your campaign rediscovered and learned it, can grant the resulting child the Gift. (AM p54) Researching why might lead to some interesting stories. Doesn't connect the Gift to blood at all--the ritual is entirely arbitrary regarding the parentage--but does allow a researcher to examine a Gifted child from conception to birth, something probably impossible in any other circumstance.

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Supernatural heritage can have an...enhancing property to ones' Gift ala Mythic Blood...should the Gift manifest. If you are Gifted and have a potent supernatural ancestor chances are you will excel in the same field they did, you can handle failed magics better than your peers, and you can manifest some other aspects of your ancestor (via Heroic Virtues & Flaws).

What exactly the Gift is, is a subject of in-universe debate. The reason the Order referres to it as "the Gift" is because Jerbiton thought it was a gift from God. There is a theory that those of noble blood, often being descended from legendary figures and mythical creatures would more often manifest the Gift and Mythic Blood, but this theory is widely disregarded outside of Normandy Tribunal.

There are means of acquiring the Gift without being born to it, which obviously puts the blood connection into question.

Odin's Sacrifice, Eating the Forbidden Fruit, Ancient Mercurian Ritual...and if we wish to count the "counterfeit" Gifts, bonding with a Homonculus and demonic influence or direct bargain for the False Gift.

Fertility Rituals are mentioned above. House Mercere also has a special wedding blessing from the Cult of Mercury that increases the odds of supernatural offspring of some variety; the Gift is the obvious objective, but how much it tips the odds is also unclear.

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Oh dear! It looks as if some of those worrying rumours about House Tremere might be true after all. "No!" I said, "Surely loyal House Tremere would never endanger the Order and their souls by studying vampiric magic!". How sad I am to be proved wrong.

Yours in Tytalus...

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Blood was seen as powerful in the middle ages- it is vital to people who tend to die as it runs out, and it is used as euphemism for heredity (bloodline), or for a class of people (of the blood, blue bloods, etc.) It shows up in a lot of places in the game because it showed up in a lot of places in the culture.
Keeping in mind this was a culture which often did not understand that correlation is not causation- if crops planted when the sun first rises in Aries grow more crops then Aries must have some relationship to crops, not simply mark the time of the year. There is no refrigeration- so if a local fruit that increases the likelihood of the Gift when eaten by a pregnant woman in the third trimester is only available in August then that too is likely associated with the astrology of the child's birth rather than the mother's diet, further confusing the issue of what does or does not cause the Gift.
So if a certain recessive gene causes a person to be likely to have the Gift, especially if the mother ate of this fruit during the third trimester, theories could abound.

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That question has more interpretations than we will be able to cover.
I think we need to think first of blood in the sense of heritage,
whether as genetics, genealogy, or metaphors.

Even as heritage, blood is ambiguous. I think it has previously been
established in this forum that Faerie Blood does not necessarily refer
to genealogical heritage or birth rights. We had a young character born
in our saga with faerie blood, simply because he was conceived at a
faerie festival with an ample supply of faerie wine, by otherwise non-faerie
parents.

With this interpretation, blood can infer to any kind of mystic legacy,
which can be transmitted in any number of ways, limited only by our
collective imagination and suspense of disbelief. Blue, royal, or noble
blood possibly has some mystic quality too, even when some people still
get elevated from commoner. That would not be more or less controversial
than the divine MR that kings enjoy.

When it comes to the Gift, I find canon conveniently ambiguous. The Gift
is not heriditary. Players cannot secure apprentices and grow the Order
through any systematic breeding programme. OTOH, it seems that genetic
heritage does give an increased probablity of getting the Gift, lest Mercere
would have had even greater trouble finding true blooded apprentices.

Now, is any of this related to some any bodily fluid (humour) known as blood?

Certainly, that must have been the mythic belief, lest the word would
never have come to refer to genealogy. However, if it does, it seems
that blood quality is not purely genetic. If a remore cousin of the late
king rises to the throne, and receives the Divine MR, would that mean that
his blood is becoming more potent, bluer so to speak? I suppose that works
in mythic narrative. Maybe faeries, when they directly or indirectly bestow
faerie blood on someone, really bestow faerie powers in their blood. Why
not?

The same would be the case for the Gift. If Faerie Blood works like this,
we could also have a Gift in the blood, without its breeding true. It works
in a mythic narrative.

I am sure, irrespective of the actually nature of the Gift, there have been
Hermetic doing research on blood, to trace the nature of the Gift and other
powers. There may not have been many, since it would be ethically questionable,
just like other areas of necromancy, but some have tried and either failed or
kept their secrets. That works in the narrative too. Only a few rare sagas
would want to have any research notes surface from such projects.

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9

As it is, actual physical blood is used surprisingly little in Ars Magica.

Inherited powers are a thing, but such inheritance tend to skip generations, and in some cases - as with faerie blood - need not even involve a biological relationship.

But even disregarding inheritance of powers, there are many other ways in which blood was important in legends, myths, folklore, and tales.
Contracts signed in blood.
Mixing blood as part of ceremonies.
Drawing of blood triggering magical effects.
Using blood in potions.
Wizards drawing power from blood - their own or others.
And more.

Few of these show up in Ars Magica, and not much. Leaving the field open to any interested author.

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