#yes prev this is ether core

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV Musings - Can Amel LEARN new Dark Gifts?

#what a lovely lovely post omg #thank you op this is so well-done !!! much to think about #also marius/avicus/mael/tesk/eudoxia/b&g mention <3 #akashas blood is vamp steroids !!! with sll this tho i do wonder where amel comes into play if he does at all #prev —>#justice for claudia #<— yup lol

@stylosha thanks for liking my post! VERY good question about Amel. Same answer:

YES. And NO.

Amel learns & progresses, too, absolutely. But it's different from vamps, and in some ways the development of their Dark Gifts are surprisingly independent of Amel.

Amel's Connection to Vampires

🪄 The Dark Gifts & Magic

The Dark Gifts are a happy BYPRODUCT of the alchemical magic that accidentally created vamps. They can do "magic" (telekinesis/pyrokinesis/telepathy/etc), cuz AR's vamps are technically corporeal spirits/ghosts--they're undead. They can do anything spirits/ghosts can do, within certain earthbound/corporeal limits--they're not shapeshfters like Lasher & Gremt, and don't need summonings. But peak vamps can fly, bespell/bewitch, start winds & fires, kill--the Dark Gifts. And so can the strongest ghosts/spirits & their strongest witches (a la QotD & Mayfair Witches).

AR's vamps are upgraded versions of her witches, cuz the source of their power literally stems from communion with the dead, getting spirits/ghosts to control the elements for them. But whereas witches have to ask the spirit for help & wait for results, vamps can autonomously do anything witches can do, but better, cuz vamp magic's internal (Akasha's Amel), not external (The Twins' Amel). The fusion causes vamp corpses to irrevocably change, which is why when Dr Fareed finally cut their link to Amel (The Great Disconnection), the Elder vamps were relieved to realize that they still had ALL of their Dark Gifts.

It was because of Amel that they had the Gifts to begin with--his magic is what made them vampires--but Amel did not CONTROL vamp access to the Dark Gifts. And as long as they were all connected to him (via Akasha), they needed his Sacred Core to survive. But the ELDERS had outgrown him--in QotD when Mekare ate Akasha's brain, that window of time nearly knocked out Daniel & Louis (younger/weaker vamps), but the older vamps were fine. And after the Great Disconnection, being connected to Amel or not didn't affect the Gifts of them at all.

🧠 The Silver Cord

I've actually started using Ymir Fritz from Attack on Titan to help me understand how the vampires' link to Amel works (x). (Louis' "simple explanation" of etheric bodies in PLatRoA confuses TF outta me.)

Long story short: Ymir, the Founding Titan, is the source of ALL Titans. Every time a Titan heals from an injury, Ymir's in the Paths resculpting their bodies from sand & water. The Paths are removed from our space-time, so even though it takes her FOREVER to build each Titan in the Paths, it only takes mere MOMENTS for Titans to heal out in the real/corporeal world. Ymir painstakingly creates everything the Titans can use/make/do (inc Titan Shifter powers), with her own two hands. She's GOD, but she's also just a little girl, the Paths are endless, her bucket of water is HEAVY, and there's millions of Titans, so she STRUGGLES; it's HARD for her to make/support the Titans as the Founder. But the Titans Shifters don't know/realize this, cuz in their world their abilities manifest thru (what they assume is) pure instinct/thoughts. Titan Shifters know their power resides in their spinal fluid, but they don't know why. The Paths are just a manifestation of Ymir's body/corpse--cuz Aot's Ymir Fritz was directly inspired by the primordial giant Ymir from Norse Mythology, whose body created the world, the giants, gods, dwarves, etc.

Amel works a vaguely similar way to Ymir--but instead of AoT's sand & water, it's AR's Silver Cord and Blood (a la TotBT & PLatRoA). The Silver Cord is a spiritual/neural link between material & immaterial bodies. It allows humans & vampires to use Astral Projection to connect/remove one's etheric spirit/soul in the Astral Plane to a corporeal body in the real world. Hence: possession (Raglan James & Amel).

As the Sacred Core, Amel's the source of ALL vampires. Every time a vamp heals from an injury, Amel's silver cord connecting vamps to Akasha rebuilds their bodies from blood. The Astral Plane is removed from our space-time, so even though time stretches FOREVER for spirits/ghosts as they lose their connection to reality, it only takes mere MOMENTS for vampires to heal out in the real/corporeal world. Amel painstakingly attaches every vampire to his etheric body, and they all tap into his magic to produce the Dark Gifts. He's the SACRED Core, but he's also just the ghost of a dead alien, the Silver Cord is a spiderweb of tentacles that stretches outwards from him PAINFULLY, and there's thousands of vampires, so he STRUGGLES; it's HARD for him to make/support the vamps as the Core. But the vampires don't know/realize this, cuz in their world their abilities manifest thru (what they assume is) pure instinct/thoughts. Vamps know their power resides in their brain, but they don't know why (x x). The Silver Cord is a manifestation of Amel's link to Akasha, spreading like an infection to each of their children: all vampires.

In AoT, Ymir controlled Titan access to their powers. Which is why once the Founding Titan was killed, all Titans were exterminated for good--Titan Shifters couldn't become Titans anymore or use their powers, and the Curse of Ymir ended.

But in TVC, Amel never controlled vamp access to their powers. The Great Disconnection didn't exterminate the vamps or cut them off from the Dark Gifts or the ability to keep making new vampires. The Dark Trick still worked--they were all still Damned, just no one was connected to Amel anymore. Every vamp became their own independent Sacred Core instead; and Amel was given his own synthetic body to latch onto, completely detached & blocked off from all vamps. 🎉

👻 Possession

According to Raglan James, the body can only host ONE active spirit at a time--he tried to force/push Lestat's spirit out and failed; he had to get Lestat to AGREE to be possessed. Otherwise, he used comatose drugged up vegetables who couldn't fight back, cuz their brain AND spirit was already damaged & vulnerable to be overridden.

Same with Amel--Akasha was dying when he went into her body & took over. BUT! Once Amel bonded with her body, HE was the one who went to sleep. Cuz she was alive again, her spirit was revitalized. He got STUCK, like a loser. 😅

It became a battle of wills--and Akasha's naturally won out, so Amel was "no more"--he went dormant, he couldn't speak/move through her (the way Lasher briefly could control corpses). In PL Lestat even mentioned how in the 1980s he'd noticed Amel try to wake up & take over Akasha's body, but he couldn't, still too weak back then.

So Amel's ghostly possession doesn't work the same way as typical ghosts--he can't puppet the body he resides in, or anyone else's. With The Voice, he could psychologically pester/torment people, driving vamps mad to get them to do things FOR him, but he can't take control of the wheel & drive the body himself. While he was just The Voice he could never physically compel/force anyone to do anything. When Les became his host in PL/PLatRoA, Les had to agree before he let Amel do anything with his body (write in Atlantis' language), and apparently the puppetry/possession caused Les intense pain--either that, or Amel was just making it hurt to be spiteful. (It never hurt Julien Mayfair to be possessed by Lasher--but Julien always blacked out & never remembered wtf happened afterwards, anyway, so who knows. Lestat even said: "Yes, he’d tried to move my limbs more than once, and I’d felt a tingling and cramping in the limb. But that had not been pain.")

Amel endured, but couldn't LIVE or GROW in his hosts, which is why he HATED being stuck in Akasha & Mekare--their spirits are vulnerable enough for him to reside in them (non-communicative/asleep/mentally ill), but unfortunately for him their spirits are also still active in their bodies, with an active will that naturally rejects anything his foreign presence tries to compel. He couldn't get them to agree to back down & let him take over, the way he could with Les--which is why Les saw Akasha seize up, forcing Amel back down.

🧛 Amel's Stunted Growth

Inside Akasha, Amel was held back from growing/developing, cuz there were TOO many vamps--hence Akasha's purges in the 1980s & the PL Trilogy's Great Burnings in the 20teens to cull the herd. His vampiric network grew at the detriment to Amel's development--the vampiric species was DRAINING him--vampires are parasites TO Amel, ironically.

Amel is ephemeral but still material, and all matter has limits. He's not infinite; he can't infinitely support all the vamps; he's stretched too thin. He gets older & the blood gets stronger, but HE can't handle it. He's the vampiric scaffold, but he's tired.

So, because Amel's STUCK in his hosts, he cannot FULLY reach his potential in any of them, not even Lestat. It literally bleeds out, down into his vampires, instead of staying in Amel and making him powerful, cuz he can't contain it all. As the Voice, he lashes out, throwing tantrums, tryna break lose & find a host dumb enough to let him in so he can exert more autonomy over THEIR body. Which is why Dr Fareed finally snapped the Silver Cord & Kapetria gave Amel a body of his own, so he could be free--but still corporeal.

However, we can see much more concrete examples of how ghosts in TVC really can grow/evolve to reach their full potential:

TVC Ghosts/Spirits

Amel & Goblin

This is AR's scientific definition of ghosts (a la Dr Fareed):

Goblin from Blackwood Farm is the perfect comparison for Amel. Amel, pre-Akasha, was a poltergeist just like Goblin eventually became.

As Quinn Blackwood learned & developed (human AND vampire), so did Goblin. Of all the ghosts in TVC, Goblin's the oddest one--he doesn't reside WITHIN Quinn the way Amel does with Akasha; he's a ghostly poltergeist (external), NOT a ghostly possession (internal).

As Quinn grew up & aged, so did Goblin. Quinn learned to talk, and so did Goblin. Quinn reached puberty/maturity & wanted to have sex, and chiiiiile.... 🤦 So did Goblin--don't ask. 🫣😅 And when Quinn became a vampire & started drinking blood, so did Goblin.

Goblin's increasing taste for blood in BwF almost EXACTLY matches Amel's in QotD.

Amel's thirst for blood was the prime mobile that pushed vampiric bloodlust forward--a vampire in & of itself doesn't crave blood, it's AMEL. He never needed it to survive, but it made him feel better--"slow" & heavy--more real/alive. (x) Goblin doesn't NEED food/blood, but he's a mimic and parasitically codependent on Quinn; so if vamp!Quinn drinks blood, so will Goblin; feeding off of Quinn to get stronger as Quinn gets stronger.

Goblin was far more codependent on Quinn than Amel ever was to The Twins, cuz they never let him get too close. But Quinn & Goblin were attached from the womb--literally. There was never a Quinn without his Goblin. Codependency turned into entitlement/parasitism, where Goblin refused to exist without Quinn, come hell or high water. But because this wasn't possession, just a haunting, there was no way for Quinn to beat back Goblin the way Akasha & Mekare inherently could--the confines of the body only allowing 1 active spirit didn't apply. Thus: exorcism.

But if Goblin had survived longer & Merrick Mayfair had never exorcised him, I'm 100% convinced he would've become the next Amel, and Quinn would've become his Akasha, creating a whole new Sacred Core and a whole new line of vamps. I'm DEAD serious. But whether their symbiotic relationship would've worked the same way--cuz Akasha was HUMAN when she was possessed, while Quinn was already a vampire already attached to Amel--who's to say? 🤷

TL;DR: Like Lasher, Gremt & AR's other powerful ghosts, Amel grows & learns & develops & gets stronger, YES. But at what cost?! 😩

As for Magnus, I have a post dedicated to him & his evolution from mortal-human to vamp to ghost to immortal-human. I haven't done one for Gremt yet, but I might later on, depending on what the AMC's Talamasca does.

[umbraastaff]

I Saw Seven Bounties, chapter 7

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[Ao3]

Phandalin is one of Barry’s most frequented locations as a lich. So, Kravitz reasons, maybe that’s where he comes back to life. Admittedly, he’s never (knowingly) found Barry in living form, but it’s been a slow week for bounties. He’s got a minute to poke around for his most important target, especially with the possibility of finding him at his most vulnerable: alive.

“Poking around” actually ends up entailing slinking around the shadows for a good bit of the day. As fate would have it, there’s a large, cross-country train passing through the city. It’s too perfect of an escape for Barry to take, he’s sure, but Kravitz slips into the darkness beneath the train anyway. What other leads does he have, after all?

He nearly jumps up through the floor the second he feels it-- muffled by flesh, but unmistakably Barry’s soul-- but he has to control himself. Barry isn’t nearing the record for Kravitz’s longest hunt by being a fool, and Kravitz isn’t going to catch him by being one, either.

Nighttime would be best, he decides: fewer witnesses, sleeping target, and of course the advantage of darkness. And so it’s in the early hours after midnight that Kravitz phases up through the floor and creeps towards the door he can feel Barry sleeping behind.

In retrospect, confusing conversations always seem to be Kravitz’s downfall when dealing with Barry. But he always seems so genuine… And then Barry’s tricking him and shoving him and running out the car door.

Kravitz slams against the door with all his weight, but Barry holds steady on the other side. They’re just inches apart, and the energy is deafening-- until it isn’t, suddenly. He shoves the door again, and it swings open easily, letting him stumble into the cold air. He catches a glimpse of movement, below. The bastard jumped. Several seconds later, he sees a red shape rise from the body just as the train takes the chasm out of his view.

There’s no hope for it now, he thinks, shutting the door and slumping against it. Now that Barry’s dead, he’ll be gone in seconds. It would be impossible to catch him here, but at least he’s spooked Barry into dying again; he’s easier to find when the lich stench isn’t buried under blood and bone.

A distinct voice cuts through his thoughts, jolting him. His whole mind goes blank to accept a single sentence: I-i-if you want a fight, Kravitz, I’m on the roof.”

It’s a trap, of course. Barry’s trying to distract him and escape. But Kravitz has nothing better to go off right now, and anyhow, it’s not as if Barry has ever actually done long-term harm to him, even with a planned trap. And if it isn’t a trap, well, punching Barry Bluejeans in the face seems like a rewarding prospect.

He rises up between the train cars. There’s a moment when he can’t hear anything, and he almost stops there. But just above that, he can hear again, as if he’d just passed through the world’s thinnest Silence spell. The wind blows audibly here, but the train now glides soundlessly over the tracks.

He sees Barry, several cars closer to the back of the train, walking towards him. His bright red cloak billows in the wind like fire, no longer obscuring his skull or his jeans. The wind shouldn’t be affecting it, actually-- Barry must be putting effort into making it move. But the energy coming off of him feels too strong to be an illusion.

A terrible rasping voice slices through the wind. “K r a v i t z,” it whispers. It’s Barry, definitely. “Howww dare you interfere… with my plans,” he growls. Kravitz’s eyes widen, just a bit. If he has another emotional explosion right above the train…

“Barry, let’s calm down…” he glances down at the train. “Perhaps we should take this somewhere else?”

Barry follows the downward look. “You don’t--” his voice is back to normal. “Oh, uh, shoot. Um. You don’t think the Silence spell will-- um, do you think we need a shield, too? Over the train? O-or we can move, yeah--”

Kravitz squints at him. “You’re still stable.”

“Yeah.”

“And… you want to fight. Me.”

Barry nods. “Yeah, it- it’s a good way to, uh, get out anger? You seem… mad at me, a whole lot, and I can’t give you-- I mean, I’m not gonna turn myself in, but I c-can do this.”

“You’re legitimately just here for a fight,” Kravitz reiterates blankly, sending out his senses for any sort of trickery. This is Barry in his entirety, though. Just there. Perfection may be unattainable, but this night sure is getting close.

“Y-yeah, uh, I mean-- we don’t have to--”

“Challenge accepted,” Kravitz says, skin melting away as he takes his own skeletal form. Barry will never come near if he fights with his scythe right off the bat, but perhaps Kravitz can wear him down before delivering a final blow. He summons a sword for the moment: long and silver, with black feathers sprouting around a red gem in the hilt.

Barry, startled by the enthusiasm, just barely manages to jump back out of range as Kravitz swings. The sword misses, but the burning energy extending from it manages to clip his hood.

“Agh! O-okay!” Barry shouts as the cloth knits itself back together, still sparking with bits of magic. “Great!” The sparks hop down to coalesce in his skeletal hand, and he points. Kravitz tries to move, but Barry’s finger follows him, and the electric strike shoots through his chest. Ouch. At least he doesn’t have any heart to stop.

In the moment he stumbles back, the ground feels uneven beneath his feet. Then it shoves upwards as soon as he’s off balance, throwing him to the other end of the train car. Of course, when he sits up and looks at the ground, it’s perfectly flat. Barry stays where he is, skeletal face betraying nothing. Waiting for the reaper to make another move.

Kravitz obliges, furious now, hovering back to his feet. They meet eyes, socket to socket, void to void. The darkness between them thickens until Kravitz can shape it, wrapping it tight around Barry to choke out any light.

He extends his senses through the artificial blackness and finds the lich shaking. To Barry’s credit, he tries to get out of range by lifting his feet and letting the train take Kravitz away. Of course, this isn’t something Kravitz will allow. He takes hold of a thread of the darkness to yank Barry back towards the train. Barry resists far less than expected.

He crashes right into Kravitz, radiating a heat and blinding light that shines through cracks in the darkness. Kravitz stumbles backwards, off-balance and blinded, and Barry collapses at his feet. The dark aura surrounding him breaks apart and dissipates.

Kravitz’s scythe materializes, and he slams the blade down. Barry rolls out of the way, passing right through his shins. The heat Kravitz felt before burns his legs with tenfold the strength, and it boils up through him, accompanied by a horrible sensation of being ripped apart from the inside. It isn't in his soul like last time, though-- it feels far too material. It’s eating away at his physical form.

Kravitz feels something shove through his back and through where his heart should be. He looks down to see a skeletal fist coated in flame, sticking right out of his chest. It looks like a ghost passing through him, but it feels like lava in his chest.

Panicked now, Kravitz forces one hand just far enough into the ethereal plane to get a grip on Barry’s wrist, and then he pulls it forward. Barry tumbles right through him and hits the train roof-- caught not by the metal, but by the Silence barrier, being made of magic himself. He looks like a slumped pile of cloth on the ground now, starting to shake with a series of violent coughs.

Kravitz is overwhelmed by a sudden nausea. Barry passing through his core didn’t burn him like the last time, but a lich is still a lich, composed of everything Kravitz is sworn to stop. So instead of taking a swing at his weakened target, he starts coughing as well. Souls were never meant to pass so close together that way.

“Augh, damn,” Barry says between coughs. “Are y-you okay? I’m-- I didn’t mean to hurt-- to, uh, startle you that bad.”

“Oh, startle me?” Kravitz shouts. His movements are too stiff for the energy in his words. “You provoke a fight and suddenly you’re concerned for my emotional well-being?!”

“I- I- I started this be- because- because I was con-- because--”

“I don’t get it, Barry Bluejeans! I don’t understand!” He looms over the lich as he gets to his knees. “Why aren’t you ever angry? Upset?! You’re a lich, for crying out loud! I’m going to drag you to hell, Barry Bluejeans, and you’re concerned for me.”

Barry does spark and twitch through that spiel-- telltale signs of instability-- but it’s more likely just him expelling magic. He says weakly, “I’m-- y- you're the only person that’s-- that I've had a fully lucid con- conversation with in almost… no, over three years, now. Of course I'm-- of course I would--” he puts his hands on his face and looks skywards. “I mean, okay, you-- I assume you usually deal with liches who g-gave up life for power. S-so their whole temperament is kinda-- it's guided by that bond to- to, uh, ambition and destruction. But the problem with that is, um, mental energy fluctuates, so they get an emotional high and then--”

“And then they crash, and the lack of defined purpose makes them explode, yes, this is my job,” Kravitz says, exasperated. “And you're special? You've got some emotionally-immune anchor, Barry? You're composed of emotions by definition!”

“Y- yeah, uh, yes. I can't explain the circumstances, exactly,” Barry says, and Kravitz rolls his eyes, “but my anchors are to my family, to love, which d-doesn't fluctuate the same way. A-and, uh, for better or worse, I'm prone to caring… e-even about people that want to k-kill me, I guess.”

Kravitz snaps back to himself at the last sentence. Neither of them have coughed for at least a minute, now. They're just… sitting around and talking. “You’re something else, Barry.”

He summons his scythe, but Barry barely seems to notice, looking past him instead. “Duck,” says the lich urgently.

Kravitz lets out a second of a laugh. “Ha! Really, again? You think--”

“Duck!” Barry shouts, and this time it's a Command, rattling Kravitz’s brain and loosening his knees.

It’s too late-- something slams into his back before he can fall, and it keeps going, destroying his physical form and leaving his soul scrambling to keep hold of consciousness.

He can't see or hear like this, but he feels a calming force wash over him: an assurance that if he falls asleep now, he will still wake up. Then he is passing through a dimensional rift, and then he is on the ground.

The moment Kravitz is awake enough to do so, he conjures up a basic skeletal form and clambers to his feet. His surroundings are about as dark as the night was around the train, but indoors. He’s in his office, in fact. Barry isn’t here.

--

Barry casts Command moments too late, and he watches Kravitz get hit by the outer wall of a tunnel the train is passing through. His body dissipates, and a glowing orb is left in its place.

The orb is no longer tethered by the train’s movement, so Barry lets go of the train as well to keep from crashing into it. “Kravitz?” he whispers. It doesn’t respond, but it keeps flickering like-- like it’s running out of energy. Oh no.

On impulse, Barry pulls on some of Merle’s teachings, from a long time ago. A cantrip: Spare the Dying. It’s classified as necromancy, but it requires divine assistance. Barry doesn’t know if the Pan in this world will listen to him, let alone any other gods, but he invites anything to to give him the magic for this one spell.

As a necromancer, of course, Barry knows that opening yourself to any power is a dangerous thing, especially when there are gods at odds with you. But in this split section of a moment, he’s ignoring a century’s worth of learned caution.

Suddenly, he is exhaling a dark fog that carries all of his warmth, and the wind begins crystallizing into ice as it blows through him. The fog surrounds the glowing orb, and then they both disappear.

Barry is suddenly sure of two things as his incorporeal form goes back to not having the nerves to feel cold: firstly, Kravitz will be fine. Secondly, if there were not countless laws in place stopping gods from interfering more directly, Barry might have just made a terrible mistake. He feels very, very small when these thoughts are put into his head, but it is not a new feeling.

Barry sighs and watches the train disappear into the distance. It would be too predictable if he tried to get to his destination now, right after being caught on the way to it.

Well, there will always be another chance. He was getting a bad feeling about heading to Glamour Springs anyway.