1.2.04
Blood, Sweat, and Tears
Lil and her Get - what exactly do they consume?
Initially, they consume life, just as people consume nutrients and calories. But as we prefer certain types of food and where one plant may be a nutritious source of vitamins and another might be an indigestible fiber wad, the Get cannot simply consume anything that's alive.
A Human life is radically different from anything else available to the Get on Coera. Animals and plants do not have unique spirits, and eating a living animal is like calorie-less flavored water - you might do it for the taste or variety, but you couldn't live on it. A god or elf, on the other hand, would be more akin to trying to eat a cow. Part of a cow might be tackled by a handful of people, but it is far too much for anyone to fit in their stomachs - since the spirit of an elf is bound to a star, an elf is incomplete, and eating them, while invigorating, is unfulfilling. They're like sugar-water. Some of the latterday elves might be weak enough to be trapped entirely in their body and consumed, but it would take one of Lil's greatest to plan and pull off a coup of the type.
Some prikies and delvers might find themselves consumed like a human, but those species found themselves at a dead end long before even Deyvid's time, and as allies of the Get in the end, they were also handy prey.
Humans are the meat and taters of the Get's diet. The Blood is the life and the soul, so most of the Get are vampiric - it is the quickest, easiest way to consume a life. It's not entirely uncommon for the lower orders of the Get to consume the flesh of a human, or particular organs, while their prey or at least the flesh of their prey is still alive; it is especially common for the flesh to be left to the prolish servants of higher-order get who have already had their fill of the life and either do not want a complete spirit inside them or leave enough resonant life in the corpse.
Though it is the life they need, like it's the calories and nutrients we need, for the both of us it is the flavor and varieties that we enjoy when we eat. A vampire will choose a blood based on the life its led, attitudes or emotions, or even a particular flavor that runs in a bloodline or species, but not on a bloodtype any more than we would the color of a cow. Vampires, who typically go much longer between meals than we do, savor their feedings all the greater, and come to enjoy all the flavors of a human. Most secretions of the human body (excretions are certainly not included) carry some of the life of the body while still fresh, and provide some small nutrition and often a strong emotional flavor. There are stories of a repentant vampire who, with great restraint, survived for many years only by licking the tears from the faces of children. A seedier adjunct is that the lower Get are often prostitutes for whom the job is the appetizer, and "payment" is the small meal afterward.
Where we are often lethargic after a large meal, the vampire is invigorated. A vampire at war will feed as he kills and can fight indefinitely. The exception to this is a vampire who has taken a complete spirit intact - they will recoil within themselves like a hermit crab to digest the shape and emotions of the spirit, and will often display some characteristics of the personality they ate until it has been fully digested, set aside, or lost in the swarm of other past meals.
Initially, they consume life, just as people consume nutrients and calories. But as we prefer certain types of food and where one plant may be a nutritious source of vitamins and another might be an indigestible fiber wad, the Get cannot simply consume anything that's alive.
A Human life is radically different from anything else available to the Get on Coera. Animals and plants do not have unique spirits, and eating a living animal is like calorie-less flavored water - you might do it for the taste or variety, but you couldn't live on it. A god or elf, on the other hand, would be more akin to trying to eat a cow. Part of a cow might be tackled by a handful of people, but it is far too much for anyone to fit in their stomachs - since the spirit of an elf is bound to a star, an elf is incomplete, and eating them, while invigorating, is unfulfilling. They're like sugar-water. Some of the latterday elves might be weak enough to be trapped entirely in their body and consumed, but it would take one of Lil's greatest to plan and pull off a coup of the type.
Some prikies and delvers might find themselves consumed like a human, but those species found themselves at a dead end long before even Deyvid's time, and as allies of the Get in the end, they were also handy prey.
Humans are the meat and taters of the Get's diet. The Blood is the life and the soul, so most of the Get are vampiric - it is the quickest, easiest way to consume a life. It's not entirely uncommon for the lower orders of the Get to consume the flesh of a human, or particular organs, while their prey or at least the flesh of their prey is still alive; it is especially common for the flesh to be left to the prolish servants of higher-order get who have already had their fill of the life and either do not want a complete spirit inside them or leave enough resonant life in the corpse.
Though it is the life they need, like it's the calories and nutrients we need, for the both of us it is the flavor and varieties that we enjoy when we eat. A vampire will choose a blood based on the life its led, attitudes or emotions, or even a particular flavor that runs in a bloodline or species, but not on a bloodtype any more than we would the color of a cow. Vampires, who typically go much longer between meals than we do, savor their feedings all the greater, and come to enjoy all the flavors of a human. Most secretions of the human body (excretions are certainly not included) carry some of the life of the body while still fresh, and provide some small nutrition and often a strong emotional flavor. There are stories of a repentant vampire who, with great restraint, survived for many years only by licking the tears from the faces of children. A seedier adjunct is that the lower Get are often prostitutes for whom the job is the appetizer, and "payment" is the small meal afterward.
Where we are often lethargic after a large meal, the vampire is invigorated. A vampire at war will feed as he kills and can fight indefinitely. The exception to this is a vampire who has taken a complete spirit intact - they will recoil within themselves like a hermit crab to digest the shape and emotions of the spirit, and will often display some characteristics of the personality they ate until it has been fully digested, set aside, or lost in the swarm of other past meals.
// posted by Wray Davis @ 10:56 PM 
