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Possibilities for a character with psychic control over blood

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shrikecatcher Since: Feb, 2011
#1: Nov 20th 2017 at 2:53:11 AM

So, I recently came up with an idea for a superpowered character to add to the many others in my setting: a character with psychic control over blood. As I envisioned it, this character, a man, would serve as The Dragon for the Big Bad. The Big Bad has the power of Shock and Awe (control over pre-existing electrical currents, not the ability to create his own), acting as the villainous Dr. Frankenstein to the anti-heroic Frankenstein's monster with the power of Mind over Matter (caveat: not biological matter, only inanimate objects) - the "true" heroes of the story (part of a series) would serve as a third party to this main conflict.

Anyway, the man with blood powers (henceforth "blood man") seemed to me like an obvious villain, on account of Bloody Horror and Evil Is Visceral. Like the Big Bad, I figure the "blood man" would be a former doctor; the Big Bad at least was a doctor in the Vietnam War. After returning home from the war, the Big Bad kidnaps and experiments on other people with powers like him up until the early 1990s, when Ms. Mind over Matter and the others escape. "Blood Man" could have joined the Big Bad while he was experimenting in The '80s, or he could have been found and recruited afterward (the story itself is set in early 2004).

But these are all plot threads that are secondary to the reason for this post: besides the obvious Bloody Horror inherent in the abilities of someone with "blood man's" abilities, what other Blood Magic (for good or bad) would be possible? That is, besides merely making someone bleed (or stop bleeding), in what ways could a person with such an ability affect other people? Thanks in advance.

edited 20th Nov '17 3:19:42 AM by shrikecatcher

Belisaurius Artisan of Auspicious Artifacts from Big Blue Nowhere Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
Artisan of Auspicious Artifacts
#2: Nov 20th 2017 at 5:21:27 AM

Blood Blockade Battlefront tends to have a lot of this. Some of the heroes can turn their blood into weapons, such as spikes, ropes, and blades. Others change the nature of their blood in order to fight like freezing it or igniting it.

Mind, a lot of this doesn't make a whole lot of scientific sense so you might not want to use all the concepts.

LordVladek Since: Jun, 2017 Relationship Status: Faithful to 2D
#3: Nov 21st 2017 at 9:33:14 PM

Another possibility is blood bending from Avatar The Last Airbender, which basically grants you control over somebody elses body.

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shrikecatcher Since: Feb, 2011
#4: Nov 23rd 2017 at 12:57:20 AM

Thanks. I've never watched Avatar The Last Airbender, but I've heard good things about it (M. Night Shamalayan's movie being the obvious exception), and after doing a quick read on the various bending techniques featured in the show, it sounds like the Elemental Powers used are right up my alley in terms of storytelling devices.

edited 23rd Nov '17 12:57:31 AM by shrikecatcher

ladytanuki Friendly Neighborhood Lich from SF, CA, US Since: Apr, 2012 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
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#5: Nov 25th 2017 at 12:26:05 PM

[up][up]Heh, that's the first thing I thought of when reading the OP.

Well, for ideas, I have one character in the novel I'm currently writing who essentially combines Bloody Murder with Poisonous Person and Poison Is Corrosive. That may not be applicable to the character you're going after though, since it would require justification for the poison, so to speak. Though to that end, you know how when doctors perform a blood transfusion, the donor blood has to be of a compatible type? Perhaps he could inject people with his own blood which would poison the recipient's own blood, causing an internal variant of Bloody Murder.

There's also this homebrew D&D spell that literally causes a target's blood to boil, like a blood-based Agony Beam (in that case, requiring the caster to inflict pain upon themselves). In the campaign I'm in now, the person who has this spell happens to be the Token Evil Teammate, and it's her favorite spell to use. So maybe something like that minus the pain cost?

Heck, something disease-based would likely be the easiest route to go.

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Miss_Desperado https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YD2i1FzUYA from somewhere getting rained on by Puget Sound Since: Sep, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#6: Feb 16th 2018 at 11:09:50 PM

I have an Anti-Hero character named Riversnake with the very similar power of control over water and a fondness for putting on a Mook Horror Show. She got in big trouble with the intergalactic courts for attempting (but not succeeding) genocide on a hyper-aggressive xenophobic species who had already killed members of the intergalactic alliance. Quite a few of Riversnake's lethal ways of playing with the water in her victims' blood can be adapted by those who control blood. Riversnake's subtle attacks involved selectively freezing and blocking certain blood vessels to cause heart attacks and aneurysms, but her attacks got more and more blatant as the xenophobes sent their standing army after her. A slightly less subtle attack involved a fingernail-sized ice blade opening a hole between a major blood vessel and the lungs, drowning the alien in its own blood. Riversnake's more blatant attacks were accidentally congruent with some of the ideas on this thread and the Bloody Murder page, like forcibly extracting, boiling or freezing all the water in the bodies and recycling the extracted corpse water to make simple weapons or shields to use against the incoming attackers. But then there were more unique attacks at the height of Riversnake's slaughter, when she was controlling enough water (from corpses and hot-springs) to fill five Earth Olympic swimming pools. She hightailed it back to her spaceship and delayed the enemy military spaceships by making engine-clogging projectiles with all that water - making them crash on the planet they'd just launched from - and when that wasn't enough, she smashed the ice through the surviving spaceships' hulls.

The only reason Riversnake made it through that rampage with so much water was because the supernatural energy that fueled her power would double every second and there were serious drawbacks to letting that energy multiply out of control.

I don't know how much supernatural kinetic energy OP's character has to spare for manipulating blood, but judging from the description so far, OP's character should at least have enough kinetic energy to manifest internal clots. Whether or not that character has the supernatural perception necessary to correctly place those clots to cause heart attacks and aneurysms, I don't know, that's up for the OP to decide whether the character has that Required Secondary Power.

Another lethal method that takes a little longer than the previous method is preventing the blood from exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen, which will suffocate the victim.

Also, as a torture method, causing unneeded clots in major blood vessels of the limbs would lead to pins-and-needles sensations and eventual death and gangrene of the afflicted limbs. There might be other gruesome and unpleasant symptoms in between those two, but I'm not a medical expert.

That's all I can think of for now, I need to go to bed.

edited 16th Feb '18 11:25:17 PM by Miss_Desperado

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Kiefen MINE! from Germany Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: It's not my fault I'm not popular!
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#7: Feb 23rd 2018 at 3:37:07 AM

If your character can sense the blood in others he could become something akin to a Living Lie Detector by sensing when a persons heart-rate rises when they lie. Eventually your character could learn to manipulate a persons emotion by stimulating the circulation of certain body parts. This can be played for the full horror implications of The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body..

Bando_Rising Since: Mar, 2018
#8: Mar 11th 2018 at 4:35:04 PM

Had an RPG character in a super hero Pn P with "Life force manipulation" in the form of this power. I worked it as "Hemokinesis" . Basically treated him like Magneto with blood. If he was being subtle he'd concentrate and just cause a clot or airbubble and alternatively had the power to heal someone suffering from the same. If someone had an open wound he'd rip the blood right from their body. If he got really pissed and wanted to be theatrical he'd grab someone by the neck and suck their body till they were a big pale raisin. If he or someone got sliced up or shot, he could use his powers to keep the blood in their body and flowing. It's really only limited by your imagination.

Hermes Evile from Mars Since: Jan, 2018 Relationship Status: Tsundere'ing
Evile
#9: May 22nd 2018 at 5:39:54 PM

[up] Air bubble via blood magic, how do you do that?

You could have the ability to look through your own blood. So just spill a bit of your blood and use it as a secret remote viewing tool or something. I mean, what are the odds that someone else would know any better?

You could condense the blood within your enemy and use it as a makeshift weapon of sorts. Use the damn blood to destroy them from inside out.

You can also do a thought transfer with your own blood. I've seen something like this in D.Grey Man. One of the characters who could manipulate his own blood was trapped or something, so he pulled out his own blood(all of his blood) and used it as a makeshift avatar body. The best part about it is that no matter how much times the make shift body is destroyed, you could probably reform it or something(cause its blood).

Also, that stuff about blood bending from The Avatar could probably be applied to dead bodies as well. All you have to do is stuff the body with a whole lot of blood and manipulate the blood to flow to major joints and muscles. Whenever the corpse puppet has to move all you have to do is manipulate the blood to either contract certain muscles, or even push entire limbs. This idea may be a bit hard to pull off as the manipulator would have to pay close attention to minute movement in order to make the corpse seem alive. Also, you'll have to do fill the body with preservatives(otherwise it'll rot), and have some method to heat the body up(that last ones completely optional). Of course there's always the issue with being unable to speak... All in all this last idea of mine is rather unpracticable in the sense that the corpse puppet probably won't be able to fool anyone when they really put attention into said puppet. Thought, it may work if the targeted character is in a state of emotional instability or something. Ex: Bob, the big bad, kills Elizabeth, whom is Lisa's lover. Lisa finds out about the death of Elizabeth, but never sees the corpse. Lisa is angry/sad/horrified. Bob puppeteers Elizabeth's corpse, and puts some makeup and... maybe hoodie or something? In order to hide her appearance. Lisa goes home in a state of emotional anguish only to find Elizabeth perfectly alive. Lisa runs up to hug Elizabeth, and Elizabeth responds by hugging her back... Then Elizabeth slides a blade into Lisa's back.

The main flaw here being that if Lisa asks Elizabeth a question, she probably won't be able to talk. Bob could probably wrap blood around Elizabeth's vocal cords, but I'm not sure what degree of mastery(time spent) it would take for anyone to be able to mimic speech via this method.

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