Golden Rule Options 

---

Okay, I developed these rules in response to what I see as a problem with the
likelihood of independent ghouls surviving very long at all, and the sudden
inspiration that struck me when I thought "what might happen if a ghoul drank
the blood of another ghoul."  I have hopefully answered your concerns
interspersed within the text below.

James Ray Comer wrote:

>         I looked at the ghouls drinking ghoul blood and was wondering:
> ghouls do not have fangs!  And HUMAN teeth cannot do what fangs can(see
> Norine Dresser's books about vampires).

True, ghouls do not have fangs, though they can still manage to draw blood
with regular normal human teeth, I have seen it done.  The ghoul in the story
blurb that serves as an intro the article actually employs a set of false
teeth that are essentially a steel insert with fangs.  He is rather old and
leads a band of independents.  It is the false teeth that left the marks.

>  So do ghouls cut their victims
> with razors?

Yes, most independent ghouls who even knew that it was possible to benefit
from the blood of other ghouls would employ knives or swords or razors.

> Then how does the wound heal?  Ghouls also don't have the
> butt-covering power to close wounds by licking.

It does not heal.  Ghouls doing this by biting are certainly violating the
masquerade, and this is a further point in the favor of keeping the knowledge
from vampires that ghoul blood does them any good.  If it was obvious that
ghoul blood was useful, they might be the likely suspects, instead, I think
that often the Sabbat would be blamed.  As most ghouls probably do not utilize
the false teeth method, it being the quirky anachronism of a particular
independent ghoul of my creation, the wounds would usually be cuts and
therefore no more suspicious than the work of a knife murderer.

> To get 1 blood point, you
> would have to drink over one pint of blood, almost impossible for a human
> unless they are psycho cannibals or lunatics (vampires' hunger for blood
> is unnatural).

According to the Ghouls: Fatal Addiction book, ghouls digestive systems begin
to process things somewhat differently as they age.  Their processing of blood
becomes, as you put it, "unnatural." They literally become more and more
capable of containing larger and larger quantities of blood as they grow
older.  A beginning ghoul can keep two points (pints approximately--which is
part of the change that comes to them due to the influence of the vampire
blood upon their metabolism) of vampire blood in his stomach, and after a
hundred years it becomes three and so forth.  They metabolize vampire blood by
absorbing it into their human blood stream, but it retains its properties, and
is spent and used when they utilize it for mystical purposes.  They literally
can spend enough blood that they die of blood loss if they have a large
quantity of vampire blood in their system and very little human blood.

It is important to realize that the game makes a distinction between the parts
of a ghoul's blood in his body.  He has a pool of human blood, which is
useless for mystical purposes, and just flows around in his veins.  And he has
a pool of kindred blood, which flows through his veins mixed with his human
blood, but powers his mystical powers, and is spent and disappears upon use.

> And blood loss diminishes
> your ability to heal wounds... this is a downward spiral.

See above notes.  The blood loss does not usually matter as the damage is
usually not bite damage and they usually do not care to hide it.

> Ghouls also
> lack vampires' hypnotic powers

Not all ghouls lack this power.  Some ghouls can be quite talented at the very
disciplines their masters practice.  It is rare, true, for a ghoul to be
particularly skilled in a discipline, but it is not impossible, nor even
unlikely in the case of ghouls who have survived for hundreds of years.  It is
of course also possible for a ghoul to use more mundane means of making others
forget, like killing them, or killing witnesses.  This has been a rather
successful tactic for many criminals for centuries.  Disposing of the body due
to its low level of or lack of blood might be prudent as well.

> (the power to make mortals forget The
> Kiss), and so would either have to take from willing victims (who, riddled
> with unhealed wounds and woozy from blood loss, would not be so willing)
> or attack, subdue (and often kill by mischance) and drain their victims.

As I mentioned in the original article, they usually get the blood by
attacking and drinking it from subdued or killed victims, who are other
ghouls.  Why do the police not descend upon them?  Why do they not descend
upon the vampires who often kill? (And face it, no matter how careful a
vampire is, he will kill now and then.)  I can give some reasons, but they are
no less flimsy than the original reasons within the main Vampire game.  A
ghoul slain by another ghoul will often not be discovered by the police
because the ghoul's master will likely not want the police asking him why this
person who he knows so well is suddenly dead, and why it is perhaps the third
or fourth time this month that this has happened.  Therefore, vampires are
likely to cover up their ghouls' deaths, in one way or another in the first
place, even if they don't realize that it was done by another ghoul drinking
the blood.  Also, I would like to point out the only real life statistic I
happen to have read concerning the solving of murders.  Washington
DC---according to the FBI, only one half of all murders in DC result in an
arrest and only one half of those result in a conviction.  Therefore,
literally only one fourth (25%) of all DC murders are ever solved.  Three
quarters of all murders (75%) that occur in DC do not get solved.

We do not live in a society that can answer every question as easily as we
sometimes would like to think.  Thousands of children go missing every year
and are never found, not even dead.  People disappear every day.  It is a fact
of life.  I am not talking about stupid conspiracy theories, I am just talking
about the fact that serial killers and rapists and drug dealers do eliminate
people from society and sometimes manage to do so without leaving any trace
that is clear enough for the authorities to follow.

> How often could one DO this ere legions of police, vigilante gangs,
> hunters, and other nuisances descended and put an end to bloodsucking,
> probably forever?  The Ananasi are another problem: they would try to
> find this rival and eliminate them.

The spider changers might be a problem, perhaps, though the ghouls are
certainly no more competition than the kindred, and in fact are rather a heck
of a lot less, as they ONLY prey from ghouls and vampires, not the general
population as kindred do.

>         I think that sucking the blood of other ghouls has problems.
> Vampire vitae is a mystickal substance with an unlife of its own, because
> Kindred are not alive.  But ghouls are living humans: their blood is just
> blood.

NO, this is not the case.  As I mention above, ghoul blood is two different
substances mixed together.  Some of it is normal human blood, and some of it
is kindred blood.  The two coexist.  The kindred blood remains essentially
kindred blood until it finally does eventually break down due to age.
Therefore when a ghoul drank from another ghoul, he would be drinking a
mixture---a potent mixture to be sure.

> If ingested orally it would break down in the stomach like
> milk.

The human blood within a ghoul would break down when injested orally.
Drinking it would have no mystical effect on the ghoul.  The portion of a
ghoul's blood that is human would just be that, normal human blood.  Injesting
it would not in any way replenish the mystical "Blood Pool" of a ghoul.  It
would be no different than drinking some other food like beverage.  But the
portion of his blood that is kindred blood could be drunk and absorbed just as
though it had been drunk directly from the veins of the vampire himself.

>  If injected, then perhaps mystickal properties could be passed on,
> but the recipient might die if the blood is the wrong type- *Dracula*, but
> rights, should have ended with all the humans dying of botched blood
> transfusions, as typing was then unknown.

And, yes, if it was injected, then perhaps the normal human blood mixed within
the ghoul's veins might cause transfusion reactions.  This is perhaps why
there would be a medical roll to prevent this, by not using blood types that
are incompatible, of course.  I think that there is perhaps some reason that
the kindred blood on the other hand would not do so.  Therefore, in the
unlikely event that you could prey upon a ghoul who possessed nothing but
kindred blood within his veins, you could inject it without fear.

>         Have you used these rules?  Did the practical problems that I've
> outlined enter the game at all?

Actually, I have used the rules in the game, and had far fewer problems than
you have mentioned due to the difference in the way we are considering the
problem.  As I mentioned, the Ghouls:Fatal Addiction product asserts that the
blood in a ghoul's veins is a mixture of normal and vampire blood.  The two
are treated separately for most purposes.

A ghoul character must keep track of his total blood quantity combined in
order to know how low on blood he is medically speaking.  But, kindred blood
is superior in sustaining his life.  A ghoul with five human blood points in
his body and no kindred blood would be down two Health Levels, as he is short
of blood.  On the other hand, a ghoul who somehow ended up with five kindred
blood and no normal human blood (it is possible and I can detail how, but it
is actually pretty darn unlikely, I am using it merely for demonstration
purposes) would be perfectly fine and would not have suffered any damage.
This proves that there is some independence between the two.

But it goes further than that.  If a ghoul had five human blood in his system,
and two kindred points, he would be at a total of seven.  When he healed the
next day, he would regain one normal human blood point.
It has occurred to me that perhaps you have been unclear in understanding what
I mean when I speak of normal blood points for a ghoul.  A normal human blood
point for a ghoul is his own blood, healed naturally, grown by his own body.
It is NOT blood that he has consumed from any source whatsoever.

The kindred blood in his system, on the other hand, is obviously all
consumed.  I was not implying in my rules in any way that a ghoul could
replenish his normal blood by drinking or injecting blood in any way different
than any normal human might be able to.  What I was providing was rules for
what would happen when a ghoul drank blood from another ghoul who had vampire
blood in his system.  The human blood in that ghoul's system would be useless
to the feeding predator ghoul, but the kindred blood mixed in with it would
serve the function that kindred blood always serves for ghouls.  However, as
the two are mixed together, it is a little harder to get the kindred blood.

That is what my rules for fractions meant.  If you attacked a ghoul who had
five of his own normal human blood points and five kindred blood points in his
system, then half of the blood you drank would be kindred blood.  This means
that the other half is useless normal human blood, and yes, it would have to
be digested more normally, though ghouls are a little more predatory in their
metabolisms that the rest of us, due to the changes wrought by the vampire
blood.  Digested normal human blood would not serve any mystical purposes,
would not provide "Blood Pool" points, and would generally just break down
like a meat or milk that we drank.

I suppose just for the sake of complete clarity I should detail how a ghoul
can end up with nothing but kindred blood in his system.  It has only happened
once in our current chronicle, but if you have a particularly insistent
domitor, it is not even really that hard to pull off.  The vampire grabs the
ghoul and begins drinking his blood, while at the same time letting the ghoul
drink from the vampire's wrist.  As the ghoul's blood is drawn out, it flows
through the vampire, and becomes vampire blood.  The ghoul reingests it as
vampire blood, even though it was once his own essence.  This continues until
there is naught but vampire blood in the ghoul's system.  Simple, effective,
and not likely due to the possibility of overdosing or frenzying, both of
which are detailed in the Ghouls: Fatal Addiction book.

Thanks.    Mostly I just think that we differ on some opinions.  We agree that
vampires would already have a difficult time hiding their presence, but I
think that ghouls would have an easier time and you think that they would have
a harder time.  I have my reasons why I think ghouls have an easier time
hiding their preying on a select subset of an already hidden society without
being caught in the public eye than vampires do hunting on the general
public.  We just disagree, I think.  I think that for example, it would be
easier to kill a migrant worker without a green card who is here illegally and
not be discovered than it would be to kill a grocery store clerk at Ukrops who
goes to school and has a family.  Even if you took them out in the very same
deserted alley, one has left more of a trace just by his very nature of daily
life.  The ghoul often hides some of his presence from normal society, just by
the nature of his service to a being whose existence cannot even be known.
Therefore, if you slay that ghoul, he is less likely to be noticed by the
public and the authorities.  Yes, the vampire who he serves, is going to
notice that he is missing.  And yes he will be angry.  But so will the vampire
who gets hunted and staked and fed upon by a ghoul.  If an independent even
has the strength to survive hunting vampires, he will have the strength to
survive hunting ghouls.  They are easier targets.  And if you make sure that
their master does not find the corpse, he will not know that their blood went
to feed your needs.

>         I still have a lot of trouble believing in hordes of vampires
> killing people and never getting caught.

As do I, but it is explained somewhat by their level of control over our
society.  Ideal princes would probably run the city morgue through blood bound
servants, etc, etc, etc.  There is also the human disbelief factor, of
course.  If aliens really landed in Richmond next week, you in Ohio would not
believe unless you saw yourself, I think.  Of course that has never happened,
but I was merely using it as an example of how much you and I are ready to
disbelieve anything supernatural or out of scientific realms.

> But as vampires have powers (and
> all vampires can apparantly make human victims forget being bitten, as
> ghouls cannot do unless their masters give them the power), it's easier to
> believe than that idea that ghouls do this, especially to other ghouls,

I just think that it would be easier to hunt other ghouls than to hunt normal
mortals without being discovered.  Certainly it is easier to kill normal
mortals, but they are more publicly connected than your typical ghoul who is
probably living a life of mystery and criminality.

> who are 1) powerful, and 2) the slaves of a monster who will punish any
> trespass on his 'property'.
>         It relates to my extreme dislike of Vampire: The Gatorade and the
> idiots who play it as fun'n'fangs.

I suppose you would probably prefer that I did not publish this last comment,
as you must maintain your writer status at White Wolf.  But, I understood that
a lot of your complaints with my article already drew from your general
dislike of the Vampire game.  I feel that by exploring the ghoul element, I am
exploring the horror that is actually forced upon humanity by vampires.  The
depths to which moral decisions have been forced I think has been an
interesting exploration of the relationship between the kindred and kine.  But
I also think that the slavery that is occurring there is also a mirror of that
servitude which surely must take place in the military or organized crime or
even the corporate environment, where it becomes more important to obey than
to be a good person, where it becomes a matter of survival in that environment
to surrender some of your beliefs.  It is a wrong thing, but it is a true
thing that happens.

> Thanks.    Mostly I just think that we differ on some opinions.  We agree that
> vampires would already have a difficult time hiding their presence, but I
> think that ghouls would have an easier time and you think that they would have
> a harder time. 

Sort of.  If you're a ghoul you don't explode in sunlight and your warm
flesh doesn't immediately strike fear into anyone who touches you.  On the
other hand you almost certainly can't conceal your crimes as Kindred can.
 

 I have my reasons why I think ghouls have an easier time
> hiding their preying on a select subset of an already hidden society without
> being caught in the public eye than vampires do hunting on the general
> public.  We just disagree, I think.  I think that for example, it would be
> easier to kill a migrant worker without a green card who is here illegally and
> not be discovered than it would be to kill a grocery store clerk at Ukrops who
> goes to school and has a family.

Migrants have families too, and if and when they are killed the police do
follow the cases.  The large migrant population here (tomatoes) is very
much a supervised group of people, with special health centers and rest
centers for their needs and clergy who minister to them: two nuns
administer the sacraments to migrant kids, making sure that they don't
'fall through the cracks'.
 
 

  Even if you took them out in the very same
> deserted alley, one has left more of a trace just by his very nature of daily
> life.  The ghoul often hides some of his presence from normal society, just by
> the nature of his service to a being whose existence cannot even be known.

But ghouls have to make daylight deals, be property owners-of-record, mow
lawns, etc.  Their masters sure can't!
 

> Therefore, if you slay that ghoul, he is less likely to be noticed by the
> public and the authorities.  Yes, the vampire who he serves, is going to
> notice that he is missing.  And yes he will be angry.  But so will the vampire
> who gets hunted and staked and fed upon by a ghoul.  If an independent even
> has the strength to survive hunting vampires, he will have the strength to
> survive hunting ghouls. 
How many people like this are there?  Two? Three?  There are no more!
 
 

 They are easier targets.  And if you make sure that
> their master does not find the corpse, he will not know that their blood went
> to feed your needs.
> 

Dark powers notwithstanding?  It would only take one such detection and
the jig would be up.
 
 

> >         I still have a lot of trouble believing in hordes of vampires
> > killing people and never getting caught.
> 
> As do I, but it is explained somewhat by their level of control over our
> society.  Ideal princes would probably run the city morgue through blood bound
> servants, etc, etc, etc. 
Well, that was how ***** saw it in 1992.  But we now know that the
multi-power nature of the WOD makes that kind of control harder to
imagine.
 
 

 There is also the human disbelief factor, of
> course.  If aliens really landed in Richmond next week, you in Ohio would not
> believe unless you saw yourself, I think.  Of course that has never happened,
> but I was merely using it as an example of how much you and I are ready to
> disbelieve anything supernatural or out of scientific realms.
> 
> > But as vampires have powers (and
> > all vampires can apparantly make human victims forget being bitten, as
> > ghouls cannot do unless their masters give them the power), it's easier to
> > believe than that idea that ghouls do this, especially to other ghouls,
> 
> I just think that it would be easier to hunt other ghouls than to hunt normal
> mortals without being discovered.  Certainly it is easier to kill normal
> mortals, but they are more publicly connected than your typical ghoul who is
> probably living a life of mystery and criminality.
> 
> > who are 1) powerful, and 2) the slaves of a monster who will punish any
> > trespass on his 'property'.
> >         It relates to my extreme dislike of Vampire: The Gatorade and the
> > idiots who play it as fun'n'fangs.
> 
> I suppose you would probably prefer that I did not publish this last comment,
> as you must maintain your writer status at White Wolf. 
Hee hee hee.  Ethan hates Kindred too.
 

 But, I understood that
> a lot of your complaints with my article already drew from your general
> dislike of the Vampire game.  I feel that by exploring the ghoul element, I am
> exploring the horror that is actually forced upon humanity by vampires.  The
> depths to which moral decisions have been forced I think has been an
> interesting exploration of the relationship between the kindred and kine. 

Okay.
 

 But
> I also think that the slavery that is occurring there is also a mirror of that
> servitude which surely must take place in the military or organized crime or
> even the corporate environment, where it becomes more important to obey than
> to be a good person, where it becomes a matter of survival in that environment
> to surrender some of your beliefs.  It is a wrong thing, but it is a true
> thing that happens.
> 
It happens everywhere, including here.