A really, really big, nice, screw which is one of my favorite imaginary weapons to play around with due to the raw potential found in the spiral shape (and, no, that's not the gurren lagann within me; I was fond of spiral-based weaponry before that show ever existed, yet alone, watched it--but after having done so, spiral-shaped weaponry became even more broken than it already was in terms of powers go for me because it went from "really, really strong" to "basically the strongest if it exists in the setting").
It actually got me thinking of it being a drill--again, not because of gurren lagann. Because the drill was the weapon of one of the seven original grandmasters of the blood masters and I imagined the screw as having the ability to cause its wielder to bleed for a power-up, leading to the obvious association. (The original drill that inspired the blood master was a drill from some childhood toy, WAY predating gurren lagann for the curious. At the time, I was expanding out the original blood master idea and turning whatever items I had on hand in my bedroom near my bed into items that could be made into being their weapons. The original grandmaster and his rival? Two different versions of the Capri Sun yellow straw. One thin, the other thick. No, seriously. When I said 'had on hand in my bedroom near my bed', I meant exactly that.)
Took me not too terribly long to track down the two pertinent blog entries on the subject where I go into the drill-style blood masters. Keep in mind that's for the blood masters as they exist in the rubyverse, not as they exist in other stories although the two are obviously closely linked. (The blood masters exist in no less than three different universes. One, Mythe, being my ripoff of Lorithia, the world of Artix Entertainment games, which is where the concept of grandmasters originated from; a second, where the urban fantasy elements originated from and actually the original story idea came from, was the origin of the characters who were imported into the Rubyverse; the third being the Rubyverse.)
But I wanted to expand upon the Guy clan style, relating to the drills. The Guy clan was always more or less the "just kinda...there" added on attachment to the Blood Masters. The founding member was a protagonist. His rival was a secondary protagonist; his main supporter that was originally unpowered before his nature as a latent blood master was discovered was also a secondary protagonist.
The dragon clan was a power that I was reusing, but while having not much of the same role in the story, was notable at least for having visible role in fights, because I had a clear, unambiguous idea of what the power was and how it worked (because it was a power I was reusing).
The seventh grandmaster was an import from a different setting technically speaking. Originally, the grandmasters were their own story (so I guess technically blood masters exist in no less than four different universes), but I decided to import them into a grander narrative (which was itself imported into the rubyverse) and that setting, Mythe, had in its "modern day" the seventh grandmaster coming in about 20 years or so after the first six, where the order of the blood masters was fairly established and no longer new, but still relatively young as an order.
I knew all of their functions quite well.
But both the Guy clan and the Gentleman clan (who I completely forgot what weapon I originally had for him; katana? rapier? Legit have no clue what I used; as far as the rubyverse is concerned it's a rapier but heck if I know what it was originally), I didn't really expand on beyond them just being there.
...The history of blood masters in my creative works is incredibly complex.
I suppose I should say it simply.
Two separate, unrelated, stories, involved blood masters, which worked similarly but differently.
One was on the microscopic scale; I was manually manipulating objects I could hold in my hand, treating them as weapons, and imagining the characters using them in a fairly medieval setting fighting both grand armies and superpowered evil blood masters. There were no other individuals in this original original setting.
The other was more on the macro scale; I was personally roleplaying as the blood master. This one was the modern urban fantasy setting. The blood masters were one of a few surviving clans in the modern days, after centuries of shadow warfare behind the scenes throughout the millenia had wiped out most other clans.
The "evil" blood masters were a main antagonist here, just like the other story, and just like the other story, they were "basically functioned as if they were vampires" (an element not found in the rubyverse mind you), capable of extending their lifespan artificially by draining the blood from others. Most blood master fights were with other blood masters, not always the evil-not-quite-vampires, either.
There was no unified blood master order in this setting; blood masters exist as a grand clan but are first and foremost individuals living their own life in that setting. They do have sets of rules, mostly for dealing with blood masters that break the rules or to bond together against threats to the masquerade (other clans, evil blood masters, etc.), but by and large existed independently from one another.
Other clans existed, but were rare, with most of them having gone extinct. One notable, thought-extinct rival clan was the shadow masters, whose powers were of equal scale and devastation to the blood masters. It is notable that this was the setting where blood master power tiers originated from.
Both settings were developed contemporary to one another. With me playing god in one and me playing the part of a character in the other--both have equal claim to being the originator of the idea of blood masters; I'm not actually sure which one came first because both came so early as to be impossible to tell. Separate, different, unique ideas.
The original grandmaster idea was then imported to Mythe. (Where the origin of the bloodmaster-vampire alliance came into being.)
Then when I imported the ideas to the rubyverse, they were combined into their rubyverse format.
But ANYWAY.
That's a bit of a tangent.
I wanted to expand on the Guy clan, the drill clan, because the screw I have was really conductive to that.
I said originally that the Guy clan focused on redirection; catching an attack and bouncing it back with extra power, basically--but I realized that in actuality, that's only the start of their powers. The spiral nature of their drill would allow for them to have one of the greatest ranged attacks of the blood masters with the highest piercing power, capable of penetrating otherwise-impenetrable targets. (Granted, they wouldn't be alone in this high-range, high-piercing power. Both stave styles would have bullet-like shots from their spears; the blood whip is incredibly long-range; the bow-and-arrow style is self-evidently ranged. However, with the exception of the dragon's blood whip, none of those are a continuous attack, whereas the Guy clan's spiral attack is continuous.)
The razor-sharp edges of their drills make for incredible slicing power as well, especially when spinning, creating a little bit of a gore-fest when they are in melee range. But I realized that they had an extra advantage; mobility and zone control almost unrivaled.
Drills being drills, they can...well...drill into objects, including the ground, to more or less achieve controlled detonations/controlled collapses/etc. Demolishing buildings, rocks, trees, tunneling under opponents, etc. Obviously, to do this over a full battlefield you need more than just one blood master (they regenerate blood at an accelerated, not unlimited, rate and drilling underground uses up a fair amount of blood), but it gives a nifty explanation for why they were out of focus in my mental image of fights between blood masters and rival armies--
They weren't very visible on the battlefield because their role was to control the battlefield in areas invisible to "my" observation point as "god" from the "sky". Certain key members like their leader? Sure, visible, fighting on the surface, but their lack of prominence in spite of their potential power now has an explanation whereas previously it did not.
I also learned that with the particular screw I am holding, the drill weapons could have an additional boost not otherwise available to them: serving as a blood-fueled rocket. (The back of the screw can be seen as a point where energy blasts out, rocketing the user forward in the direction the screw/drill is pointed.)
It'd work by channeling blood both into the drill (creating a magnified blast of wind to basically reduce resistance/drag to nil) and the 'pommel' of the drill, where the boost is--granting the Guy-style blood master limited flight if pointing upwards, as well as being able to close an incredible amount of distance in an instant, and allowing for shooting around the battlefield.
Know how in animes you have some characters who can, as fast as the eye can see, bounce back and forth (sometimes on just air)? The ones which build all that momentum, evade, and strike with incredible speed/power when they stop bouncing around? The Guy style blood masters can do exactly that.
They can even weaponize this exhaust.
By flipping their weapon around and by grabbing the razor-sharp drill, channeling their blood into that back? (Making it function a lot like a wizard's staff.) They launch what is basically a big laser beam--not with the same pinpoint focus/penetration power as their normal attack, but with every bit the same range and with a MUCH wider beam, allowing them to mow down unprotected masses of enemies.
However, this gave me the idea for why the Guy clan isn't basically the default clan, for why they're a fairly small subsect of the total number of blood masters. Each and every single one of their non-redirection attacks? (They still have that basic ability, too, it's just that it's their basic ability, not a more advanced one.) Each and every single one of their signature moves outside of redirection.
Drilling underground.
The super-penetrating ranged drill attack.
The rocket.
The laser beam.
All of them use up blood at an accelerated rate, draining the blood master's resources faster than other styles, making their achilles' heel be the duration for which they can fight at peak efficiency. They are masters of bringing absolute sheer destruction and control to the battle, but can only provide it for a short time before being reduced to a support role, where all they can do is redirect and amplify. (Mind you, they are very efficient at this because in spite of their attacks draining blood, they are very efficient at using their blood. Or maybe it's because their powerful attacks drain so much blood that they are efficient at using blood. Same end result.)
Again explaining why they didn't have much prominence.
Feels like a really neat explanation to me, which is why I felt like making this blog post. I just kinda expanded on something that had always bugged me, and now have it at a level where I am happy with what I came up with.
Granted.
This is for something that nobody will ever get to see the light of day on.
The original grandmaster story was a generic one, which I have dozens of different similar stories to. Not dozens, actually. Hundreds. Even thousands. I'm not making it.
Mythe as a setting I kinda lost interest in beyond the one story. Plus, at least one of the very key fundamental stories to the setting of Mythe (actually, at least two), I've forgotten most/all of the details of. Fundamental parts of the setting's background/lore/backstory I've forgotten. I could work with it, but I probably won't.
These details were never relevant to the urban fantasy version of the blood masters--which, by the way, I actually wrote at least part of the story for. I even emailed it to an online friend of mine so in spite of having lost the original I could at any time pull up what I wrote and post it if I felt like it. Could continue it if I wanted. (Technically, could also do this with the relevant part of Mythe, because I did write part of the origin story of the seventh grandmaster.)
And all of this? This is canonical material in the rubyverse, sure...but is offhanded pretty much. I'm not sure any of this will even get mentioned in the rubyverse. The blog pretty much contains all my plans for what will be mentioned in red hood rider proper; Gary goes to visit a blood master in order to increase is control over his Water Rider powers. They may get brief mentions from vampires, too. That's literally it.
So pragmatically speaking.
For all intents and purposes.
What I just went into detail about, figured out, spent time extrapolating out?
Utterly, 100%, completely and entirely irrelevant and worthless. Word of God material, All There In The Manual material, but not something seen in canonical material proper in spite of being considered canon.
OH WELL.
It made me feel better, so that's good enough for me!
It actually got me thinking of it being a drill--again, not because of gurren lagann. Because the drill was the weapon of one of the seven original grandmasters of the blood masters and I imagined the screw as having the ability to cause its wielder to bleed for a power-up, leading to the obvious association. (The original drill that inspired the blood master was a drill from some childhood toy, WAY predating gurren lagann for the curious. At the time, I was expanding out the original blood master idea and turning whatever items I had on hand in my bedroom near my bed into items that could be made into being their weapons. The original grandmaster and his rival? Two different versions of the Capri Sun yellow straw. One thin, the other thick. No, seriously. When I said 'had on hand in my bedroom near my bed', I meant exactly that.)
Took me not too terribly long to track down the two pertinent blog entries on the subject where I go into the drill-style blood masters. Keep in mind that's for the blood masters as they exist in the rubyverse, not as they exist in other stories although the two are obviously closely linked. (The blood masters exist in no less than three different universes. One, Mythe, being my ripoff of Lorithia, the world of Artix Entertainment games, which is where the concept of grandmasters originated from; a second, where the urban fantasy elements originated from and actually the original story idea came from, was the origin of the characters who were imported into the Rubyverse; the third being the Rubyverse.)
But I wanted to expand upon the Guy clan style, relating to the drills. The Guy clan was always more or less the "just kinda...there" added on attachment to the Blood Masters. The founding member was a protagonist. His rival was a secondary protagonist; his main supporter that was originally unpowered before his nature as a latent blood master was discovered was also a secondary protagonist.
The dragon clan was a power that I was reusing, but while having not much of the same role in the story, was notable at least for having visible role in fights, because I had a clear, unambiguous idea of what the power was and how it worked (because it was a power I was reusing).
The seventh grandmaster was an import from a different setting technically speaking. Originally, the grandmasters were their own story (so I guess technically blood masters exist in no less than four different universes), but I decided to import them into a grander narrative (which was itself imported into the rubyverse) and that setting, Mythe, had in its "modern day" the seventh grandmaster coming in about 20 years or so after the first six, where the order of the blood masters was fairly established and no longer new, but still relatively young as an order.
I knew all of their functions quite well.
But both the Guy clan and the Gentleman clan (who I completely forgot what weapon I originally had for him; katana? rapier? Legit have no clue what I used; as far as the rubyverse is concerned it's a rapier but heck if I know what it was originally), I didn't really expand on beyond them just being there.
...The history of blood masters in my creative works is incredibly complex.
I suppose I should say it simply.
Two separate, unrelated, stories, involved blood masters, which worked similarly but differently.
One was on the microscopic scale; I was manually manipulating objects I could hold in my hand, treating them as weapons, and imagining the characters using them in a fairly medieval setting fighting both grand armies and superpowered evil blood masters. There were no other individuals in this original original setting.
The other was more on the macro scale; I was personally roleplaying as the blood master. This one was the modern urban fantasy setting. The blood masters were one of a few surviving clans in the modern days, after centuries of shadow warfare behind the scenes throughout the millenia had wiped out most other clans.
The "evil" blood masters were a main antagonist here, just like the other story, and just like the other story, they were "basically functioned as if they were vampires" (an element not found in the rubyverse mind you), capable of extending their lifespan artificially by draining the blood from others. Most blood master fights were with other blood masters, not always the evil-not-quite-vampires, either.
There was no unified blood master order in this setting; blood masters exist as a grand clan but are first and foremost individuals living their own life in that setting. They do have sets of rules, mostly for dealing with blood masters that break the rules or to bond together against threats to the masquerade (other clans, evil blood masters, etc.), but by and large existed independently from one another.
Other clans existed, but were rare, with most of them having gone extinct. One notable, thought-extinct rival clan was the shadow masters, whose powers were of equal scale and devastation to the blood masters. It is notable that this was the setting where blood master power tiers originated from.
Both settings were developed contemporary to one another. With me playing god in one and me playing the part of a character in the other--both have equal claim to being the originator of the idea of blood masters; I'm not actually sure which one came first because both came so early as to be impossible to tell. Separate, different, unique ideas.
The original grandmaster idea was then imported to Mythe. (Where the origin of the bloodmaster-vampire alliance came into being.)
Then when I imported the ideas to the rubyverse, they were combined into their rubyverse format.
But ANYWAY.
That's a bit of a tangent.
I wanted to expand on the Guy clan, the drill clan, because the screw I have was really conductive to that.
I said originally that the Guy clan focused on redirection; catching an attack and bouncing it back with extra power, basically--but I realized that in actuality, that's only the start of their powers. The spiral nature of their drill would allow for them to have one of the greatest ranged attacks of the blood masters with the highest piercing power, capable of penetrating otherwise-impenetrable targets. (Granted, they wouldn't be alone in this high-range, high-piercing power. Both stave styles would have bullet-like shots from their spears; the blood whip is incredibly long-range; the bow-and-arrow style is self-evidently ranged. However, with the exception of the dragon's blood whip, none of those are a continuous attack, whereas the Guy clan's spiral attack is continuous.)
The razor-sharp edges of their drills make for incredible slicing power as well, especially when spinning, creating a little bit of a gore-fest when they are in melee range. But I realized that they had an extra advantage; mobility and zone control almost unrivaled.
Drills being drills, they can...well...drill into objects, including the ground, to more or less achieve controlled detonations/controlled collapses/etc. Demolishing buildings, rocks, trees, tunneling under opponents, etc. Obviously, to do this over a full battlefield you need more than just one blood master (they regenerate blood at an accelerated, not unlimited, rate and drilling underground uses up a fair amount of blood), but it gives a nifty explanation for why they were out of focus in my mental image of fights between blood masters and rival armies--
They weren't very visible on the battlefield because their role was to control the battlefield in areas invisible to "my" observation point as "god" from the "sky". Certain key members like their leader? Sure, visible, fighting on the surface, but their lack of prominence in spite of their potential power now has an explanation whereas previously it did not.
I also learned that with the particular screw I am holding, the drill weapons could have an additional boost not otherwise available to them: serving as a blood-fueled rocket. (The back of the screw can be seen as a point where energy blasts out, rocketing the user forward in the direction the screw/drill is pointed.)
It'd work by channeling blood both into the drill (creating a magnified blast of wind to basically reduce resistance/drag to nil) and the 'pommel' of the drill, where the boost is--granting the Guy-style blood master limited flight if pointing upwards, as well as being able to close an incredible amount of distance in an instant, and allowing for shooting around the battlefield.
Know how in animes you have some characters who can, as fast as the eye can see, bounce back and forth (sometimes on just air)? The ones which build all that momentum, evade, and strike with incredible speed/power when they stop bouncing around? The Guy style blood masters can do exactly that.
They can even weaponize this exhaust.
By flipping their weapon around and by grabbing the razor-sharp drill, channeling their blood into that back? (Making it function a lot like a wizard's staff.) They launch what is basically a big laser beam--not with the same pinpoint focus/penetration power as their normal attack, but with every bit the same range and with a MUCH wider beam, allowing them to mow down unprotected masses of enemies.
However, this gave me the idea for why the Guy clan isn't basically the default clan, for why they're a fairly small subsect of the total number of blood masters. Each and every single one of their non-redirection attacks? (They still have that basic ability, too, it's just that it's their basic ability, not a more advanced one.) Each and every single one of their signature moves outside of redirection.
Drilling underground.
The super-penetrating ranged drill attack.
The rocket.
The laser beam.
All of them use up blood at an accelerated rate, draining the blood master's resources faster than other styles, making their achilles' heel be the duration for which they can fight at peak efficiency. They are masters of bringing absolute sheer destruction and control to the battle, but can only provide it for a short time before being reduced to a support role, where all they can do is redirect and amplify. (Mind you, they are very efficient at this because in spite of their attacks draining blood, they are very efficient at using their blood. Or maybe it's because their powerful attacks drain so much blood that they are efficient at using blood. Same end result.)
Again explaining why they didn't have much prominence.
Feels like a really neat explanation to me, which is why I felt like making this blog post. I just kinda expanded on something that had always bugged me, and now have it at a level where I am happy with what I came up with.
Granted.
This is for something that nobody will ever get to see the light of day on.
The original grandmaster story was a generic one, which I have dozens of different similar stories to. Not dozens, actually. Hundreds. Even thousands. I'm not making it.
Mythe as a setting I kinda lost interest in beyond the one story. Plus, at least one of the very key fundamental stories to the setting of Mythe (actually, at least two), I've forgotten most/all of the details of. Fundamental parts of the setting's background/lore/backstory I've forgotten. I could work with it, but I probably won't.
These details were never relevant to the urban fantasy version of the blood masters--which, by the way, I actually wrote at least part of the story for. I even emailed it to an online friend of mine so in spite of having lost the original I could at any time pull up what I wrote and post it if I felt like it. Could continue it if I wanted. (Technically, could also do this with the relevant part of Mythe, because I did write part of the origin story of the seventh grandmaster.)
And all of this? This is canonical material in the rubyverse, sure...but is offhanded pretty much. I'm not sure any of this will even get mentioned in the rubyverse. The blog pretty much contains all my plans for what will be mentioned in red hood rider proper; Gary goes to visit a blood master in order to increase is control over his Water Rider powers. They may get brief mentions from vampires, too. That's literally it.
So pragmatically speaking.
For all intents and purposes.
What I just went into detail about, figured out, spent time extrapolating out?
Utterly, 100%, completely and entirely irrelevant and worthless. Word of God material, All There In The Manual material, but not something seen in canonical material proper in spite of being considered canon.
OH WELL.
It made me feel better, so that's good enough for me!
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