Prime Effects

• • • Bond of Blood — Transferring Quintessence between Patterns is a staple of potent magicians. The mage can take Quintessence from Tass

or from a Node. If offered freely, the mage can even accept Quintessence from another individual, or gift a person with his own Quintessence. The

mage can store energy in a P eriapt or store it in another object. With a powerful enough Effect, the mage can even strike out against another mage

and drain away that magician's extra Quintessence, although energy stored in the Avatar is inviolate.

This Effect gets its name from the Verbena, who use blood as a conduit for Quintessence. The Verbena in question smears an object with her

blood or shares blood with a person in order to share her Quintessence. Hermetic mages use a similar rite by passing around a golden chalice and

drinking from the cup or anointing a subject with it.

Although other supernatural creatures often carry their own power, taking Quintessence from them is a chancy matter at best. Most have a form

of power that does not translate well into universal energy, and it is often bound up in their own inherent natures (that is, their Avatars). In the rare

case where a mage is offered that power in some sort of conduit — vampire blood, for instance, or a shifter ritual that allows the trade of spirit

energy — he can harvest Quintessence from the source. However it is usually inefficient and loaded with Resonance.

As a variant, a mage can sometimes channel a small trickle of Quintessence from a Pattern that's destroyed. An object that's burned normally

releases its Quintessence back to the Tapestry, but the mage can coax some of that Quintessence into taking a slightly longer route and tunneling

through another Effect. Such an Effect must be used conjunctionally with whatever magic it's powering, but allows the mage to draw a single point

of Quintessence from the process of breaking or sacrificing things, like pouring out an offering of wine or burning several sticks of valuable

incense.