After the Calling

So yeah, Jax should probably have every form of hepatitis available and Chloe should probably be on baby number 27.

Under logical terms, yes.  But he doesn’t and she’s not, nor the vice versa, because, outside of their philandering, the following can be assumed:

1.     Vampirics don’t get sick easily. They can only really sustain physical damage when their auras are low on energy, or out in sunlight, when the sun is draining their energy faster than normal anyway. So, if you wanted Jax to get Chlamydia, you’d have to:

A) Take him tanning on the beach at noon on a summer day. Or have Chloe bite the shit out of him. Either will bring about the same conclusion. 
B) Have Chlamydia readily available.
C) Put Jax in a pliable enough mood to show you his most patriotic parts, which may be a challenge seeing as his aura might be a bit unruly.
D) Douse his patriotism with said Chlamydia, and do so with any method seen fit. Personally, I would rather have a vial of it hidden in the beer cooler, but there are other ways to get that done. Many many other ways.
E) Let him bake until golden brown and crispy.

Follow these rules and Jax should be probably be scratching his balls in no time.  However, once his aura is restored it is likely that he’ll heal and be a bit peeved with you. So you might want to take that into consideration.

2.     Vampirics don’t get preggers easily. It is actually not the most straightforward thing for your average Jane to get knocked up either. There are tons of defenses (DEFENSES!) in the female body to kill off little swimming intruders. And then even if those buggers get through and meet that one special ovum, if the womb isn’t a happy place for implantation, then… well, yeah, no implanting.  So, on top of that, you can figure that someone with an aura that likes to eat itself would have a tough time growing a frickin’ person. Because their own body isn’t really a happy place for them. It is unlikely that it would be a happy place for anyone else. An aura that is already a bit sketchy to begin with might be absolutely ravenous if it is also supporting a little growing ball of energy.

So female vamps are generally childless because A) they’re auras don’t usually condone pregnancy. B) They have obscenely low egg counts. In terms of biology, vampiric bodies generally don’t see much of an advantage to putting energy into the production/preparation of gametes. Especially when the “hyper heal” switch is clicked on and much time is spent healing wounds, enhancing perception, and trying to cope with a super strong, super unmanageable aura. Just to use as a really awful example, when someone is starving, or has very bad nutrition, or is a gymnast and has very little body fat, they stop ovulating. The body knows that it cannot support a child, so it won’t even put those vibes out there. That is pretty much the case with vampy women. The body may seem physically capable, but the aura isn’t, so it’s a no to the babies, thanks.

However, there is an occasional egg drop in the lady vamp, but those eggs are of a certain brand of tootsie pop that would require the average Joe sperm to have lots of time, energy, and red bull to get to the center of. Not saying that the average Joe sperm could not crack it open. It has happened. In my imagination. Maybe. But it is a tough egg to crack. I’m sure there is a fictionally scientific explanation for this, but I don’t know it yet.

 That said, Chloe took amazing care of her energy. Her aura has never wanted for a damn thing. So since her aura was just chilling out, it didn’t mind that her ovaries felt cozy enough to drop Ms. Super Egg. She happened to be banging another vampiric around that time that super egg set up shop in the fallopians, and the stars were aligned just right to make her ripe for impregnation. And so it was Chauncey, therefore, henceforth, and hereafter, born with more recessive genes than a Norseman.

3.      Vampirics don’t impregnate easily. Again, vampy boys and girls have bodies that set priorities much higher than gamete production, so the swimmer count is abysmal. Bang, bang, blanks. But the sperm that do decide to make the occasional appearance are just herculaic enough to really send it home. Especially on the eggs of vampiric mommy. Ms. Super Egg, meet Mr. Spermicide Ain’t Got Nothing On Me, Biznatch. With that stance, it is probable to think that there may be a small clutch of baby vampys running around out there with flat fish-faces and not much an idea of who daddy is. But! That is unlikely.

You see, average Joe swimmers encounter the super egg, and generally die on impact. Those that do survive die pitful, awful deaths trying, trying so hard…usually.  The average Jane egg, alternatively, meets the sperminator and explodes. Like a missile at an orange. Not saying that it is impossible. A vampiric, who has had a busy day and his boys aren’t really kicking like they might be otherwise, might meet a non-psychic who takes hormone supplements and has ova that wear steel toed boots.  IT HAS HAPPENED. In my mind. Possibly.

BUT! for all intents, and to keep my own personal squick factor on the lower levels of ick, we’ll rely on number 4.

4.       Jax and Chloe practice safe sex. Except for when the criteria of number five is met.

5.       They don’t.

Kind of related, but no longer having much to do with the Bouchard sex life, there is a period of time, long or short, where vampirics are not vampiric. From the time they are born until whatever age for which their aura holds out. For Chauncey it was 17. For Jax it was 19. For Roux it was 16, although we aren’t sure yet just how vampy she is right now.  Rowanne was much older than all of them, but no one knows her real age, so we can’t speculate.  Chloe was around 21. Arden was older like Rowanne, around 28, after Roux was born, but he was pre-vamp for a long time. And both he and Rowanne put a significant amount of effort into delaying the transition. Had they not, they might have been in the early 20s/late teens like everyone else. All this said, they all had a period of time behind puberty where they would have been biologically fertile and not vampiric, meaning (relatively) normal reproductive abilities.

From birth a vampiric is on his or her way to vampirism, it is just a matter of when. By they time they hit puberty, they are already half way there. If not further. They may have an easier time fathering or mothering a child, but not that much easier. Their bodies are still on a one way street.

And whatever child that is produced would have still held the genetic material that helped make its parent, so the liklihood for vampirism is still there.

That they have that window, though, does not always hold true, for Loris became vampiric when he was 9. Don’t you want his background story? Yeah, so do I.

Now in terms of how all this plays into genetics, I’m still not sure if vampirism is genetic, or if it is a side effect of something genetic. Or if those two things are exactly the same thing. I think along the lines of someone born with a super psychic aura that is crazy powerful. The body can’t maintain it because it is so damn strong. Energy from outside sources is the only way to keep it from going dry. Vampirism ensues. So what was passed down to you by your parents was not so much vampirism, but rather a stupidly strong aura.  Like, there are no genes for vampirism, but there is are genes for a super aura. And while you can’t have vampirism without the super aura, you can have a super aura without vampirism. You can look at people like Garcia Hazard, or Mercer Rye. Or Mickey. Or Jericho. Both of them.  The were born with the physical wherewithall to sustain themselves.

OR! Vampirism is a genetic mutation. A gene can be singled out and passed on resulting in someone with a defective aura that will eventually cease to support itself, having nothing or very little to do with the strength of the aura.  The vampiric gene would have little or no effect on the strength of an aura outside of resulting physical effects of the vampirism and the actions taken by a vampiric. However, it would make sense that anyone can have this mutation, if their parent was a vamp or they have vampirism in their family line, but everyone isn’t a vampire. AND all vamps are crazy powerful in the psychic aura department.  It could be that the gene doesn’t express the mutation UNLESS the aura is super powerful. Like, you can be vampy, but if you’ve got an aura that’s hovering around latency, then there is no need for the body to get all up in arms. It can handle a low level aura. However, if you have level 6 aura and the gene is hanging around, you’re going to have a problem. I don’t really like this version, even though I think I lean toward it a little bit sometimes, because I don’t like that I have to explain why a low level wouldn’t have vampirism. I don’t think having a smaller aura is a good reason not to be vampy. Eh. But I can follow it, because there are plenty of conditions out there that an individual will carry for years, but without a specific situation to trigger it, (high altitude, low blood pressure, peanuts!) it would have remained dormant.

So I’ve been trying to find a mixture of both explanations, because currently I have a mixture of both ranging among my vamps.

You have Chloe and Jax, who made Chauncey, our only true genetic prototype.  Depending on the explanation you use it appears that Jax and Chloe passed on their vamp to their kid, OR all they passed on to him was a strong aura, and his body just couldn’t support it. For just a bit more insight, both Jax and Chloe had very psychic parents, none of whom were vamps.

Then you have Aeryn and Hadrian, whose lineage I’ve only mentioned a few times. But essentially, Hadrian is an odd case. They had a non-psychic dad. Not even latent. And a weakly psychic mom. Level 2 Empath. Aeryn came out a level 2 Channeler, which is fair. But Hadrian is something like a level 5 or 6 Empath, although he and everyone else, for a long time, believed that he was a level 4. Which is why he never peaked anyone’s interest when he was hanging out in The Calling. Once his aura started to go wonky, upon closer inspection, it was realized that he was actually a lot stronger than originally noted. This mistake was probably made because he was young when he and Aeryn were first taken to the psychic organization, and at that time, he was a L4. He passed under the radar until his aura matured and he became pre-vampy, or rather, he started showing markers of vampirism.

His powerful aura can’t be explained from (what we know about) his lineage. It doesn’t make much sense that a non-psychic and a weak psychic could come together and make a super psychic.  Although, recessive genes might play a part. Mickey, who is immense in her psychic abilities had two latent, or maybe weak psychic parents. They were able to come together and make a healer. Hadrian’s father could have been a latent psychic, which is someone who is probably heterozygous with the psychic genes, and just no one knew about it. But as psychics, Aeryn and Hadrian might have noticed. But then, they were both young and not very knowlegable about what they were when he died. And Hadrian’s vampirism could just be a side effect of being unable to maintain a huge aura. Or, one of his parents could have carried the gene, but because neither of them had crazy auras, it never expressed itself. The only one we’d be able to look to for confirmation would be Aeryn, but because she has a fairly chilled out aura, level 2, there is no need for her to be vampiric. So either she has the gene, but no need to express it. Or she just has a level 2 aura and can handle that just fine.

Eh.

Last thing, not quite related, in general a vampiric aura can be ranked as a certain level based on Calling standards, but overall it is usually stronger than those auras in its class just by way of the activites of the owner. The intake of energy stregthens it. After that energy has been assimilated and is no longer unable to be distiguished from the vampiric’s, then maybe the auroric strength decreases a little bit. But a vampiric who is a regular energy consumer is more likely to tip the scales in the psychic power department. Psychic abilities become sharper, stronger, and more effective. Even more so if s/he’s taking in psychic energy as opposed to non-psychic or latent energy, although vamps tend to have preferences.

The aura itself, in structure, brings a certain vigor to its owner (when the aura is healthy), that makes that individual stronger physically as well.  Not just in terms of the ability to heal rapidly or hear very well, or see in the dark, smell minute scents… although yeah, all that… but also in actual physical strength. I don’t know that there are any vamps who would lift a car just to do it, but they probably could. Maybe not above their heads, they aren’t from Krypton, they are still of the brand human. But maybe like from the fender to drag it a few feet. And yes, I’m really thinking about this.  

So with this, we’re left with the knowledge that baby vampires do not come from storks. Vampiric fertility is so very complicated. Vampirics can lift cars, kind of. Vampirism could be a side effect or a mutation. And Jax and Chloe practice safe sex, except for when they don’t.