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The Beating of a Moth's Wings: Small Changes and their Role in the process of Transcendence.
The Following is a Thesis that is availble only to those with status in the Ordo Dracul to everyone else, this represents OOC knowledge
Preface
Chaos theory. A moth beats it's wings in a desert in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In China a typhoon is created by the breeze and hits Shanghai as a direct result of the moth. Usually, many of the Dragons rather scoff at the idea that change can come randomly. I am not unlike these honored scholars of the Great Work. However, I do not think that there is a chaotic anything truly. There are stimuli that bring the moth to bear, specific and smaller changes that orders themselves to conspire to put that moth within the proverbial forest.
In the end, it is the smallest change that creates the largest of changes. Hence, when Dr. Thomas Johansenn, Philosopher of the Elysian Curse, Sworn of the Dying Light and former Grand Wyrm in the City of Carcosa once uttered the small idea to me one night during my Slavery. It is this culmination of twenty years of work that was the result. Perhaps, it will contribute in some ways towards the Great Work. Or perhaps it will simply beat a beating of a moth's wings.
Introduction
Like all ideas, this one began simply during a short summer night. It was an off-handed mention at the small changes in the world. Small things that open up to larger changes, which in turn end up with transcendence above and beyond what one would think of at a time. However, the thought stuck and I applied it to my own work. A burgeoning work in the mortal medical professions; this would be something more applicable towards our community.
Generally the Kindred Physical structure is mostly human. However, many of the organs that we used as humans suddenly and over time evolve into something different. The Kindred Body is marvelous in it's efficiency. The evolution from human organs to Kindred Organs, small vessels for the holding of Vitae is not something you see often. There is one obvious parallel to such things. The human female's breast generally changes it's purpose biologically to create milk to feed the young. Then when it is no longer needed it returns to the fatty muscle it usually is.
In any case, I began to think smaller rather than undertaking the arduous work of understanding the Kindred Body. What about the DNA and the genes of the Kindred? How different are they from the Mortal human. And what if small genes are changed, what would be the change that arises from this. Can one gain transcendence from the change rendered at your most basic building blocks of genes, DNA and amino acids?
This, created the need for such a work.
A Short Review
The work that has been done in such a work, has been sparse to be quite honest. There have been lots of forays into the properties of the blood by scholars of the Blood and some of the Flesh. These works are the basis of this works, that seek to go deeper than the surface properties of Life that we all seem to have. For instance the work of Henry Goode tells us that the properties of the blood, depending on clan, vary (quite obviously) from one to another. All of the samples in his experiments, for instance, reacted to different stimuli and different reactions.
Further the work of Rebecca Jones, and especially her thesis speaks of how one could force an evolution of the blood to suit one's needs. And that, like a muscle in the mortal body with constant exercise one could strengthen one facet of it. She posited that the potential for just about anything was locked within the blood and that it was simply easier for one clan than another. And, like a muscle, the blood had weakened in one regard due to disuse. Balance, she concluded was the key to overcoming any and all weakness while attaining a point of transcendence.
- "In all of the tests that I have run, I have found that subject a could overcome his specific weakness by exercising that which did not evolve along his family's history. Medical history, is an important factor in understanding. However, since the potential is there for any and all of the results are within the blood it just takes exercises of many kinds to unlock such potential. Of course, some family's are more suited towards them, much like different spices of birds." -- Rebecca Jones, Blah of the Blah Blah. Title of Work (1893)
While this is certainly agreeable, as a scientist, I do have to wonder if it is more entrenched than that. If one could examine the specific properties of the blood itself. The basic parts, what stimuli react to which building block that creates what the Blood is indeed. I believe, that what Blah Jones discovered was simply the cusp of what could be explained. Stimuli exercise these genes or building blocks of the blood and thus force an evolutionary sea-change within it.
It is only in these days and ages where such building blocks are regularly being discovered. Deoxyribonucleic Acid is not quite a new thing to many mortals but in the case of research and work into the Great Work, is quite a break through in and of itself. One could wax lyrical about how the 1958 Meselson-Stahl proven model of DNA resembles two coiling dragon around the Rod of Asclepius.
Given the relative breakthroughs in the 1950's in Mortal Molecular Biology, there haven't been many works that detail such a thing. The 1960 work of Patricia Patterson Blah of the Blah Blah, was a tentative beginning into the world of Kindred Molecular Biology.