Blood bonding is the process by which a greater demon and human are joined together by blood for life. Any and all attempts to blood bond are highly dangerous to the human involved; an incorrect match between a human and demon can easily result in the death of the human, as demon blood is lethally poisonous to all humans.
The Process
A blood demon or pair of blood users (for example, Majors Lu and Zasha Belikov) sense a viable, non-lethal match between a human and a demon. There is also a slim chance that a random human and demon may create a viable bond by accident but these are extremely rare cases.
Once there is the chance for a viable pair, the human must drink the blood of their potential partner or have blood-to-blood contact with them (meaning that the demon must have blood, and it cannot be acidic, especially poisonous in comparison to other demons', etc.). Provided that he or she does not die during the process, the human becomes bonded for life with the demon.
During the bond, the human usually feels intense pain followed by hallucinations of the memories of the demon partner while the demon will feel odd and may experience slight confusion or dissociation before hallucinating.
DAMMED facilitates the bond by providing the human with demon blood inside a pill capsule that also has various painkilling herbs.
Demon's Role
Once bonded, the demon is forced into their human form where their powers are weakened. They are unable to revert to their demon form until they have received sufficient training and their relationship with their human partner is strong enough.
Demons act as the "power source" in the bond. They supply the elemental ability and the potential power that the two share.
Human's Role
Once bonded, the human shares the demon's extended life span and elemental power. They are able to explore their new found abilities and train to discover and develop their skills.
Within the bond, the human acts as the "catalyst" for the pair. While the demon is full of raw power, most of it remains untapped in their unbonded state. The bond with a human is the means through which a demon can harness and focus their power, so the two can both achieve their full potential.
Two Lives Connected As One
Through the blood bond, two separate lives become co-dependent on one another. Many aspects of their lives before have now drastically changed as they are no longer responsible for just their sole self. In order to prosper, the two must work together and trust each other. The strength of a human or demon's powers correlates directly to the strength of their relationship; a close pair will be more powerful and have a stronger bond than a distant or reluctant pair of partners. Even an argument between partners can negatively affect the degree of strength.
Communication
Communication between the two parties might be impossible before bonding; however after the bond, the language barriers are broken to an extent so that partners can communicate so the partners may pick up each others' languages. If either partner is particularly multi-lingual, their counterpart will likely pick up two at most.
Memory Flow
As mentioned previously, the two parties "hallucinate" vital memories of the other during bonding. Memories will continue show themselves to the bonded very slowly over time unless prompted by Merging. (see below)
Sympathy Pain
Partners may experience sympathy pains which act as an alert system when either is in mortal peril. Such pains occur when one of the pair is severely injured (broken bones, internal bleeding, 3rd degree burns, concussions, etc.), suffocating, drowning, or severely ill, among other things. The other half of the pair will feel the pain in varying degrees depending on how severe the situation is.
Pains will not occur from smaller injuries like bruises and scrapes, headaches, menustrual cramps, or sexual activity.
Mortality
Should either member of the pair dies, the other one will as well. The demon partner will also revert back to its original form upon death. Long-term separation in the early stages of the bond also has negative consequences. At first, each member will gradually lose their elemental abilities. Then, their bodies will become increasingly fatigued until death.
Merging
While the partners may live their lives separately, the two are able to fuse into one being, with that being having both a humanoid and a demonoid form.
Merging is an advanced stage of the bond and requires either extensive experimentation or training to access. To be able to merge in the first place requires an extremely close relationship and level of trust. During merging, the minds and personalities of both halves are shared (Similar to the concept of "drifting" in Pacific Rim). Once the two are separated they may retain traits from their counterpart for a brief period before readjusting to their own single body and mind.
Trivia
- While blood bonding is designed to be an irrevocable and permanent, in RP this is not so for the sake of convenience. When one half of a pair quits, the bond between their characters is cut via rebonding, as soon as another person's character is selected for their new partner. The one half goes back to how they were before the bond.
- Humans may start to take on physical characteristics of their bonded demon. For example, a human may develop pointed teeth or slitted eyes. However, this only happens after hundreds--if not thousands--of years and is a very slow and gradual process.