Kettle battles are competitive community events among practitioners of alchemy.
Overview[]
Get enough people into a craft in one place and someone’s going to ask: Who’s better? When thin-blood alchemists need to know who’s best, they throw a kettle battle. Kettle battles are a mix between a cooking competition and a hip-hop cypher. They emerged with Thin-Blood Alchemy and happen in cities with large thin-blooded populations. Since battles get messy, they also happen outside the eyes of authority. This might mean at the underground rave club in the old factory district, the abandoned airstrip outside town, or in a mostly built, but entirely bankrupt, empty suburban subdivision.
Depending on the scene, there might be an ad hoc kettle battle every weekend, or every full moon, or during the city’s big festive times, such as Carnival, Christmas, big football game nights, to blend in among the normie crowds and parties. Most scenes have battles on the summer solstice and on Alchemy’s Birthday: the closest weekend to March 12th.
Process[]
Boasting[]
Traditionally done to begin kettle battles in most cities, battlers show off their achievements, such as the health and state of their athanors, or rare and powerful formulae they’ve created. It’s a full-on exhibition, both to intimidate other battlers and bring new thin-bloods into the craft.
Brewing[]
Next, the kettle battle’s organizer — usually a big-name alchemist or someone important to the thin-blood community — gets the battlers together and introduces the theme, which ranges from direct requests like, “Burn as much of this stop sign as you can, points for speed and color” to vague requests like, “Show me what you can do with this guy’s blood.” The organizer gives the battlers time to gather materials and brew, from half a night to three. Bigger name organizers usually hold longer battles, for bigger rewards social and otherwise. Once time’s up, the battlers reconvene, they imbibe or apply, and show off their skills. The alchemist who impresses the crowd most wins. Everyone gets ripped to the tits on El or other sangria and parties until dawn: or at least until the vampires in charge break things up.
References[]
VTM: Blood Sigils, p. 46-47