WWYCD: The Vampire Who Doesn't Want to be a Vampire Anymore

[Michael Hopcroft]

Your character (who hopefully has some small clue about the occult) is approached by a 300-year-old vampire with a strange request. Like most vampires she did not choose her unlifetyle, having been made a vampire against her will. Ever since then she has been stalking the night feeding on humans, soometimes siezed by the "blood lust" which causes her to feed to the death of the victim. She lost count of the number of people she'd killed about two hundred and fifty years ago.

Now she's sick of it. Throughtout her unlife she has been troubled by the moral implications of what she's done and all the suffering she has caused. Recently she has attempted more "reasonable" approaches to feeding, but the blood lust is still there and all too often she loses her self-control and her "donor" dies in her arms. Now she has turned to your character for help.

In her mind, there are only two possible solutions. One is simply to have herself destroyed. Since unlife brings with it a supernaturally keen sense of self-preservation that, however depressed or morally troubled the vampire might be, makes outright suicide impossible, that would mean someone would actually have to hunt her down and kill her -- and because that isntinct would kick in she'd be fighting every inch of the way. The other solution would be for some way to be found for her to not be a vampire anymore -- to restore her to mortality where she can live out a normal. lifespan (since she was about 17 when she became a vampire, she figured she would have about about sixty years left if she became a mortal again).

WWCYD?

[Teflon Billy]

Stake her and leave her out to see the sunrise.

True death to the undead, they are a mockery of life and the living should not suffer a leach to be amongst them.

TB

[dbsousa]

Golden Eagle doesn't believe in the occult, although he will believe she is a "vampire" if he is provided with direct evidence. Reluctantly, he will call in "arcane" experts to consult on a cure, fully expecting them to fail. If there is evidence of her crimes, he would suggest that hand herself over to the Vault, and he would vouch for her abilities and observed weaknesses, so that they could lock her in a sunless, vapor-roof room, while she looked for a cure. Assuming she came to him in his capacity as a lawyer, he would find scientists who would vouch for her abilities, and ask a psychiatrist to determine if her belief that she was a vampire was a psychosis induced by the nature of her powers, or if she has a physical addiction to human blood...
Bouncer will try to bounce her through an outside wall, if it is daytime. At night, he will try to wrestle her to the ground, relying on his bounce field to keep her from biting him.
Revenant, being undead himself, notes that she has no soul to rend (His Modus Operandi involves a death stare that removes an evildoer's soul , turning the body to dust.) As he has no blood for her to drain, the fight would probably end in a stand still. He can follow anywhere she goes in his ghostly form, and trade blow for blow without taking much damage at all...

[Lord Mhoram]

Blackcat would take the being to Byzantium, an interdimensional city, that if there is a cure for vamparism, would be the place to find it.

Ballistic would use his magic pool to immobalize the sucker and fly him into space, and thence into the sun itself (well he'd stop well short). He's a supermage, and has a problem with Undead.

Terminal Velocity would call for one of his teammates to help him make a decision.. "Jepeordy help!"
Meeb would ask if thisbeing wanted to be cured or killed, and if the second do it. He's defensive enough (and with an alien physiology that is immune to most vampiric attacks) that he could do it. If the former, he'd go look for a cure.

Angelfire would turn her 75 pt Hellpowers/Angelic powers into a "Transform Undead to human, heals when character dies (or some other kind of thing)" and fix it on the spot.

Sift doesn't have the magical knowledge to do it, but would know where to look, and try and find a cure.

In every case, if the Vamp killed anyone, it is removed from it's cursed state right then.

[Chuckg]

OK, now, if the vampire cure doesn't exist, the only answer for all three is "light her up", with whatever degree of harshness or gentleness is in their nature. So, I'll answer the question as if a cure *could* be found, with one exception.

These answers presuppose that the 'vampire cure' does not itself require any dark actions (such as, oh, "the Ritual Of Restoration will require five human sacrifices...")

Starguard -- help her with it and see if she can't throw in some archangel mojo of her own to help make the cure global. (Even Starguard most likely can't cure vampirism on her own, though, but she could probably arrange for a chance for the vampire's soul to face Atonement as it undergoes Final Death, and thus escape going downstairs to the hot place.)

Dr. Pain -- does what he always does when he faces magic foes... calls Witchcraft. (I have *got* to buy up that Contact.)

Baron von Darien -- he *is* a vampire, and thus, the situation gets a bit complex here.

One, he'd find it *extremely* suspicious that he didn't know about this 'cure' already, seeing as how he's about 800 years older than the vampiress in question and has been very well-up on the secret doings of the Mystic World for a great big chunk of that time.

Two, his origin story is pretty much predicated on the basis that no such cure exists.

So in his particular game world, the most likely thing going on here is that she has been misled, as many desperate vampires have been misled before her, by some manipulative occultist holding out a quack cure. The Baron has several ways to deal with such scenarios, most of them involving unpleasant methods of departing the mortal coil for said occultist.

OTOH, if the cure is genuine, then he faces a dilemna. Does he take it himself, or not?

... what, the dilemna of whether to forgive her and help her regain her humanity, or else stake her? To the Baron, this isn't a dilemna at all. He *didn't* feed on the innocent, even when he was first Embraced... he had the power of will to do otherwise, and would have destroyed himself (or at the very least, /tried/ to destroy himself) had he been a scourge upon humanity. He would *not* have gone the path of first rampaging, then getting remorseful about it *after* a couple centuries of massacre, and then expect to get away scott-free without penance. In addition to being too stubborn for that, he's too stinkin' proud. A man of honor faces the consequences of his actions, he doesn't try to skate.

Basically, the vampiress in this instance has committed things he wouldn't ever have forgiven *himself* for, so he's damn sure not gonna forgive any *other* vampire.

Of course, the Baron's presence in this scenario is problematic for yet a third reason -- not even the insane vampires of his game world, let alone any remotely sane vampire, will willingly go within a hundred miles of him.

His Reputation as a scourge upon his own kind, the elder vampire who destroys other vampires, the ancient betrayer who brought down and destroyed his game world's equivalent of the Camarilla in blood and fire, is carved across the entire Mystic World in seventeen-meter high flaming neon letters. (No, seriously -- his Reputation modifier is bloody extreme, and I paid every point for it too.) Any vampire who has ever shed innocent blood knows what the Baron will do to them if he ever gets within arms' reach of them -- he's not quite as inevitable a path to Final Death as sunbathing at noon, but he's damn close.

So, most likely, this particular WWYCD doesn't apply to the Baron von Darien, because there is no way she can have survived 300 years as a vampire without hearing at least /something/ about him, and if she had... she'd have gone somewhere else.

[Zeropoint]

Special Agent Trent would listen to her story with his arms folded and a stern expression on his face. When she was finished, he sigh softly, and remove his sunglasses.

"I understand your situation better than you could guess--or did you come to me because you knew that? Never mind. The point is, I know what it's like to have power, and a curse, forced upon you. I know what it's like to have urges that aren't part you driving you to do things that horrify you. Only by the grace of God are my hands free of blood.

"I can't condone what you've done, or the lives you've taken. However, your death would be an appropriate payment for your crimes. If you want release, I can give it to you."

[Powerhouse]

Lady Silver: as a powerful mystic with a heart of gold, she'd immediately chose to help anyway she could. She'd start going through her own library and contact everyone mystic she knows to find a cure. If it's there, she'll find it no matter who she needs to ask or place she needs to go: that's how driven she is to the right thing.

If no cure was avaliable, she'd be in a tight spot. She's sworn to protect humanity from magic threats and vampires are included in that. Yet, this person seems to have repented and is driven by impulses she can't control. One thing she'd look into is whether her own company (a pharmaceuticals giant ala Merck, has any blood products that could substitute adequately. If possible, Lady Silver would also try to put the vamp into suspended animation or offer to send her to a dimension that has animals she can feed on but no sentients.

[ghost-angel]

Jessica - would look up (she looks up to everyone) at the vampire, show her own pointed teeth, "If you can find a cure let me know. I'm all for it. Otherwise, I can hunt and kill at your request. I will win." Jessica will be more willing to try and find a cure as she hates her own vampiric state, assuming the vampire coming to her has any leads at all.

Silence - The undead do not trigger her CvK (the undead should be dead already by all rights) so would oblige and kill (or attempt to kill) her, and make sure her soul were guided on to the afterlife, given the vampires intent on doing "good" she may (if it turns out to be true, and she can ALWAYS tell once the soul has entered Between Places) do a bit of shifting and send her to a 'happier' afterlife if required.

[Black Rose]

-looks around- Wow. A lot of hard-core White Lighters here, ladies and gentlemen.

Penumbra would sigh, grumble about someone handing out "Got a freaky metaphysical problem? Go to Penumbra!" business cards all over the frickin' Underworld, and say he'd try to help, but no promises. If she needed a place to run to ground, he'd offer one of his boltholes, but not his primary one. He'd go on a research jag, trying to see if he could do anything at all for her. In the course of this, no doubt, he'd be approached by his mentor/nemesis the Prince of Darkness (no, not the Devil, the Prince of a dimension called Darkness), who would dangle some much needed info in front of Pen and offer to assist him in this task if Pen will only acknowledge that he is the PoD's heir. Somehow or other Pen would manage to either make the girl mortal (though she'd probably be left with some weaker versions of her vampiric powers) or be forced to hunt her down and kill her. If the first, Pen would help her settle into life if she needed it; if the second, he'd feel like crap for a long while* and probably make developing a vampirism cure one of his many goals.


Penumbra has a CvK at the 10 pt level, but I count it as a 20 pt CvK for people he knows and has any consideration for.

[sinanju]

Hell's Angel, who recently learned that the supernatural is all too real, wouldn't doubt that she's really a vampire. She also wouldn't doubt that simply turning the woman back into a mortal is not justice, given the body count she's racked up over the years. That leaves death--and a vampire coming to someone named Hell's Angel is just asking for a quick, fiery end. Just a thought is all that's required for a furiously burning wall of flame to surround the vampire--and then for it to collapse inward, incinerating the undead monster.

The Black Knight would grin, reach into his jacket and pull out his big-*** sword, and growl, "Tonight you sleep in Hell!" and attack.

[Funksaw]

Caleb: "Join the club!"

Barnstormer: Would probably try to sleep with her first, but keep her under locked quarantine until such a cure can be found.

[DataPacRat]

Bunny would inquire whether the vampire would be willing to be placed in confinement long enough to prevent any other innocents from being killed while she looked for a cure; and, if not, she'd do whatever was necessary to keep any further innocents from being harmed - most likely calling in some other local supers, since she doesn't really have any heavy firepower.


(My first reply to a WWYCD; if anybody's curious, Bunny arrived on Earth through an alien wormhole project, and looks something like a cross between Alice in Wonderland's White Rabbit, and a Playboy Bunny, with something of a stealth/gadgeteer role. She's a quadriplegic (due to a previous wormhole accident shearing off her limbs), but has a collection of cybernetic prosthetics to walk around with.)

[shadow_walker]

Dark Avenger is the only character who has any experience with the supernatural would agree to help her, but first she must prove that she is a 100% honest about returning to human life. If she fails and attempts to attack him he'll use his 60 point cosmic magic pool to give her a "everlasting" release, or if she has a corrupt and evil soul he'll let his sword feast on her flesh, blood and black soul.

[GoldenAge]

Bastion: Find the cure, of course.

Then taint it with a dependency that will force the bat*itch to inform on all of her kind in Epic City. Should she comply and, with her help, every single vampire in Epic City is vanquished, a pure vaccine will be administered, curing her.

If after being cured Bastion finds that her actions as a vampire were similar to madness he'll remand her over to professionals for psychiatric help. Should she show no remorse for her crimes as a vampire or symptoms that would lead Dr. Sebastian Castle (Bastion) to believe that said crimes were not caused by madness he will have her incarcerated to the full extent of the law.

Either way, Bastion would take special care to keep tabs on this person until she dies.

[McCoy]

Millennium has regen back from the dead/resurrection useable on others. Has never tried it on the undead before. Will push it like it has never been pushed before. Fine if it works, if it doesn't, arrange to keep her safely confined while he consults with experts.

Cheeta "Um, I'm the one who runs fast. Am I the one you're looking for? If you have a plan that involves me, could you buy me a vowel because I'm drawing a blank."

Iron Will Makes a telekinetic wave. "Hi Bunny! Nice to see a fellow quadroplegic in the business. Let's show these bipeds that the differently able can pull their own weight!" He then assembles a de-vampire-izer, "This might sting a bit."

Snow Leopard Her Mom was almost a vampire once, did go vamp in an alternate reality. Will do what is necessary to find a cure, may be willing to be a "blood doaner" until a cure is found (will definitely try it once, will see how it goes after that, how her life support and healing factor handel it).

Dolphin Would be willing to be a blood doaner, but doubt his power would allow it. Will discuss with experts if she has a soul, and will reincarnate if killed. If the answer is no, he will advise against that path. She's immortal, he's immortal, he'll keep her safe and not a danger to others for as long as it takes to find a cure.

[Badger]

Badger does hate demons, and really doesnt like vampires, either. But, I could see him finding some compassion for a vampire at least. He has turned away from doing evil. (albeit the "normal-type" of supervillany). Someone who would want to repent and save their soul would probably get through to him. And he would try to find a cure. Though one problem he would have is the nagging question of "If it bothered her so much, why didnt she go after animal blood?"

[SatinKitty]

The only one of my characters who might be able to help is WICCA.
She would transport the Vampire back before the time she was transformed, and then just aid the girl so it never happens in the first place, in as many realities as possible.

[Lamrok]

Jimmy Hebert would pick up the phone and call his uncle. That would take care of it. Hebert's uncle is the man whose group "cured" Jimmy of vampirism, leaving him still a bit averse to sunlight, but by and large, no longer a vampire. He'll tell her that the vampire hunters will keep coming till she's dead. That's just the way it goes.

[Arkham]

The Paladine would nod solemnly, lay hands upon her and channel all the divine energy he has been gifted with.
Either this will cleanse her soul of taint, or leave her a seared mass of undead flesh. Either way is as she wished.

Dr. Damascus would agree to help, get assistance from his mentor, Dr. Djinn, the Grand-Master of Mages, Keeper of the Chakra Stones, Teacher of the Sages, and Wearer of the Turban of the Air Lords. They would find a cure, even if it involves traveling to the Dark Dimensions and rescuing her soul from the black place where it is kept, and bargaining with the Lord of Light to allow her a second chance at salvation. ( And you can be sure it would require such lengths. )

[Brandi]

Irving-- "Well, um, I'm not really a scientist by training-- so we'll need to talk to [campaign's superscientist] and my knowledge of the supernatural and metaphysics isn't bad, but we'll need to talk to [campaign's sorcerous type]...
but there's another issue."

"I HAVE been studying law-- though I haven't taken the bar exam yet-- and I suspect, based on what I've been reading, that even if we CAN cure you you will have to face trial for a LOT of murders. True, not all of them were first-degree, but there is no statute of limitations on murder... you see the problem? Mind you, death by lethal injection may be less painful than the methods traditionally used to dispatch vampires, and you would be legally entitled to appeals, but... your choice."

[Black Rose]

But Irving, couldn't we try for some kind of Insanity Plea? I mean, she only killed her meals when she lost control; it's not like she deliberately sought to kill. There's got to be something there. And really, she's dead. Don't we stop the litigation after the defendant is dead?

[daeudi_454]

Firedrake: Incinerate the demon spawn. Dragon's breath ought to be just as effective as a stake or sunlight. Any remorse it feels now is between it and the Creator. The undead must still be punished for their earthly transgressions.
ION: Positive: Search for a cure by researching biology as well as magic. Would call on mystics for help. Negative: Would do experiments on her while "looking for a cure". Does her blood have properties that can empower the still living? What about organ or bone marrow transplants? Does she still have eggs in her ovaries? Could they be fertilized?
Gawd Bless the phrase "Tissue Samples"
The PC: Would try to listen in on his player to determine what I think would work. This is obviously a plot hook, and will probably lead to an adventure ot two. Failing to find a cure, he would try to annoy the GM by finding a way to increase her EGO, so that she can actually beat the EGO roll to control her blood lust. Then he would try to recruit her into the team.
Quantum Cat: He won't allow himself to be publicly connected with a vampire, but he couldn't bring himself to destroy someone who feels remorse. Would refer her to team mates who deal with the occult. Would wonder about cloning her a new 'clean' body, and finding a way to do a mind transfer into it. (Everybody has a mind switch technique these days, after all.)

[Chuckg]

But Irving, couldn't we try for some kind of Insanity Plea? I mean, she only killed her meals when she lost control; it's not like she deliberately sought to kill. There's got to be something there. And really, she's dead. Don't we stop the litigation after the defendant is dead?

Errr, if you take the legal position that the defendant is dead, then they forfeit *all* their legal rights -- including that due process of law thing.

AAMOF, if I remember correctly (edit -- which I apparently didn't -- see my post below for the corrected version)

*SNIP*

[daeudi_454]

Champions Universe has the 'default' CU's legal position on the undead being that (unlike clones, aliens, AIs, and etc.), they are *not* 'persons' under the law, have no legal rights, and can be lit on fire by anybody who feels like it without any repercusion whatsoever.
hehehe.... could ya tell us where that's published? I got a teammate who is just asking for it. hmm... wonder how that would apply to ghosts...

[Chuckg]

hehehe.... could ya tell us where that's published? I got a teammate who is just asking for it. hmm... wonder how that would apply to ghosts...

*looks it up*

It's on page 48 of CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE, under the 'Constitutional Law' subheading of the "Superhumans and the Law" section.

Problem is, I remembered it wrong:


A number of Supreme Court rulings have stated that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection do not apply to sentient aliens, extradimensional entities, artificial intelligences, and the undead, because they are not “persons” under the law. On the other hand, they do apply to mutants, mutates, clones, and genetic constructs based on human stock.

Congress has, however, passed laws granting at least limited rights to all “independent, free-willed, sentient entities” in American territory.

[daeudi_454]

Overheard at a NASCAR tailgate party in the CU...
"Yeah- ya gotta watch those guys. Next thing ya know, zombies will be taking all the roofing and landscaping jobs, and those damned AIs will be signing up for welfare and wanting their Subroutines to go to our public schools."

[WhammeWhamme]

Errr, if you take the legal position that the defendant is dead, then they forfeit *all* their legal rights -- including that due process of law thing.

AAMOF, if I remember correctly (edit -- which I apparently didn't -- see my post below for the corrected version)

*SNIP*

If they are dead, then they cannot be convicted of a crime, and any damage done to their person would logically be desecration of a corpse and thus illegal.

Which is kinda evil to pull. :)

[Chuckg]

If they are dead, then they cannot be convicted of a crime, and any damage done to their person would logically be desecration of a corpse and thus illegal.

Which is kinda evil to pull. :)

Naaah. It's an *infectious* corpse. Burning it was a public health measure! :D

ObGaming -- in GURPS Technomancer, their modern-day magic-and-science-is-mixed setting, the US government took exactly this legal position re: vampires -- specifically, that they were human corpses (albeit *animated* human corpses) which were infected with a highly contagious and lethal plague, and that therefore destroying all vampires on sight was not murder, it was disposal of biohazardous waste and quarantine measures.

The US' official vampire hunting teams, complete with heavy weapons and flamethrowers, were therefore under the operational control of the CDC. :)

[McCoy]

Errr, if you take the legal position that the defendant is dead, then they forfeit *all* their legal rights -- including that due process of law thing.
If a former Vampire, she's not dead, she's born agian! Time to dust off the Delorian Desperation Defense (and remember it worked for Delorian).

[Brandi]

Irving: "I suppose it all depends on the legal status of the walking dead. If I, an animated statue, am considered a full citizen under the law [OOC comment: 4th edition Champions Universe had a whole interesting section on the legal status of nonhuman beings, but I don't have a copy on hand], I suspect that unfortunately this woman's undead status would have no bearing on her ability to be tried for murder, unless it could be shown that vampirism somehow affected her mental competence."

[WhammeWhamme]

If a former Vampire, she's not dead, she's born agian! Time to dust off the Delorian Desperation Defense (and remember it worked for Delorian).

What is the DDD?

Google comes up dry.

[Chimpira]

Nicolas Cross would light up a Doral (crappy cigarettes for the uninformed), cut the meter of his cab off and tell her, "Huh. That's pretty much what I thought I had to look forward to. Tell you what. You give me all the info on your friends that are not having a change of heart and then we can look into this. Personally I'm hopin' for the cure end of it. I really hate the taste of blood."

[McCoy]

What is the DDD?

Google comes up dry.
Sorry, I misspell again.

First the Official version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52616-2005Mar20.html


Flashy Automaker John Z. DeLorean, 80, Dies
Executive Known For Legal Troubles, Stylish Innovations

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 21, 2005; Page B05

John Z. DeLorean, 80, the brilliant but troubled automaker who arguably was as flamboyant as his car designs, died March 19 at a hospital in Summit, N.J., after a stroke.

Mr. DeLorean, the son of an autoworker, reached the executive ranks of General Motors Corp. with an astonishing series of successes that revolutionized the industry. He attributed his rise largely to an acute cultural awareness missing in the older executives he saw around him, men he once described as "sitting behind [a] desk, wearing a pair of those old high-top leather shoes and packing a big wad of cigars" in their shirt pockets.

His winning formula was strikingly simple and hip: Listen to rock and roll radio. From there, he said, one could gauge what young buyers wanted, what trends would develop. "It's the cheapest education you could get," he once said.

He won acclaim by introducing sports-car sexiness to conservative Pontiac with his GTO muscle car in the 1960s. He also brought Pontiac its first compact vehicle, predicting a trend to more fuel-efficient models. Ceaselessly inventive, he was credited with creating the overhead-cam engine, concealed windshield wipers, the lane-change turn signal, vertically stacked headlights, racing stripes and an emphasis on cockpitlike driver consoles. He said he had more than 200 patents.

Mr. DeLorean conveyed a manic, restless energy at GM, where he was viewed as Chevrolet's savior after a period of extensive decline for that brand. But his rise never seemed to satisfy him, and instead he felt more constricted by bosses who he said were out to get him and deliberately stymied his plans to improve cars and increase sales. If GM's sales were below 50 percent of total U.S. car sales, he said, the federal government would not have any incentive to dismantle the company.

With his overconfident, often dazzling demeanor and a string of innovations behind him, he widely had been expected to take over GM.

Instead, he left to form his own, eponymous company with the hope of creating an economical, "ethical" sports car. The British government gave nearly 100 million pounds to the business, hoping that Mr. DeLorean's plan to employ 2,000 workers near Belfast in Northern Ireland would cause support to dwindle for the Irish Republican Army.

Mr. DeLorean's dream was crusted with problems with the start, from undercapitalization to mechanical flaws in the car's design. It took seven years to create the DeLorean DMC-12, a sleek sports car with a stainless-steel body, gull-winged doors and a rear-mounted, V-6 fuel-injected engine.

The cost overruns raised the sticker price to more than $25,000, well beyond the reach of most car-buyers in 1981. The British government, under Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, demanded that Mr. DeLorean raise more money to keep the project solvent. When he was unable to meet the price of business, the plant closed in late 1982, having produced about 9,000 cars.

Embittered, Mr. DeLorean went after the Thatcher government with the gusto with which he previously attacked GM. Business had been flourishing, he wrote on his résumé, but, "The UK government closed [the plants] because the Catholic employees were said to be tithing to the IRA."

His troubles only grew. Returning to the United States, he became embroiled in a drug sting operation and was arrested in a Los Angeles hotel room in October 1982. He faced more than 60 years in prison.

Law enforcement officials said he intended to sell $24 million of cocaine to prop up his flailing auto business. To them, the case was clear-cut, complete with an FBI surveillance tape of Mr. DeLorean accepting a suitcase containing 55 pounds of cocaine and telling an undercover agent that "it's better than gold."

A series of maneuvers by Mr. DeLorean's legal defense team discredited the star witness, a convicted drug dealer turned government informer. Their main argument was entrapment by the government. Mr. DeLorean was acquitted on all drug charges and beat a later indictment on charges of defrauding investors in his company.

"We didn't need our extensive defense plan," he later wrote in his 1985 memoir, "DeLorean," by which point he said he was a born-again Christian. "My enemies had destroyed themselves in their effort to be my undoing. I must admit I identified with King David when he wrote the third Psalm: 'O Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me!' "

John Zachary DeLorean was born Jan. 6, 1925 in Detroit. His father was an Eastern European immigrant with a reputation for drunken brawling. The father later disappeared from the family, leaving Mr. DeLorean's mother, an Austrian immigrant, to provide for their four sons. The one luxury in Mr. DeLorean's life was music lessons, which helped him win a college scholarship.

After Army service during World War II, he graduated from the Lawrence Institute of Technology in Detroit, a renowned center for auto design. Later, while taking night classes, he received a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Chrysler Institute of Engineering, which was affiliated with the automaker, and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan.

One of his earliest jobs was at the Packard Motor Co., a luxury-car maker. There, he developed an innovative automatic transmission system that he called the "ultramatic."

With Packard under financial distress, Mr. DeLorean made the leap to Pontiac in 1956 and became director of advanced engineering. He immediately established himself as an idea man par excellence.

His designs for the Catalina and Bonneville won praise from notable auto racers, which lent them cachet. His compact Tempest model was named "car of the year" by Motor Trend magazine in 1961, the year he was promoted to GM chief engineer.

Radio, as he had noted, was instrumental in finding and then disseminating trends. With that in mind, he launched his greatest early venture, the GTO. "Little GTO," a song extolling the car's power, became a hit for Ronnie and the Daytonas. The car itself took its name from a Ferrari coupe called the Gran Turismo Omologato, but the design owed to fitting the powerful 389-cubic-inch, V-8 engine of the Bonneville into the smaller body of the Pontiac Tempest/LeMans.

The manufacturer sold all its 31,000 models by the end of the year, and the car continued to be a major moneymaker for the company for years. He continued to guide the company in accenting powerful, stylish models, such as the Firebird, and more luxurious models, such as the Grand Prix.

At this time, he was a familiar sight in the social pages, driving -- to much ridicule -- his Italian sports car. With dark, dashing good looks, he dated a series of beautiful film stars and showgirls, some of whom remarked on his hubris. One woman said she was unimpressed with his Christmas gift to her: a leather-bound portfolio featuring photographs of himself.

In 1969, Mr. DeLorean was asked to take over GM's flailing Chevrolet division. He cut administrative staffing at the top ranks and spent heavily on testing vehicles to ensure their quality. He introduced the compact, fuel-efficient Vega to compete with Ford's Pinto and GMC's Gremlin, but he otherwise found many of his proposals dismissed by his bosses.

Eventually becoming a GM vice president in 1972, he found ways to trim $1 billion in expenses, but he chafed at his superiors when they wanted a year's extension on meeting federal emission-control standards. "It was like standing in the boiler room and tending a machine and you were just watching it instead if running it," he told Fortune magazine.

In 1973, he resigned his $650,000-a-year position at GM, which gave him a Cadillac franchise in Florida as a retirement gift. He soon was lecturing about complacence within the car industry, and he helped business reporter J. Patrick Wright on a book-length expose, "On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors."

As his hopes for the DeLorean Motor Co. began to take shape, Mr. DeLorean retreated from the agreement with Wright. He feared that General Motors could "crush me like a grape" if he were associated with the book. An unauthorized version of the book, published in 1979, was heralded for its insight.

The nearly 40 legal cases stemming from the death of the DeLorean Motor Co. took him years to sort out. He lost a series of homes and faced constant litigation regarding unpaid fees to his attorneys and others. He declared bankruptcy in 1999.

More recently, Mr. DeLorean sold pricey watches over the Internet under the brand name DeLorean Time. It was his hope one day to sell new models of the DeLorean sports car, which had become a cult favorite since its starring role as a time machine in the film comedy "Back to the Future" (1985).

He told an interviewer: "Someone outside the country wants to build a plant for the cars, either here or outside the country, but I can't disclose that information."

His marriages to Elizabeth Higgins, and two models, Kelly Harmon and Cristina Ferrare ended in divorce. Survivors include his fourth wife, Sally; a child from each of his second, third and four marriages; three brothers; and two grandchildren.

[footnote added]
* This is where the DDD comes in. While this account focuses on the entraptment aspect (and by no stretch of the imagination did the FBI's actions rise to the legal standard of "entraptment"), once in jail, like so many others, John DeLorean had Found Jesus. The backup strategy, the DeLorean Desperation Defense, was that John, having been Born Again, was a New Creature, no longer the man he was before he was arrested, and could not be held responsable for any actions in his past life.

Again, the jury aquitted. A videotape of him buying 55 pounds of cocaine, and the jury aquitted.

[edit: Most fameous example of the DeLorean car was the stanless steel gull wing car in the Back to the Future trilogy.]

[Black Rose]

Penumbra: "I think it's a safe bet that being afflicted with a disease that requires you to feed on your "fellow human beings" for any sort of satisfying sustanance, and occasionally subjects you to rages that overwhelm your ability to control your feeding urges to the point where you overfeed - and thus kill the donor - could come under the heading of affecting mental competance."

[WhammeWhamme]

Sorry, I misspell again.

First the Official version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52616-2005Mar20.html


* This is where the DDD comes in. While this account focuses on the entraptment aspect (and by no stretch of the imagination did the FBI's actions rise to the legal standard of "entraptment"), once in jail, like so many others, John DeLorean had Found Jesus. The backup strategy, the DeLorean Desperation Defense, was that John, having been Born Again, was a New Creature, no longer the man he was before he was arrested, and could not be held responsable for any actions in his past life.

Again, the jury aquitted. A videotape of him buying 55 pounds of cocaine, and the jury aquitted.

[edit: Most fameous example of the DeLorean car was the stanless steel gull wing car in the Back to the Future trilogy.]

Thank you. Interesting reading.

I did figure DeLorean was spelt DeLorean (after google prompted me) but I still didn't find anything useful.

Sadly, I haven't repped enough different people yet.

[Brandi]

Penumbra: "I think it's a safe bet that being afflicted with a disease that requires you to feed on your "fellow human beings" for any sort of satisfying sustanance, and occasionally subjects you to rages that overwhelm your ability to control your feeding urges to the point where you overfeed - and thus kill the donor - could come under the heading of affecting mental competance."

I imagine that it also depends on how one decides if it's a disease or an addiction. A heroin addict (say) who kills in the commission of a robbery when trying to get some money or fencable loot for his next fix doesn't often get to use the diminished capability defense (at least not that I've seen).

[Black Rose]

I imagine that it also depends on how one decides if it's a disease or an addiction. A heroin addict (say) who kills in the commission of a robbery when trying to get some money or fencable loot for his next fix doesn't often get to use the diminished capability defense (at least not that I've seen).
Penumbra: This assumes that a vampire can be "weaned" off of blood entirely, or onto some sort of substitute, like animal or synthetic blood. If they can, then it's an addiction. Otherwise, it's a disease. Barring some sort of "superhuman" intervention, you can't wean normal people off of air.

[Zed-F]

Soulbarb checks to see if the vampire has a soul. If not, if her soul has already moved on... then there is no possibility for a cure, and Soulbarb is talking to an animated corpse. She'll have little option but to incinerate it with barbs of hellfire.

If the vampire has a soul, and it's not an evil one, it might be possible to cure her. Though she's never heard of such a thing, it sounds like it's time to do some research. Fortunately she has an extensive occult library to search in. "Of course, you'll probably have to turn yourself in, once you're cured, and I have no idea what PRIMUS will want to do with you. Fortunately for you, I don't expect they will really know either. You might go to prison for a while, though. Still, if it's a choice between prison or final death..."

Cerulean will consider this to be an interesting problem. If he can establish a lock on what magic makes the vampire a vampire, he might be able to suppress that magic. The question is, will that turn the woman into a dead person, or a living one? Only one way to find out... with her consent, of course.

[EverKnight]

Stockade doesn't know anything about the occult, nor does anyone else in the team. There are two sci-fi geeks in the team though and they may be able to work something out from a TV program. After consulting with them Stockade will go and rescue another team mate Resonance (a womanising showoff) from whatever trouble he's landed himself in with this vampire.