I got to thinking, what effect if any would HIV and diseases in blood have on a vampire when they drink blood of an infected person?
Anti-Social Neighbor
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I got to thinking, what effect if any would HIV and diseases in blood have on a vampire when they drink blood of an infected person?
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I'd go with none. Vampires consist primarily of dead tissue. There's nothing for viruses or bacteria to work with. Nothing for them to digest or be sustained.
Very High Powered Superhero
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Perhaps, being a rather mischievous game master; I'd say a mutation would occur. Something more sinister...Originally Posted by Curufea
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Well, whatever magic that keeps the vampire in an animated state may cause the diseases to become undead too...
Lion of Zion
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At worst I'd think they would become a carrier for the disease, but not suffer from its effects. This is really more a question of what you want for feel as opposed to logic since vampires are, in of themselves, fantasy. On the other hand, some might feel - or simply prefer - that vampires cannot be a carrier (even if they consumed the blood) by way of a simple necrotic hand-wave. How exactly the blood sustains them is also a matter of person interpretation.
Summation:
1) Carrier.
2) Not a carrier.
But that's just my 2AP.
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Grey haired guardian
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I agree its really up to personal interpretation. I've always pretty much felt Vampires were pretty much immune to disease. Tech based Vampires might be different though. However,if they regenerate like crazy I always figured their body defenses for infection and disease worked at the same level though. Immortality and immunity to sickness always seemed to go together to me anyway. As to a carrier supernaturals maybe, certainly legendary precedent, tech vampires if immune probably no IMO.
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Wybie Normal
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Oh, an undead version of AIDS... that could be such a devious Champions plot twist!
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The Dread Polack
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I imagine vampires as having a body in much the state a body has after death, but before decomposition. None of the organs or tissue are alive or functioning, but instead animated by magic. As such, diseases have the same effect they'd have on any inanimate structure. A blood disease would stay alive as long as the blood drank by the vampire stays alive how long that is is up to you. In the vampire rpg, vamps use blood to power their supernatural abilities, at which point, it "goes away," and I've carried that idea into other vampire myths, myself. Drinking the infected blood of a vampire might infect you if drinking the blood of an infected human would. Otherwise, the vamp isn't "infected" itself, so it normally can't be transmitted by sneezing, coughing, etc.
And that would be my 2 AP.
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Decuple Millennial Master
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One episode of the Forever Knight television show from some years back (short premise, vampire trying to "reform" for his past misdeeds) featured an experimental genetically-engineered virus designed to attack HIV, that got loose and proved to be the only disease that affected vampires. Lethally. It was threatening to spread and wipe them out, when one of them accidentally discovered the cure: drink HIV-infected blood.
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I agree that it depends on the vampire. Lumley's vampires were scared of Leprosy, a disease over vampires don't worry about.
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Official Killjoy
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Options:
1) Vampires are dead, and the disease organisms die.
2) Vampires' ability to heal includes destroying the microbes to die.
3) Vampires' supernatural state changes the microbes, causing the next plague.
4) It becomes a vampire-specific disease.
5) The vampire is a carrier without suffering from the disease.
6) The vampire suffers from the disease.
7) Etc.
Much of it simply comes down to the nature of vampirism in the setting.
Last edited by Kristopher; Apr 26th, '07 at 11:32 AM.
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In my Via setting, vampirism is a curse, afflicting only two people, and neither of them are actually dead. A side effect of the curse is an immunity to diseases. So, if they got loose in the real world and drank blood from an HIV-infected host, nothing would happen.
If I'd built them differently, it might wind up differently, but I've heard a lot of vampire mythos that have vampires immune to disease. I think the idea is that they're merely ingesting the blood, not everything else with it.
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Official Killjoy
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Maybe, but it's kinda hard to drink blood without getting all the little stuff that's in the blood.
"When all the small pleasures and freedoms of life become the property of the state, you are fighting to exist." -- Nafisi
"I think your approach is entirely valid and perhaps there's some merit, but I tend toward's Kristopher's way of thinking." -- Zornwil
"It is one thing to suspend your disbelief.
It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead."
"Never wrestle with a pig. You end up dirty and the pig likes it."
Who, me?
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It is, but if it's not absorbed into the body, it would be discarded as waste. I suppose it implies a more advanced sorting mechanism for what's waste or what isn't, but these writers also imply vampirism is an advanced evolutionary step.
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Lumley's vampires weren't undead though, but parasitic mutants.
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