Jump to content

Lucius

Recommended Posts

My problem with vampires in general is the ecology of them. As a population element they should run away and within a generation the entire population is vampire. There's no negative feedback in any version I've ever heard of. And if vampires die without ordinary humans to feed on, then in a couple of generations everyone is dead, after the last humans are consumed and then the vamps starve.

 

Humans have always hunted their favored prey to extinction, and then moved on to less favored things, until they learned agriculture.

 

The classic vampire story has vamps as hunters, and looking at the population dynamics, extinction is absolutely unpreventable. Ordinary humans go the way of the giant ground sloth and the moa and the California sardine fishery.

 

P. N. Elrod's vampire novels (two series, connected but in different time periods--one Revolutionary-era US, the other 1930s Chicago) address the issue. Vampires can drink from humans without killing them, and with no risk of ever turning them. The only way to potentially turn a human into a vampire is to exchange blood. And even then, it's like sex--it might work after one try, or it might take many tries, or it might not work at all. And you won't know until the human dies (by whatever means, including old age) and comes back as a vampire...or doesn't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's an urban fantasy series (Women of the Otherworld--all the protagonists are women) in which there are vampires. They can drink blood without killing...but once a year they MUST kill someone. It's the price of their extended lives; it's paid for with other peoples' lives. So even the "good" vampires are killers.

 

Yeah, in my game, vampires extend their lives by taking other people's life force, so it's not possible to drink blood without harming someone. You might not kill them, but at the very least, you are going to make them very ill. In this setting there are no "good" vampires as such. Even those who are not overtly evil still feed on sentient beings - the best you can hope for is that they feed on your enemies, but if there are no enemies at hand, they are going to feed on you. 

 

As to the vampire ecology thing, vampires in this setting have powers that give them advantages over normal humans, but they're more like the Dracula of Bram Stoker than the mary-sue invincible monsters of Ann Rice or modern vampire films. If they were so powerful, they would have destroyed human societies long ago.

 

What makes  them potentially fearful foes is not their vampiric powers - but the fact that they can live for centuries or even millennia: the Vampire Queen of Vulea isn't feared because she's a vampire (or at least not just for that) but because she's an 800 year-old sorceress, with all the power and knowledge accumulated in that time.  Most newly-created vampires are more powerful than ordinary people, but are no match for an experienced adventurer. In addition, in my game, a victim only rises as a vampire if killed by feeding. That requires either a vampire completely gorging itself, making repeated visits to one victim, or a group feeding. These things happen, of course, but in general a vampire's feeding will leave its victim enfeebled, but they'll recover in a few weeks - if the vampire does not physically kill them to cover its tracks. Vampires have the problem that they need to feed every day or so - even in a large city, killing or making severely ill a couple of hundred people a year is going to risk drawing attention, and there are plenty of monster-killing heroes out there. That gives a vampire a strong incentive not to leave new vampires lying around.

 

cheers, Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not her vampire mythology that's the problem. It's literally everything else about her poorly executed work that's contrived.

 

Point taken.

 

...Vampires have the problem that they need to feed every day or so - even in a large city, killing or making severely ill a couple of hundred people a year is going to risk drawing attention, and there are plenty of monster-killing heroes out there. That gives a vampire a strong incentive not to leave new vampires lying around.

 

cheers, Mark

I think in most settings with vampires, something like this is the answer to Cancer's concerns. Sure, IF every victim bitten becomes a vampire that goes out and indiscriminately bites more victims, vampirism will spread exponentially until everyone's a vampire and then they all starve. But I think stories in which every victim is automatically a vampire are the minority, and often a vampire has to deliberately want to make a new vampire and must do something specific to make it happen - and why would a vampire WANT lots of other vampires around? Count Dracula enjoyed having a gaggle of "brides" but he never turned the entire population of Transylvania into a tribe of vampires - he had no reason to do so, and good reasons not to.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says vampires suck

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a module for a oriental style dnd game. While there are no vampires in it, I think that the zombiea are a nice twist. The original evil castle has been buried for thousands of years. The evil sorceress enslaved the original population, starved them and made them eat some vauables. Its the hunger that turned them into zombies. Also the place is cursed so when the players enter into the dungeon proper, players make a CON roll or be cursed. Each hour the desire to eat becomes even stronger to the point that they will want to bite another human. If that happens, then the player becomes a zombie.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What makes  them potentially fearful foes is not their vampiric powers - but the fact that they can live for centuries or even millennia: the Vampire Queen of Vulea isn't feared because she's a vampire (or at least not just for that) but because she's an 800 year-old sorceress, with all the power and knowledge accumulated in that time.  Most newly-created vampires are more powerful than ordinary people, but are no match for an experienced adventurer.

 

I think the show Supernatural is a good model for this sort of thing (at least the early seasons). Yes, vampires (and werewolves and lots of other things that go bump in the night) are deadly threats, and one-on-one probably superior to humans in many ways. BUT...a motivated human, who knows the score, is nonetheless a mortal to them. Humans don't have fangs or claws or the strength, speed, toughness and so forth of the monsters--but they can use weapons and tactics, and exploit the monster's known weaknesses, and will. Hunters aren't a threat (just) because they're experienced adventurers--they talk to one another, and leave records for their colleagues (and later generations) to find, which helps negate the monsters' key advantage: secrecy and non-belief in them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the show Supernatural is a good model for this sort of thing (at least the early seasons). Yes, vampires (and werewolves and lots of other things that go bump in the night) are deadly threats, and one-on-one probably superior to humans in many ways. BUT...a motivated human, who knows the score, is nonetheless a mortal to them. Humans don't have fangs or claws or the strength, speed, toughness and so forth of the monsters--but they can use weapons and tactics, and exploit the monster's known weaknesses, and will. Hunters aren't a threat (just) because they're experienced adventurers--they talk to one another, and leave records for their colleagues (and later generations) to find, which helps negate the monsters' key advantage: secrecy and non-belief in them.

 

And of course, in a fantasy setting, they don't even have the non-belief thing going for them - in fact, the reverse: many a normal person has met a grisly fate because his neighbours thought he was a vampire or a werewolf.

 

Paladin. "But how do you know he was a vampire?"

Mob: "Well, he stayed dead when we cut his head off, drove a stake though his heat and stuffed his mouth with garlic!"

Paladin: "OK. Seems legit"

 

cheers, Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, the classic vampire had a strict limitation on its ability to spread: one could not become a vampire who did not choose to succumb to the vampire. One had to be invited in, and allow themselves to be bit. Several times.

 

Those who did not not only had knowledge to defend themselves, but had the daylight hours to attack.

 

Now, by the nineties, they became super heroes and lost the whole 'damnation' thing, even if the angst of Lestat et al made one forget that point.

 

Supernatural vampires, in no story I'm familiar with, can starve to death.

 

One of the advantages of different takes on a creature can easily be seen in the vampire. The vampire tales of the seventies did not frighten anymore by the eighties, so they became glossier, and, with movies like The Lost Boys[/i}, popularized the pretty redeemable vampire that then would become so popular in the nineties, so that vampires moved almost completely out of horror. Actually, Let Me In is a nice, haunting return to more horror based vampires, imo. Near Dark would be a good example of an unusual take on the vampire as a horror story before this as well.

 

Ravensloft would be a good example of a departure, in its time, from vampires as irredeemable monsters in games.

 

Another example would be the classic Nasferatu vampire, which, for years, was not generally the go-to appearance, but has occasionally been used to great effect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These are cool vampires, so I like them too. Perhaps, the use of them would be in smaller scale, such as a certain type of vampires.

Honestly, the idea of this is brilliant, but easily can be exploited. Many vampires could "feed" upon different people to constantly increase their power.

 

 

 

Let's Say We Have A Vampire With The Following Stats.

 

 

20 Str

15 Dex

25 Con 

40 Ego

20 Int 

25 Pre 

4 Ocv

4 Dcv

 

They could feed on a powerful fighter and increase their STR, CON,  OCV, and Probably DCV. 

They could feed on a strong willed wizard and increase their EGO, INT, and PRE. 

They could feed on a rogue and increase their DEX, EGO, and INT. 

 

They could continue to feed until they became so strong that feed only keeps them alive. 

 

 

 

As Words Die, The World Is Confused On How A Palindromedary Excretes

Well, there is a natural limit. If you become more like your food, you will need to find the power hungry to eat in order to not lose your own preference for power. The power hungry warrior, wizard, rogue, or the character's motivation will quickly change to match the personalities it has eaten. Such power hungry personages, if they actually stand to contribute an improvement to the vampire's power, will also be likely, in life, to have means to fight back.

 

Just my thought on it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

P. N. Elrod's vampire novels (two series, connected but in different time periods--one Revolutionary-era US, the other 1930s Chicago) address the issue. Vampires can drink from humans without killing them, and with no risk of ever turning them. The only way to potentially turn a human into a vampire is to exchange blood. And even then, it's like sex--it might work after one try, or it might take many tries, or it might not work at all. And you won't know until the human dies (by whatever means, including old age) and comes back as a vampire...or doesn't.

But if vampires don't die (which is a feature of the undead) then no matter how slowly the population grows, it never shrinks. And if you have a good run of fecundity you can accelerate that growth, but nothing reverses it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But if vampires don't die (which is a feature of the undead) then no matter how slowly the population grows, it never shrinks. And if you have a good run of fecundity you can accelerate that growth, but nothing reverses it.

 

But vampires do die. In pretty much any story. They're unaging and powerful, but not truly immortal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But if vampires don't die (which is a feature of the undead) then no matter how slowly the population grows, it never shrinks. And if you have a good run of fecundity you can accelerate that growth, but nothing reverses it.

 

 

But vampires do die. In pretty much any story. They're unaging and powerful, but not truly immortal.

But they're hard to kill.

If you have a low "birth" rate, and even lower "death" rate, the population of vampires will increase inexorably. Cancer's perception seems to be that the usual run of vampire fiction presents them in a way that implies exactly that - an inexorable, if not actually an exponential, increase in the proportion of vampires to Humans.

 

I perceive the opposite implication. One of my favorite examples is in the movie Blade. Some High Council of Vampire Elders or somesuch holds a meeting about the movies Big Bad gathering vampires in great numbers and attracting Human attention thus threatening the "Agreement" they had with Human authorities. It wasn't clear to me what the "authorities" got out of the deal, but it was obvious that for the vampires it was about protection - they were afraid for their own survival.

 

Another example is the game Vampire: The Masquerade. Vampires in that game like to refer to their prey as "cattle" but the very name of the game proves they are lying through their pointy little teeth. No one hides from cattle.

 

As sinanju points out, it is an unusual vampire story that has more active vampires at large at the end than it does at the beginning.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says Humans like to invent scary monsters but nothing they invent is as scary as themselves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But if vampires don't die (which is a feature of the undead) then no matter how slowly the population grows, it never shrinks. And if you have a good run of fecundity you can accelerate that growth, but nothing reverses it.

 

Right, which is why any sensible vampire fiction (and I am including RPG storylines in the mix) has to have a reason why that doesn't happen. In the game world I described, vampires are harder to kill than humans - they don't age, they don't get sick, they heal what would be mortal wounds to a human, and they are in general, a little stronger, and faster and they can see in the dark - plus they have a few other tricks up their sleeves. But although they don't die of natural causes, they can still know the eternal rest that comes from being hacked into a hundred, bloody, quivering pieces. In addition, they burn in sunlight, and they need to feed. Vampires don't die of starvation, but they do have a low level berserk that is triggered by not feeding - eventually an "abstinent" vampire is going to flip out and start feeding on the first warm thing it comes across - in fact, in my game, that's how most newly-created vampires actually get into the business. They hold off murdering people as long as they can until the Red Thirst overwhelms them ... at which point there's usually no way back.

 

Think about that for a minute. Let's say you are a simple carpenter who gets drained one night by a passing posse of vampires, who toss your body in the river. You wake up a few nights later possessed of a raging thirst for blood. What are you going to do? If you go back home, how are you going to explain that now you can't go out into the sunlight. How are you going to deal with the Red Thirst? Start preying on hobos and passing travellers? How long before people start noticing your victims? You might be physically superior to what you were, but you can't hold off a raging mob with pitchforks and fire, which is what is going to happen if your neighbours work out what is going on. And you know that vampire hunters exist - and you know that your family knows, too.  How long are you going to be able to hide? On the other hand, if you just run, how are you going to live without any resources except some muddy grave clothes?

 

A wealthy merchant might be able to call on more resources at short notice, but the whole "can't go into the sunlight thing" is pretty hard to hide, even if you can smooth over the awkward "Yeah, I was dead, but now I'm better, thanks" conversation.

 

The mortality rate (or un-mortality rate, or re-mortality rate ... whatever) among newly-created vampires is pretty high. So the population grows slowly, and is subject to sharp reversals when people work out that there are vampires around.

 

cheers, Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are two books where the vampires grow exponentially and wipe out most of the humans on their turf: Salem's Lot, and They Thirst.

The surviving humans kill the lead vampire in Salem's Lot and I think a lot of the vampires who have to return to their graves in the daylight. A miracle happens at the end of They Thirst and a tidal wave kills all the vampires in LA before they can spread out of the valley.

CES    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There was a movie, can't recall the name, where there was vampire overpopulation.

 

I think Markdoc hit on one aspect, which is the initial mortality rate. The sun, alone, is a pretty bad vulnerability. Dracula was nobility, but the lesser spawn he put out were not often as safe as him.

 

Depending on the vampire story, having to have native soil is also a pretty cumbersome requirement. It would tie the vampire who, in life, was a pauper, to his burial place during the early, vulnerable years.

 

Further, Dracula is not kind to those beneath him. The vampires who survive are not going to risk their survival, or their access to blood, by allowing just anyone become vampires.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think Markdoc hit on one aspect, which is the initial mortality rate. The sun, alone, is a pretty bad vulnerability. Dracula was nobility, but the lesser spawn he put out were not often as safe as him.

 
Yeah, they tend to handwave this aspect in a lot of fiction/film, but it would make it difficult to fit into society, especially a premodern urban society, where people tend to live very closely together. If people know that vampires actually exist, it makes it even harder to pull off. As an aside, since having the windows on your house or apartment blocked up to prevent sunburn looks kind of suspicious, in my game world, vampires often choose to sleep in the cellar, big closets or in closable boxes, which is where he legend arose that they sleep in crypts or coffins (though to be fair, both of those would be safe places to sleep if you are a vampire! It's just not a requirement).
 

Depending on the vampire story, having to have native soil is also a pretty cumbersome requirement. It would tie the vampire who, in life, was a pauper, to his burial place during the early, vulnerable years.

 

That's a very good point. In my game, resting each night in "native soil" or "grave soil" is not a requirement, but a vampire who is mortally wounded  - but not killed - will regenerate in his grave (or place where they became a vampire, if they don't have a grave). So, for a travelling vampire, it makes sense to carry some of your grave soil around so you can regenerate there, instead of wherever it was you started.

 

cheers, Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

I've always been rather fond of the physiology and mythology presented for Vampires in the Legacy of Kain and Soul Reaver line of video games.

 

In their lore, Vampirism is a curse which the siring vampire can subject any corpse to. Although there is an implication that only powerful or fully mature vampires can sire fledglings. Fledglings are weaker than their sire, and also their older siblings. Kain only sired something like eight vampires himself, the last of which was so weak that his immortal flesh still putrefied. Given the number of equally powerful vampires you encounter during the course of the games, it is safe to assume that this is to do with Kain siring them all at the same time, one after another. His progeny, who became his generals, obviously learned from his mistake and waited for their reserves to refill after each siring before doing so again.

 

Vampire physiology is highly mutable, but as a generally rule share the following traits:

Vampires regenerate very, very quickly. Even severe injuries heal in a few moments. Destroying their body, or impalement prevents regeneration. If you remove the impaling implement, they immediately come back to life, regardless of how long the corpse has been left in that state.

Vampires thirst for human blood, but they don't appear to actually need to consume it to survive. Which is to their benefit, as by the end of the games' timeline, humanity was all but extinct; only one heavily fortified city full of free humans, and a few scattered cults that worshiped vampires remained.

Vampires are vulnerable to sunlight, fledglings especially so, but ancients much less so. A vampire in direct sunlight is typically immolated and destroyed soon thereafter.

Vampires are vulnerable to water. A vampire submerged in water dissolves as if it were strong acid... I assume rainfall would hurt like hell, but thanks to their regeneration wouldn't be lethal.

 

Vampires mutate over the course of centuries, tending to acquire animalistic features. Towards the end of the games' timeline most of them had become quite monstrous. This can allow them to gain unique abilities, or over come their common vulnerabilities. For example, there was a group of vampires whose bodies had become shark-like, and had overcome their vulnerability to water at the expense of heightening their vulnerability to sunlight. The descendants of each House tended to develop the same abilities and monstrous appearance as their progenitor. However, the heads of each house (despite being siblings), all developed differently from one another and their progenitor; Kain, whom by the end of the games' timeline all remaining vampires were ultimately descended from.

 

Vampires are cursed in body and soul. Unless their body is destroyed, their soul will continue to wander the spirit world until eventually it's curse warps it into a creature that thrives on devouring souls instead of consuming blood. An ability which the vampire retains if even given the opportunity to return to its body (such as by removing an impaling implement. Likewise, until their soul is devoured by something else, a vampires body will never decay (though it can still be destroyed if regeneration is prevented)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...