Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

[SSgt Baloo]

I just finished listening to Science Fridays on Public Radio. One of the subject for today was the zombie psychology. A few days ago I watched a natural history of werewolves, presented by Animal Planet (Hint: mutated rabies virus). It got me thinking. How have you handled vampires, zombies, werewolves and other things that go bump in the night? A fantasy campaign's version of these creatures will necessarily be different than the "same" creature in a science fiction, contemporary adventure, or superhero setting.

 

In many of my campaigns, vampires, werewolves and "ghouls" (my own version of zombies) were the result of different strains of the same disease, a disease that altered the physiology and psychology of the victim. There were subtypes of each different kind. For instance there were two primary varieties of werewolf. One I called "Full Lycanthropy Syndrome" (FLS) and the other was "Lon Chaney's Syndrome" (LCS). In FLS, the subject fully transformed into a close-but-not-quite-wolf-like creature that cound run on all fours. LCS victims transformed only partway.

 

Full Lycanthropy Syndrome

 

Lon Chaney Syndrome

 

As you can see, the LCS victim has better luck meeting women, but they usually don't stay conscious for long enough to create a mutually-satisfying relationship.

 

Vampires came in several varieties, from the classic

movie-style Dracula clone, who looked human, had loads of charisma (and possibly mind control of one sort or another), could turn into a bat or mist (sometimes a wolf), etc. Then there were other varieties that were more akin to rats (Nosferatu, anyone?) There were other varieties in different parts of the world, where an isolated population had mutated into something a bit "different" like the Japanese kappa.

 

If vampires and werewolves were the top predators, then ghouls were the jackals of the undead -- they usually only ate the flesh of the dead, but could and would kill someone and stash a body until it had "ripened" if they couldn't find something already dead. Most varieties lived secret lives near sources of dead bodies. Some were zombielike (slow and stupid), while others were cunning, wily creatures.

 

Other monsters, like Frankenstein's monster, were assembled with the aid of Mad Science. Others came from another world (the Blob, The Thing) or were the result of radioactivity or other rubber science (Them, The Beast from 20000 fathoms).

 

How have you, in specific or general terms, handled these (or other) kinds of "monster" in your campaigns?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Interesting discussion: kudos. I’ve never been completely happy with the way I’ve done monster psychology. The best I’ve come up with, to try and emulate the ‘alien’ is to create a ‘priority table’ as a role playing aid: zombies might simply have:

 

1. Kill

2. Eat

 

Whereas vampires will usually have:

 

1. Seduce

2. Eat

3. Kill

 

Well, maybe a bit more than that J, but it keeps me honest when I’m playing them as NPCs. As a player I prize consistency and as a GM I try and deliver that.

 

I’ve never really played an enormous amount of ‘horror’, so I don’t know that I’ve ever really had an overall vision of the undead. I do know I’ve always been reluctant to number werewolves amongst them, seeing them as something rather different.

 

Mind you, I think if I did want to have a global vision I would probably plump for some sort of demonic possession. That would allow very different abilities and psychology within a set framework. It does make undead PCs rather difficult to explain though: if there is a vampire ‘character’ why do they not simply spend their time seducing, eating and killing their way through their team mates (OK, well, some do, whether they are vampires or not…)? You would be playing, in effect, the possessing entity and, whilst in the werewolf, control may be shared (sometimes the demon, sometimes the human) in most undead, the demon is all there is. I suppose that is (largely) the Buffyverse approach.

 

Although I do not play a lot of Horror, I do play a lot of superhero games, and, IMO, the considerations as to psychology are often similar. Someone with (significant) superpowers is generally able to do more or less what they want and get away with it. To me, that is why the majority of those with superpowers become evil, or at least self serving. Heroes are largely the exception. Of course, villains will (generally) be seeking to dominate those clearly weaker than themselves i.e. they will generally not be going after superpowered targets, and may quail when facing opponents they can not easily beat – which can explain a lot about villain psychology – or at least the psychology of a lot of villains.

[teh bunneh]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

This is a handout I gave to my players in my Fantasy Hero game, describing the differences between different types of Undead...

 

A Primer on the Undead

As Told by Chrissie Rocks (Taleweaver and Expert in All Manner of Things)

 

There are two major types of undead: the Corporeal and the Incorporeal. The Corporeal, since they have physical bodies, are the easiest to classify (and to deal with… but more on that later).

 

Starting with the lowest type, you have Zombies, sometimes known as the Shambling Dead (or any number of other terms). These are the corpses of unfortunate people who are animated with necromantic magic (banned in every civilized nation in the world). They are more-or-less mindless and have no free will of their own; they follow the commands of the one who created them to the best of their ability – though they have no imagination or incentive, so the commands have to be very literal and fairly simple. The Shambling Dead are, for the most part, very slow and are noted for their jerky and clumsy movements. However, they are extremely strong, immune to pain, fear, magic that affects the mind or the senses, and are almost impossible to kill. You need to chop their bodies into pieces before they stop coming. Hacking or bludgeoning weapons are best – arrows and spears are pretty useless against them. Also, a properly cast counterspell (like Dispel Magic or Drain the Flow) can disrupt the magic that animates them, turning them back into harmless corpses.

 

The problem with using necromantic spells is that sometimes, the Shambling Dead can develop a mind of their own. No one knows why, but Zombies have been known to turn on their creators and kill them. An uncontrolled Shambler is known most commonly as a Ghoul or a Flesh-Eater. These creatures aren't intelligent per se, but they have a predatory cunning and have been known to stalk their victims, lay simple traps, and set ambushes. They also tend to work together, like a wolf-pack, which makes them even more dangerous. Most Ghouls retain the slow, clumsy movements they had when they were simply animated corpses, but some are blindingly fast as well as being strong and hard to hurt. Watch out for them! While regular Zombies don't need any sustenance (since they are animated by magic), Ghouls lust after flesh – fresh or rotten, it doesn't seem to matter – and they greedily devour their kills.

 

Wights, unlike Ghouls or Zombies, were not created by a necromancer but instead apparently just rose from the grave of their own volition. They are sometimes found in old graveyards or battlefields. Some of them simply defend their resting place; others are very aggressive and they'll leave their graves to hunt. Like Ghouls, they tend to have some cunning and are not just mindless monsters.

 

Vampires are the most powerful of the corporeal walking dead. They retain all the intelligence and initiative they had while alive, coupled with an insatiable hunger for the flesh and/or blood of the living. They retain all the strengths of the lesser undead – strength, speed, near invulnerability – and few of their weaknesses. Most of them, it is said, also command great magical powers. They can hypnotize you with a glance, transform into animal shapes, vanish into thin air, fly, or perform any number of other stunts. Some people refer to Vampires as Ghasts, but most scholars agree that a Ghast is something different – sort of like a Vampire (intelligent, fast, strong), but without all the fancy magical powers.

 

How do you hurt a Corporeal Undead? Like I said before, they're really tough. Arrows are worthless, and spears aren't much better. Most of them you can hack to pieces with a sword or axe, but until they're completely shredded they'll just keep attacking – they don’t know fear and they can't feel pain. Holy items are said to work really well against them, though. Holy water dissolves their flesh, and priests can frighten them away with the power of their faith. Folklore has it that the touch of pure silver burns them, and that they can't stand the smell, taste, or touch of salt. I don't know if that's true or not. Enchanted weapons cut through their rotten flesh like a hot knife through butter, but the same can be said for enchanted weapons cutting through just about anything.

 

 

And if you thought the Shambling Dead were bad, there's the Incorporeal Undead… These things are disembodied spirits, doomed to haunt the earth. They don't really exist in the real world – they have no physical form. But you can see them, and they can see you. Worse, they can touch you, and that's bad. The Incorporeal Undead are known generically as Ghosts – if you don't know what you're dealing with specifically, it's a Ghost.

 

The most benign (if such a word can be used to describe the Undead) types are known as Phantoms. They aren't much more than just a ghostly image, or perhaps a sound. They tend to haunt one specific location, and don't normally interact with the real world. They seem to be stuck in an endless loop of actions – they keep doing the same things, over and over again. They might replay a murder scene, or an accident, or a battle, or even something innocent like opening and closing a door. But if you get too close, you'll risk being drawn into their world and becoming a part of their curse. There are stories of people who help them break their curse so they are free to move on to the next world, but there are also a lot of stories about people who tried to do that and who disappeared forever.

 

Specters are sort of like Phantoms in that they haunt a particular area, but unlike Phantoms they are extremely hostile to all living creatures. If you enter a place haunted by a Specter, they will come after you. Some of them are unable to manifest in the real world, instead trying to harm the intruders by attacking them indirectly (like pushing a bookcase over on you). These "non-manifesting" Specters are sometimes called Apparitions. Others become semi-real and will physically attack. For the most part, Specters can't leave the specific area that they haunt, but there are some stories of Specters that can "attach" themselves (for brief periods) to people who've managed to escape from their deadly grasp. There is some debate among experts whether Apparitions are more dangerous than Specters, but if you ask me, the argument is a stupid one – they're both things you want to stay away from.

 

Wraiths, like Specters, are extremely hostile. They hate the living. In addition, they are not limited to one particular time or place – they can manifest anywhere and at any time. It is said that once you've attracted the attention of a Wraith, you can never escape their curse until you are dead.

 

Shadows may or may not be actual Undead. Some people think they are Thaumaturgists who are lost in the Land of Shadows, somewhere between this world and the next. They may have had an accident while teleporting, or attempting to travel between worlds, or something else entirely. Fear their touch, because it can draw you into their world – essentially turning you into a Shadow, too.

 

How do you stop a Ghost? That's even tougher than stopping one of the Walking Dead. Weapons don’t harm them – not even silver ones. Magical weapons… may or may not hurt them. The stories are contradictory and inconclusive. Priests can drive them away with the power of their faith, and some of them are thought to recoil away from holy symbols (but I wouldn't rely on that). Some spells work against them, but most don't. Don't let one of them touch you – they'll suck the soul right out of your body. And I've heard stories of people who merely caught sight of a Ghost who aged ten years. Best bet when dealing with a Ghost? Run away – and pray it's not a Wraith!

 

Oh, and one more thing! The worst thing about the Undead is that many of them have the ability to drag their victims into their curse – turning them into Undead monsters as well! Everyone pretty much agrees that this is the most terrifying power of the Living Dead. So be careful!

[Cancer]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

I've given thought to the evolution and ecology of a number of creatures ... usually sentient races ... in a science fiction context, but I've never done this for undead. Well, I have done undead once, in terms of the epidemiology of a transmissible/infectious form of undead. If (for example) lycanthropy is infectious and transmitted by a bite from a werewolf, you have to have a good reason why the entire population isn't all werewolves, since it usually seems like werewolves are greatly superior beings. (This is even more so for vampires. And don't give me the "birth control" argument for vampire population control; people only learn that lesson after irreversible damage has been done, if they learn it at all.)

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Perhaps both lycanthropy and vampirism have to be sufficiently established in the host body before they can create a new werewolf or vampire - so it is only survivors of attacks who are ever likely to 'turn' - and survivors may be rare indeed in most cases.

 

Or it may be that, like most diseases, the body has natural defences, and some can fight off an infection...or if they can not fight off an infection then perhaps the most likely result is death...it is just a very small number of individuals - perhaps a generic marker or rare blood group - who can be transformed by the disease.

[Peregrine]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Or it may be that' date=' like most diseases, the body has natural defences, and ... if they can not fight off an infection then perhaps the most likely result is death...it is just a very small number of individuals - perhaps a generic marker or rare blood group - who can be transformed by the disease.[/quote']

 

That is simple, clear, and elegant. Kudos!

[Wolf]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

*snip*

A few days ago I watched a natural history of werewolves, presented by Animal Planet (Hint: mutated rabies virus).

*SNIP*

 

I saw that one too, it was pretty cool. I enjoyed delving into their fantasy world for that, what... 2 hour, period.

 

As for working out Monstrous ecology's ... I haven't done it yet, however for my Otherworlds War campaign I may end up having to do just that... Nice thread for giving me ideas.

 

Can't give Rep to teh bunneh, but that's an awesome handoout.... I think I need to work on things like that. A general level of character knowledge is a good thing.

 

We had a 3.5 game where my character ended always running into undead for some reason or another, luck just seemed to have it that he was the one who ran into more undead. So he started to try to figure out bits of their physicality. In the end he had gotten to several facts (utilizing a variant on the Scientific Method; state a theory, test it, revise).

1) Undead are vulnerable to steel- Swords were able to kill (we had a majority of fighters)

2) Thunder kills undead in one or two Shots (honestly it seemed every time we killed a major undead, thunder was part of the endgame) then our major damaging fighter got a long sword of thundering, and that just about did it for the theory.

3) Roaming undead are good for lighting on fire, if you need the battlefield lit (as the military uses flares currently), most especially via the Ranger's bow and arrow. Or use as a zombie depth gauge (just get him to fall and light him on fire (usually a held action), works quite well.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Not really on topic, but this got me thinking...A long time ago, playing DnD I set a bunch of zombies on a party of level 4-5: no contest, you might think BUT, then, I didn't tell the party that they were facing zombies. These things rose up out of a swamp, covered int hick, clinging mud - they had to be some sort of swamp creature - right?

 

So no one tried turning them, or using holy water or any of that stuff - they just fought them. Now zombie numbers in DnD are usually predicated on the fact that half (or more) will get turned. Zombies are reasonably tough and very persistent. It turns out 10 zombies really can be a challenge even for low-mid level characters if they are not using the right tactics

 

So, based on this experience, it seems to me that most intelligent undead will do their best to disguise their nature - so their opponents will not use the most effective tactics against them. Maybe get a human henchman to dress up in a cape with a couple of potato fangs, just to get them wasting turning 'charges'.

 

You can up the danger level of virtually anything by playing it smart.

[Cancer]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Perhaps both lycanthropy and vampirism have to be sufficiently established in the host body before they can create a new werewolf or vampire - so it is only survivors of attacks who are ever likely to 'turn' - and survivors may be rare indeed in most cases.

 

Or it may be that, like most diseases, the body has natural defences, and some can fight off an infection...or if they can not fight off an infection then perhaps the most likely result is death...it is just a very small number of individuals - perhaps a generic marker or rare blood group - who can be transformed by the disease.

 

Right, but the ecology is not complete until you specify what the end point of the vampire/werewolf usually is, and what the usual lifetime of one is. Then you can talk about a balance between human/uninfected population and werewolf or vampire population. Until then, you're just in a transient condition as the infected individuals take over.

 

To express it mathematically: No matter how small your birth term, until you have a nonzero death term, your population will grow monotonically until all possible targets of infection have been converted.

 

(This is my great irritation with the wild upswing in vampires' popularity in the last couple decades: Why hasn't everyone turned into a vampire yet? If there's only one Buffy out there dusting 'em, it shouldn't take too long before 6 billion humans and one vampire and one slayer turns into 6 million vampires and one slayer. Yeah, only one in a thousand humans turns vampire ... but if there's no effective way to get rid of them, their population grows until they exhaust all possible conversions.)

 

So what kills vampires? Or lycanthropes?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Right, but the ecology is not complete until you specify what the end point of the vampire/werewolf usually is, and what the usual lifetime of one is. Then you can talk about a balance between human/uninfected population and werewolf or vampire population. Until then, you're just in a transient condition as the infected individuals take over.

 

To express it mathematically: No matter how small your birth term, until you have a nonzero death term, your population will grow monotonically until all possible targets of infection have been converted.

 

(This is my great irritation with the wild upswing in vampires' popularity in the last couple decades: Why hasn't everyone turned into a vampire yet? If there's only one Buffy out there dusting 'em, it shouldn't take too long before 6 billion humans and one vampire and one slayer turns into 6 million vampires and one slayer. Yeah, only one in a thousand humans turns vampire ... but if there's no effective way to get rid of them, their population grows until they exhaust all possible conversions.)

 

So what kills vampires? Or lycanthropes?

 

OK: I'll bite...

 

Lycanthropes are not generally (well except in the UNDERWORLD films) any longer lived than humans - so they have the attrition of aging...and they turn into mindless beasts once a month, when they can be killed by sufficient trauma.

 

Vampires do (apparently) live forever, and generally remain in self control.

 

So, if I had to come up with a natural killer of vampires...I'd say vampires were probably favourite. Perhaps vampire blood is particularly nutritious things at the top of a food chain are usually kept in check by themselves, others of their kind.

 

Other than that, if we are going the disease vector for the spreadf of vampirism, well, I'd say disease, or soemthing similar, as a control method. Perhaps the relatively small number of humans who can fight off the disease of vampirism actually act as poison to vampires - a sort of natural balance. It may well be that it has been very difficult to detect who is poison - and who is not - giving vampires a real reason for caution.

 

Of course with improved testing techniques, that barrier to vamprire expansion may be lifted - it would make sense that it runs in families - and perhaps the vamps are now able to detect the carriers - and they might systematically destroy those bloodlines. It may be that the rise of the vampire tide is upon us, thanks to improvements in science. I can sense a scenario seed there somewhere...

 

Perhaps vampires have to hybernate for lengthy periods? That would not stop the disease spreading but would slow its spread.

 

Perhaps - not sure where this idea comes from - vampires are not the top of the food chain - something else is - and it sleeps until their is enough prey for a feeding frenzy. Blade, perhaps, one of the sequels anyway?

 

If we look at the idea from a different angle, if vampirism is not disease like in the physical sense, but a form of demonic possession then the maximum number of vampires is limited by the maximum number of available demons.

 

Perhaps it is not just Buffy out there taking on the vamps? Perhaps Elite Vatican White Ops teams have sophisticated methods for detecting and destroying vampires?

 

Perhaps there's more of them than we know...

 

Maybe Underworld had it right and vampires and lycanthropes kill each other

[Spidey88]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Another way to look at it:

 

1) Assume there's some sort of critical threshold at which a vampire's victim becomes a vampire, and before which he's merely drained of some blood (possibly enough to die, likely just weakened). At the very least, vampires have some control over who becomes one of the children of the night.

 

2) Vampires are generally very intelligent; but underneath their sophisticated exterior, have the instincts of an extremely territorial predator.

 

3) Vampires, while completely devoid of any sentiment or emotions such as mercy or compassion, are concerned enough with their own well being that they want to preserve their own existences.

 

 

A combination of those three factors would generally lead to these:

 

 

1) Vampires don't want to create other vampires without very good reason (boredom might qualify, mind you) - other apex predators in their territory would be competition for valuable resources. Vampires would likely be well aware that a world full of vampires with no blood sources would be bad news for them!

 

2) Plus, vampires might just resent having other beings on their power scale around, period. You spend 200 years being a selfish narcissist, chances are you don't want someone around who can challenge your supremacy.

 

3) More vampires around means that there's more of a chance those wimpy, but irritating vampire hunters will catch wind of your kind. You spend how many decades getting comfortable in this moldy old castle, and some young upstart from the graveyard down the block sucks the mayor's daughter dry in the middle of a huge party - now everyone's carrying torches and stakes, and you can't get any sleep for fear of waking up with a sharpened broomstick through your chest!

 

 

 

Basically, if the act of a vampire feeding does not automatically create another vampire (some supernatural "seed of evil" must be passed on, perhaps; or there must be sufficient transfer of tissue in order to catalyze a transformation, such as the typical "victim must drink of the vampire's blood"), then I imagine most vampires would not want to create more of their kind unless there was some reason to.

 

 

As for werewolves, it may be a similar thing - while they aren't known for self-control, they are possibly territorial... Also, if the infected human is aware of his condition, he's likely to want to isolate himself as much as possible, limiting his exposure to potential victims.

 

Perhaps there are only very specific circumstances that lead to the creation of werewolves - only people with a rare recessive gene can contract lycanthropy, there's a binary element to contracting it that only rarely occurs (victim is able to bite werewolf fighting back and draws blood, needs to die in contact with some particular substance or plant, etc). Heck, maybe all you need is a survivor of a werewolf attack (A viral infection won't work on a corpse) - that could be pretty rare in and of itself!

 

In other words, some external limiting factor shouldn't be too hard to come up with - what it is will just depend on what the cause of vampirism/lycanthropy is.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

There used to be a lot of vampires: a plague of the damn (and damned) things. Vampirism is spread by a virus that can be transmitted through the blood. It enters and changes the cells of the host, banishing aging, creating a series of microgates, connecting the human host body to a different place, the Bloodlands - a place of hunger: the changed being takes blood and feeds it to the Bloodlands, drawing some of the sustenance as it does and able, in turn to draw from the power of the Bloodlands, if needs must, giving it incredible, magical abilities and resilience. It has been speculated that the infection was designed; something in the Bloodlands has sent out gatherers. Earth was infested, infected.

 

Still, humans are nothing if not terrifyingly dangerous, and capable of turning almost anything into a weapon. Fighting disease with disease: perhaps it was a mutation of the vampirism disease itself, or perhaps an interaction with another human disease: vampires started falling ill. This new sickness closed the microgates, blocking their connection to the Bloodlands, blocking their power. Still, their changed flesh would not age or die - but with just the memory of the terrible hunger, and without that animating, directing something that resides in the Bloodlands, they were lessened, crippled.

 

There used to be a lot of vampires. Now there are a lot of zombies.

 

Able only to feed on clean blood - lines carefully farmed and preserved, the vampire plague has receded, yet the call for blood is stronger than ever - but the sight of a zombie is enough to overcome even that lust...for it is what the indiscriminate vampire will surely become...

[Jagged]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

This is my great irritation with the wild upswing in vampires' popularity in the last couple decades: Why hasn't everyone turned into a vampire yet?

 

Agreed. Same is true of the Zombie Apocolypse, but at least they usually are apocolypse stories.

 

I believe in the Bram Stocker original there is some comment about bringing earth from his homeland. So while Dracula could create new vampires he only had the ability to maintain a small number. Might be wrong though, its been a long while since I read the book.

[Jagged]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

 

Vampires do (apparently) live forever, and generally remain in self control.

 

So, if I had to come up with a natural killer of vampires...I'd say vampires were probably favourite. Perhaps vampire blood is particularly nutritious things at the top of a food chain are usually kept in check by themselves, others of their kind.

 

One of the plot ideas often used for vampire stories is the idea of vampires turning the world perma-dark, an idea I always found lazy and stupid. Vampires are presumably as intelligent as us and therefore know that the human population (as large as it is) can only support a certain number of predators. So I am sure they can work out the inevitable consequence of shutting out the sun and destroying global crops. I mean it is speculated that the last time that happened (due to volcanic action) the human race dropped to about 10,000.

 

Since vampire can "live" forever I expect them to plan for the long term. I therefore suspect the green and climate campaigns have a lot of vampiric backers

[Jagged]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Regarding lycanthropes: perhaps the idea that you catch it from a scratch or bite is just myth.

 

Maybe lycanthropy runs in families skipping generations. Other lycanthropes can smell a carrier and what the rest of us know as the werewolf myth is actually part of the initiation process. The carrier starts to believe they are being stalked by a monster (which is true) but its all part of the process of triggering the change through fear and adrenalin.

 

Once they change the "stalker" says "Boo! You should have seen the look on your face!" and they both go off for a beer and a rare steak.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Of course it is also possible that the lunar cycle of the werewolf runs mainly in the female line and affects all of them to a greater or lesser degree...

[Jagged]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Of course it is also possible that the lunar cycle of the werewolf runs mainly in the female line and affects all of them to a greater or lesser degree...

 

 

Not touching that one!

 

[Marcus Impudite]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

In some of the vampire lore I've read, the process of turning someone into a vampire (i.e. "Siring") is more involved than simply biting them: the vampire drains the person until they're just on death's door then feeds them some of his/her (the vampire's) own blood. After that, the victim remains in a death-like coma for anywhere from hours to a fortnight while the physiological changes take place. Once awake, the newly sired bloodsucker immediately goes out to feed for the first time.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Removing most of the victim's blood reduces the white cell count, making it harder for them to fight off the vampiric infection. Even so, a lot of potential vampires die during the process - they don't tell you THAT in the brochures.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Removing most of the victim's blood reduces the white cell count' date=' making it harder for them to fight off the vampiric infection. Even so, a lot of potential vampires die during the process - they don't tell you THAT in the brochures.[/quote']

 

Of course not. The supply of willing young women seeking a bad-boy vampire boyfriend would dry up.

 

In some of my fantasy campaigns, the nonhuman races were hominid species that hadn't died out. Ogres and orcs were varieties of Gigantopithecus, Dwarves were neanderthal men, hobbits and elves were different varieties of small hominids (Homo Erectus or Homo Ergaster or the like).

 

In postapocolyptic settings, nonhuman races were descended from evolved (or mutated or genetically manipulated) apes and a few "uplifted" species that had been developed in secrecy to allow medical experiments on nearly-human physiology without actually using humans.

 

In some campaigns, I relied on After Man, a Zoology of the Future and The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution for fauna that seemed familiar but alien.

 

ETA: Example pic:

 

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Well those books can go on my Christmas list

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

Of course it is also possible that the lunar cycle of the werewolf runs mainly in the female line and affects all of them to a greater or lesser degree...

 

Not just in werewolves either !

 

Also Sean, I think in Vampire the Masquerade, the Antidulvians (sp ?) needed the younger vampire blood to live. That would also keep down some of the vampires.

[Jagged]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

In some campaigns, I relied on After Man, a Zoology of the Future and The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution for fauna that seemed familiar but alien.

 

 

This made me think of Dresden Codak

[Sean Waters]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

This made me think of Dresden Codak

 

Oh I like that a lot

 

...and, good lord, how many of THESE have we done?

 

http://dresdencodak.com/2009/05/11/42-essential-3rd-act-twists/

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

This made me think of Dresden Codak

 

Actually that reminded me of a character I made up as part of a reimagined Justice League. The specific character was a scientific genius who looked like a terrestrial dog. His sidekick looked human but had only canine intelligence. By way of a psychic link, the "human" acted as the "dog's" hands. I went looking for the post but couldn't find it.