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Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters


SSgt Baloo

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Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

According to the article' date=' toxoplasmids make people more attracted to cats. Are they kidding?[/quote']

 

No, but they're possibly getting ahead of the evidence.

 

What CAN be shown in a laboratory, as I understand it, is that toxoplasmids make rodents less afraid of cats (and therefore more apt to be eaten by them, which is probably good from a toxoplasmid's point of view.)

 

What the clinical evidence in humans seems to show is a variety of behavioral changes - some sex-linked, oddly enough - and I'm not sure there's a medical consensus yet on any of it.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wonders if cats make people more attracted to toxoplasmids

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Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

I typically prefer to leave such things as mystical effects, be they curses or the results of spells, and not a 'disease' of any sort; I don't consider things like Resident Evil zombies to be 'zombies', per se. Zombies are undead, necromatic creations, not people infected with a disease that makes them cannibals. Such conditions are rarely, if ever, communicable.

 

Vampires kind of throw me off there, of course, but I typically let their 'contagion' be completely under the control of the vampire in question; they have to intentionally inflict their curse on you. I've considered the same thing with werewolves, with only the pack alpha having the ability to transmit the curse/'induct a new pack member'.

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Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

I am currently running a zombie apocalypse campaign. The way that I am dealing with the disease which turns living humans into unliving mobile death machines, is by saying it is a parasite. It would not make much sense for a zombie to rip a person's throat out, killing them in 30 seconds, but somehow a virus takes hold in the brain and reanimates the body. A parasite can move under its own power, so it does not need the blood to be pumping to move throughout the body and take control of its dead host.

 

Separating the head from the body of these zombies will deny the parasite full control of the body, it might still twitch a bit now and again. The head will still function as it did while it was attached, so it will still be dangerous.

 

As far as vampires go, if I am not telling a masquerade game, then I like them to be like the 30 days of night vampires. Their bites will turn a human into a vamp, but they don't want that and destroy the body after they feed.

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Re: Discussion: Taxonomy and Pathology of Halloween Monsters

 

I tend to go with mystical curses as the original source of both vampirism and lycanthropy. To become a werewolf you have to survive a werewolf attack, which is pretty rare, and those who do often commit suicide once they've started changing or get into pecking order fights with older, more experienced werewolves (which is much the same thing). Vampires have to drain someone to near death and feed them their own blood to pass on the infection, and once transformed they face dangers from territorial competition with other vampires, hostile confrontations with magicians or other supernatural creatures, and deliberate hunting by the Church, vengeful realtives of their victims, and assorted wackos.

 

Zombies are either raised from the grave by necromancy or rendered brain-dead and suggestible by less mystically gifted Voodoo priests via that blowfish powder. In either case, it's not infectious.

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