Updating the vampire

[awesomenessofme1]

I haven't read or seen Twilight, but I have absorbed some information about it on TV Tropes and places like that. Regarding their fertility: From what I understand, the author went back-and-forth on it to some extent. The final answer is that female vampires are completely sterile, and male vampires can have children with female humans, but it causes major issues with the pregnancy.

I'm not super-familiar with them, but I have seen the first Blade movie, and I remember those vamps pretty well. They aren't weakened by crosses or other holy attacks, but garlic will harm them, and silver will kill them even with a minor injury. Sunlight causes them to burn to death, but not instantly, and it can be mitigated by strong sunscreen. They're fast, but not superhumanly so, and very strong. They don't age (or possibly age extremely slowly, it seems like the head vampires are physically old). Mentally, they can mostly act normally, and seem more hedonistic than anything.

Another interesting one to look at is the vampires in From Dusk Till Dawn. They're pretty strong, but actually quite fragile, and have a lot of weaknesses. They can be impaled with a non-sharpened table leg, they pretty much dissolve on contact with holy water, and they can be repelled by two sticks held in the shape of a cross. Another thing about them is it's very easy for them to turn people. If you get bit, you turn into a vampire, even if it takes a while.

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by Inky

I'm going to list the main features of the vampires in some of those things to see what the common factors are.

Vampire: the Masquerade.

• Portrayed as fierce, agile predators; super-strength and super-speed.
• Unaging.
• Sterile.
• 13 conspicuously different strains ("clans") and many sub-strains, inherited from "sire" to "childe".
• No pulse or body heat, otherwise appear normal (and often more than averagely good-looking), except for one clan who are all monstrously disfigured and a few other exceptions. Retractable fangs.
• Mentally: Liable to go berserk, especially when hungry. Otherwise, by default no different from humans, to begin with, and often obnoxiously cultured and stuck-up. Some are eventually driven insane by the weird and gruesome lives they lead, and one clan are all naturally unstable anyway.
• Can't eat people food, at all, it makes them vomit.
• Can feed on animal blood, but need twice as much in that case.
• Special powers: lots, although that's dependent on how much blood they've had. Only one clan can shape-shift. Without actively using magic, senses no more acute than anyone else's.
• Unkillable except by sunlight or fire. A stake through the heart stops them temporarily but they'll get up again if it's removed. Revert to corpses or dust (depending how long dead) when killed.
• Unaffected by religious symbols (usually), garlic, running water, or any of the other fancy things.

> Portrayed as fierce, agile predators; super-strength and super-speed.
But excepting the 'combat-clans', not often. Using your blood pool to raise attributes only worked for one scene, and was (for normal-gen) vampires limited to human limits. F.ex. a str/dex/sta 2/2/2 vampire raising their attributes to 5/5/5 would cost 9 of their 10 blood points and probably make them frenzy; which, granted, might get their blood back, but a vampire which hunted like that would probably not last long. Without using blood points they had issues with regular humans in physical confrontations.

Characters with "Potence" in old VTM had 'super-strength' though, and with only a point or two they could tear the doors off cars and the like. Similar for other attribute-enhancing disciplines.

> Sterile
Except 15th generation vampires which could sometimes sire Dhampir. 14 and moreso 15th gen were described as 'barely' vampires in many ways.

> Unaffected by religious symbols (usually), garlic, running water, or any of the other fancy things.
With some exceptions. F.ex. a person with True Faith. I think some unusual clans also had religion-related weaknesses. Either way, it was basically up to the GM to determine how useful/useless a person with a cross would be (how faithful do you really have to be to have "True Faith"?).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

• Portrayed as fierce, agile predators; super-strength, super-speed and superhumanly acute senses.
• Unaging.
• Sterile. (I think.)
• Apparently only one type.
• No pulse or body heat, otherwise appear normal unless fighting or about to drink blood, in which case their fangs appear and their faces go gargoyly - this is a reflex they have no control over.
• Mentally: Psychopaths, to a man, or woman. Explained as "having no souls"; care nothing for anyone other than themselves, including each other, will cheerfully kill any humans they can get and not see any problem. In addition to this also have some kind of predator instincts thing going on, even the few freak cases who somehow got their "souls" back, and some are liable to go berserk, especially when hungry.
• Can eat small amounts of people food, but it doesn't do anything. (Affected normally by alcohol and drugs).
• Can feed on animal blood.
• Special powers: No particular magic powers and can't shape-shift.
• Unkillable except by sunlight, fire, beheading, or a stake through the heart. Anything else is survivable - one was shot through the heart, went down, but a few minutes later got up again. Collapse into dust when killed (even recently turned ones).
• Repelled by garlic and crosses, no reflection, cannot cross a threshold for the first time until invited.

> Sterile
Connor is basically a Dhampir born of two vampires (Angel & Darla), though there was also a fallen god involved in that whole mess somehow.

Connor notably is stronger than Angel and even moreso regular vampires, to the point that he didn't even know he could break bones until a literal fallen god gave him a beating.

Anyway, the vampires are basically corpselike demons, and being able to sire offspring under some circumstances doesn't seem that unreasonable. A bigger question would by "why". They don't really seem dispositioned to intentionally do it in the first place, especially not when it probably requires magic to make it possible.

> having no souls
More like their real soul is suppressed or locked away somehow. I don't think they themselves really decided if they had 'two' souls (one summoned from 'hell' and one original), or if giving Angel is soul back was more like suppressing a forced split-personality. Spike notably voluntarily got his "soul" back. There is conflicting statements about the issue in the series though, the comics might have elaborated on it though.

Personally I'd figure the demon-personality is an extremely evil split-personality created by the demonic curse. A suppressible/reversible corruption of the soul rather than outright replacing it.

> Can feed on animal blood.
If not for the Evil Personality they'd probably be among the easiest-to-survive-as types of modern vampires. VtM vampires could only dream of such an easy undead life.

> Special powers
Well, the "vanilla" ones can pretty much just shape-shift to their combat-form, which probably makes them slightly stronger, but otherwise that is it.

In terms of weaknesses they are absurdly vulnerable to wood. Muggles have literally killed them by jabbing at them in the heart with school pens straight through the vampire's clothes. You could argue that was just for drama though, or because the actor under-acted the pen-attack so it looked absurd.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by RedMattis

> Portrayed as fierce, agile predators; super-strength and super-speed.
But excepting the 'combat-clans', not often. Using your blood pool to raise attributes only worked for one scene, and was (for normal-gen) vampires limited to human limits. F.ex. a str/dex/sta 2/2/2 vampire raising their attributes to 5/5/5 would cost 9 of their 10 blood points and probably make them frenzy; which, granted, might get their blood back, but a vampire which hunted like that would probably not last long. Without using blood points they had issues with regular humans in physical confrontations.

Characters with "Potence" in old VTM had 'super-strength' though, and with only a point or two they could tear the doors off cars and the like. Similar for other attribute-enhancing disciplines.

> Sterile
Except 15th generation vampires which could sometimes sire Dhampir. 14 and moreso 15th gen were described as 'barely' vampires in many ways.

> Unaffected by religious symbols (usually), garlic, running water, or any of the other fancy things.
With some exceptions. F.ex. a person with True Faith. I think some unusual clans also had religion-related weaknesses. Either way, it was basically up to the GM to determine how useful/useless a person with a cross would be (how faithful do you really have to be to have "True Faith"?).



> Sterile
Connor is basically a Dhampir born of two vampires (Angel & Darla), though there was also a fallen god involved in that whole mess somehow.

Connor notably is stronger than Angel and even moreso regular vampires, to the point that he didn't even know he could break bones until a literal fallen god gave him a beating.

Anyway, the vampires are basically corpselike demons, and being able to sire offspring under some circumstances doesn't seem that unreasonable. A bigger question would by "why". They don't really seem dispositioned to intentionally do it in the first place, especially not when it probably requires magic to make it possible.

> having no souls
More like their real soul is suppressed or locked away somehow. I don't think they themselves really decided if they had 'two' souls (one summoned from 'hell' and one original), or if giving Angel is soul back was more like suppressing a forced split-personality. Spike notably voluntarily got his "soul" back. There is conflicting statements about the issue in the series though, the comics might have elaborated on it though.

Personally I'd figure the demon-personality is an extremely evil split-personality created by the demonic curse. A suppressible/reversible corruption of the soul rather than outright replacing it.

> Can feed on animal blood.
If not for the Evil Personality they'd probably be among the easiest-to-survive-as types of modern vampires. VtM vampires could only dream of such an easy undead life.

> Special powers
Well, the "vanilla" ones can pretty much just shape-shift to their combat-form, which probably makes them slightly stronger, but otherwise that is it.

In terms of weaknesses they are absurdly vulnerable to wood. Muggles have literally killed them by jabbing at them in the heart with school pens straight through the vampire's clothes. You could argue that was just for drama though, or because the actor under-acted the pen-attack so it looked absurd.

All this is why I keep going back to Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (1974):

"You see, Doctor, there are as many species of vampire as there are beasts of prey. Their methods and their motive for attack can vary in a hundred different ways. (...) Some can only be destroyed by hanging or decapitation, or fire or water, or by other means." - Grost

Heck there was R.P. Smith's "Varieties of Vampires" in ''Dragon'' #25 (May 1979) which showed the huge variety of vampire on one page.

[Plane]

One downside of building the HP restoration from blood based on Leech is you don't really get any benefit if the blood isn't sucked directly from you.

Like if you had a minion slit your prey's throat and empty their neck into a goblet and you drank from the goblet, no HP from that, since you're not directly contacting the foe, just their lost blood.

Unless... maybe shed blood could still qualify as a living character for a certain period of time before it "dies" and becomes ineligible to Leech?

Blood Agent, Reversed for example still qualifies as blood not just when someone is touching your wounds directly but also if you fling your blood droplets at somebody from a distance, although the range at which you can do do has to be defined as an Innate Attack.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I'd forgotten how big the discount for Leech was relative to Vampiric Bite

That's because if the only modifier you do is Blood Agent like Howl did above, it can only heal HP.

P86 notes that to emulate how Basic Set's VB works you need to take "Heals FP, +60%;" since basic vamps got the ability to choose whether HP or FP was restored from the stolen HP.

The net +20% applied to 25/4 is 30/4.8 so it's slightly more expensive (31 points) at first level, but at higher levels Leech ties VB: 5 extra levels costs 24 points vs 25, so it ties at 55 points. Five more levels (total: 11 per second) VB costs 80 points while Leech+Teeth costs merely 79.

VB did have advantage if you applied other limitations to it that you got a bigger discount since it's a % of base 30/5 instead of base 25/4. This also mean that enhancements costs more points though.

[Inky]

Maximara: I very much agree. But there does seem to be a particular strand of fictional vampires going on that MOSTLY have at least SOME things in common (some of which they don't share with other vampire stories - I'm sure the tiresome "apex predator" thing didn't use to be so universal), and it's interesting to try and pick out what those common features are in GURPS terms. As you say, though, even among those stories there are exceptions even to those! (PS would like to see that article, is it about traditional legendary vampires? I like myths and legends.)

Awesomenessofme1: Thanks for the info, those are good! Twilight list edited.

RedMattis: Oh, I was deliberately oversimplifying for brevity, ignoring most of the rare cases such as True Faith in VtM etc..

Spoiler:  

Originally Posted by RedMattis

Connor is basically a Dhampir born of two vampires (Angel & Darla), though there was also a fallen god involved in that whole mess somehow.

...Did not know that. You're serious? Edited. Maybe you should put some of your posting in spoiler tags, by the way. None of the rest of what you said was news to me, but it would be pretty massive spoilers for anyone who hadn't seen those parts.

Originally Posted by RedMattis

> having no souls
More like their real soul is suppressed or locked away somehow. I don't think they themselves really decided if they had 'two' souls (one summoned from 'hell' and one original), or if

Spoiler:  

giving Angel is soul back was more like suppressing a forced split-personality. Spike notably voluntarily got his "soul" back.

There is conflicting statements about the issue in the series though, the comics might have elaborated on it though.

Personally I'd figure the demon-personality is an extremely evil split-personality created by the demonic curse. A suppressible/reversible corruption of the soul rather than outright replacing it.

Hence the "Explained as" and the quote marks, I was just repeating the unsatisfactory way the characters usually explain it, but I don't think the writers meant that to be entirely reliable. I can discuss this for ages.
(I don't think there are spoilers in the following, but I'm using the tag because it's a very long and probably off-topic tangent.)

Spoiler:  

My opinion is that it's meant to be two things.
One is the "soul" thing, which is clearly not what it sounds like - in my mind, if somebody had no "soul" they'd be a vegetable - but something has apparently been cut off and is capable of being switched back on again. (And the something seems to be more than a purely psychological thing, given some of the pyrotechnics that have resulted.)
The other is the "demon blood" thing, which seems almost like an external force. Holden Webster, for instance, said that thing about being "connected to this blazing demon energy that's going to devour the world" (and then forgot about it and went off at a tangent). So in Buffy when someone comes back as a vampire, the demon blood is calling on them to go out and cause carnage, and since their sense of right and wrong has been amputated, they now see no problem with this, it only needs to give them a little push and off they go.
It's implied that the "demon blood" part still applies even to those vampires whose "souls" are back in full working order - some part of them still likes murdering stuff, but they now know why they shouldn't and therefore they usually don't. Vampires who are indifferent to anything but their own amusement are much easier to control - in fact, they're an involuntary case of "if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything". That's my impression, anyway. It's really quite cleverly written.

Personally, I think the writers didn't mean any of the things the characters said about this point to be reliable.
In series 1, for instance, Buffy, and later Giles, imply that a vampire is not even the same person ("Remember, you're not looking at Jesse. You're looking at the thing that killed him."). But shortly afterwards, what Angel tells Buffy reveals that it ain't necessarily so. Angel clearly does think that he's been the same person throughout all the various complications he's been through.
I think the "vampires have no souls" theory is courtesy of Angel, at least it seemed to be news to Giles, but this may well itself be a not entirely accurate superstition that Angel's picked up somewhere. Nice as Angel is, he does strike me as someone who will believe anything he's told.
And, of course, throughout series 5 and 6, we have the received wisdom, frequently repeated, that a vampire is 100% incapable of considering anyone but himself, versus the evidence of our own eyes.
It was a good idea to do it like that, from the writers' point of view, since it meant that if they had a good plot idea that didn't fit what Giles had previously said, it could always be that Giles had been wrong!

By the way, no spoilers for the "Angel loses his soul" episode, please. I missed that one, and I'm intending to catch it again some other way when I get round to it.

Buffy vampires give the impression of having been crudely hot-wired by whatever demon is supposed to be behind it, and it doesn't always seem to be foolproof.

Originally Posted by RedMattis

In terms of weaknesses they are absurdly vulnerable to wood. Muggles have literally killed them by jabbing at them in the heart with school pens straight through the vampire's clothes. You could argue that was just for drama though, or because the actor under-acted the pen-attack so it looked absurd.

Did not see that :-D :-D :-D
I rather think there is supposed to be a special weakness beyond it just being capable of killing them like it would a normal human being. There was one scene where Spike was trying to get Harmony to take him back, having escaped from the Initiative, and Harmony responded by threatening him with a stake. Spike exclaimed "You kept that in our bed?! Don't you know how dangerous that is?" (To which Harmony responded cheerfully, "Let's find out"). I think it's one of the things the writers never bothered to fully make up their minds about, though.

Originally Posted by RedMattis

> Can feed on animal blood.
If not for the Evil Personality they'd probably be among the easiest-to-survive-as types of modern vampires. VtM vampires could only dream of such an easy undead life.

Agreed! :-D

Originally Posted by RedMattis

> Portrayed as fierce, agile predators; super-strength and super-speed.
But excepting the 'combat-clans', not often. Using your blood pool to raise attributes only worked for one scene, and was (for normal-gen) vampires limited to human limits. F.ex. a str/dex/sta 2/2/2 vampire raising their attributes to 5/5/5 would cost 9 of their 10 blood points and probably make them frenzy; which, granted, might get their blood back, but a vampire which hunted like that would probably not last long. Without using blood points they had issues with regular humans in physical confrontations.

Characters with "Potence" in old VTM had 'super-strength' though, and with only a point or two they could tear the doors off cars and the like. Similar for other attribute-enhancing disciplines.

I could've sworn the VtM rulebook said that vampires were stronger and faster than regular humans even without spending blood, but can't locate any mention of it on the White Wolf wiki. Edited.

[AlexanderHowl]

Anyway, there are a number of vampires who seem to be allergic to silver (such as in Blade). Then again, the vampires in Blade are exceptional fragile, as they seem to dust at the drop of a hat, which seems to be a common trait in movie vampires.

[RedMattis]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Anyway, there are a number of vampires who seem to be allergic to silver (such as in Blade). Then again, the vampires in Blade are exceptional fragile, as they seem to dust at the drop of a hat, which seems to be a common trait in movie vampires.

Much like the non-existent ribcage on Buffy vampires.

I think it is just rule of cool. It doesn't look good for Blade in Blade to use his blade to outright impale vampires through the heart or have Blade making repeated violent chops to a vampire's neck with his blade (decapitating even a regular human is hard!). It would also be a bit too violent. Blade is about Blade dancing around looking cool after all. Blade blade blade blade blade.

If you want that type of behavior in GURPS just use the mook-rules for the random vampires (have them always die if they take any damage from wood/silver/whatever).

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Inky

Maximara: I very much agree. But there does seem to be a particular strand of fictional vampires going on that MOSTLY have at least SOME things in common (some of which they don't share with other vampire stories - I'm sure the tiresome "apex predator" thing didn't use to be so universal), and it's interesting to try and pick out what those common features are in GURPS terms. As you say, though, even among those stories there are exceptions even to those! (PS would like to see that article, is it about traditional legendary vampires? I like myths and legends.)

Sadly the article doesn't provide where it gets its information from so there is no way to tell how accurate it is even for its time. It doesn't help that not only is there no structure to the list it it shoves (in order) : Asanbosam (Africa), Burcolakas (Greece), Catacano (Crete, Rhodes), Lobishumen (Brazil), Ekimmu (Assyria), Blautsauger (Bosnia-Herzagovinia), Mulo (Serbia), Alp (Saxony), Anananngel (Philippines), Krvopijac (Bulgaria), Ch’ing-Shih (China), Vlkodlak (Serbia), Bruxsa (Portugal), Nosferat (Rumania) all on on page and so gives very little information.

Based on my cross referencing of it to Theresa Bane's 2010 Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology it's all over the place in terms of quality (Blood Types is far better thought it sometimes it's source material was 'off' as demonstrated by the Ch'iang Shich)

For example it says an Alp is "A butterfly that attacks day and night. It settles on the chest of a victim and suffocates him." But Bane says "Originating from Germany, this vampiric demon does not have a single true form. Throughout the ages the only consistency in its description is that it wears a white hat." with "Source: Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 423, 442, 463; Jones, On the Nightmare, 126; Nuzum, Dead Travel Fast, 234, Riccardo, Liquid Dreams, 139"

The bibliography for Bane's book runs from page 155 to 182 so it has references for about every one of its some 600 vampires.

The "Ch’ing-Shih" is a problem because as explained on the GURPwik:

Due to issues with Romanization of Chinese characters and homophones in the language "Ch'iang Shich" is spelled several different ways and can be applied to different "species" of vampires."

There is Blood Types' Ch'iang Shich:

The "traditional form of the vampire, the uncorrupted corpse of a mortal being, often of great physical beauty. This form is suitable for Mandarin lords and vengeful seductresses" version isn't part of the description given in The Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology and the rest of the text suggests that similarities to Western vampires are due to Western views of vampires being added to the Chinese version.

Then there is the Jiang Shi:

Jiang Shi (meaning "stiff corpse" or "zombie") are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living creatures to absorb life from their victims from Chinese mythology.

By contrast the "Ch’ing Shih" is blind and can only be active in moonlight.

Then there is the Vlkodlak which has to have one of the most convoluted methods of destruction in the article

"It has a congested face and blood-red skin. It can cause eclipses. Otherwise, it is like a common vampire. It is active day and night. To defeat: cut off its toes and thumbs, drive a spike into its neck, pierce its navel with a stake (not its heart), then burn it, starting the fire with holy candles." (that is all there is).

Bane has more details with the destruction method being stabbed through the stomach with a stake made of hawthorn, the hair on its body covered with tar, and then "set ablaze with a candle that was used during its wake. The fire must be hot enough and burn long enough to render the corpse to ash."

[AlexanderHowl]

Yes, the only thing that seems to be a commonality between vampires is the ability to feed on the life energy of living creatures in some fashion (represented in GURPS by Leech). Consuming blood does not make someone a vampire, as the majority of non-Islamic cultures have blood as a culinary ingredient, though the consumption of human blood for psychological purposes does fit the clinical definition. In general though, a vampire should be able to consume the life force of living humans in some fashion to be an existential threat (though those that only consume animal blood may be an economic threat).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Inky

...Did not know that. You're serious?

Alright, Spoilers!










Angel wanted Darla ressurected and made a deal for a magical intervention from some sort of representative of the PTB. Angel completes his end and the PTB discover that oops! Darla's already been brought back once and is not eligable for a third go round. As their idea of fulfilling the deal they make vampire-Darla pregnant with Connor. What that makes Connor is a good question but he didn't actually inherit any vampire traits relating to blood, feeding or vulnerabilities. As a human pumped up to vampire+ levels of physical ablities he might be more like a male Slayer than anything else.