Types of Vampires:
1. Faux
2. Weeds (need to make a note in the creation that they can spread very fast), and need to add more details for the higher level ones, and probably skills such as 'biting' for the lower level template already created. Demonically possessed dead body.
3. Devlin: Magico-Body Vampire (Probably need to rewrite the nature of the vamp to make it able to be a verser).
4. Dawkins: Purely Magical Vampire
5. Psi-Kin and the Lifesuckers (I just started working on these).
6. Wodium's Wamphyres or Body Based Vampires
7. Need a potentially redeemable vampire, and its type.
8. Alien species vamp would be nice (Wraith on Stargate: Atlantis are one such.)
9. Mechanical vampire
10. Fallen Incarnate (as Falling Perhaps, and as Fully Fallen).
With all this gathered together, that should offer enough for a Vamps R-us.
A few notes:
Mechano-Vamp: In all the alternate dimensions where Dar Koni and Darleek (I'm not looking them up now...way too late) try to kill each other...in this dimension a light cruiser of Dar Koni origin jumps a colony ship of the praying mantis enemy in Sol System. Its headed elsewhere, but the Dar Koni don't want a colony on their flank.
Things go badly for both sides, but worse for the cruiser. It still has maneuverrability,a nd it lands on Earth. The colonizer lands later on the Moon. The Dar Koni recruit the Earthlings with tales of evil aliens and offering new tech. The Mantis's know this will happen,a nd know they have to attack. They can't let Earth be turned to Dar Koni use especially when to both their surprises (the aliens that is), Earthlings turn out to be good at this stuff.
War picks up between the Earth and the Moon. Eventually, the Mantis's try to drop asteroids on Earth to kill it off, but the Dar Koni knew this would happen,a nd defenses are prepared. This finally convinces Earth to go all out.
The Mantis ship has built colony domes on Luna, and is building factories, and clone warriors. It sends invasion forces, and they get chopped up by the new human cyborgs.
So the Mantis send their best armed with new D-guns. Its a desperate fight.
And thats where we leave them.
For the D-guns are weapons that disintegrate by collapsing the local structure of space-time. Extremely deadly, but then the Mechanovamps are deadly. Occasionally a botch in these new weapons occurs, and the target gets dumped into another universe. This hardly bothers the Mantis even if they knew.
The end result is to drop a killer cyborg from a deadly war against aliens into a normal world. The Mechanovamps are stronger, faster, more durable than a human. They have puncture tubing in their mouths to draw out the fluid of a target. They can use this to access data from a computer, draw up gasoline to power their engines, or bring in new fresh blood because their old blood gets rapidly polluted. They have hard-wired 'survive at all costs' commands built in to their computer adjuncts to their brains.
Lady of Sorrow or Sarah
Sarah is an angel. She is on the verge of Falling. As her decision is in some sense outside of Time, her arrival on a Earth is at her whim. So her Fall from Grace is not completed yet even thousands of years after most have done so.
Its possible for the verser to convince her to go back to her Heaven before she makes the irrevocable choice outside of Time. Before her desire to be even more glorious than she already is overwhelms her good sense.
She is Veiled as she walks the world, but she's obviously trying to talk herself into becomaing a 'Bad Girl'.
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Lady of Sorrows is for when she's already made the evil choice. Sarah has incarnated permanently. Sarah has Fallen. And she has lost much of her power. She has torn off her wings,a nd can no longer cross the dimensional boundaries,a nd ascend to Heaven. Nor can she fly.
But, she is the most powerful being on the planet by a long shot.
And she's been here a long time, several thousand years.
Because after she failed to be turned, she went to another world, early in its Creation, and Fell.
She does drink blood because its one of the few ways to approach the rush of the Glories is to feel the lifeblood beneath her hands as the target dies. At one time, she felt the Glories like sun on her skin. Now, she couldn't stand their presence. But at the same time, she needs that feeling of attention and joy and love. Killing innocents is a poor substitute, but it'll do. Its like how some people need a feeling of power, they need power, and so they take cocaine to give them a feeling of power.
She continues to Fall.
Her greatness diminishes century by century.
At one time, she could have juggle dthe Sun in the palm of her hand. Now, she can't bear its light as it sits in judgment on her.
She has given of her self to make lesser beings called vampires. Loneliness eats away at her. But they offend her with thier greed,adn ambition,a nd she destroys them. This happens several times ove r the millenia--these Reigns of the Dead are known as bad times....the last one occurred during the Black Plague. But their seems to be evidence that she's trying it again....the Century of Slaughter filled with Nazi's and Communists and mountains of the dead seems to have been inspired by some of her creations.
In this world, there are those who worship the Christ, but there are also many who have small shrines to the Lady of Sorrows who is full of self-pity and unbending anger against Heaven. The Lady who cannot admit she made a mistake.
There is some speculation among a very few that she can be redeemed. After all, she has taken on a body, immortal though it be. Most think her a spirit entity,and not actually a breathing component of their life. Most of those who do realize that the ancient tales have large grains of truth in them think her inescapably evil, and in need of destruction. Others think she will only die at the Battle of Armageddon. Some think that a prophecy of a 'woman who holds a sword in her hand, and stands against the Great King for two strokes of his sword before falling to her doom.' (which is in an apocryphal text not accepted as canon) is referring to her. Others think that this refers to the evil, end-time church. Still others say 'apocrypha' and scoff which is a good position since their are other eminently false bits of prophecy in the Testimony of the Seven Witnesses. Some think that the Testimony was created by her as propaganda so that no one would attack her since she is 'invulnerable until Armageddon' or so goes the logic.
What about a version based on Morbius? The Living Vampire (not the Dr. Who villain):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morbius%2C_the_Living_Vampire
A bod-skilled vampire with tech origins, essentially. Eliminates the magic without all the hassle of the symbiont mechanics. It could be a little more difficult to rationalize the traditional limitations, but it could work.
What about Bunnicula? (Pronounced Bun-ick-you-Lah) He was a vampire rabbit that sucked the juices out of plants until they died. You can stop laughing at me any time. I'm serious. A vampire that sucks the juices out of plants could decimate forests and food supplies. It might not be immediately dangerous to the human population, but I could imagine some interesting times that could be had fighting this type of vampire.
For Morbius
--allergic to garlic, and hypersensitive to UV
--Also, he's got a bit of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and refuses to enter houses without an invite, or eat peas in odd numbers.
For the bunny...
You got the Ladyfaire to laugh. Thanks. I'm thinking a plague that turns normal woodland creatures into plant juice suckers of ravenous amount. They grow in size, and swell....until near the end they get overwhelmed with a desire to bite other animals (thus spreading the disease), and then they explode throwing disease tainted gore in a wide circle.
The virus is strictly for attacking plants, but it has a dual-genomic structure (which probably some clueless folks in this world are going to call 'its mutated'). In a dessert environment without enough plant matter, it shifts its targets to animals and people.
I just remember a children's story called Bunnicula. If I recall, Bunnicula was a white rabbit vampire that kept destroying vegetable gardens by sucking the juices out of the plants. He gets befriended by some children, and learns to use his talents for the good of mankind. I like what you've got, I just thought I would give the story synopsis in case you wanted to research it.
I have an idea from something Prof. John Oakmaster and I were working on. Its a cluster related bubble universes that grew from the acorns off Master Oak (which is a child of the world-tree Yggdrasil).
One universe would be a place where your essential nature determined your animal form.
Another would be a Woods of Small Things.
There was talk about a patch of woods inspired by Pooh's Hundred Acre Woods....a set of intelligent plushies wander about this wood.
There would be some evil universes as well...one based on Grim's Fairy Tales which I did in WAW.
I probably should add my Saturday Morning Good Squirrel World...which if anything is more annoying than MJ's Purple Dinosaur World. In SMGS, every time you make an error, a squirrel pops up to explain to the audience the nature of your error. Shooting squirrels just causes more squirrels to pop up to explain that shooting the messenger is bad.
I also liked the book w hich had a vet go to magic land, and be a vet to magic creatures.
And I need some sort of connections to normal worlds....Grim's has mirror gates to a supposedly normal world.
And in all this....a children's themed...set of related universes which all grew from acorns into bubble universes and are guarded by the Ranger Mages who carry staffs from the Master Oak....
I think a Deeply Dark Woods of Friendly Monsters where monstrous creatures whuffle and thump, and go from being outcast to be accepted and useful for their unique gifts which would include something like Bunnicula (but I can't be too close....copyright bad). In this world...say five children found a magic gate in an old treehouse to the Deeply Dark....and they are taming the monsters who hate themselves,a nd helping to create a society of acceptance.
And it actually works pretty good because the strange monster powers are very useful when turned to purposes not vicious and unkind.
Any other ideas for the above, or for other Children Themed Acorn Universes (they're still growing in size...)
You might want to research Bunnicula if you're planning to use it, just so you don't go overboard with copyright. I could be totally misremembering this, but I seem to remember something about beets. They got Bunnicula to stop by giving him beets, and letting him drink those. What is a beet without juice? A turnip!!! Then they sold the turnips. That might be way off base (I remember this from 20 years ago, at least) but I think it was something like that.
Eric, something else here. What if an unsuspecting human kills and eats one of these vampire bunnies? Does the human become a vampire? Or what if a wolf ate the vampire bunny. The wolf transforms? Just trying to help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunnicula
Wikipedia entry on Bunnicula.
As for the potentially redeemable ... All vampires retain their sentience. One of the defining characteristics of Vampirism is that it does not strip you of your intelligence. Any vampire has the potential to be redeemed - by which I mean turned to the cause of goodness - so long as he isn't being kept permanently evil or insane by the specific (probably magical) nature of his affliction.
If by "redeemed" you mean "able to be turned human again," that's almost unheard-of. I've honestly never heard of a type of vampire that could be resurrected.
If by "redeemed" you mean "able to be turned human again," that's almost unheard-of. I've honestly never heard of a type of vampire that could be resurrected.
C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy features exactly such a character. (Sorry to spoil the surprise for those who haven't read it.) Incidentally, we've already got him covered - he's a wholly magical vampire. I might mis-remember, but I don't think the books ever actually call him a "vampire." Still, about halfway through the first one it's dead obvious* that's what he is.
_
*No pun intended.
I just realized I missed a point:
As for the potentially redeemable ... All vampires retain their sentience.
Ah, but not all vampires retain the soul of the original occupant (e.g. Weeds), and not all of those who do have not already been Judged. (Judgment before Judgment Day seems weird to me, but I'm not the expert on Christian theology, so I'm deferring to Eric and MJ on that one.) That probably falls under your "specific nature of his affliction" clause, but at the time Eric made the comment, we pretty much only had Gavin (dead and I think judged), Dawkins (damned), and my symbiotic Trick-The-Player vampires.*
I'm of the opinion that we already have redeemable vampires, but it's still important to note which ones can and cannot be turned.
_
*Who, by the way, aren't necessarily even evil to begin with, and are in theory quite curable.
Well, Vampires are pretty weird in Christian theology to begin with to put it kindly. I'm not sure you really can put them together unless you're prepared to ignore in the story a huge hole.
And no, as to #8, I think I just knew I needed one, but I didn't come up with a concept for it. So if you've got one, that would be great.
I do have one. The basic idea is a doppleganger-predator with a mix-in of Star Trek psionics, with the peripheral details completely adaptable to the biases of the universe at hand. I guess now I have three types to write up.
I thought you said something earlier about vampires being irredeemable because they were already damned, but all I can find now is this:
And thus, Sir Dawkins became one of the undead, a vampyre. He was Dammed, already dead, and aware that once he died certain judgment awaited him.
Does that mean what I think it means?
Kewl to the first point, and I hope you're not taking on too much. But if you can handle the load, then (does a little happy dance!)....
And to the second point, yes. He's walking about, and he is unredeemable. He's already died, he just hasn't vacated his body yet.
Devlin and Gavin should be unredeemable as well. The Lady of Sorrows is an interesting case (code for 'I don't know').
MJ can certainly explain this better than me.
Um--what am I explaining? I seem to have lost the thread of the question somewhere....
--M. J. Young