On Vampirism and Its Causes

Diabolic Compact: by power of a compact with dark and unspeakable forces, immortality has been granted in the form of Vampirism. These are the undead, but they can, through the severing of their compact, be brought back to life and made killable. Baring this, only holy forces can truly ever destroy them. While this form of Vampirism can be spread, the original vampire is forever lord and master over his brood, most of whom lack many of his powers and invulnerabilities. Power is based largely on experience and strength of will. These Vampires are extremely susceptible to the power of holy relics and symbols but are merely weakened in daylight. They cannot cross running water without being encased in grave soil and they must rest within the embrace of the earth. They have many dark and terrible traits. Blood has no value to these beings, but they must drink it to slake their never-ending thirst, if only for a time.


Daemonic Lineage: born to a race of dark beings who feed upon the vital essences of man, these vampires have never known what it is to truly be a mortal and can only envy man his humanity. This form of Vampirism cannot be spread except through a process known as rebirthing, whereupon the Dark Being completely consumes the vital essence of a mortal, sucking the vessel dry of even the tiniest trace, then transforms that essence into a new one of the parent kind. This is the means by which such creatures spawn and so most are female. Males of such species are usually totally impotent when it comes to spreading the species, unless they have grown powerful enough to impregnate mortal women with their Dark Seed… such pregnancies are seldom safe for the mortal mother, often resulting in twisted monstrosities and a dead mother, but a rare few such births result in powerful mages with only minor daemonic traits. Sometimes the mother of such mages even survives. These vampires drink both spiritual energy and blood and have even been known to consume the flesh of their victims. Magic and divine workings are quite effective on these nasties, but weapons tend only to slow them as they heal non-magical damage quite quickly. As lovers and seductresses, they are typically far less violent, at least initially, than other forms of vampire. Like most deamons they cannot stand running water, but they can cross it. These beings cannot stand the sight of themselves in mirrors, for no really concrete reason.

Blood Taint: this form of Vampirism is a disease of the blood which uses its transformed hosts to transmit itself. Anyone bitten by such a Vampire but not slain will transform into one unless their body can successfully fight off the infection, an extremely rare occurrence. Such “Vampires” are driven to feed and are usually quite bestial. They are also among the weakest of all “Vampires”. Often this sickness spreads from animals to humans. No real strengths or weaknesses. Sometimes these diseases mutate to create flesh eating Ghouls instead.

Blood Rites: through dark and secret rituals these adepts have stolen the immortality of some dread being and in doing so gained great power… at a price. Some such Blood Cults serve their dread master, others are forced to keep the bastard alive to preserve their own extended lives and powers, while others have no such obvious shackles. Most Blood Cults can only spread their darkness by the sharing of the master blood, or in the case of those cults with no living font, by sharing the mixed blood of several initiates with the neonate. These Cultists lack the fangs of more traditional Vampires but more than make up for it in other, more subtle, ways. They must observe certain rituals when they drink and most of their powers are blood based.

La Sang Sacre: Those who have tasted of the blood of the sacred, those who have slain the blessed, are damned, never to die, never to find true peace until somehow atonement is granted by the higher powers. The blood of such beings cannot spread their condition, for it is a sickness of the soul not the flesh and their consumption of lesser blood serves only to prolong their lives and ease their suffering. Such beings cannot be slain, merely contained.

Damned Indifference: Some of the Fallen Angels fell not to Hell but to Earthly Realms and some of those fell with a terrible violence and hit especially hard. In order to survive, many such Broken Angels joined with a mortal host in order to survive. No one knows exactly why such beings feed upon blood, but such is the nature of the beast.

Nature of the Beast: Ancient spirits of blood and death that have plagued mortals since the days when fire was new, these blood drinkers took many forms over the ages until they realized that Mankind’s ultimate predator was Mankind itself. These spirits are harmless without a form, but can bring new life to the dying as long as the desire is great and the hunger greater. Originally appeased with offerings of blood by primitive tribes, these spirits know only hunger in these more “civilized” times. The body of such a vampire can be slain, but the spirit will simply seek out another host and return at some later time. They can only be truly stopped by defeating the spirit in spiritual combat.

Apex Predator: An evolutionary adaptation, a mutation some say, the Apex Predator Vampire is born and breed a hunter. Their prey? All those with blood, for the Apex Predator needs nothing else. The most ravenous of all Vampires, but also the least discerning, for an Apex Predator can subsist on any kind of blood. Apex Predators are not in the least dead and although they are long lived they do age and can be slain.

Hunter of Hunters: these are the Blood Angels, bound for their vengeful ways, to hunt the darkness and to draw sustenance only from the evil. Their prey is all who tread in darkness, who live in sin, and who prey upon the weak.

Immortal Blood: These are the true vampires, immortals comprised entirely of pure blood. While the weakest of their kind can be slain or dissolved in running water, the strongest cannot be destroyed but only dealt with, imprisoned, or banished.

Xian Hua: the Jumping Dead, deceptively fast and dangerous, these dead beasties have no personalities or obvious weaknesses.

Shiny Happy Vampies: a direct reaction to the common gothic vampire, the SHV's are immortals with style, ones who are not weakened by sunlight but rather shine in it.  It is theorized that the carbon in their bodies has been altered, restructed into diamond nanotubes, thus giving it great tensil strength while maintaining its flexibility.  SHV's are shunned by the more traditionally minded Vampire Groupies who react to anything outside their comfort zone with such scorn and disdain that one would think themselves stuck at a GOP rally.

Recipe of the Day

Kung Pao Ferret
Ingredients
One Batch Kung Pao Chicken
One Paper Plate
One (or More) Ferrets
Paper Towels to taste

Directions
Prepare and plate Kung Pao Chicken
Place Kung Pao Chicken plate on the edge of a chair
Release the Ferrets!
turn your back on Plate for approximately 8 seconds... listen for the thump.
Turn to regard Kung Pao Ferret... looking innocent and or confused.
Sigh... clean up mess, bathe ferret.
Have Ramen for diner.

Next on Recipe of the Day: Cat Pizza

Proceeding from What

(This is an exercise in thought and analysis.  Proceed only with caution.)


All Questions proceed from what? Exactly. All Questions proceed from What.

In the beginning there was What. Before Who and Why, there was What. Before When and Where, before How and How Much, there was What. What is the perfect whole from which all other questions flow.

In the beginning there was Prime, that which is. Prime, the first, the indivisible1 whole. Prime, whose essence was “I am.”2 Prime is the Truth of Truths, the first principle from which all other principles derive, the truth and principle of Existence itself. From Prime does the first Noble Truth come… All that is… is. Yet from Prime comes the first Question, What. If I am, what am I? Prime was unable to answer this, for all that Prime was, was I. Prime existed to exist. Prime was without limits and indivisible. Prime was all that was. Clearly more questions would be needed.

So Prime became two, The Duality of Who and Why. The first was the truth of Identity the second of Causality. Identity said, If I am, then Who am I? while Causality asked, If I am, then Why am I? Yet What remained, and asked of itself, “Which of these am I?”, for Which is the lesser form of What, that form which arises out a limited field of choices. And so the Duality became a Trinity. From those three arose the questions of Locality and Methodology and so three became six, that most perfect of numbers, for Six is product of its sums and for so many other reasons as well.

So there were six questions.

What is my Nature? What is my Purpose? What is my Origin? What is my Task? What is my Location? And Which of these is the most important? Yet Prime, in asking these questions, had begun to perceive that each question not only spawned more questions, but each question had an existence of its own and was separate from all the others, so that each question had both an internal awareness and an external awareness, so that in fact there were twelve questions, adding those above to those below; What is their Nature, their Purpose, their Origin, their Task, their Location, and Are they more important than I?

All thought proceeds from questions, and of all questions these are the most basic. Six selfish, six selfless, yet intermixed and codependent. Six Noble Truths and Six Ignoble Truths, twelve basic things that must be known and acknowledged.

The Six Noble Truths are stated thus:
1. The Universe Exists, The Universe is Truth.
2. There is nothing that Exists that is Outside of the Universe
3. You Exist, thus You are part of the Universe
4. You are Aware, thus The Universe is Aware
5. The Collective awareness of the Universe, is Prime… or, if you really must, God.
6. The Universe does not know why it is here, and is seeking that knowledge. Your purpose is figure out your own Truth, in an effort to answer the ultimate question.

The Six Ignoble Truths are stated thus:
1. The Universe, as a Whole, does not care about you, any more than you care about your individual electrons.
2. In the Grand Scheme of things, you are unimportant… as is the entire human race, the entire Planet Earth, the entire Sol System, and in fact, the entire Milky-Way Galaxy.
3. You cannot communicate with Prime. Prime cannot communicate with You.
4. It is impossible for anyone to understand exactly how the Universe functions, or why, or where it ultimately came from, and any effort to do so is both useless and doomed to failure.
5. The existence of the Universe is significantly more impossible than its non-existence.
6. There are at least two sides to every truth, and many more sides to every falsehood.

In the end, we must conclude The Ultimate Truth: None of the Noble Truths help and None of the Ignoble Truths matter.

Quotes of the Day

What if God really is Omnipotent but just has really lousy reaction time? 
--PJGrant

What a long, strange trip I've been.
--PJGrant

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff
--Frank Zappa

You cannot conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.
--Graham Greene

Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.
--Maggie Kuhn