To understand death, and undeath, we need to first understand life.
All living* things are imbued with a life force, drawn from the positive material planes. However lowly the lifeform, this life force is always present, however infinitismal. So long as the body is able to maintain the business of life, so long the conduit to the positive material remains. While the deeper arcanery at work is complicated, imagine it simply as a pump, the action of the living body sucking life energy from the positive material planes.
On death:
Death is the cessation of the life, the end of bodily functions of maintaining it and the conduit*, and the severing thereof. Death is complex and complicated. The conduit is severed, and life force no longer animates the body. For lesser beings, what life force is in the body simply slips away into the negative material planes, a tiny part of the ongoing universal mechanism of entropy.
But for higher life forms, it's nowhere near as simple. I like to imagine the life force of higher beings as having a color*. That color can be defined by many things. For beasts, it is defined simply by the fact that they are beasts, and what remains of them after death shall go into the beastlands, where they become some ideal version of what they were in life. For sentients, many more things affect the color: Morality, religion, actions taken or avoided in life, our loves and interests and passions all play a part. But in the final outcome, the color of that life force - the soul - determines what becomes of it. Where it goes, and what awaits it there.
The state of undeath:
Put in the simplest of terms, undeath is another conduit. Rather than the living body 'pumping' energy from the positive material planes, instead the dead body (or immaterial being) draws from other things to remain animate, and siphons it into the negative material. What this means is that any and all types of undead drain energy in one way or another. Most obvious perhaps is the vampire - but no undead can exist without this siphon, taking energy from the environment and draining if off into the negative material planes.
Being undead:
It is often touted as being a great boon to become undead. Particularly vampires are romanzised as living for ever, with dark passions and appetites. Beautiful, exciting and somehow sexy.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. None of the things that make us alive survive being dead. When we die, the soul departs, taking with it all that was good and warm and pleasant in our lives. All feelings of happiness and joy, all positive memories, all our love and affection, everything. Only slivers remain in the mind of the undead, and only negative - all our pain, all our hatred, spite and anger and jealousy and ill-will.
Being undead is neither romantic, or in any way a boon - not in any way desirable. It is eternal torture. There are no exceptions, not vampires, not liches.
In conclusion:
Undeath is undesirable. Despite all rumors to the opposite, much of what makes a sentient being is absent in the undead - they lack most of the motivations that drive the living, existing forever in a tortured state of fighting their own demons, suffering through the mistakes they made while alive, ranting and raving at slights long past and forgotten - and maybe even long resolved, while alive.
Some few undead may find rest if convinced to let go of those troubles. This is true for some ghosts, but the principle could theoretically apply to all undead.
* Living: Various beings can be considered to be alive, despite not really living. Elementals, automatons, the denizens of distant planes may have many of the outward signs of life, but despite everything are not actually alive. Being alive, in this case, defined as a cycle of life and death, and procreation.
* Conduit: Such transfer is universal. All fire comes ultimately from the elemental plane of fire, all lightning comes from the region where wind and rain meet - the border regions of the planes of air and water, the quasi-elemental plane of storms. Only phenomena of the mind, thoughs and ideas, do not come from elemental planes. They may have origines in stranger, more distant regions of the multiverse - or, indeed, may arise in us, the sentient minds of the prime material plane.
* Color: Not truly a color at all, but a useful - or convenient - term to describe an otherwise unknown and perhaps undescribable quality.
This text was discovered in the study of the lich Xorianthus. It is generally agreed that the text is penned in the distinctive style of the lich itself. In academic circles, debate rages hotly whether this was penned prior to, or after the mage completed the ritual to become a lich, and whether it's contents disprove itself or not.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Here liches might be the most terrifying undead. They looked at a fate worse than death straight in the eye and said “worth it”. (Though it may be that most were deceived).
Here liches might be the most terrifying undead. They looked at a fate worse than death straight in the eye and said “worth it”. (Though it may be that most were deceived).
This is also why they’re the coolest. Step aside, vampires — and there’s a new tragic villain in town.
Now that I think about it, liches are just the product of Gandalf’s midlife crisis. That’s some scary stuff, right there.
I think Xoranthus had it wrong. Vampires are beautiful, exciting and somehow sexy despite being undead, at least once they become free willed and move beyond the vampire spawn stage. Liches really aren’t though, unless they use powerful illusions to disguise their true nature. Also, one minor nitpick: in 5e, it’s the positive and negative energy planes, not material planes.
You’ve been reading too much Tracy Hickman and not enough Twilight :)
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I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
I think Xoranthus had it wrong. Vampires are beautiful, exciting and somehow sexy despite being undead, at least once they become free willed and move beyond the vampire spawn stage. Liches really aren’t though, unless they use powerful illusions to disguise their true nature. Also, one minor nitpick: in 5e, it’s the positive and negative energy planes, not material planes.
You’ve been reading too much Tracy Hickman and not enough Twilight :)
Twilight is so bad.... ಠ︵ಠ
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Kasrik Argentum Stellaris Fiddlesticks the Wizard, Lord of Stars, Master Trickster, and Creator of both the Mosh of Stardust Hornets and Mimiczilla.
I think Xoranthus had it wrong. Vampires are beautiful, exciting and somehow sexy despite being undead, at least once they become free willed and move beyond the vampire spawn stage. Liches really aren’t though, unless they use powerful illusions to disguise their true nature. Also, one minor nitpick: in 5e, it’s the positive and negative energy planes, not material planes.
You’ve been reading too much Tracy Hickman and not enough Twilight :)
Twilight is so bad.... ಠ︵ಠ
Yeah, Twilight’s not perfect (I don’t like the sparkly part either). But there is lots of literature and rpgs that portray vampires as sympathetic characters. They don’t have to all be evil disgusting villains just because Tracy Hickman says they have to be in the introduction to Curse of Strahd. (Although granted, Jander Sunstar in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is a good example of a sympathetic vampire in D&D.)
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I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
Many intelligent undead retain their memories of life: experiences, decisions, the reasons for them, and the consequences.
What makes a person? Is it the sum of the person's experience?
If this is retained in undead with the soul departed, how does being turned into a soulless syphon affect the defined person? Do we excuse the actions for the person being soulless if the person is now an intelligent undead? Would the soulless people honestly excuse their own actions though having the experiences of living... assuming they aren't lying to themselves?
If individuals prove too dangerous for their existences and must be dispatched, do the new imposed influences on their intelligence matter at all in regard to any condemnation?
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I think Xoranthus had it wrong. Vampires are beautiful, exciting and somehow sexy despite being undead, at least once they become free willed and move beyond the vampire spawn stage. Liches really aren’t though, unless they use powerful illusions to disguise their true nature. Also, one minor nitpick: in 5e, it’s the positive and negative energy planes, not material planes.
You’ve been reading too much Tracy Hickman and not enough Twilight :)
Who now?
Vampires are why I came up with this whole thing, initially - well, vampires and Lord Soth. If you take the torture out of the torture, it's ... no longer torture. I don't want my undead horrors to walk around behaving like living people - only just a little dead. I want them to by frayed, desperate, starving for things they cannot ever, ever have. I want every moment of their endless wakefulness to be a living nightmare. Undeath is about suffering - not about being cool and having an alternate diet.
Many intelligent undead retain their memories of life: experiences, decisions, the reasons for them, and the consequences.
What makes a person? Is it the sum of the person's experience?
If this is retained in undead with the soul departed, how does being turned into a soulless syphon affect the defined person? Do we excuse the actions for the person being soulless if the person is now an intelligent undead? Would the soulless people honestly excuse their own actions though having the experiences of living... assuming they aren't lying to themselves?
If individuals prove too dangerous for their existences and must be dispatched, do the new imposed influences on their intelligence matter at all in regard to any condemnation?
Intelligent undead do not retain their memories - only their pain. The person is gone, passed away, but a sliver remains, a carbon copy of only the bad and painful things. It could be said that intelligent undead aren't. They do not retain reasoning outside of their personal nightmare.
Although, over time, maybe it's possible for a precious few to learn. Say you're Xorianthus. You know all this. You've studied it, wrote a book on it. Yet you realise, maybe there's a ... not exactly a light at the end of the tunnel, that would be way too optimistic. But maybe you die, and you're tortured forever, but with a chance that you can eventually become something else. After gods only know how long. And you don't even know if that's going to happen.
How desperate do you need to be, to take that sliver of a chance - to suffer maybe centuries of pain, in the vain hope that eventually, something vaguely resembling rational thought will re-emerge?
That's an undead I like. Someone with 200 years of trauma, but growing out of it, slowly learning that there are experiences beyond just reliving old wounds. That's someone whose motivations I'd like to explore.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I really like this. I think it's a lot better than the sexy undead that get to chillax for all eternity. In my opinion, undeath and immortality on the mortal plane should be undesirable, yet people will still seek it out because they are fearful or misinformed. Thanks for showing us this.
I think Xoranthus had it wrong. Vampires are beautiful, exciting and somehow sexy despite being undead, at least once they become free willed and move beyond the vampire spawn stage. Liches really aren’t though, unless they use powerful illusions to disguise their true nature. Also, one minor nitpick: in 5e, it’s the positive and negative energy planes, not material planes.
You’ve been reading too much Tracy Hickman and not enough Twilight :)
Twilight is so bad.... ಠ︵ಠ
Yeah, Twilight’s not perfect (I don’t like the sparkly part either). But there is lots of literature and rpgs that portray vampires as sympathetic characters. They don’t have to all be evil disgusting villains just because Tracy Hickman says they have to be in the introduction to Curse of Strahd. (Although granted, Jander Sunstar in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is a good example of a sympathetic vampire in D&D.)
Twilight was a half-baked wish fulfillment/power fantasy "romance" story that took for granted that whatever position the protags hold is "correct", as I understand it. While hardly a mortal sin, it's not really a good example of thoughtful or well put together characterization or worldbuilding. Such as in the case of analyzing what being a wolf to humanity's lamb would actually entail. Regarding the invocation of other RPGs, the biggest name in vampire RPGs is unsurprisingly Vampire: the Masquerade, which makes it very clear that being a vampire is not a great experience. The hunger for blood is not just "oh, I'm feeling a little peckish, guess I better nip down to the Goth club for a sip", it's viewing humans in general as "happy meals on legs" to borrow from another cornerstone of vampire media, Buffy. Except ultimately the craving is more like addiction than hunger, at least as most of us in the 1st world understand hunger. Humanity is a resource that vampires must actively work to maintain and fight a ridiculous uphill battle to attempt to cultivate, with nearly all of them gradually having it worn away into sociopathy as the world moves on while they're locked in state. Imo, that's a much more interesting take on vampires than "oh yeah, they're basically just sexy superhumans with stupid amounts of money". Not everyone will agree, of course, but you have to admit the latter is not exactly breaking much new ground on the "speculative" part of "speculative fiction".
You can tell interesting stories about the undead without reducing them to tortured souls with little to no agency - Twilight wouldn't be a good example, and neither would Buffy, to my mind. But Interview with the Vampire isn't bad, and Dracula is actually kinda great. Also, Dracula is my model for my undead. Think about it: He just stays put in Transsylvania until he discovers Wilhelmina Harker (née Murray).
Sure, you might argue that he had the idea of moving to London before that - but I'd deny that. He lured a Londoner to his lair, sure, but he wasn't really going anywhere. Not until his tortured soul got a glimpse of that one thing he'd been longing for, for ... well I dunno, let's call it 150 years. When was the Ottoman invasion? Seems it was 1476. So ... I think the movie is set in 1899? 423 years. That's a longish while of heartbreak. Of suffering.
But he really is the model. He cursed himself - out of pain and despair and loss. And after becoming undead, that was all he was - a package of loss and longing and hatred and anger. Forced to forever hunt something he could never have. And to be in death the antithesis of what he had been in life, a fallen paladin sleeping on cursed earth at night, and skulking about his desecrated church. Torture. It's a wonderful story of tortured love, and a final glimpse of redemption.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Yeah, Buffy wasn't a good example of exploring the vampire experience from a character perspective, though early Spike had some good points. And arguably the lack of agency can be a selling point from the perspective of a personal horror story; losing control to the dark base urges inherent to vampirism. Vampire the Masquerade bases a considerable portion of their game design around that conflict.
Really I think for vampires the crucial thing if you want to go for horror as opposed to a power fantasy angle is this: there's no good solution. Maybe the hunger itself is simply too strong, maybe you can't get away with safe sips of blood (keep in mind that it doesn't actually take much volume to impair or endanger someone; a basic blood donation is about the same volume as a grocery store water bottle, and I can tell you from personal experience that you definitely notice a difference for the next couple days), or the mindset just shifts into something that's not particularly compatible with human society. If they can just coast without harming others (that the audience feels "matter"- the "I only eat dangerous criminals" type is in the same boat) or having their day-to-day experience particularly impaired, it's really just a standard power-up.
Why would they be sparkly, anyways? Metals and crystals sparkle, but why would vampire skin. Gah! =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Because their skin is made of metal and crystals, of course.
Well ... when you put it like that, it sounds totally obvious, of course =D
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I'm 90% sure liches are the exception to this rule. They explicitly have a soul and retain who they are. They are also known as the "Perfect Undead". The thing is about liches, 99% of anyone who would become a lich was already horribly evil and probably insane from the start.
I'm 90% sure liches are the exception to this rule. They explicitly have a soul and retain who they are. They are also known as the "Perfect Undead". The thing is about liches, 99% of anyone who would become a lich was already horribly evil and probably insane from the start.
There's no rule. This is all ... my opinion, it's 'homebrew' if you like. And since it's my opinion, there's no such thing as a 'perfect undead'. All paths into undeath - no exceptions - are traps, and all forms of undeath is endless torture. Sure, maybe the lich retains some of itself, but only enough to hurt even more.
Of course, my homebrew doesn't need to affect how anyone else plays the game =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
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On life:
To understand death, and undeath, we need to first understand life.
All living* things are imbued with a life force, drawn from the positive material planes. However lowly the lifeform, this life force is always present, however infinitismal. So long as the body is able to maintain the business of life, so long the conduit to the positive material remains. While the deeper arcanery at work is complicated, imagine it simply as a pump, the action of the living body sucking life energy from the positive material planes.
On death:
Death is the cessation of the life, the end of bodily functions of maintaining it and the conduit*, and the severing thereof. Death is complex and complicated. The conduit is severed, and life force no longer animates the body. For lesser beings, what life force is in the body simply slips away into the negative material planes, a tiny part of the ongoing universal mechanism of entropy.
But for higher life forms, it's nowhere near as simple. I like to imagine the life force of higher beings as having a color*. That color can be defined by many things. For beasts, it is defined simply by the fact that they are beasts, and what remains of them after death shall go into the beastlands, where they become some ideal version of what they were in life. For sentients, many more things affect the color: Morality, religion, actions taken or avoided in life, our loves and interests and passions all play a part. But in the final outcome, the color of that life force - the soul - determines what becomes of it. Where it goes, and what awaits it there.
The state of undeath:
Put in the simplest of terms, undeath is another conduit. Rather than the living body 'pumping' energy from the positive material planes, instead the dead body (or immaterial being) draws from other things to remain animate, and siphons it into the negative material. What this means is that any and all types of undead drain energy in one way or another. Most obvious perhaps is the vampire - but no undead can exist without this siphon, taking energy from the environment and draining if off into the negative material planes.
Being undead:
It is often touted as being a great boon to become undead. Particularly vampires are romanzised as living for ever, with dark passions and appetites. Beautiful, exciting and somehow sexy.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. None of the things that make us alive survive being dead. When we die, the soul departs, taking with it all that was good and warm and pleasant in our lives. All feelings of happiness and joy, all positive memories, all our love and affection, everything. Only slivers remain in the mind of the undead, and only negative - all our pain, all our hatred, spite and anger and jealousy and ill-will.
Being undead is neither romantic, or in any way a boon - not in any way desirable. It is eternal torture. There are no exceptions, not vampires, not liches.
In conclusion:
Undeath is undesirable. Despite all rumors to the opposite, much of what makes a sentient being is absent in the undead - they lack most of the motivations that drive the living, existing forever in a tortured state of fighting their own demons, suffering through the mistakes they made while alive, ranting and raving at slights long past and forgotten - and maybe even long resolved, while alive.
Some few undead may find rest if convinced to let go of those troubles. This is true for some ghosts, but the principle could theoretically apply to all undead.
* Living: Various beings can be considered to be alive, despite not really living. Elementals, automatons, the denizens of distant planes may have many of the outward signs of life, but despite everything are not actually alive. Being alive, in this case, defined as a cycle of life and death, and procreation.
* Conduit: Such transfer is universal. All fire comes ultimately from the elemental plane of fire, all lightning comes from the region where wind and rain meet - the border regions of the planes of air and water, the quasi-elemental plane of storms. Only phenomena of the mind, thoughs and ideas, do not come from elemental planes. They may have origines in stranger, more distant regions of the multiverse - or, indeed, may arise in us, the sentient minds of the prime material plane.
* Color: Not truly a color at all, but a useful - or convenient - term to describe an otherwise unknown and perhaps undescribable quality.
This text was discovered in the study of the lich Xorianthus. It is generally agreed that the text is penned in the distinctive style of the lich itself. In academic circles, debate rages hotly whether this was penned prior to, or after the mage completed the ritual to become a lich, and whether it's contents disprove itself or not.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
This is some pretty cool stuff.
Here liches might be the most terrifying undead. They looked at a fate worse than death straight in the eye and said “worth it”. (Though it may be that most were deceived).
I concur.
This is also why they’re the coolest. Step aside, vampires — and there’s a new tragic villain in town.
Now that I think about it, liches are just the product of Gandalf’s midlife crisis. That’s some scary stuff, right there.
Terra Lubridia archive:
The Bloody Barnacle | The Gut | The Athene Crusader | The Jewel of Atlantis
Interesting.
Kasrik Argentum Stellaris Fiddlesticks the Wizard, Lord of Stars, Master Trickster, and Creator of both the Mosh of Stardust Hornets and Mimiczilla.
"You're never fully dressed without a smile!" >:3
"Honk."
I think Xoranthus had it wrong. Vampires are beautiful, exciting and somehow sexy despite being undead, at least once they become free willed and move beyond the vampire spawn stage. Liches really aren’t though, unless they use powerful illusions to disguise their true nature. Also, one minor nitpick: in 5e, it’s the positive and negative energy planes, not material planes.
You’ve been reading too much Tracy Hickman and not enough Twilight :)
I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
Twilight is so bad.... ಠ︵ಠ
Kasrik Argentum Stellaris Fiddlesticks the Wizard, Lord of Stars, Master Trickster, and Creator of both the Mosh of Stardust Hornets and Mimiczilla.
"You're never fully dressed without a smile!" >:3
"Honk."
Yeah, Twilight’s not perfect (I don’t like the sparkly part either). But there is lots of literature and rpgs that portray vampires as sympathetic characters. They don’t have to all be evil disgusting villains just because Tracy Hickman says they have to be in the introduction to Curse of Strahd. (Although granted, Jander Sunstar in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft is a good example of a sympathetic vampire in D&D.)
I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
We're left with a question still with Undeath.
Many intelligent undead retain their memories of life: experiences, decisions, the reasons for them, and the consequences.
What makes a person? Is it the sum of the person's experience?
If this is retained in undead with the soul departed, how does being turned into a soulless syphon affect the defined person? Do we excuse the actions for the person being soulless if the person is now an intelligent undead? Would the soulless people honestly excuse their own actions though having the experiences of living... assuming they aren't lying to themselves?
If individuals prove too dangerous for their existences and must be dispatched, do the new imposed influences on their intelligence matter at all in regard to any condemnation?
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Who now?
Vampires are why I came up with this whole thing, initially - well, vampires and Lord Soth. If you take the torture out of the torture, it's ... no longer torture. I don't want my undead horrors to walk around behaving like living people - only just a little dead. I want them to by frayed, desperate, starving for things they cannot ever, ever have. I want every moment of their endless wakefulness to be a living nightmare. Undeath is about suffering - not about being cool and having an alternate diet.
Intelligent undead do not retain their memories - only their pain. The person is gone, passed away, but a sliver remains, a carbon copy of only the bad and painful things. It could be said that intelligent undead aren't. They do not retain reasoning outside of their personal nightmare.
Although, over time, maybe it's possible for a precious few to learn. Say you're Xorianthus. You know all this. You've studied it, wrote a book on it. Yet you realise, maybe there's a ... not exactly a light at the end of the tunnel, that would be way too optimistic. But maybe you die, and you're tortured forever, but with a chance that you can eventually become something else. After gods only know how long. And you don't even know if that's going to happen.
How desperate do you need to be, to take that sliver of a chance - to suffer maybe centuries of pain, in the vain hope that eventually, something vaguely resembling rational thought will re-emerge?
That's an undead I like. Someone with 200 years of trauma, but growing out of it, slowly learning that there are experiences beyond just reliving old wounds. That's someone whose motivations I'd like to explore.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I really like this. I think it's a lot better than the sexy undead that get to chillax for all eternity. In my opinion, undeath and immortality on the mortal plane should be undesirable, yet people will still seek it out because they are fearful or misinformed. Thanks for showing us this.
Twilight was a half-baked wish fulfillment/power fantasy "romance" story that took for granted that whatever position the protags hold is "correct", as I understand it. While hardly a mortal sin, it's not really a good example of thoughtful or well put together characterization or worldbuilding. Such as in the case of analyzing what being a wolf to humanity's lamb would actually entail. Regarding the invocation of other RPGs, the biggest name in vampire RPGs is unsurprisingly Vampire: the Masquerade, which makes it very clear that being a vampire is not a great experience. The hunger for blood is not just "oh, I'm feeling a little peckish, guess I better nip down to the Goth club for a sip", it's viewing humans in general as "happy meals on legs" to borrow from another cornerstone of vampire media, Buffy. Except ultimately the craving is more like addiction than hunger, at least as most of us in the 1st world understand hunger. Humanity is a resource that vampires must actively work to maintain and fight a ridiculous uphill battle to attempt to cultivate, with nearly all of them gradually having it worn away into sociopathy as the world moves on while they're locked in state. Imo, that's a much more interesting take on vampires than "oh yeah, they're basically just sexy superhumans with stupid amounts of money". Not everyone will agree, of course, but you have to admit the latter is not exactly breaking much new ground on the "speculative" part of "speculative fiction".
You can tell interesting stories about the undead without reducing them to tortured souls with little to no agency - Twilight wouldn't be a good example, and neither would Buffy, to my mind. But Interview with the Vampire isn't bad, and Dracula is actually kinda great. Also, Dracula is my model for my undead. Think about it: He just stays put in Transsylvania until he discovers Wilhelmina Harker (née Murray).
Sure, you might argue that he had the idea of moving to London before that - but I'd deny that. He lured a Londoner to his lair, sure, but he wasn't really going anywhere. Not until his tortured soul got a glimpse of that one thing he'd been longing for, for ... well I dunno, let's call it 150 years. When was the Ottoman invasion? Seems it was 1476. So ... I think the movie is set in 1899? 423 years. That's a longish while of heartbreak. Of suffering.
But he really is the model. He cursed himself - out of pain and despair and loss. And after becoming undead, that was all he was - a package of loss and longing and hatred and anger. Forced to forever hunt something he could never have. And to be in death the antithesis of what he had been in life, a fallen paladin sleeping on cursed earth at night, and skulking about his desecrated church. Torture. It's a wonderful story of tortured love, and a final glimpse of redemption.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Yeah, Buffy wasn't a good example of exploring the vampire experience from a character perspective, though early Spike had some good points. And arguably the lack of agency can be a selling point from the perspective of a personal horror story; losing control to the dark base urges inherent to vampirism. Vampire the Masquerade bases a considerable portion of their game design around that conflict.
Really I think for vampires the crucial thing if you want to go for horror as opposed to a power fantasy angle is this: there's no good solution. Maybe the hunger itself is simply too strong, maybe you can't get away with safe sips of blood (keep in mind that it doesn't actually take much volume to impair or endanger someone; a basic blood donation is about the same volume as a grocery store water bottle, and I can tell you from personal experience that you definitely notice a difference for the next couple days), or the mindset just shifts into something that's not particularly compatible with human society. If they can just coast without harming others (that the audience feels "matter"- the "I only eat dangerous criminals" type is in the same boat) or having their day-to-day experience particularly impaired, it's really just a standard power-up.
Don't forget sparkly!
Why would they be sparkly, anyways? Metals and crystals sparkle, but why would vampire skin. Gah! =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Because their skin is made of metal and crystals, of course.
Well ... when you put it like that, it sounds totally obvious, of course =D
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I'm 90% sure liches are the exception to this rule. They explicitly have a soul and retain who they are. They are also known as the "Perfect Undead". The thing is about liches, 99% of anyone who would become a lich was already horribly evil and probably insane from the start.
There's no rule. This is all ... my opinion, it's 'homebrew' if you like. And since it's my opinion, there's no such thing as a 'perfect undead'. All paths into undeath - no exceptions - are traps, and all forms of undeath is endless torture. Sure, maybe the lich retains some of itself, but only enough to hurt even more.
Of course, my homebrew doesn't need to affect how anyone else plays the game =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.