prismatica | text; un: sekiken

Hello. My name is Louis, and it’s been about a month since my arrival.

This is something I’ve been curious about since arriving, so I’d like to gauge the current community:

Are you, do you know, or have you ever known a vampire?

If so, I’d like to learn as much as possible about the vampires from your worlds. While one might have in mind a vampire they would call “stereotypical,” that is undeniably a relative label, and it interests me just how widely the differences can range under what may very well now be called an umbrella term.

For example: My race goes by the name “revenants.” For all intents and purposes, I would still classify us as vampires, as we are immortals sustained by drinking blood—but perhaps you might think other criteria more appropriate for determining whether or not one falls into the vampire category? I welcome any challenges or elaboration.

Some further questions for consideration:

Do your vampires have fangs? Powers, abilities?
What kind of blood do they drink? How often? How do they feed?
What does a vampire’s immortality look like to you?
Are vampires well-embedded in your world’s history, or are they more recent?
What relationships do you or they have with non-vampires?
How have other vampires adapted since coming to this world? Are there any particular hindrances you or they encounter?

These are just a few to prompt discussion, but don’t feel limited to these questions only. This is meant to serve as a collaborative gathering of information.

As all of this may be a sensitive or even unpleasant topic for some, I want to offer full transparency from my side of things, and welcome anonymous responses should anyone wish to protect their identity. Please share as much or as little as you’d like, and feel free to ask if there’s anything you’d want to know of me, as well.

Thank you for reading.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Halved? That's awful!

I guess I can see the reasoning, though...do you get the same sort of resilience and power from vampirism? I never really understood how vampires could live just on blood anyway.

But then people usually told me I was thinking too much about fiction.

Yes... It was a tragedy that struck worldwide, all at once. Giant thorns pierced the land, and monsters that exceeded the imagination arose from the cracks. Revenants were meant to fight back against these monsters, while protecting the dwindling number of humans.

Specific abilities can vary from one revenant to another, but in general, we all have enhanced strength and endurance, as well as accelerated regeneration. Some powers lend better to agility or magic, too.

I wish I could tell you why only blood sustains us... I believe I read somewhere once that the earliest vampire mythos reasoned that blood equated life, and because vampires were born as a disruption to the natural cycle of life and death, they fed on "life" itself as an act of defiance and spite towards the gods.

But, like you said... Perhaps that's just overly focused on the fiction of it.

[ Wow. That's a lot to unpack. Rebecca doesn't respond for a little bit, rereading the message. Giant thorns, monsters from under the earth, humans becoming a persecuted minority - then these new abilities rising along with the cataclysm. ]

Biologically, it still doesn't make sense. If you were alive, then your body would eat your fat and eventually your muscle; if you were dead, then you'd start to rot. I can't think of any way you'd be able to stay alive and healthy-looking without some sort of paralytic agent...

But that's all leaning on my own assumptions. Whatever happened, everything changed.

I'm really sorry you had to go through all that, Louis.

[Ah... It's not that he had been fishing for sympathy or anything, but perhaps he had gotten a bit too used to talking about the state of his world in a removed, almost clinical matter. He was here talking about things that were just fact to him, though her apology reminds him to stay on track.]

Thank you. It was difficult, but we did our best to carry on, as I'm sure they're still doing now.

You're very right, however. There's a lot about my own body that boggles the mind. It appears to function to the capacities of a living human and then some, but also acts as if it is frozen in the state before my death; this body does not grow or change, and "healing" wounds is more akin to restoration, I'd say.

I'd attempted to conduct my own investigations back in my home world, but was limited by both my lack of equipment and expertise. A thorough look may be more viable here in Lunatia, though I wonder if that would prove of any use to anyone, given that the parasite does not exist here.

[ It's not about her right now, but the broad details, at least, are an awful lot like what happened to her. She gets it. Making it matter-of-fact is a way to survive. And a little sympathy never hurt. ]

It'd be a little morbid to say I have a biological interest in your body, huh? I'd love to know if you work anything out. :)

Either way, it'll only come in handy here. Assuming you have some safe source for blood...how often do you need to eat?

Haha, well... It's okay. I think a bit of morbidity comes with the territory of being a vampire. I'll give it some more consideration, then. Can't promise results, though.

On my home world, we had a potent but somewhat scarce organic blood substitute called blood beads. About 250ml of its liquid could sustain an adult for a month max, given they didn't exert energy excessively. Here, there are daily supplements available to me both from Lunatian healthcare and the clinic I'm working at. I have a preference for the synthetic type made in-house at the clinic, though I keep the others as backup.

That's a relief. I'm glad you have some same way to get it.

How'd you come across an organic blood substitute at home? Usually the 'good' vampires in fiction eat animal blood or things like that.

I can't say for sure where it came from... It didn't exist when revenants were first brought into the world, but in the time between my human death and revival as a revenant, bloodsprings became widespread. They bore the highly coveted blood beads like fruit and was more accessible than finding humans to drink from, though with over-harvesting and no way to grow the plants for ourselves, food security became rarer and rarer.

While I might not personally rule out animal blood as an option, I did not come across any in my ruined city. I want to believe some survived the apocalypse in other areas, but I never saw any myself.

I see...I guess if you're stuck in a ruined city, relying on plants that you can't grow, or animals that weren't around, isn't really feasible.

[ And another person trapped in a ruined city. More and more, every other world she hears about feels the same as her own. ]

text; un: sekiken

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