I like vampire movies, but you know … you have to wonder
sometimes.
There are several theories about vampires, depending on the
culture you reference. Vampirism is
associated with the rising dead, that is to say, the undead such as ghouls and
zombies. They are a type of living
dead or animated corpses – not as a dull a conversationalist as let’s, say a
zombie, but still they are of the dead.
The classic western culture vampire of literature is fairly
modern, dating to only the 1820s although the folk stories go back farther,
they don’t enter into mainstream literature.
It’s no accident that vampire stories became common in Western Europe in
the Romantic Era and remained highly popular for 150 years given a great boost
by the Victorians with their love of romanticism and exoticism. Vampirism as a cultural, folk, and
literature phenomena is pretty well documented, so I won’t belabor the reader
with a rehash.
With modern western, gothic vampires. I will be dealing here
with the typical evil spirit type, which can coalesce into different forms such
as a human, a bat, and a wolf. They
drink blood to sustain themselves and are pretty much invulnerable to most
physical attacks, except in a few circumstances. Sounds tough doesn’t it, but in the right circumstances you can
win.
Vampires do have vulnerabilities such as being destroyed by
the light of day and they must sleep during the day in their native soil far
away from light. Secrecy is an important
part of being a vampire. The first part
of the secret is that vampires exist at all; the second part is finding their
vulnerabilities and then the physical location of their lair and resting place. Really, once you identify vampire activity,
know how and when to kill them, you pretty much got the problem licked. Knowledge is strength, but just hope the
vampire doesn’t know you are on to him/her and it tires to nip you in the bud
before you begin. An enraged vampire
will backtrack his trail and entrap a vampire killer.
Locals and minions may thwart your inquiries through fear
and domination by the vampire as well as getting substantial payback from the
vampire for helping its enemies. It’s
kind of like squealing on the Mafia,
you know there is going to be payback, so expect a lot of reluctance and
possible misdirection. Also, since
vampires can cloud people’s mind, there might be people who can’t give you
information because they just can’t remember.
You know, “These aren’t the droids you are looking for”, gambit. Trying to get clues from a frightened or
mesmerized populace might land you in the middle of a mob who doesn’t want the
status quo upset, so even victims might not want your help for fear of making
it worse.
Presuming you have a classic gothic vampire, you are pretty
safe in the sun, but if you have an ultra-modern vampire, the kind that just
glitters, you might have a problem.
Generally though, the sun is your friend. Also mirrors are useful because a vampire doesn’t throw a reflection
and possibly an image in a camera.
Mirrors and photos make pretty good vampire detectors, but the problem
is that you are probably standing with a vampire just a few feet behind you! This is not a good to be in position at
all.
A note on vampire kits:
if you approach assembling a vampire killing kit in scope of a very
specialized exorcism and eradication kits, then you might get something like
the kits seen on the web. In such a
situation, the components would be highly charged religious items such as
relics or items that have been deeply and powerfully consecrated as well as
mundane tools. Getting your hands on
special religious items might be a campaign on its own. Keep in mind that in Dracula, Bram Stoker's book, Van Helsing,
assembled his kit on the spot and tossed it all into a hand bag for transport
to the site. He didn’t have a pre-made
kit available.
Religiously charged items will repel vampires such as a
cross, a blessed host & etc. They
will stop and turn vampires, provided you have the right culture or
religion. You have to wonder, however,
if the vampire was from another religion, how effective some holy implements
would be in that case. It’s like the
old joke, “Oy vey, have you got the wrong vampire”* shtick. This could get very dicey if you don’t know
the religious affiliation of a vampire.
Even worse, how do you kill/turn an atheist vampire -- with a copy or
Darwin or Nietzsche? Hopefully I
haven’t offended anybody, I’m just thinking out loud, so to speak.
Ok, so you found the vampire’s lair, evaded traps, got away
from minions and now stand in the center of the maze. The vampire is asleep/dormant in his/her coffin, lying native
soil, powerless – it’s time to stake him out.
Various lore suggests the best possible wood and these vary, but frankly
anything that pierces the heart and remains there will work. This is classic vampire staking at it’s
finest. So you hammer in the stake and
maybe get some shrieking action and flailing as the body disintegrates. So maybe it doesn’t turn into a foul wisp
and you have a more corporeal vampire than you expected. That probably means you have to cut off the
head, move it to the feet and stuff garlic in its mouth. A few crosses strewn about and some other
holy items and you probably have it beat.
But I don’t understand why the intrepid vampire hunters just
don’t finish the job on one of these corporeal jobs and just drag the staked
stiff out into the sunlight for a bit of the old ultraviolet to do its job and
fry that baby up! Nah, by this time the
credits are rolling and that vampire looks kind of heavy, so never mind. Amateurs for sure; no doubt a movie sequel
is going to be spawned due to this sloppy inaction. Maybe I am being too logical after all.
The other possibility is to lure the vampire out into the
sun either by keeping him up after bedtime or making an opening in a room to
let in sunlight. That scenario requires
a lot of luck, timing and a really, really mad vampire who looses track of
time. In that case, give me a sleeping
vampire every time.
So game on, my intrepid adventurers whether it be RPGs or
LARPs and smite those blood suckers … do it logically, but just pay no
attention to physical mass conversions during morphs and energy transfer and
other things like physics. Thinking too
hard gets in the way of the fun and too much logic can rain on your parade.
CoastConFan
In this same series of blog entries, see also:
The Werewolf Paradigm
http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2011/03/werewolf-paradigm-fun-vs-rationality.html
And the Logical Zombie
http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2011/11/logical-zombie.html
Also my previous post on a custom made Hourglass Vampire
Hunting Kit http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2013/01/hourglass-vampire-hunting-kit.html
The truth about those Vampire Hunting Kits, appropriately named: Vampire Hunting Kits Debunked, June 17, 2014
Some additional links of interest on the subject::
Vampire skeletons http://news.discovery.com/history/vampire-skeletons-120606.html
Check out the extensive bibliography at the end of the
Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire
Skeptics dictionary about vampires http://www.skepdic.com/vampires.html
An interesting show about vampirism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Dead
Project Gutenberg free digital download of famous vampire
stories:
download Dracula http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345
download Varney the Vampire
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14833
download Carmilla http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10007
*movie quote, The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
*movie quote, The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
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| You want fries with that stake? |
