Since the game Shadowrun was first came out there have been players who absolutely must play some sort pole-smoking, euro-trash fashion victim. There have been loads of homebrew rules for the players in question to play their favorite sort of blood sucker. Be it the North American Vampire, the European Nosferatu or any of the other ridiculous variants.
The various players will try to claim that it’s for the role-playing experience. They want to play something outside the norm, as if playing a cybernetically enhanced street monster is normal. I haven’t seen any trolls walking the streets lately nor have I ever witnessed a flying mage streak across the sky. I have yet to see someone control a computer with mere thought via a cyber-deck, wireless commlink, or a set of bullshit magical powers. I can’t claim to have seen someone interfacing with a giant robot nor wirelessly controlling a formula one race car just by thinking about it.
Despite having a game completely devoted to vampires, people still feel the need to incorporate their rape fantasy into every possible gaming system. This is especially true now that Shadowrun shares a common set of rules with the “The, The, The” game company. By that I mean White Wolf and their games “Vampire the Requiem”, “Promethean the Created” and “Emo the need for Prozac”.
In Shadowrun the movement to shoehorn in Vampires officially came when their cousins the Ghouls were offered as an available player type. These flesh eating monsters were allowed to be part of a shadowrunning team because the authors spent a great deal of time and effort to transform them from mindless necrophages into vampire lite. The official inclusion of the vampire was fully realized in 4th edition with their arrival as a fully available player race. The rule change was a mere formality; vampiric PCs had existed on the internet since 1st edition.
Most game masters who allow their players to indulge in their rape fantasies will just gloss over the fact that it isn’t blood that keeps them alive but essence. SR Vampires can’t just go to the local blood bank for take out. They either have to attack someone or find someone dumb enough to allow themselves to be fed upon. But don’t worry the gm will also gloss over the rule that Vampires drain essence permanently. The real reason behind the gloss over of the rules is create player monstrosities. You know what I mean; unstoppable necromantic juggernauts capable of tearing their way though a squad of military grade cyber-soldiers.
Wait a tick. Did he say “Rape Fantasy”? Yes I did and I meant it. Playing a vampire is a way of fulfilling some deep seated need to play out a rape fantasy. How can you say that it’s about rape? Actually it’s quite easy when you do the research. How many players or Goth freaks have actually examined the roots of what a vampire actually is? What, did I hear that correctly? Practically none of the players who feel the need to play a vampire actually understand the roots of the monster? Let me ask another question. How many players have actually read Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”? What was that? Only slightly more than have done the historical research? I can’t believe that. Surely you jest.
The historical roots of the vampire come from the universal association of blood with life. Humans have always understood the connection between blood and staying alive. Blood is spilled when a predator kills it prey. The predator is usually covered in it as it feeds. Warriors understand that if one is wounded the injury his very life is dripping onto the ground. He also understands the need to staunch that flow, be it by bandaging or fire. He also understands that if too much is spilt he becomes a lifeless corpse.
Humans need to feel safe, we all understand that feeling. So did primitive man. He needed to come up with a way overcome the uncertainty that death brings. Do we just cease to exist or do we somehow continue to exist in another form? Whether someone goes to be with the animal spirits or travels to paradise be it the Elysium Fields or Heaven or an eternity at a free all-you-can-eat Chipotle. So if someone can exist after death, is it possible to come back?
That’s where blood comes back into the equation. What does a rotting corpse need to come back to life? Quite simply it needs to have blood flowing though its arteries and veins again. Quite obviously it can’t just start making its own again. What if that body could just somehow find a means to get blood from somewhere else? Where could a worm buffet find blood? Wait a second, doesn’t blood flow freely when a predator rips out the throat of it prey? Is not a predator covered in blood as it rips out the guts of it victim?
That connection is where the walking dead come from. It is just an extension of predator and prey. The difference is that time the predator is an unnatural force that cannot exist without a supply of new blood. So now the prey must be human because no mere animal can provide the special brand of blood makes a human separate from beast.
Now just what is this new supernatural predator going to look like? Will he look the same as he did in life? Will he be suave? Will she be sexy? Will the living want to have sex with an unliving blood drinking, flesh eating monster? To answer that question one must dig up the recently deceased and examine the process of decomposition.
As a body begins to decompose undergoes certain processes. Moisture is lost forcing the skin back pulling it tight. This is especially noticeable at the fingernails and facial hair. The skin at the fingernails recedes giving the illusion of growth. The flesh sinks lower exposing more of the hair follicles which makes is appear as if the hair is still growing. The gums also receded exposing more of the teeth making it appear as if the teeth have become more feral, especially the canines. Fluids in the chest cavity and stomach putrefy and start to flow out of the only two exits available. It appears as if the corpse has recently eaten as the mouth is stained red and has had a bowel movement. Blood settles in the portion of the body laying on the ground appearing as a fresh bruise. The rest takes on a waxy pallor. Occasionally gases will build up in the torso and evacuate sometimes as a rush of methane sounding similar to groan or a fart. Here is our general composite of the walking dead. Pale complexion, quite often gaunt, blood stained teeth that seem to have enlarged, the finger nails that look as if they’re still growing. There is evidence that a man’s beard has lengthened. Sometimes they groan, occasionally they appear to have recently digested a meal and crapped their pants. Stinking fluids that obviously aren’t blood, but some foul ichor that leaks out if the corpse is pierced.
Thus we have our foul smelling, noise making, mouth bleeding, fingernail and beard growing, meal digesting, defecating, fang endowed friend. Now that’s sexy. Wait a second that isn’t sexy unless you’re a necrophile. Nobody is going to want to play a stinking corpse that’s rotting from within. This is quite simply a quick review of the historical vampire. It took something else to start people down the road of actually liking the image of the undead. For that we have to touch on the person most responsible for bringing that image into the main stay. An Irish author named Bram Stoker.
It was during the Victorian Age when Stoker wrote “Dracula”. He wanted a blockbuster of a novel; something that would make him a sizable profit just like most authors. So we must ask ourselves what is the one thing that always sells, the one thing that everybody wants? Well of course the answer is obvious its sex my dear reader. Sex sells period. It was just as true then as it is now. Stoker’s time was during the Victorian Era and sex was taboo. It was viewed as a disgusting act merely to create children and shunned by proper society. The real truth is that what went on behind closed doors was then as it is now, however it was not proper to write about it. Thus to hint at sex in a literary work would have been scandalous and the author shunned with an old fashioned book burring thrown in for good measure. Stoker used the next best thing to the intimate act of sex. He used the dance of predator and prey. The act of piercing the flesh with teeth substitutes for the act of sexual penetration. The exchange of sexual fluids is replaced by the act of feeding on blood. It is an act of violence where someone becomes a victim. It is an act of rape, which leads to death, Predator and Prey, plain and simple.
Most people at the time did not want to see a brutal murder on stage. In fact nobody at the time wanted to see that in the movies. Thus we enter Bela Lugosi a handsome man at the time, who spoke with a Hungarian accent. The ladies liked him and so too did some of the men. The image changed from a walking corpse to a robust good looking man. He was attractive and as Dracula, he was rich and powerful, more than a mere human. He had special powers that mortals could only dream of. But at the end of the movie, he was killed off as he was still a monster. Later movies would make the vampire more human, attractive, and tanned. The ladies just loved Frank Lengella. Then we enter into the age of a certain author. A former erotic story writer who goes by the name Anne Rice.
Anne Rice turned the vampire into an angst driven anti-hero. Her greatest creation Lestat was once a man who had lost his grip on humanity and was quite simply was a monster who all the ladies liked. The average female reader wanted to have Lestat come into her bedroom and bite her. She would writhe on the sheets is sexual ecstasy. Rice fused the pornographic with the description of the vampiric bite. No longer was it just an act of violence now it was an embrace or a dark kiss. Thus the act of becoming a vampire had transmuted into something quite sexual and desirable. This however is just a fantasy any sane person knows just how they would react to being assaulted like this. They just like I, would cry and beg for their lives screaming to anyone to save them.
This led to the vampire becoming more publically acceptable. The Goth movement which had at that time been an offshoot of the punk scene had an avenue into the mainstream. Thus it wasn’t too long before someone got the idea to create a game. That game was Vampire the Masquerade by Mark Rein-Hagen. It was originally intended to be a game of personal horror where the character had been killed then raised by a creature of the night. They were now undead abominations who had to try and find their way in a hostile world where if discovered death was sure to follow. That idea lasted for about thirty seconds at the unveiling at Gen Con. Soon it was undead X-Men where the sunlight challenged player characters were ostracized by the world they sought to conquer by any means necessary. The players quite often skipped over the whole encounter where they were violated and murdered, only to rise sometime later as a monster.
That’s right I said monster. The historical vampire is clearly a monster; he is a predator who feeds on victims to sustain himself. He is a walking corpse, who must kill the innocent to perpetuate his unholy existence. Night after night he stalks the night in a manner similar to the way a great white shark seeks out its prey. The act of becoming a vampire involves no less that four separate acts. First, the prey is stalked, unknowingly breathing its last few breaths. Second, the victim is attacked, be it by stealth of via a blitzkrieg rush. Third, the victim is drained over the course of time other times he has his throat ripped out in an orgy of violence. The prey resists most likely screaming to whatever deity to save them, begging for mercy. Of course there is no mercy the victim dies pure and simple. Finally, sometimes if the vampire feels lonely or playful he decides the give some of his own blood to the dying victim damning him to become a monster in his own right.
Thus I present you with the facts of playing a vampire. The character is a monster who murders and rapes his or her way throughout their unliving existence. They are not undead heroes who save the day. They are abominations that would be sought out and destroyed in reality. No sane person would ever want to be an actual vampire. The current version of the vampire is incorrect. The vampire is not a sex symbol it is quite simply a preternatural serial rapist and killer.
Edited by Brad K.