My ninth novel
Mar. 11th, 2011 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdI have contracted for a minimum of 65,000 words of vampires, to be delivered by Sept 1. Yes, there is an advance involved.
I am terribly excited.
So, in the interests of making my world believable, and my vampires not complete idiots--except those whose brains have rotted, of course--I have been noodling.
Vampirism is a virus. It incubates in its host from the time of the initial blood ingestion, for anywhere from three days to a month. Vampires do bite, and if they drain the victim during or after the exchange, it's a three day incubation. In case of accidental ingestion, the virus will incubate up to a month, during which time it replicates in the RNA, gradually causing the host to "die," then return.
It does not end decay, merely slows it over centuries instead of years. A fresh vampire will be ravenously hungry for the first month as the body adjusts to the new life. The first century of a vampire's life is its most powerful, but the more established vampiric organizations are designed to squelch competition during this period. A two hundred year old vampire is at his peak. A three hundred one is slipping. A four hundred year old vamp is rotting out. By 500, they tend to be mindless things, devouring and ravening. Anything beyond that is pretty much a snapping skeleton held together by leathery sinew, eating out of habit to feed organs long decayed away. The organizations usually put them down at the first signs of blatant decay.
Sun exposure hastens the decay. Vamps are destroyed by fire, a stake to the heart and destruction of the brain. They have slightly greater strength than humans. Running water, garlic, holy symbols, roses, seeds, lemons with spikes, none of those work.
Should a vampire sire a child during the incubation period, the virus lies dormant in the child's cells. (the incubation is not long enough to conceive and carry) Most of these live out their lives and die of old age. Should such a child meet a violent end at any point in their life, they return almost immediately, not as a vampire, but as an Undying, a revenant with powers of regeneration. These are very rare, less than 100,000 in the whole world. Being immortal eventually drives them insane. Every Undying has at least two diagnosable mental illnesses, of a type more severe than personality disorders.
The Council of Eternity tries to find and train the Undying to hunt vampires. They also try to create a support network to deal with culture shock and constant change. They have about a 50% success rate in recruitment and training. The support network is less successful. The Undying do not work and play well with each other, since too many diagnoses in the same room always gets ugly. The Council, in recent years, has begun GPS chipping the Undying, just behind the ear. There are some who have taken the training and gone off on their own.
So, where have I gone totally off the rails?
I am terribly excited.
So, in the interests of making my world believable, and my vampires not complete idiots--except those whose brains have rotted, of course--I have been noodling.
Vampirism is a virus. It incubates in its host from the time of the initial blood ingestion, for anywhere from three days to a month. Vampires do bite, and if they drain the victim during or after the exchange, it's a three day incubation. In case of accidental ingestion, the virus will incubate up to a month, during which time it replicates in the RNA, gradually causing the host to "die," then return.
It does not end decay, merely slows it over centuries instead of years. A fresh vampire will be ravenously hungry for the first month as the body adjusts to the new life. The first century of a vampire's life is its most powerful, but the more established vampiric organizations are designed to squelch competition during this period. A two hundred year old vampire is at his peak. A three hundred one is slipping. A four hundred year old vamp is rotting out. By 500, they tend to be mindless things, devouring and ravening. Anything beyond that is pretty much a snapping skeleton held together by leathery sinew, eating out of habit to feed organs long decayed away. The organizations usually put them down at the first signs of blatant decay.
Sun exposure hastens the decay. Vamps are destroyed by fire, a stake to the heart and destruction of the brain. They have slightly greater strength than humans. Running water, garlic, holy symbols, roses, seeds, lemons with spikes, none of those work.
Should a vampire sire a child during the incubation period, the virus lies dormant in the child's cells. (the incubation is not long enough to conceive and carry) Most of these live out their lives and die of old age. Should such a child meet a violent end at any point in their life, they return almost immediately, not as a vampire, but as an Undying, a revenant with powers of regeneration. These are very rare, less than 100,000 in the whole world. Being immortal eventually drives them insane. Every Undying has at least two diagnosable mental illnesses, of a type more severe than personality disorders.
The Council of Eternity tries to find and train the Undying to hunt vampires. They also try to create a support network to deal with culture shock and constant change. They have about a 50% success rate in recruitment and training. The support network is less successful. The Undying do not work and play well with each other, since too many diagnoses in the same room always gets ugly. The Council, in recent years, has begun GPS chipping the Undying, just behind the ear. There are some who have taken the training and gone off on their own.
So, where have I gone totally off the rails?
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 09:39 pm (UTC)The sunlight thing makes sense, but I think you should stagger it: sun is less degrading to younger vamps than older ones. Sunlight has been known to trigger cellular decay and tumors in humans, so this makes sense.
What's the Council of Eternity? Are they humans who are anti-vampire? If their goal is to create Undying, they should either find a willing vamp or get one of their own males turned vamp who can then sire lots of children. If they have the money, they could take impoverished women out of poverty for the price of bearing a child who will be come Undying. This could get out of hand, so I recommend there be a few more restrictions to becoming an Undying.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-11 10:54 pm (UTC)They hate vampires, because they hate being immortal. The goal is not to create more, but train the unfortunates who are.
Undyings are only created during the incubation period, not after full vamping. Most vampires don't make more. And most eat all the kill, so there is no live incubation period.
So, you have to make a new vampire about every month. And getting someone to do it just so he can impregnate a bunch of women and be killed? I don't see many takers for the job.
Or when they did try it, it ended badly. Remember, Undying tend psychotic or sociopathic, or both.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 02:50 am (UTC)Stupid question: do human-made drugs work on Undying psych problems? Do they work sometimes and have...side effects?
Just from reading your description, I almost want your story to start like it's the end of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and one Undying is breaking another out of a psych ward.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 03:02 am (UTC)ZOMG, i love your squishy brains!
But I've already started it with the Lego table.
The lego table lay on its side in the restaurant flowerbed, broken glass around it just catching the first glints of light as the new sun came over the ridge. The rider parked his motorcycle beside it and swung off. He paced the scene, careful not to leave tracks. Not that the attackers had left any when they ate the patrons of the little restaurant.
He counted six dead inside, a fair crowd for an early Thursday breakfast. The whole air felt like vampires, cold and ugly, without the proper sense of growing that an Ozark spring should have in late March. A miniature schoolbus, sitting on two flats, its grille and most of its glass missing mocked him from the junk yard by the defunct canoe rental place.
The other ten victims, all children, slumped bonelessly on the cracked seats, their heads lolling on shredded throats. Great. This crew had a sense of humor. He turned away, ignoring the tattered bunting and faded flags from last summer that fluttered in a dawn breeze.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 04:51 am (UTC)I think the vampirism as a virus thing was hackneyed by the time Underworld was made, but you have enough good stuff here to make it worth it. Especially the gradual loss of structural integrity in the older vamps.
What do you think about having it be a microscopic parasite instead of a virus? It's a subtle difference, and some readers won't even notice it, but it isn't as cliched, and to me it also makes a little more sense. The way I see it (and please disregard my comments if they get too intrusive), the parasite subsists on the host's blood while shutting down the basic biologic processes, keeping the neural network alive and the ability to move around--what would be a symbiotic relationship, except that it's slowly killing the host. Before they're completely taken over, drinking blood helps them keep the virus from completely destroying their bloodstream. Once the parasite has fully taken hold, it can only keep the host's brain alive so long, but drinking blood helps them to sustain it longer.
Then the vamps who haven't completely lost their humanity are in a conundrum, because it means that drinking blood helps them sustain their consciousness/sense of self longer, so they constantly have to choose between losing their humanity by performing monstrous acts and losing their humanity by letting it slowly slip away.
I'm also kind of iffy on the Undying. How about if a child infected in the womb doesn't always turn into an Undying, but some do--so it's like Huntington's disease, where you can have it hanging over your head your whole life, but instead of there being a blood test, the only way you find out is when you die--or don't.
I also think that if I were writing a vampire story with a medical explanation, then things like garlic and lemons would have some effect, even if it's not the standard ones you'd expect. For example, garlic might be repugnant to vampires, but something they can get over with effort. So it would work against the truly mindless vampires, but if you piss off one that still has his sentience, then garlic might distract him a little, but it wouldn't stop him.
That's my 2.5 cents. Hope there's something in there you can use.
no subject
To my line of thinking then:
The vampire virus (although I DO like the aforementioned parasite idea, if for no other reason than that it hasn't been done before--to the best of my reckoning) lies dormant in an infected host until it is triggered by the host's body temperature dropping below a certain level (as in death, although hypothermia or substantial blood loss would also cause one's normal body temp' to slip below the norm & thus trigger it). An infected host could thus go on & live for years--if not decades--and be blissfully unaware he/she is infected.
Once "The Change" takes place and the host goes vamp' the virus subtly changes certain aspects of the host's body. Again, I like the parasite idea here, and the whole notion of a symbotic relationship. A virus just lives to replicate itself and destroy anything else not itself, whereas a parasite needs its host alive so that it can continue feeding off him/her; kinda making a host/vamp' feed off other creatures so that the parasite may then feed off the vampire. Creepy.
Vampires gain greatly heightened senses, hence why garlic and other things that give off strong odors affect & repulse vampires. Quite a difference though between repulsing and actually driving off a vampire. A normal human might be repulsed by somebody with a bad case of body odor or WAY TOO MUCH perfume, and thus cause said person to seek other people to interact with by preference... but it would not keep us from interacting with the offensive stinker out of necessity. Same with a vampire; they'll shy away from somebody or a doorway girded with garlic (or skunk oil, or anything else with a strong odor), but they'll not be kept away if they have a serious reason to move on that person or place.
Vampirism affects the skin of vampires--often leeching out the pigment so that vampires appear pale & ghastly, at least in the early days or months--and puts the adrenal gland into overdrive, thus making them sensative to sunlight--to the point of actually burning if exposed to ultraviolet light for any length of time--as well as making them much stronger & faster than they might look without any obvious added muscle. This could be a side-effect of the parasite or virus itself preferring cool temperatures in order to thrive in a host's body... thus if it makes a vamp' sensative to the sun--which is a major natural source of warmth--or just heat in general (aka: fire) so that getting warm actually hurts... the parasite gains great control over a host seeking ideal temperatures that will benefit the parasite. Vamp's are also known to have far below normal body temperatures, hence why their touch is so cold. This again could be the parasite taking control of the thyroid gland once it is activated; to maintain a host's body temp' more to its own liking so that it can multiply.
Aging is slowed down dramatically in vampires, and might actually be stopped altogether. Vampires also regenerate. I honestly fail to see why only the Undying should gain this benefit, while their vampiric parent is denied it. Perhaps something to do with the parasite hyper-activating T-cells in the host body--which I think is how crustacians, insects, arachnids, and amphibians grow back & replace lost limbs. Vampires just take it to another level, although regeneration takes time relative to the age of the vampire and the extent of the damage; older vampires regenerate faster than younger ones, because they have more parasites inside them motivating/controlling this new bodily function.
I don't know that vampires can shape-change, but with their greatly boosted strength, they might be able to jump really high and/or far, and thus give the illusion that they can fly.
no subject
Vampires are also more tolerant of pain than normal humans, aside from burning. Stabbings, puncturing, and beating a vampire will not gain the flinching away response of a normal human. An injured vamp' knows it has been struck or stuck, but just does not feel the pain as acutely; the sense of touch or pain being perhaps the one sense that vampires lose rather than have heightened by "The Change." The sensation of burning however is acute and something vamp's will strive to avoid; their skins perhaps being thinner and less moist, they might be more subject to catching on fire than normal people.
The stake through the heart kills the vampire while the bullet does not. Why? The stake remains in the organ and effectively keeps it from beating, hence regeneration cannot take place beyond a certain point. Remove the stake however, and see what happens! Bullets--by virtue of their velocity and penetrating power--tend to pass right through the heart, leaving only a hole, which regeneration can repair. There are such things as self-sealing tires now, but these new modern marvel tires fail to work if a large nail or some such lodges inside the tire, instead of just puncturing & falling out, or puncturing but being small enough the tire can seal around the intruder. Vampiric regeneration works in a similar fashion.
Vampires cannot ingest solid foods; the parasite needs something in blood to sustain itself, and once it burns through the vampire's own blood--replacing it with a watery serum--it needs more, which its host must then provide by hunting & feeding. The first month of a new vampire's new existance are very difficult, as they are ravenous, and thus prone to draw attention to themselves by careless hunting & feeding just to slack the maddening, near-constant thirst, although as the parasites mature they require less & less nourishment.
The older a vampire is, the stronger it is, not the reverse. Think of each parasite in the host's body tweaking its intelligence and adrenal gland by a factor of +1... and then multiply that by centuries of parasites breeding inside the host; the vampire parasite living for centuries itself, and thus basically taking their host along for the ride, like it or not.
Waving holy symbols in front of a vampire to drive if off has no affect--other than maybe to amuse him/her. Holy ground likewise has no sway over vampires, although they might avoid churches & temples because of the incense often and traditionally burned inside these holy places--which offends their ultra-sensative noses.
Vampire social structure will vary, but would likely be akin a a wolf pack. You will have your loners & your close-knit family units. Small groups & large ones; the larger probably regarding themselves as elitists--recognizing strength in numbers. Mobile hunting packs & packs with established hunting grounds they will want to keep & defend.
Vampires are -NOT- stupid. They will police their own kind, if for no other reason than to maintain their own personal safety & hunting grounds from local law enforcement (or vampire hunters) interfering with their continued well-being & other activities--same as drug lords police their own turf. While powerful, vampires know they exist only in the thousands, while humans exist in the millions, and thus they know that even a hunting lion can be tramped to death by a stampeding herd of cattle.
If vampires they know they are being hunted, they will band together for common defense, or scatter to the winds. Vampires banded together will use ambush tactics, as well as human "ghouls" or minions to add to their numbers & stengths; used to thwart, distract, delay, kill, or lure their antagonists. Vampires living long lives will also tend to have vast wealth, and the smarts to use modern technology to their advantage. (I always wondered & hated why it was that no vampires ever went after Buffy The Vampire Slayer with some machine guns or high explosives!) Some elder vampires, having lived--and by now being rather bored with--such long lives, might even welcome & relish the challenge of hunting the hunters, and dedicate all their resources to this task.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 06:10 pm (UTC)Heightened senses: minimal. Sense of smell enhanced to cat level, but not as good as a dog's. The rest, no. A legally blind human will still require glasses as a vampire.
Appearance change: no. Not for vampires or for Undying.
Aging, greatly slowed for vamps. Stopped for Undying. Because I say so. This is a feature of the universe and one I want to play with. How do you destroy something that regenerates and cannot die? How horrible is it to be destroyed, and feel it all? How hideous is it to live forever with your pleasure center removed? (one of the Undying has been subjected to that)
No shape shifting. No animal control. Regeneration only for Undying, vamps just heal faster than in life. (I have a couple that spend most of the book as severed heads, trying to regrow their bodies and being quite frustrated they have no lungs and cannot give advice)
Enhanced strength: minimal. Within strong human norm. Able to lift twice their body weight or so.
Pain tolerance, some enhancement. the old pain receptors don't fire as fast as they used to.
Bullets kill as well as stakes.
No solid food, duh.
Vampires weaken as they age because the body, organs and brain decay. This is a FEATURE in this universe and something I want to play with.
It's an atheistic universe, so no effect from holy objects. And most protestant churches don't use incense. That's for Catholics and pagans.
Vampire social structure is a lot like the Mafia, in this uni actually. Still working the bugs out.
No human minions. Ghouls are grave-robbers and I hate that misuse.
Vampires with a functioning brain are no smarter than they were in life. Personalities are rendered permanent, not improved by death. They can learn more, but that depends on their ability to learn in the first place. Mr. Proudly Ignorant will remain stupid as a vampire while Ms. Librarian will probably spend most of her unlife in late night libraries.
Modern weaponry...certainly. Not that it will do much good.
no subject
Also don't care (personally) to see another vamp' uni' where vamps walk around in the daylight, eat solid food, and are essentially just humans with fangs & a certain fondness for blood.
Also not wanting to see a comic book uni' where the good guys (your Undying) are sacred cows who can never make a mistake or be killed. Okay, it kinda kills the whole comic book if Spiderman or Wolverine gets decapitated or blown to smitherines, but it also gets tedious for the readers & fans when a main character is immune to harm and basically unstoppable... even when up against a credible opponent who should be able to defeat them.
How do you kill something that regenerates & cannot die?
You destroy all tissue that could logically regenerate, usually with fire or acid. (Duh...) There is also the option of sealing the un-killable thing inside something it can't escape from while it is recovering and then storing it someplace secure. If you can't kill it, fine... just remove it from the game board & keep it on ice. Personally, I always liked the idea of an oil drum welded shut, then surrounded by quick-drying cement... and then dumping the resulting cement block over the side of a boat into a really deep part of the ocean. "Let's see you get out of & come back from this one, Dracula."
No human minions?
Why not? Why risk your own kind when there are hundreds of highly expendable lesser creatures to be had who will risk life & limb for you in exchange for enough cash? ...Or at least wake you from your slumber if your lair is intruded upon? Human minions also make for tasty snacks if worst comes to worst; kinda like emergency rations. If vamps can't operate in the daylight... are they just too (Buffy The Vapmire Slayer) stupid to hire somebody who can if they have this ability?
As a possible sideline idea: Maybe, if you choose to go with the parasite idea, the vampire parasite could be of alien origin? Perhaps the vampire parasite carries the vampire virus. The virus can be passed to another in sex to produce unintended off-spring (the Undying), but the parasite can't be transmitted in this way. This could explain the difference between Vampire & Undying.
Just trying to be helpful...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-12 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-14 05:03 pm (UTC)