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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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.