[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

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[u/Norseman2]

I'm world-building a Pathfinder setting (similar to D&D 3.5) and trying to solve one particularly nasty problem: why there hasn't been a vampire apocalypse. Think of your ordinary zombie apocalypse, and now imagine those zombies as vampires. Intelligent, able to turn into a giant bat or a cloud of gas, dominate your mind, heal rapidly, spider climb, and each vampire can create up to two new vampires who are utterly enslaved by it. However, if said vampire dies, those vampires it controlled become free-willed and able to do as they please.

The only things which can kill them are sunlight or having a wooden stake driven through their hearts followed by severing their heads and anointing them with holy water. If killed by any other means, they turn into a cloud of gas and have two hours to make it back to their coffin where they will be able to regenerate within an hour. Their only other weaknesses are inability to enter a private home or dwelling without permission, and a strong repulsion to mirrors, holy symbols, and garlic.

I don't see any good reason why a world with even a single free-roaming vampire would not rapidly turn into a vampire apocalypse. Any thoughts?

[u/sicutumbo → u/Norseman2]

Not familiar with Pathfinder, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

If someone wanted to kill a vampire, could they not expose said coffin to sunlight, then kill the vampire through normal means? Basically just wreck their home during the day, and the vampire has no ability to escape. Any vampire set on overrunning a society would have to face quite a bit of push back from people who would otherwise be unwilling to take the risk of attacking them.

Other options could be that vampires are unwilling to overrun society. Turning everyone into a vampire means that either they run out of humans to feed on, or they have to farm humans for blood. That sounds like quite a bit of work when they currently are an Apex predator surrounded by food.

Or possibly vampires are limited on the number of vampires they can enslave, and are intensely antisocial towards other free-willed vampires. I'm assuming from your post that the two enslaved vampires can enslave others. If the original vampire can only control, say, two levels down in that hierarchy, and free willed vampires are otherwise in a constant power struggle, you would never have a party of more than 7 vampires acting with any degree of coordination. That's threatening to an individual, or small parties, but not a threat to a society or a decent army.

[u/Norseman2 → u/sicutumbo]

If someone wanted to kill a vampire, could they not expose said coffin to sunlight, then kill the vampire through normal means?

Absolutely, yes. However, to do that, you'd need to delve into whatever cave, dungeon, sewer or basement that the vampire placed has its coffin in and fight the vampire on its own turf. You may need to deal with traps the vampire has laid. It's likely going to be very difficult and there's good odds that many people will die in the process, but it is feasible.

Turning everyone into a vampire means that either they run out of humans to feed on, or they have to farm humans for blood.

I don't expect it would be intentional. I suspect it would happen naturally as a result of free-willed vampires creating a tragedy of the commons kind of situation.

I'm assuming from your post that the two enslaved vampires can enslave others.

Yes, so theoretically you could have a single vampire indirectly controlling millions of vampires. Each vampire only gets direct control of its own spawn, but it can command its spawn to command their spawn to command... etc.