Vampires in Wesnoth

[solsword]

This was just recently being discussed in the "Bat Descriptions" thread, so I thought that I'd start up a separate discussion (as indicated in that thread) and contribute some of my own ideas.

The problem:

References to vampires appear only twice in mainline Wesnoth: once in the name of the "Vampire Bat", and once as an undead opponent in "Cursed Isle", scenario 17d of TroW (thanks WikiWizzzz for looking that up).

The solutions:

1. Get rid of such references entirely. It doesn't seem critical that the opponent in "Cursed Isle" be a vampire, as opposed to a generic life-draining undead, and the "Vampire Bat" could easily be renamed to something like "Blood Bat" or "Dread Bat", as thespaceinvader has suggested.

2. Add more references to the lore so that the existing two aren't unsupported. A potential Vampire Bat description could include a note about vampire legends, and future references could be added.

The advantages of the first solution are that it is immediate and simple. However, it might become a hurdle that prevents otherwise sound vampire-themed material from entering mainline/canon. The advantage of solution 2 is that it places no such restrictions on future vampire-related material. However, until more vampire references can be added, the existing references may come off *to some* as a little weak or suspicious. (Maybe this really isn't much of a problem?).

Now I'd like to present another solution:

3. Add vampire references, but make the vampires of Wesnoth different from the vampire legends of our world.

Alright, I'll admit that it's basically strictly worse than solution 2 from an ease-of-implementation perspective, and could create other problems, but... I feel like it's a good chance to add some uniqueness to Wesnoth, which could be a cool thing. And of course, I've got some ideas about how to make vampires (slightly) different.

If people are just put off by this whole thing, feel free to just shoot me down; I won't take it personally.

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Intermission: Go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire, especially the section titled _Origins of vampire beliefs_.

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And now on to how I think Wesnoth vampires could work:

As thespaceinvader pointed out in the bats thread, Wesnothians have very real undead to be afraid of, so it would be of little use to manufacture legends of fictional undead to scare their children with. This implies that vampires in Wesnoth should be real, as opposed to purely mythical. But vampires wouldn't be very fun at all without some vague mythical/legendary status, which implies that they should be real, but rare enough that most people experience them only through distorted legends and myths. Also, in order to deserve the name "vampire", they need to incorporate some core qualities from the *modern* vampire legends of our world. To me, this means that they should suck blood, be pale, and for the most part, they should be both sinister and extremely evil. Associations with bats, wolves, and the moon are optional. Some sort of vulnerability to sunlight would be cool, but perhaps isn't strictly necessary. (If you did your homework, you'll note that many of these are properties that vampires acquired relatively recently, but they are pretty core to the concept of a vampire as it exists today.)

And now the more radical ideas:

I'd be tickled if Wesnoth vampires were not in fact undead. The inspiration here is from thespaceinvader's comment about already having undead to fear, and the Wikipedia section about rabies. Vampires could get their mystical powers from their "supernatural" nature, rather than from being undead. They could have extremely long lifespans (an optional feature, but one which makes them scarier) because they are no longer human, but rather a mix of human and some form of evil spirit or demon.

But wait! It gets cooler (in my opinion, of course):

The only known Wesnothian vampire to date used to be an elf. I believe this was mentioned in the bat thread, but it could be the case that vampires are only derived from elves, never from humans. They could be the result of an elf being possessed (or partially possessed?) by a demon: the elf retains its intelligence, but acquires a very evil nature, along with a thirst for blood and some supernatural powers.

Of course, the elf thing means that the peoples of the Green Isle would have no prior exposure to vampires. In fact, the Wesnothians might be somewhat used to undead (especially given that their leaders used to work with undead regularly), but *really* frightened of vampires, which would be more mysterious to them? Maybe that's going a bit too far...

Anyways, these are really just some very raw ideas. I hope that they're inspirational and/or well-received, and I'd appreciate any of comments on the ideas, suggestions as to preferred solutions to this problem, and more ideas about vampires in Wesnoth.

[melinath]

If we assume that Wesfolk didn't know of vampires until they and the Islefolk came to Wesnoth, then the name "Vampire Bat" doesn't make sense. The name implies former knowledge of the beings.

Though it could be that they had some sort of legends about these creatures that were then freakily confirmed by the Midnight Queen.

I would like to point that it's unclear from the 'historical record' i.e. the campaign, what exactly the Midnight Queen's status is in terms of race. She lives on an island full of cursed elves who worship/serve her, but it's completely possible that she's not a cursed elf, but rather the curse itself, which would have interesting implications.

[solsword]

Excellent point. To maintain historical continuity, you'd either have to rename pre-Wesnoth (i.e. Green Isle) Vampire Bats to something else, like Dread Bats (which seems like a huge and unnecessary pain in the ass), or there would have to be pre-Wesnoth vampire legends. Perhaps the easy thing to do is drop the "only elves" restriction. Although it could be the case that elven vampires are much more powerful than their not-particularly-fearsome human vampire cousins...

Taking that idea to the extreme, "vampire" could simply have been a term for someone with rabies, lacking some (but not all) of the sinister connotations it eventually carries, until the Wesfolk met the real vampire-elves, at which point the term was co-opted and changed meaning a bit.

Another possibility: I know that TSI has made the point that "Vampire" came from Vampires in our world, but I, for one, think that folk etymologies and causality paradoxes/reversals can be great fun. If we just called the "Vampire Bat" a "Vampire", then we could have the Wesfolk corrupt this word for use with what we consider "actual" vampires. We could even give a fake etymology for "vampire" that explains how it means "blood-bat" in the unit description, like this:

[quote=fake etymology]
Vampires are huge bat-like creatures that are large enough to pose a serious threat to humans in battle. Their name derives from the [acronym=Is there a name for this? Are the linguistics of Wesnoth established?]Old High Wesspeak[/acronym] "vamp", meaning "blood" (referring to their freakish ability to drain the blood from their victims), plus "pire" (or "pir"), meaning "bat".
[/quote]

That way, we can call what we consider "real" vampires one of:

1. "Vamipre" (implying that the term has come into confusing dual-usage in Wesnoth).

2. Some simple corruption, such as "Vampyre" or "Vampir", implying the same as the above but adding a bit of distinction.

3. Some or something more specific, like "vamp-men" (sounds silly IMO), "vampire-men" (also sounds a bit silly...), or "vampire-demons" (maybe just a tad less silly?).

Of course, maybe this whole track is going too far: I'm really just throwing around ideas here. On that subject, another possibility has occurred to me: the term "vampire" could refer to an evil spirit that possesses a creature, making it thirst for blood and giving it supernatural strength and longevity. In this way, "Vampire Bat" means exactly that: a bat turned into a monster-like creature via possession by vampire. In this way we could maintain the elves-only bit, by just specifying that humans (and/or orcs, etc) are not (or perhaps just not very) susceptible to possession by "vampire", but that elves for some reason are. This way, other creatures would naturally show up as vampires, which might be cool ("vampire wolves" and "vampires bears" strike me as awesome-sounding). There could be various explanations for the vampires' predilection for possessing bats (since vampire bats are by far the most common form of vampire), including simply natural affinity, or perhaps some association between vampires and caves, or even something more complicated: for example, maybe if you see the vampire-spirit creeping up on you, it's not able to possess you, and bats' weak eyesight makes them susceptible. This would even tie in with other vampire mythology: if you are attacked by a vampire-spirit, simply seeing the spirit is enough to drive it off and prevent possession, but be warned: mirrors are useless in this endeavor, because vampire-spirits, like those they possess, have no reflections.

Alright, at this point I'm just producing pointless literary riffs on ideas surrounding vampires. Obviously it would be very difficult to try to cram lore this detailed into Wesnoth, but if we do decide on a set mythology for vampires here, we'll at least be able to make things consistent in-game, and we'll be able to drop enough hints in unit descriptions and similar places that players will sense the underlying continuity and complexity.

Please feel free to critique harshly and add your own ideas.

[Aethaeryn]

Here's a distinctly Wesnoth way of becoming a vampire:

What if vampires were those corrupted by the arcane, faerie world instead of purified by it? This could happen to failed elvish sorceresses, but would be more common on other race's dabblers. These humans wouldn't be able to become sylphs, but tried to harness this powerful branch of magic anyway. Faerie magic isn't inherently evil or good, but rather neutral to our world, but those who tried to control it to their own means tended to get burned by it. As the faerie world began to consume their soul and body from the inside out, these corrupted magicians needed to be able to drain lifeblood to stay in this universe.

These first vampires (and also a way of becoming a vampire) were thus magicians who failed to tap into the faerie world, and took in blood of other humanoids to be able to sustain their presence in this world. Provided they could keep adding the blood of the living, they could sustain their presence in this universe indefinitely. If they could not do so, their body would slowly decay as their soul and body were painfully ripped apart by faerie magic. These vampires became chaotic not because they are naturally chaotic (orcs) but rather because their fighting style was one to lurk up on victims in the shadows to drain their life essence (similar to how outlaws choose to fight chaotic).

A victim of a vampire loses their blood, but also comes into contact with a being who is partially of the faerie dimension. This then opens up a similar situation in the victim (if they survive the attack) whereas they need to either drain lifeblood to sustain their presence in this world indefinitely (thus being a semi-immortal) or will die a very painful death in an explosion of brilliant light as their body literally turns into faerie fire (the elvish sorceress's attack). A vampire therefore can only die two ways: "starvation" (not having enough blood intake) or being killed in combat.

Those elves who fail to be sorceresses or sylphs and become vampires are usually taken out by successful sorceresses or sylphs in a ritualistic mercy killing. Those who for some reason were solitary or aren't killed usually choose starvation over a vampiric lifestyle, thus dying in a painful-but-honorable burst of faerie fire. This explains why vampires are extremely rare among elves.

As for human mages, most of them know not to dabble in faerie magic. They have three orders of magic (white, red, and silver) that work perfectly fine and history tells them that learning faerie magic as a human simply doesn't work (elves have some faerie blood in them, or something, that enables some to do faerie magic without being harmed). However, the same desperation (monsters and orcs overwhelming the Old Continent) that caused the Wesfolk to rely on necromancy (usually banned) also caused some Wesfolk mages to dabble in faerie magic, thus starting a bit of a vampire epidemic. Most were eliminated, but the reason you don't see too many vampires on the Great Continent is because most vampires exist on the Old Continent.

The result of this explanation is that you have (1) rare vampires, (2) a way to explain vampires via Wesnothian magic, (3) vampires that function similar to modern vampires (except no weakness to daytime).

Vampires are evil because the good/honorable ones choose starvation. They're chaotic because they prefer to fight in the dark (perhaps they even get better night vision; similar to an orc). They're sometimes aligned with Undead because both are ostracized and evil, with similar aims.

[Yeran]

I see two nice ways explaining the vampire-description:

The easy yet convincing way: As we already have draining undead, maybe Vampire is just another word for a Lich? It wouldn't be far off to say people call those nasty bats all too often seen at their side vampiric bats, even more so as they heal their wounds at the costs of the livings just like their masters.

The other way would be to develop our own vampires, which are not undead, but extend their life using the blood of other beings. Obviously those people would be feared and probably most of them would be evil, but there's always the chance some of them get the needed blood without the need to force others to give it. After all a drained unit can just be healed and be fine after the process. You could use these guys as those anti-heroes where you are never sure whether they already crossed the line to darkness or not. As soon as someone raises and enslaves a corpse he's evil beyond redemption in my view.
However I'd leave demons out of this stuff as I think they are not mainlined (yet?) and I am pretty happy about that as we already have undead. The faery magic would be a very good explanation, as very few but the most intelligent elves ever get to tap those energies and I like the idea of vampires being mostly elves like Lichs are mostly human. Also I totally agree Vampires should be a rare thing, so the faery fire is indeed tempting even more so as its proven that it can transform an elf into another form.

[Sithras]

Seeing the power of a vampire, it would have to be a level 4 unit, which could unbalance the undead faction considerably.

First of all, Vampires are dead, which makes them immune to deteriorating attacks.

Vampires would have the plague, drain, and possibly poison specials. Since the plague wouldnt turn victims into walking corpses, spriters would have to create a vampire for every living unit (wose would look really weird).

The movement would be simular to spirit movement.

They might have the nightstalk ability and skirmish ability.

Adding this altogether, you pretty much got a one man army.

I agree that a vampire could actually be a lich, seeing that a lich is rife with dark magic and they drain the life out of other victims.

[Aethaeryn]

Seeing the power of a vampire, it would have to be a level 4 unit, which could unbalance the undead faction considerably

Which is why it's not going to be added to multiplayer and will continue to have a very rare appearance. Also, it's only powerful if you make it powerful. Flavor doesn't affect unit stats, it's the other way around.

First of all, Vampires are dead, which makes them immune to deteriorating attacks.

More like decaying due to interdimensional forces, based on my description. A different kind of Undead, at the very least.

Vampires would have the plague, drain, and possibly poison specials. Since the plague wouldnt turn victims into walking corpses, spriters would have to create a vampire for every living unit (wose would look really weird).

Not really. Vampires would only plague humanoids (again, according to my description) because only their lifeblood is truly sustaining. That would lead to two units, based only on height: dwarf and orc/human/elf.

The movement would be simular to spirit movement.

No.

They might have the nightstalk ability and skirmish ability.

No.

Adding this altogether, you pretty much got a one man army.

No. (See above.)

I agree that a vampire could actually be a lich, seeing that a lich is rife with dark magic and they drain the life out of other victims.

No. Liches already are too common, bordering on cliche villains. Let's actually develop something unique here, please.

[Sithras]

What I meant about the lich part is that they are powerful beings, having two stages (but only one is accessible in the game through leveling)

The level 3 lich has nearly the same damage as a Necromancer in ranged attacks.

However, as I should have made a bit clearer, I was reffering to the ancient lich. It has 5 strikes for each attack. This, as powerful as it is, is enough to top off the undead; adding a vampire to the game (which they won't, luckily), could create the undead a little too powerful (not that they aren't already.)

The movement would be close to spiritual movement; in our type of lore, vampires can move over any land, and move slowly over water, just like ghosts. Read about it.

Nightstalk would make sense, seeing that vampires (again in our history) would stalk their prey, hiding extremely well.

Skirmish; out of the question.

[Aethaeryn]

What I meant about the lich part is that they are powerful beings, having two stages (but only one is accessible in the game through leveling)

The level 3 lich has nearly the same damage as a Necromancer in ranged attacks.

However, as I should have made a bit clearer, I was reffering to the ancient lich. It has 5 strikes for each attack. This, as powerful as it is, is enough to top off the undead; adding a vampire to the game (which they won't, luckily), could create the undead a little too powerful (not that they aren't already.)

Both the ancient lich and the vampire are not playable in multiplayer, the only place where factional balance matters. Vampires aren't necessarily full allies with the Undead, either. They're different creatures than the necromancers that control most of the Undead.

The movement would be close to spiritual movement; in our type of lore, vampires can move over any land, and move slowly over water, just like ghosts. Read about it.

Nightstalk would make sense, seeing that vampires (again in our history) would stalk their prey, hiding extremely well.

Skirmish; out of the question.

Or you could make it original, vaguely resembling vampires, but not directly derivative. You could make them turn to dust during the daytime unless they took shelter in a castle or village (aka. indoors), or you could simply just not care about adhering strictly to someone's stereotype of a "vampire."

[Sithras]

If they were to turn into dust at day, then how are they to turn back into a vampire at night?

Frankly, I think if you were to go with something along those lines, they should be petrified in the day, instead of turning into a sweep job.

[solsword]

I like the ideas kicking about here, especially Aethaeryn's. Sithras, as Aethaeryn has pointed out, you're missing the point a bit. The unit wouldn't end up in MP, and as such doesn't require balance. In fact, the unit stats aren't something for us to decide, whoever wants to put a vampire in their campaign can go ahead and make up whatever stats they want (although perhaps they should take some hints from the existing vampire in TRoW). I also agree with Aethaeryn that we should develop a uniquely Wesnothian vampire that has core elements taken from modern vampire mythology (so that it deserves the name "vampire"), but which has its own specific traits.

Of course, we could take into account factors that would make the unit tactically interesting when designing the lore, and here I think that a specifically vague aversion/weakness to sunlight would make a good trait, for the following reasons:

1. It ties in with modern vampire myths, and thus requires little justification.
2. It opens up huge opportunities for campaign designers, without being too specific. A designer would be free to force vampires to hide in houses or castles during the day (as Aethaeryn suggested), or do something less drastic, like lowering their resistances or defense attributes during the day (beyond the normal lawful/chaotic stuff).
3. It helps associate vampires more strongly with darkness and the night, which makes them give a more frightening impression overall.


On another note, one very important question about vampires is whether the process of becoming a vampire is strictly intentional, strictly unintentional, or possibly either, depending on the situation. If it's strictly intentional, it becomes much harder to create the odd "good vampire" that some people are so fond of. However, this route helps make vampires truly and completely evil, notably *unlike* liches/necromancers (of course, different campaign designers have different opinions on this, so...).

One of the things that I don't like about Aethaeryn's idea as it stands is that the process of becoming a vampire is in most cases strictly unintentional: you either simply had bad luck with faery power or got bitten by a vampire. This does make it easy to put vampires into the tragic hero(ine) role, but detracts from their overall evilness as a concept, especially since you seem to imply that only people who were somehow evil *before* they became vampires would actually resort to sucking blood to prolong their life, whereas most new vampires intentionally starve themselves to death (or perhaps you were going for more of a "constant inner battle with vampiric hunger" take?).

One subtle alternative would be that vampirism only befalls those who dabble in the explicitly forbidden darker secrets of the faery power, which would make the condition more intentional (although it sounds a bit Star Wars-ish...).

A closely entwined issue is whether vampirism comes with a difficult-to-resist thirst for blood, or whether it actually twists one's moral perceptions (as lichhood is implied to do, I believe, although I think Mal Keshar is the exception?), or whether it does neither and simply forces people to choose between a wasting death and subsistence on the blood of others. This affects the roles in which vampires can be reasonably cast.

For bonus points, does anyone feel like analyzing the necromancer/lich line in terms of the above issues? Perspectives on both DID and IftU (I don't remember if UtBS is also relevant...?) would be necessary. The relevant questions are:

1. Does necromancer/lichhood intrinsically change a persons' morality? I.e. if you become a necromancer/lich with the best of intentions (is this even possible? I believe DID implies that it is...) do you inevitably turn out evil because of the influence of the magic that you wield (I believe DID implies this, but I think that the corrupting effects could also be blamed on the mentor and/or the protagonists psychological issues)?
2. Is involuntary necromancer/lichhood possible?
3. Not *that* relevant to necromancers/liches, more of a vampire issue, but does necromancer/lichhood create any artificial urges or desires, which tend to make a person more evil/bestial but which can be resisted by those extremely strong-of-will?

I know that IftU has some very interesting things to say on these points, but maybe that position is discredited a little because it's not quite mainline?

I think that it might be interesting to have vampires work differently than liches in terms of their evilness, giving campaign writers a chance to explore the complexities of different types of/motivations for evil.

[Aethaeryn]

If they were to turn into dust at day, then how are they to turn back into a vampire at night?

Frankly, I think if you were to go with something along those lines, they should be petrified in the day, instead of turning into a sweep job.

Or I was being sarcastic, showing how adhering strictly to lore can make an extremely underpowered unit instead of just an extremely overpowered unit.

EDIT: Though, I wouldn't mind making vampires super-chaotic, giving them -50% during day and +50% during night. It's more flavor to make them extremely weak at day and not so good at dawn/dusk, since you could easily make sure their night damage isn't overpowered.

[Sithras]

I may be missing the point (again) but liches and Nercromancers don't have to be evil. As it says in Wikipedia about liches, a lich retains the spirit and mind, but does not keep its body. DiD is a perfect example. Malin wants to save Parthyn from orcs and journeys into the dark arts, soon becoming a lich. He still has his memories and personality, and knows mercy (play "Endless Night" in DiD). Vampires could have the exact same traits.

[Aethaeryn]

One of the things that I don't like about Aethaeryn's idea as it stands is that the process of becoming a vampire is in most cases strictly unintentional: you either simply had bad luck with faery power or got bitten by a vampire. This does make it easy to put vampires into the tragic hero(ine) role, but detracts from their overall evilness as a concept, especially since you seem to imply that only people who were somehow evil *before* they became vampires would actually resort to sucking blood to prolong their life, whereas most new vampires intentionally starve themselves to death (or perhaps you were going for more of a "constant inner battle with vampiric hunger" take?).

One subtle alternative would be that vampirism only befalls those who dabble in the explicitly forbidden darker secrets of the faery power, which would make the condition more intentional (although it sounds a bit Star Wars-ish...).

Well, after a brief talk with Espreon on IRC, I'm modifying my stance very slightly. Instead of strictly being dabbling in the faerie world, any kind of botched interdimensional thing could cause slightly different breeds of vampires. In Espreon's case, it would be the demonic world of Inferno instead of the faerie world. I'd say that you would need an evil (Inferno) or neutral (faerie) world to cause a vampiric transformation, though I doubt a benevolent world would simply let you try to use its energy for bad means. (Perhaps the benevolent world would be more merciful, and not slowly destroy you like the vampires I described.)

A closely entwined issue is whether vampirism comes with a difficult-to-resist thirst for blood, or whether it actually twists one's moral perceptions (as lichhood is implied to do, I believe, although I think Mal Keshar is the exception?), or whether it does neither and simply forces people to choose between a wasting death and subsistence on the blood of others. This affects the roles in which vampires can be reasonably cast.

...

I think that it might be interesting to have vampires work differently than liches in terms of their evilness, giving campaign writers a chance to explore the complexities of different types of/motivations for evil.

Well, I do think the choice is there, but there would be a strong temptation for self-preservation. Only the truly selfless would choose such an awful death, which means most vampires would be corrupted if not necessarily evil. Perhaps some vampires choose to subsist off of non-humanoids, but it probably wouldn't give the necessary force so they'd be weaker. I think that if vampires plagued, for instance, they'd only turn humans, orcs, elves, and dwarves (the four big humanoid races in Wesnoth).

As for a contrast between liches and vampires, both originated on the Old Continent. I'd suspect that there would be a rivalry the western lich lords (those that did not migrate with the Wesfolk to the Green Isle and beyond) and the vampire lords (since they are more common on the Old Continent based on my description; they might have increased in commonality after the apocalypse mentioned in UtBS). For my campaign trilogy, Thunderstone, I intend to explore some of the aspects of the Old Continent currently ignored (besides vague references in TRoW). Thunderstone 3: Vendetta will probably have the Old Continent as a primary setting (both pre-TRoW as its beginning few scenarios, and post-UtBS/IftU/T1&2 for the rest of the campaign), which will allow me to include things like vampires.

[Sithras]

EDIT: Though, I wouldn't mind making vampires super-chaotic, giving them -50% during day and +50% during night. It's more flavor to make them extremely weak at day and not so good at dawn/dusk, since you could easily make sure their night damage isn't overpowered.

That would be a new special.