Are Vampires only human?
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radred609
Zombie
All i see here is High elf this, Dark elf that
What about the wood elves? These dudes are capricious as frak! i wouldn't put anything past them
anyway, In my VC armmy's fluff, the Vampire Lord is a wood elf.
The abridged version of the fluff is that he was an aspiring Spellsinger who lost his family and mentor in an angry dryad incursion. in his quest for vengence he became a wildwood ranger. One fatefull winter he and a handful of others were captured by a Vampire lord intent on experimenting with how the Blood Kiss effects elves.
Together with a master necromancer, the Vampire Lord
began testing upon his captives.
His spirit was broken in captivity, and eventually he was the "lucky" one who was successfully turned. As a way of dealing with his capture, torture and turning, he convonced himself that is was a gift bestowed upon him by Nethu, (the elvish god of death/"the last door") and saw his master as the path Nethu had provided to learn about his new powers.
Eventually his master was killed by an elvish warhost, but my vampire lord escaped and fled into the mountains, inhabiting an abandoned dwarven outpost with his masters court, continuing his studies of the Lore of Vampires.
This was primarily done because the new wood elf codex was released just after i bought a bunch of models for my new VC army and i couldn't pass up the oportunity to convert, and partially because my girlfriend started collecting Warhammer as i bought my new VCs, and she chose Wood Elves.
Anything is posible in the Warhammer World as long as you come up with an interesting backstory. The important thing to remember is no Godmoding and not too much Mary Sue-ing. If it's interesting and you're not being "That guy" people usually like it, or at the very least roll with it
What about the wood elves? These dudes are capricious as frak! i wouldn't put anything past them
anyway, In my VC armmy's fluff, the Vampire Lord is a wood elf.
The abridged version of the fluff is that he was an aspiring Spellsinger who lost his family and mentor in an angry dryad incursion. in his quest for vengence he became a wildwood ranger. One fatefull winter he and a handful of others were captured by a Vampire lord intent on experimenting with how the Blood Kiss effects elves.
Together with a master necromancer, the Vampire Lord
began testing upon his captives.
His spirit was broken in captivity, and eventually he was the "lucky" one who was successfully turned. As a way of dealing with his capture, torture and turning, he convonced himself that is was a gift bestowed upon him by Nethu, (the elvish god of death/"the last door") and saw his master as the path Nethu had provided to learn about his new powers.
Eventually his master was killed by an elvish warhost, but my vampire lord escaped and fled into the mountains, inhabiting an abandoned dwarven outpost with his masters court, continuing his studies of the Lore of Vampires.
This was primarily done because the new wood elf codex was released just after i bought a bunch of models for my new VC army and i couldn't pass up the oportunity to convert, and partially because my girlfriend started collecting Warhammer as i bought my new VCs, and she chose Wood Elves.
Anything is posible in the Warhammer World as long as you come up with an interesting backstory. The important thing to remember is no Godmoding and not too much Mary Sue-ing. If it's interesting and you're not being "That guy" people usually like it, or at the very least roll with it
PureSphinx
Ghoul
I don't know if it's been said already as I only skimmed the 70-odd comments, and I also got the following info from various secondhand sources (wikis, other threads/forums) so don't shoot the messenger!
In reading around a bunch of lore on various WHFB wikis I read about the Necrarchs and what they do. As we all know they chill in towers casting spells and stuff all day, and in the article it specifically states the following (paraphrased): necrarchs are (for the most part) the only vampires with the magical aptitude to give the blood kiss to a non-human, as most non-human races have innate magical defenses against such black Magic.
Now we're back at the "why would a [insert race here] want to be a vamp?" thing. Well, according to another post I read right here on VC.net a while back, in one of the Von Carstein books Vladdy gave the blood kiss to a guy (Jarek?) who didnt ask for it and was dying. So it's plausible (not likely, but plausible) that there could be a vampire from any race, even goblins or skaven. I mean, don't tell me that if you were a vampire you wouldn't ever wonder in your immortal existence what one of those would be like! I've never seen anything specifically stating that x or y race could/would never become a vampire either.
I don't know if you guys take canon that seriously or if my sources are even correct or relevant anymore, but I personally would love to read a story about an army of female elven vampires and wouldnt write it off as impossible. In fact I'm working on a story for my dark elf fleet master that will certainly take creative liberties like much fan-fiction does, and as long as no story butchers the plot of the warhammer world any worse than GW itself already has I see no problem.
In reading around a bunch of lore on various WHFB wikis I read about the Necrarchs and what they do. As we all know they chill in towers casting spells and stuff all day, and in the article it specifically states the following (paraphrased): necrarchs are (for the most part) the only vampires with the magical aptitude to give the blood kiss to a non-human, as most non-human races have innate magical defenses against such black Magic.
Now we're back at the "why would a [insert race here] want to be a vamp?" thing. Well, according to another post I read right here on VC.net a while back, in one of the Von Carstein books Vladdy gave the blood kiss to a guy (Jarek?) who didnt ask for it and was dying. So it's plausible (not likely, but plausible) that there could be a vampire from any race, even goblins or skaven. I mean, don't tell me that if you were a vampire you wouldn't ever wonder in your immortal existence what one of those would be like! I've never seen anything specifically stating that x or y race could/would never become a vampire either.
I don't know if you guys take canon that seriously or if my sources are even correct or relevant anymore, but I personally would love to read a story about an army of female elven vampires and wouldnt write it off as impossible. In fact I'm working on a story for my dark elf fleet master that will certainly take creative liberties like much fan-fiction does, and as long as no story butchers the plot of the warhammer world any worse than GW itself already has I see no problem.
Previously they couldn't in the old fluff but now they can according to the new fluff (The Nagash End-Times stuff).
Mannfred made a certain important Elf-Lady into a vamp.
Mannfred made a certain important Elf-Lady into a vamp.
: Possible spoilers:maybe
the fluff behind it supposedly is that with the return of nagash the world is flooded with death magic which is why all armies can use the lore of undeath. it may stand to reason that the elevated levels of death in the air might be the only reason elves can be turned now, when in the past they couldn't.
the fluff behind it supposedly is that with the return of nagash the world is flooded with death magic which is why all armies can use the lore of undeath. it may stand to reason that the elevated levels of death in the air might be the only reason elves can be turned now, when in the past they couldn't.
I don't think that necromantic and dark magic filling the air is likely to make it easier for any race to become more susceptible to being turned into a vampire. That's not how turning works.
Yeah this. It's just fluff changes/variation.
No one makes that big a deal out of it either afaik.
this is true, but if you really want to theory it out ("i have a theory that its a demon" " a dancing demon?" "no something isn't right there.") there are many ways around it as i don't think they ever say how the bloody kiss is given. if its like "Blade", "Buffy:TVS", Vampire the Masquerade", or some weird magical rite.
It's still a kiss though, regardless of which way you look at it. There must, therefore, be some sort of physical contact. Vampirism doesn't just float through the air on a breeze with necromantic and dark magic driving it along 
.
.It's still a kiss though, regardless of which way you look at it. There must, therefore, be some sort of physical contact. Vampirism doesn't just float through the air on a breeze with necromantic and dark magic driving it along
there is. using my previous examples (plus some i just remembered):
if its like blade, underworld, or supernatural then any bite from a vampire, as long as the receiver doesn't die, will eventually cause the bitten to turn into one. easy on the battle field if the vampire is trying to take out too many people and has his hands full and mouth empty.
Buffy and Ann Rice seem to agree that it's dieing from the bite that turns people(i'm assuming that its dieing while the fangs are still in you).
while vampire the masquerade thinks that the process is sucking out the human blood while replacing it with vampiric blood (3 liters minimum).
It seems to be that dying is necessary for the "Blood Kiss" to take effect.
The draining of the blood only brings the target closer to death from massive blood loss (and possibly also helps the vampire "refuel" as it where).
The person then has to drink vampire blood.
Vlad even turns someone by spitting blood into their mouth if I remember correctly and then pushes them off a Tower. Jerek then wakes up in a coffin several days later, a vampire.
Also there is the short story from the Vampire Wars series about the priest who gets bitten by Posner and left to die but he manages to drag himself back to the nearest Temple and his fellow priests help him heal up (through entirely mundane methods) but lock him away for his safety and the safety of others.
Afterwards young girls start to die and over the next while something like 40-odd are killed, the priest remembers all of it like a dream and believes it is his vampire side causing it but it ends up that it was just his connection to his sire and he was dreaming of Posner's killings. The priest was not a vampire (although he was "tainted" in a way...I can't recall if there were any other side effects).
Of course he is then killed afterwards by a Witch-Hunter and after dying he comes back as a monstrous vampire with his humanity gone (luckily he is chained up and the Witch-Hunter was fully aware of what would happen, the place is lit up and he burns to death).
So it appears to be that dying is a necessary part but the bite will not necessary kill you, however if you've been fed the Blood then you will eventually turn, even if it's only after your natural death.
Of course things change by edition and author soooo I wouldn't get too bogged down on specifics.
The draining of the blood only brings the target closer to death from massive blood loss (and possibly also helps the vampire "refuel" as it where).
The person then has to drink vampire blood.
Vlad even turns someone by spitting blood into their mouth if I remember correctly and then pushes them off a Tower. Jerek then wakes up in a coffin several days later, a vampire.
Also there is the short story from the Vampire Wars series about the priest who gets bitten by Posner and left to die but he manages to drag himself back to the nearest Temple and his fellow priests help him heal up (through entirely mundane methods) but lock him away for his safety and the safety of others.
Afterwards young girls start to die and over the next while something like 40-odd are killed, the priest remembers all of it like a dream and believes it is his vampire side causing it but it ends up that it was just his connection to his sire and he was dreaming of Posner's killings. The priest was not a vampire (although he was "tainted" in a way...I can't recall if there were any other side effects).
Of course he is then killed afterwards by a Witch-Hunter and after dying he comes back as a monstrous vampire with his humanity gone (luckily he is chained up and the Witch-Hunter was fully aware of what would happen, the place is lit up and he burns to death).
So it appears to be that dying is a necessary part but the bite will not necessary kill you, however if you've been fed the Blood then you will eventually turn, even if it's only after your natural death.
Of course things change by edition and author soooo I wouldn't get too bogged down on specifics.
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I'm not following you. My point was that there needed to be physical contact of some sort, and that vampirism cannot just be conferred through the air by dark or necromantic magic. Your examples seem to indicate you're agreeing with me, but I'm not sure that you are agreeing with me, so I'm a bit confused
.i am in general. though this is GW we're talking about. the kiss could actually be doing the hokey pokey with a vampire.
Wolf Child
Ghoul
I like one one the characters in Brian Lumleys books who became a vampire through the bite of a wolf,so not only was he was a vampire ,he was a werewolf as well...Radu the Dog lord
I think a vampire wouldtry and turn anyone if he was, for whatever reason, inclined to do so. If you read the vampire wars you would know that vampires are pretty much all bat shit crazy and have very little of their human personailties left (i.e. Jon Skellan). I would like to see a beastman vampire. It would be soooo easy to make it look soooo good.
LordTobiothan
Crypt Horror
I read most of this thread (skipped the last 2 pages) and just wanted to throw my own opinion on dark elves and vampirism.
On the subject of reason for wanting it, immortality is already a big goal for a bunch of them so that is already a massive driving factor, especially when it comes to removing the need to beg and grovel to the chaos gods, which I'm sure a race as proud as elves hates doing.
On the subject of feeling too superior to humans to use their magic, how exactly is seeing a being that mastered something your naturally magic butt hasn't been able to do in 10's of thousands of years make you feel superior in any way? All this work to achieve immortality and humans beat you too it an unbelievably long time ago.
Not to mention when you see this corrupted human rip apart your corrupted elf lord in combat or out cast your best wizard in magic, why exactly would he be seen as anything but a superior being? I would think elves would actively seek this new form to prove that elves make superior vampires to humans.
And the requirement of being fueled by blood is really no different then needing food, except you never have to stop killing when you need to eat, so it is a bonus really.
On the subject of reason for wanting it, immortality is already a big goal for a bunch of them so that is already a massive driving factor, especially when it comes to removing the need to beg and grovel to the chaos gods, which I'm sure a race as proud as elves hates doing.
On the subject of feeling too superior to humans to use their magic, how exactly is seeing a being that mastered something your naturally magic butt hasn't been able to do in 10's of thousands of years make you feel superior in any way? All this work to achieve immortality and humans beat you too it an unbelievably long time ago.
Not to mention when you see this corrupted human rip apart your corrupted elf lord in combat or out cast your best wizard in magic, why exactly would he be seen as anything but a superior being? I would think elves would actively seek this new form to prove that elves make superior vampires to humans.
And the requirement of being fueled by blood is really no different then needing food, except you never have to stop killing when you need to eat, so it is a bonus really.
Yet, if you read a whole variety of other novels and role-play books on vampires, including GW's own material, you will see that some vampires still have retained significant elements of their personalities, and are not all completely crazy. I disagree with one-dimensional interpretations of how vampires are meant to think and behave, and there's plenty of evidence across a wide range of sources that vampires are, in fact, very diverse.
This could easily be turned on its head. Surely, it would give elves of any type an even greater justification to feel superior to a vampire by defeating said vampire without being a vampire themselves?
One thought I've had about vampires and how others view them, and this hasn't been thoroughly verified through any official sources, is that when a vampire is created it has its soul locked up completely inside its own body. It no longer has a reflection in the ether/realm of chaos and is beyond the reach of any god. This sounds good when you're thinking of the chaos gods and all that stuff but it also means that vampires are, at the bottom of it all, alone. They're not sharing the spiritual connection to one deity or another that all living things do and that could raise the question of what eventually will happen to a vampire's soul? In a world where religious wonders are very much tangible that might make you think twice before wanting to become a vampire and cut yourself off forever.
True in non-gw fiction for sure, no doubt about it. Makes a better story too. The warhammer vampires can have some of their original personality too, although I believe that is bloodline specific and also depends on whether they were killers before being turned. Lahmians in general, become slues, but probably keep a lot of their personality traits. Don't know much about necrarchs or blood dragons tbh. Von carsteins can keep some of their personality but I believe that is an exception to the rule. And even then they have to battle insanity to keep it. The insights from jerek in book 3 of the vampire wars sheds a lot of light on this. I think the warhammer vampires need a bit of extra craziness over vampires from other fictions because of the whole "leading armies of undead into war" thing that they tend to do
I always wondered why vampires weren't turned to chaos! Von carsteins and blood dragons would make awesome khorne lords. This makes sense now
I think it's been pretty much established by GW that undead are the true opposites to chaos, although (end times spoiler ahead)
I'm pretty sure there's a bit about Walach Harkon giving himself over to Khorne during the end times in order to fight against Nagash. He figured that a world ruled by the dead would be the end of honourable fighting or something like that.
Chaos thrives on emotions echoing through the ether and the undead don't give off any. Vampires are (supposedly) locked out from the realm of chaos and undead grunts are not sentient. If the world was inhabited only by the dead then the chaos gods wouldn't get any nourishment from it.
LordTobiothan
Crypt Horror
Except the odds of a dark elf beating a vampire without the help of the chaos gods is slim to none. As soon as one tried and failed horribly but somehow survived the encounter, the only places to turn are groveling to the chaos gods to make you better or being turned yourself to make you better.
A superior being losing once is not an option. That kind of elitism falters the moment it isn't true 100% of the time. No elf is of the belief they are "better then humans, except sometimes when they use magic we feel is beneath us yet beats us with extreme regularity"
I'm still not overly convinced by that, given the reflexes and skill possessed by many of the more powerful elves. Still, it's good to have a variety of opinions on the background .
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