Crusniks . . . how do they operate?

rebelcheese · May 9, 2011

I've been conceptualizing something that I found interesting over the last few days, the crusnik. Apparently, crusniks are vampires who, well, feed on vampires. As someone who doesn't particularly like vampires (with rare exceptions, see Blood Oath as an example of a good vampire novel), the concept of a crusnik is something I find fascinating and in fact merciful for a vampire-hater like me. What better to kill vampires than a vampire predator?

But unfortunately there's been a couple of things I haven't been able to figure out.

Number one, why would crusniks attack vampires instead of humans? You would think humans would be food too. I mean, I guess vampires could have something special that humans don't, so humans are like almost insects while vampires are the big juicy steaks, but this leads in to . . .

Number two, why would crusniks have any desire to help humans? The story concept I'm writing follows a crusnik who, well, assists a bunch of humans in exterminating a vampire clan (yes, that sounds plain, I'm not done with setting everything up yet and it'll be much more interesting eventually). But why would a crusnik waste his/her time helping humans out when humans are basically inferior prey? Wouldn't it be better to let vampires feast upon (and convert) humans so there's more prey for the crusnik?

And finally, though this is a small point whose answer I can probably come up with on my own: how the heck is a crusnik even created? I assume God has something to do with it considering an alternate name seems to be "Black Angel", but I don't exactly know what. And personally I want to dodge religious imagery for my project in order for it to have more mainstream appeal.

Just reaching out for any kind of assistance with this.

Alessandra Kelley · May 9, 2011

Huh. What mythology is that from? The only vampire predators I know about are the benandanti (see Carlo Ginzburg's brilliant The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries).

But I've never heard of crusniks. Is that Russian or something?

muravyets · May 9, 2011

The only place I've ever heard of crusniks was in the Japanese manga/anime Trinity Blood. According to that, they were manufactured. If there is another source Trinity Blood got them from, I'd be eager to read about it. Google, however, comes up with nothing but the Japanese pop culture source.

Also Allesandra Kelley, thanks for the book tip.

ETA: Scanning the blurbs on Google results, I spotted a reference to "Crusnik" possibly being inspired by "Krsnik," from Slavic myth/folk culture. Wikipedia gives the following on that:

Krsnik (vampire hunter)

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This article is about the Croatian and Slovenian mythical creature. For Slavic deity, see Krsnik (deity).

A Krsnik or Kresnik is a Slovenian or Croatian type of vampire hunter, a shaman whose spirit wanders from the body in the form of an animal. The krsnik turns into an animal at night to fight off the kudlak, his evil vampire antithesis, with the krsnik appearing as a white animal and the kudlak as a black one.[1] The krsnik 's soul leaves the body, either voluntarily or due to a higher power, to fight evil agents and ensure good harvest, health, and happiness. [2]

The legend evolved from a pre-Christian myth present in Slovenia, Croatia (mainly Istria and the islands), and other countries, in which the celestial pagan god Perun is locked in eternal combat with the evil snake of the underworld, Veles.[3] The krsnik is taught magic by Vile (fairies),[4] and has the ability to heal people and cattle with traditional medicine.[5]

The origin of the name may be from the word krst, which means "cross", [6] and which in Macedonia and Serbia is the word for a stone sign denoting village boundaries.[7]

Similar beliefs circulated among the Italian Benandanti cult.

However, the crusnik form of cannibalistic vampire is original to Trinity Blood, apparently.

Alessandra Kelley · May 9, 2011

Thanks, muravyets. Those krsnks sound very like the benandanti.

Sounds like the typical Japanese creative mash of western mythology in anime.

rebelcheese · May 9, 2011

I saw Trinity Blood a looooooooooooong time ago (was it really five years ago or so that the show aired? Wow).

I apologize for my poor wording, I found the idea off of Trinity Blood and I liked it but I wanted to see if it originated from elsewhere (so I could do my own thing with it) and couldn't find where. Guess it's back to the drawing board (writing board?). I really want to phase Japanese pop culture out of my ideas and this . . . didn't help.

Actually, I like the idea of the krsnik more than the crusnik. It's a helluva lot more creative for use in fiction that's for sure. I think I could do something with that without significantly altering my core idea AND it solves my questions too. Krsniks would want human support because how else would the body left behind stay protected, for example.

Alessandra Kelley · May 9, 2011

John Crowley used benandanti in the third book in his Aegypt trilogy (Daemonomania, I think). They were Appalachian coal miners who went out in dreams to fight witches. If you turned one on his face while his spirit was out, he couldn't get back in. Some people considered benandanti to be werewolves, but just possibly the werewolves vs. vampires thing has been a bit overdone recently.

Anyhow, good luck with your story.

rebelcheese · May 9, 2011

Alessandra Kelley said:
John Crowley used benandanti in the third book in his Aegypt trilogy (Daemonomania, I think). They were Appalachian coal miners who went out in dreams to fight witches. If you turned one on his face while his spirit was out, he couldn't get back in. Some people considered benandanti to be werewolves, but just possibly the werewolves vs. vampires thing has been a bit overdone recently.

Anyhow, good luck with your story.

I never read it, but it sounds really interesting. If my library has it I'll definitely check it out!

I wasn't going to do werewolves vs. vampires. I was going to have some fun and have the werewolves and vampires allied together against the puny human prey. :evil

But thanks to you and muravyets I have a general setup for battles: the vampires and krsniks release their spirits from their bodies and fight each other, but then its humans vs. werewolves in support of those spirits (of course, both are pretty much cannon fodder if a krsnik or vampire feels like picking on them).

I was also shooting for a YA flavor if you'll believe it so believe it or not this highly spiritual approach is a lot more desirable than the previous, gory, version I had in mind. Plus this gives me more room for the "all myths are true" theme I envisioned, with fairies, "fair folk", gargoyles . . .

Thank you so much.

BriMaresh · May 9, 2011

It's actually a trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FoodChainOfEvil

Give it your own name, and your own reasoning, but feel free to run with it. I can't recall where, but there's an anime or book or horror movie out there where the vampires feeding on other vampires gain control over the other vampires, as well as a power boost. The idea is out there, in a variety of guises, so make it your own and run with it.

muravyets · May 10, 2011

Your idea sounds great, and I'm glad the krsnik idea sparks for you. Original folklore FTW!

Laura_6 · May 11, 2011

I like your idea very much.
To your first problem (why do they attack vamps), I have two ideas
1) They do it for the sport because vamps are hard to kill.
2) Because vamps have some enzyme (or whatever) in their blood that the crusniks need.
To the second problem:
1) If they consider vamps interesting prey, they consider humans pitiful, like cows. Too easy--no sport.
2) What if they do feed on humans and are getting pissed off that the vamps are killing their gooey, yummy, easy-to-kill food?
3) There's been some insult up the hierarchy of vampire-crusnik relations and now there's a feud. They're not after the humans because they don't care about them. They help the humans because any path to killing vamps will help incure the damage the crusnik rulers have demanded.
To the last problem--why would they help the humans. This one's tougher. If you go with the sporting idea, they're not really helping the humans, just joining forces temporarily. Perhaps there's a bounty on how many vamps a crusnik kills and there's a cheating crusnik who will utilize the humans to help him achieve his goal.

Hope I gave you some food for thought. Good luck!

dondomat · May 11, 2011

I suggest the name of the vampire predators changes along the way, as in many Eastern European languages it would mean ‘the godfathers’, by the ‘krst’ logic already illustrated by muravyets – what in English is a 'Christian name' is a ‘cross’ (krst/kryst/krest’) name' among the slavs, and possibly other major European ethnic groups.

I’ll call them V2’s here.

The special enzymes mentioned by Laura 6 makes sense, also the warrior code, which would put the whole drama into a Predator vs Alien dimension.

You have to choose whether the V2’s blend with the human population or live separately. Is it even our world, or a fantasy one? That’d help.

Off the top of my head, I imagine a future where Vamps have won the battle for dominance. Humans are bred for blood in special farms, and are bloated, diseased creatures kept in filthy cages and with very low intelligence. There are areas where wild humans Planet of the Apes style still roam, and are captured in raids in order to be sold for much money to rich vamp aristocrats who like the taste of ‘wild human’.

Perhaps one of them can escape and roam the city, meeting up with a V2 protgonist at some point.

V2’s are the natural predators of vamps, but have been almost wiped out and are believed to be a myth by many city vamps.

When the V2’s are in larvae stage, they are barely sentient werewolf-like creatures, who eat anything, humans included. After hatching – they become V2’s proper, who feed on vamps. Vamps try to kill larva V2’s when they see them, later on V2 proper are much harder to kill.

This would give the opportunity both for the main POV character to wake up from a cocoon and have to figure out what is going on, and later meet his soul mate, with whom they frolicked when they were larvae but have forgotten. Maybe smelling each other would trigger flashbacks and realization of how things stand.

Making an alliance with wild humans would make sense, in order to subvert the vamp civilization.

In order to make it all a small enough scale to be managable, maybe have the vamps live like in a dozen or even just one steampunk city, maybe after human civilziation destroyed itself, paving the way for the vamp glory?

rebelcheese · May 12, 2011

dondomat said:
I suggest the name of the vampire predators changes along the way, as in many Eastern European languages it would mean ‘the godfathers’, by the ‘krst’ logic already illustrated by muravyets – what in English is a 'Christian name' is a ‘cross’ (krst/kryst/krest’) name' among the slavs, and possibly other major European ethnic groups.

I’ll call them V2’s here.

The special enzymes mentioned by Laura 6 makes sense, also the warrior code, which would put the whole drama into a Predator vs Alien dimension.

You have to choose whether the V2’s blend with the human population or live separately. Is it even our world, or a fantasy one? That’d help.

Off the top of my head, I imagine a future where Vamps have won the battle for dominance. Humans are bred for blood in special farms, and are bloated, diseased creatures kept in filthy cages and with very low intelligence. There are areas where wild humans Planet of the Apes style still roam, and are captured in raids in order to be sold for much money to rich vamp aristocrats who like the taste of ‘wild human’.

Perhaps one of them can escape and roam the city, meeting up with a V2 protgonist at some point.

V2’s are the natural predators of vamps, but have been almost wiped out and are believed to be a myth by many city vamps.

When the V2’s are in larvae stage, they are barely sentient werewolf-like creatures, who eat anything, humans included. After hatching – they become V2’s proper, who feed on vamps. Vamps try to kill larva V2’s when they see them, later on V2 proper are much harder to kill.

This would give the opportunity both for the main POV character to wake up from a cocoon and have to figure out what is going on, and later meet his soul mate, with whom they frolicked when they were larvae but have forgotten. Maybe smelling each other would trigger flashbacks and realization of how things stand.

Making an alliance with wild humans would make sense, in order to subvert the vamp civilization.

In order to make it all a small enough scale to be managable, maybe have the vamps live like in a dozen or even just one steampunk city, maybe after human civilziation destroyed itself, paving the way for the vamp glory?

. . .

You should use those ideas for your own work. I've made up my mind on what direction I want, and you're a really creative person. Use them for your own work!

And I'll add special thanks to Laura 6 for suggesting some awesome ideas as well.

dondomat · May 12, 2011

rebelcheese said:
. . .

You should use those ideas for your own work. I've made up my mind on what direction I want, and you're a really creative person. Use them for your own work!

And I'll add special thanks to Laura 6 for suggesting some awesome ideas as well.

Alright, good luck with the vamp-predators!

Laura_6 · May 13, 2011

Yup, dondomat, your ideas are excellent! I'm having some plot/character problems with my next novel and may PM you for your input! :-D

dondomat · May 14, 2011

Laura_6 said:
Yup, dondomat, your ideas are excellent! I'm having some plot/character problems with my next novel and may PM you for your input! :-D

Sure, go ahead. Playing with other people's ideas and helping edit a chapter or two of someone else's work is very good excercise for the mind, helps one keep from stagnating

Crusniks . . . how do they operate?

rebelcheese

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

muravyets

Old revolutionary

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

rebelcheese

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

rebelcheese

BriMaresh

New kid, be gentle!

muravyets

Old revolutionary

Laura_6

Love what you do. Love who you are.

dondomat

rebelcheese

dondomat

Laura_6

Love what you do. Love who you are.

dondomat