Vampires and Blood

[-alex-]

Hey all,

I’m asking for a bit of help here. On Vampires. Yes, I know, vampires. Sorry folks, I know it’s a touchy subject these days…

Okay, so I’m trying to figure out a way which vampire can get their blood, apart from the traditional way—right from the source.

Blood bags came to mind, but that is just so overdone that I wanted to go with something different. So, I had the idea of injecting the blood.

The trouble with that is, unless injecting into the stomach, surely it would go into their circulatory system instead of their digestive system? Which would probably not stop the hunger for the blood, right? And another problem would be, why inject at all, when blood-bags are just so much more convenient?

Any ideas?

[leahzero]

In the True Blood universe, there's a synthesized blood drink that keeps the cravings (somewhat) at bay. The drink is served at bars like a bottle of beer would be.

Depending on how realistic you want to be (are your vampires scientifically plausible, or are they supernatural?), there are all sorts of creative ways to deliver whatever it is in human blood that your vamps need. Blood pills. Blood patches. If there are enough vampires out there, blood could be sold illicitly like a drug, with all the problems that come from that.

As for what can stop the cravings, it really depends on how you want your vampires to work. If the blood-drinking mechanism is supernatural, you can pretty much make up anything--injected blood stops cravings, sure; why not?

If you have some scientific basis to your vampirism, then it should hew closer to plausibility. Have their bodies physically changed to crave blood in place of food? Then yeah, they can get nutrients from injected blood, but they'd still feel that rumble in their bellies.

[-alex-]

Thanks for the reply :0)

Yeah, I forgot to add that I'm going with "Supernatural".

[Jcomp]

Agree with leah. If you're going at it from a supernatural angle, you can go with whatever your imagination comes up with, so long as there is some measure of internal consistency. To build out on her point, "injected blood stops the cravings, sure;" because of x, y and z. If it was a scientific angle you'd be more limited in what those variables can be. With a supernatural approach you have more freedom to determine those variables, but it's important, in my opinion, to be faithful to what's established throughout the story.

[-alex-]

Yeah, I get what you’re both saying.

As my vamps are Supernatural, it’s easy to say “Yep, injecting can stop the cravings – they don’t taste the blood as such, so they don’t get the cravings”, but would it? Even with the supernatural, hasn’t it go to be believable to a degree?

If I did go with that, my next problem would be… would it work? As I said in my OP, if injected, surely it would go into their circulatory system instead of their digestive system and would that keep them alive/undead/whatever?

The only thing I can come up with is—which I don’t know if it’s plausible, or just plain reaching—when vampires drink blood it goes into their stomach, it doesn’t just sit there, otherwise the more they drink the more it would swell – and they’ll end up looking like pregnant vampires – so the idea is that it absorbs into the rest of their body. When they inject, the blood goes into their body, so it’s sort of like bi-passing the stomach? The blood that's in thier system would stop the hunger, because, it's, well, there.

Any feedback on that idea?

[Carlene]

The vampire in my novella, "BLOOD LUST" is a NYC EMT! He's careful not to take TOO much blood from the patients he's transporting. In a pinch, he gets plasma from the hospital.

Carlene

[veinglory]

It would make a lot more sense, biologically, of vampires did inject blood IMHO. Because what they need in their veins would be blood, not digested blood....

[robjvargas]

As undead, vampires are frequently portrayed as not having a pulse. So I'm not sure that blood in the veins *does* make sense.

Of course, if the story is consistent, there's nothing forcing it to *not* make sense, either.

I suppose a "scientific" vampire doesn't digest at all anymore, just absorbs into the bloodstream via the alimentary organs.

Which begs the question whether vampires poop...

I think I'll go (away) now.

[-alex-]

Originally Posted by robjvargas

Which begs the question whether vampires poop...

LOL! Yeah. So where do the technicalities stop?

EDIT: Okay, so I've thought about it some more... and what I’ve come up with is…

If my vamps inject the blood into the stomach (I didn’t say it needs to be pretty), it would by-pass the taste buds in the mouth, but still quell their hunger, because it’s reached their stomach and so ends up in the same place.

The reason I’m saying bi-pass the taste-buds is that the taste of blood is what sets them off (Smell can come into it too, but not be as prominent). Once they taste it (feed direct from humans), they can’t stop, the bloodlust takes over, until it’s all gone and the human is dead.

Thoughts?

[veinglory]

They have to have a metabolism and circulate a fluid, unless it is all magic in which case you can do anything. My vampires had smooth vessels going out from the stomach which had no digestive acid--so the vessels propelled fluid like the gut does, no central heart required. The quickest way to kill them would be a funnel and a bottle of Coca-cola.

However they work, it just has to make some kind of sense.

[Rhoda Nightingale]

Rhoda's Two Cents:

Alex, I think the mythology you've come up with works just fine. Like veinglory and other have said, the main thing is to be consistent once you've established the rules of your fictional universe.

I write a lot of vampire stories, and of the things I've established is that blood isn't "food" in the same way as it is for humans. They ingest it, but it's not about hunger--it's more like an addiction without which they can't function. They're not alive, so they don't need to digest anything. They just need that element in their system somehow to keep moving, stay lucid, keep resembling humans somewhat. They have no lifeforce of their own, being undead and all, so they take it from others.

That's my take on it.

/two cents

[Kitty27]

I also like your mythology.

I stuck to supernatural reasons for my vampires needing blood.

Blood powers their entire being and it's what gives them all their powers.Plus,they are just plain cuckoo for cocoa puffs for it.

I compared their addiction and reaction to it like being on a mixture of Special K,heroin and LSD at once.

[areteus]

There are many different physiologies proposed for Vampires and not all of them make sense (a friend of mine once wrote an article for Vampire: The Masquerade which asked the question - how do vampires get an erection? He concluded they had to spend a blood point to acheive it...)

Brian Lumley's vampires are metamorphic creatures grown out of a parasite which lives inside them and slowly replaces the hosts flesh with vampire flesh... they absorb the blood through this flesh (and could actually just bathe in it Bathory style if they chose but most prefer to drink it).

Bathing is one possibility but needs a lot of blood. You could also shower in it...

[PPartisan]

It would be quite a grim existence if blood were equivalent to food and it constantly bypassed the tastebuds. Imagine if we just ate a bland, flavourless mush to fill us up when there were 5course meals walking around everywhere. Not that I'm suggesting vampires have tastebuds, but it's in a vampire's nature to predatory, so these efforts to cheat it will come at a cost.

[Brandon Locke]

I'm stealing this from the RPG: Vampire the Masquerade, but a clan of vamps called the Tremere could use magic to absorb blood from people, and the victim had no clue. They just became weak and wrote it off as something else. The vamps could even do it at a distance.

Since you're going the supernatural route, I'm sure there would be a way to do it mystically.

[Once!]

At times like these I tend to take a step backwards. The way I see it, vampires are undead. Or rather, they ought to be dead but something keeps them alive for years and centuries after they should RIP.

So how come they are undead? How do they get energy? What stops them from ... ahem ... dying?

That has to be the blood of their victims. Or more correctly, the life force of their victims which just happens to be carried in the blood. A vampire on the run might do the normal random killing stuff, leaving dead bodies around, draining virgins, your normal saturday night.

But a vampire homemaker wouldn't want a series of one night stands. We need something a little more permanent. We need a blood farm of some sort. And then we could riff around willing symbiotes donating enough blood to sustain the vamp without killing themselves. Or if we want to get a bit more gruesome we hook into something like the Prometheus myth. Chained to a rock to have your liver eaten daily, only for it to grow back the next day.

I have this vision of a dapper vampire count keeping a cellar of humans all tied up with iron manacles. And when he wants to feed he selects one of them, opens a vein and decants a pint or two. Leaving the victim alive to replenish the stock. You might even have one vamp showing off his cellar to a guest. "I have a particularly fine 44 year old. An excellent year. Try this, you'll love it."

[Pearl]

Originally Posted by Once!

I have this vision of a dapper vampire count keeping a cellar of humans all tied up with iron manacles. And when he wants to feed he selects one of them, opens a vein and decants a pint or two. Leaving the victim alive to replenish the stock. You might even have one vamp showing off his cellar to a guest. "I have a particularly fine 44 year old. An excellent year. Try this, you'll love it."

I actually have this scene in my vampire book. I'm having my vampires involved in human trafficking just so they can gather their humans to feed off of them, since hunting isn't the way it used to be due advancing technology and increased surveillance.

[acelticdream]

And the odds of 3 of us thinking of the same type of scene in such a short span of time ????

[Jess Haines]

Originally Posted by Once!

I have this vision of a dapper vampire count keeping a cellar of humans all tied up with iron manacles. And when he wants to feed he selects one of them, opens a vein and decants a pint or two. Leaving the victim alive to replenish the stock. You might even have one vamp showing off his cellar to a guest. "I have a particularly fine 44 year old. An excellent year. Try this, you'll love it."

Have you read the short stories in UNDER THE FANG? You're putting me in mind of that antho.

I did a review here, if you're interested.

[Feral_Sophisticate]

Originally Posted by -alex-

Hey all,

I’m asking for a bit of help here. On Vampires. Yes, I know, vampires. Sorry folks, I know it’s a touchy subject these days…

Okay, so I’m trying to figure out a way which vampire can get their blood, apart from the traditional way—right from the source.

Blood bags came to mind, but that is just so overdone that I wanted to go with something different. So, I had the idea of injecting the blood.

The trouble with that is, unless injecting into the stomach, surely it would go into their circulatory system instead of their digestive system? Which would probably not stop the hunger for the blood, right? And another problem would be, why inject at all, when blood-bags are just so much more convenient?

Any ideas?

I know it's an old thread, but if you're at all savvy with roleplaying games like Vampire: The Masquerade, there are descriptions in the various game books about ways that vampires get their blood - outside of the obvious.

There are "blood parties" where mortals are suspended from the ceiling, and have veins opened through the course of the night, "Blood Dolls" (people who get off on the near-orgasmic pleasure of the feeding) can be found in "The Rack" (slang for the nightclub district), and so on. The "Sabbat" (the "evil" sect of vampire) have quite a few creative (and somewhat disturbing) means of getting their fill of vitae (as they call blood).

If you need specific references still, send me a PM, and I'll give you page numbers. You can buy PDFs of the books at a variety of legitimate sources online, and there are even print on demand options, too.

[phineas12gauge]

Originally Posted by Feral_Sophisticate

I know it's an old thread, but if you're at all savvy with roleplaying games like Vampire: The Masquerade, there are descriptions in the various game books about ways that vampires get their blood - outside of the obvious.

I have to second this recommendation and not just for this reason.

I think that white wolf series and supplements present the most coherent and consistent world for vampires. I never played the game much but I have spent a great deal of time reading the game books and was pretty impressed by their depth.

[FOTSGreg]

Actually, the idea of a modern day vampire keeping a human donor around is not that original, but is somewhat logical. Jeff Rice did it for his vampire Janos Skorzeny in the novel "The Night Stalker" and that bit was kept in for the movie "The Night Stalker" starring Darren McGavin (c1975).

[Feral_Sophisticate]

Another "angle" to come at it is to examine how they can use the dregs of humanity. Having a vampire choose to use a local homeless shelter, retirement residence, psychiatric ward, orphanage and the like makes perfect sense. Depending on the time period where the story takes place, the society and culture that its set in, and the degree of lawlessness, this sort of thing could likely be easily done, and hidden.

[Griffin Hayes]

Just a random thought. Might be interesting to look at all the different kinds of insects and animals that drink blood and study how they do it. Maybe a new take on a parasitic idea could be creepy and different enough to get people's attention.