Resurrecting a vampire

heart transplant?

Have you thought about going back and re-writing your WIP so your vamp never got killed in the first place? Or did that happen in a previous book?

Do you need an actual mythological method? If so, I think they'll all need some form of remains. Failing that, how about just summoning the dead spirit into a new vessel?

ooh!

someone swallows his ashes by mistake and he takes over their body!

One thing I've learned about vamp fiction is that *anything* goes.

If he wasn't a vampire how would you bring him back?

Twin brother? Psychic twins? Possession? He reaches up, grabs his heart out of the killer's hand and stuffs it back in his chest? (This was done in a Casca the Eternal Mercenary novel by Barry Sadler. After that Casca steered clear of the Aztecs and their quaint local customs.)

Or do the Star Trek Thing with a Parallel Universe cliche where the character never died in his version of reality and crosses over to this timeline.

Re-writing the original WIP makes the best sense. Otherwise write the story before the character is killed. They did that on Highlander after killing off Roger Daltry's Immortal. (D'OH!)

As far as anything going in vamp fiction, that holds true only to a certain degree. So much vamp fiction has been written that there are a number of "truths" regarding killing and creating them. One sure way to kill a vampire is to remove his heart. You might make a transplant work, I like the parallel universe idea, but be be careful doing anything WAY outside the "norm" for vampires, they have their own mythos now and the folks who read vamp fiction might rail against anything way outside of what is "known" about vamps. Good luck.

BarbaraSheridan said:

There's always the reincarnation angle but that seems rather been there done that.

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Indeed.

Heh--maybe it wasn't THE character, but some possessed doppleganger he sent in his place.

When I get stuck I usually think "WWJWD?" And see what happens.



(What Would Joss Whedon Do?)

What happened to his heart after it was ripped out? Does some little piece of it remain somewhere? What if some other vampire found it and dripped some of his own blood on it and your dead one is regenerated from that?

Or someone summons him from hell? Remember Vampires are demons after all.

James Buchanan said:

Remember Vampires are demons after all.

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Not always. The great thing about the critters is each writer can do a different take on them.

I've seen/read them as demons, (with or without souls) mindless killing machines, related to humans the way we are to apes, supernatural constructs, aliens, you name it.

Most of the time all they had in common was a need to drink blood, keeping clear of sunlight, and being REALLY great in the sack.

(And for some, wealth, no aging, dressing sharp, and snappy last lines.)

Would a clone with inherited memory be impossible?

BarbaraSheridan said:

I don't post much but I read the boards fairly often and I haven't seen this topic. If it's been mentioned I missed it.

I need to bring back a vampire who was killed by having his heart ripped out. (Note to self: never kill a minor character who may "grow on you" at a future point in time ).

I've seen the old movies where Dracula comes back when blood spills on his remains or a stake through the heart is removed but I'm wondering if there's a way to bring my vamp back with no remains available (besides a reincaration theme that is).

A magickal spell won't work because of other events in the series ao I'm trying to think of something "plausible" that won't make the story a wall banger.

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Break away from the mold, my friend. Its your world, so the rules can bend whenever you like, for any reason you'd like. He's already undead. We've already, if you're telling a good story, suspended our disbelief so that we can accept the walking dead.

So we half expect him to get back up ANYWAY! Use that to your advantage. Come up with a clever trick; if you have a heaven and hell theme, maybe he bargained with the devil to come back.

Maybe you could have some sort of necromancer pull the heart from a corpse and put it into his body.

Perhaps other vampires have the ability to heal their dead. Since they're already dead, perhaps, to them, death is just a wounded state.

Let your imagination run around! Stop penning it to the popular imagery. Free range imagination tastes best.

And I think it goes without saying that you can use any idea I've posted in this thread in any capacity you like, to do whatever you like with. =)

Bart

Using his DNA to resurrect him? Wouldn't a Vampire's DNA reproduce the same Vampire??