LogFAQs > #934623336

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I've always enjoyed the "can't cross running water" and "have to be invited in" ones. Or that they need to travel with their coffins/native soil.

I honestly loved how Vampire: the Masquerade handled things - there are different clans/bloodlines of vampires, and each one has different weaknesses. So it kind of explains why there are so many contradictory myths and legends about vampires - they're true for some clans, not for others.

So the Tzimisce (Dracula's clan) have the two handfuls of grave dirt thing, but it's the Lasombra who don't reflect in mirrors. One bloodline is especially weak to light, another is weaker to religious symbols, and so on.

The problem was that they ran out of cool weaknesses quickly, and didn't feel like "counts stuff" or "has to be invited in" or "running water" made for good weaknesses, so they didn't give them to any specific clan (though players could take them as personal Disadvantages if they wanted to).

I also liked how they sort of took all the various stereotypes and turned them into separate clans to justify how they could all exist at once. So The Lost Boys were basically Brujah, Anne Rice vampires were almost certainly Toreador, turning into a wolf/bat was a Gangrel thing, the Tzimisce were the creepy Eastern European lords, the Nosferatu were literally the vampire from Nosferatu, etc.



WhiskeyDisk posted...

I've always found the "can't cross running water" fascinating on some level. Depending on the geography of where a vampire was sired, that could be incredibly confining, or a huge swath of night in which to roam.

It was originally another purity thing - running water is "pure" (ie, less likely to be contaminated with bacteria, and thus drinkable), so its purity repelled vampires. Plus, water is literally symbolic of life itself in most cultures, so again, is anathema to the walking dead. And for most of human history, rivers tended to be natural borders, so there's the symbolism of crossing out of your native land (vampires had to remain tied to their native soil, hence the dirt thing).

Yes, that seems like you're kind of screwed if you're a vampire and you die on an island, but there's usually loopholes around it (ie, they can use boats, walk across bridges, etc - they just can't ford a river or fly across one using their own power).



WhiskeyDisk posted...

And if we're counting plumbing and sewers as "running water" then unless the vampire rose somewhere where they still shit in a hole in the ground, they're practically imprisoned tighter than a fairy in a bottle already.

It's worth remembering that plumbing and sewers really weren't much of a thing back when most vampire myths were coming into being. At best, you might have aquaducts, rainwater runoff troughs, and the occasional cistern. But again, purity comes into it - sewers are likely too "polluted" (in the metaphysical sense) to repel vampires at all, and even regular water pipes likely wouldn't affect them because the water is completely contained within a pipe, minimizing its ability to influence the vampire.



Zeus posted...

Sounds like you're cribbing the Wolfman >_> The satanism connection has been closely aligned with Hollywood, starting with the Wolfman's pentagram

Yeah, that's about the only thing in that movie that's actually accurate. For most of history, lycanthropy/shapeshifting in general was a black magic thing, where someone would deliberately transform into an animal of their own will, then change back (part of why black cats are associated with witches).

The idea of the half wolf/man form, the idea that the change is involuntary, that the person loses control when they become an animal, or that there's any tie to the moon, all come almost entirely from that movie or the sequels that followed.



Zeus posted...

It's worth noting that the running water restriction is prevalent throughout a lot of supernatural lore, including as a precaution against werewolves and ghosts (coincidentally, it's why the Headless Horseman was said to be unable to cross the bridge in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

Rivers are great for saving you from the supernatural. You just hope there isn't a rusalka in it.

Though it's also worth noting that the reverse is true to some degree - the unnatural can taint pure water. The Romani used to have the belief that a menstruating woman shouldn't cross running water, because if she did she would taint it, and it would become unsafe to drink. And then you'd have to ritualistically purify the water before it would be usable again.
---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family