Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Tuesday, 17 Nov 1992 09:55:07 CST
From: <U16244@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.vampyres
Subject: Re: Species of vampires

In article <caw1k8g@rpi.edu>, jordag@cary108.its.rpi.edu (Lord of the Vampyres)
says:
>
>one more thing on Anne Rice species that you forgot to mention...
>    incediblely fast...ie running so fast that mortal dont realize Lestat just
>ran by...

Hell, if I were to list every single power of every specie of Vampire that I
knew of, the listing would have been a hell of a lot longer than 60 lines,
and I had to be rushing to class when I sent it.  As it is, I forgot to list
wallcrawling, animal and canine control, heightened reflexes, incredibly
sensitive senses of smell and vision (they are nocturnal creatures), and so
on and so on.  Hell, the life support systems alone (ability to breathe without
air, and resistance to all diseases and poisons) are common enough to most
species that all things considered, Vampires are no pushovers (duh!), and
Peter Cushing's Van Helsing either must have been bionically enhanced, or
paid a  huge bribe to the script writer to survive his wrestling matches
with my favorite Dracula (Christopher Lee).

Still haven't received any word on the Saberhagenians yet.  But I have
speculated on the origins of the Stoker Dracula.

The term Dracula means Son of the Dragon.  In ancient mythology, the further
you go east, the more vastly powered the species of Dragons become.  Indeed,
Dragons seemed to be enormous parts of the cultures of the Eurasian continent,
and perhaps even North America (remember the Thunderbird?).  Also, as we go
to look at the Eastern Dragons (who mythologically might have extended to
the area of Europe that would have been where Tepes was doing his greatest
fighting with the Eastern Turks), they had some abilities in common with
some of the vampires of old.  They could become invisible, change between
human, animal and dragon form, had command of the beasts and elements, could
mesmerize humans... starting to see a bit of a pattern?

Mythological hypothesis:  Tepes, or perhaps some relative, or even an
invading Turk or a Mongol among the Turks, engaged in a battle with a rogue,
predatory Eastern Dragon, in a battle that was so intense, that both sides
shed blood, and it mixed.  The blood infected the surviving human (he sure
as hell wasn't alone), and mutated him dramatically, giving his mortal frame
the power of the dragon he had killed.  But because of his mortal frame,
while invulnerable to most of the metal weapons of the day, or the dark twisted
nature of the "hero" (the battle was so intense that he became psychotic),
he became predatory himself, developing such an innate fear of light that his
own powers would kill him in the light of day, an insanity which would go on
and continue to effect others, even though they didn't bear the same insanity,
merely a curse of the Dragon's blood being passed on.

It is just a half-assed idea, but considering the Rice-Vampires are the result
of a conflict with a poltergeist with similar results, can my explanation be
all the more strange?

Douglas P. Wojtowicz.

Before I take off, perhaps also, the dragon was a species with its own
weaknesses to sunlight, (perhaps not so lethal as a vampire, but still
losing enough power in the light for a single man to slay it in single
combat).
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