Vampyres...

[JoelMcKickass]

"If portrayed as some kind of Xenos or Chaos warped creatures that are universally feared and have no compassion for those they prey on, then that would fit..."

That'd be the way i'd want the lower ranks to appear, yet it would be the same attraction that politicians and leaders have to Slaanesh. They know it's wrong, yet they still can't help by be enthralled (the exact word i was looking for) by it.  Though they would definately be the antagonists in the campaign. Whilst people would be attracted to them, they wouldn't have a single redeemable quality.

"Depends on who you ask. There are plenty of people in the Imperium who believe that any deviation from the 'blessed purity of the human form' is inherently blasphemous and thus is deserving of only one thing: to be killed with fire"

"The Blood of Martyr's is the Seed of the Imperium", from the LRB. It could be something of a defence for a loyalist Vampire (who can't understand why people don't like him killing people, kinda like the Flesh Tearers), who believes that by consuming the blood, he is infact keeping it alive. Or something.

Having a Thorian trying to examine one (much like a mad scientist) would be an interesting idea...

[Vladimir]

Any body here head of a chapter called the Blood Angels?
Anybody here heard of the Black Rage?

Now, IIRC, if prevented from charging gloriously into battle, a Blood Angel aflicted with the Black Rage lapses into a state known as the Red Thirst. In which case, they become utterly feral, desiring only to feed on the warm blood of their fellow men. These Blood Angels are restrained by their brothers until their inevitable (and usual rapid) death by  physical trauma as they attempt to struggle out of their bonds.

Suppose such a creature were to escape.

Now, we know that the blood of sanguinary priests is used to get a cerain amount of genetic material into blood angels neophytes- this is in part what causes the chapter's degeneration. What if our escaped blood angel were to spill his blood apon one of his victims, effectively gifting said victim with a portion of Sanguiniouses nature, and passing on the red thirst to him as well? This will probably be accidental at first, but soon he will realise the potential for a cult of equally bloodthirsty followers...


Potential warband:
Brother Guilamant, our escaped Blood Angel. An astartes with no armour and only basic equipment. He possibly loses some skills, and gains Vampirism. for d6 turns after he has used vampirism, he benefits from Regenerate and Heroic.
Gryle, Guilamant's first victim to survive. Hideously scarred.  Has Vamprirism et al, as well as WP and NV apropriate to an astartes, representing the Blood Angels heretidge in his blood.
Lenore, Guilamant's most recent victim. Uses Severina/sevora figure, perhaps? Infiltrater. usual vampirey abilities.

Hell, I may have to make this warband myself...

[Inquisitor Cade]

I suppose there are two catagories of vampire. The first, broader one is humans or creatures who drink blood for whatever reason, and the second is supernatural creatures that possess several of the classic vampiric traits: dependence on blood to survive, reaction with sunlight (usualy a violent reaction), a resiliance to most forms of death, weakness to holyness and maybe even the ability to turn into a bat or a swarm of bats.

I think there is plenty of room for the former. Blood angels are a previously mensioned example, elitist haemovores who favour vampirism over cannibalism also exist and I'm sure there are Khornate and Slaneeshi vampire cults.
The latter, I think, are plauable only as a breed of daemon, or possibly victims of a daemonic virus, and thus would be present in imperial society hardly more than plague zombies.

As to how to represent chaos virus vampires, I'd say the daemonic impervious exotic ability and the vampirism exotic ability, then perhaps invunerability and cloak of darkness too. It might also to be appropriate to count them as having a gland of psycon (no dose limit). But otherwise they should not gain skill or abilities over humans.

[JoelMcKickass]

I think i'm going to go with the Xenos idea, and after looking around i've seen some models i could use for them.  I really like the idea they've got Glands, it doesn't make them immensely strong, but it does give them an edge.

As for abilities, i can't shrug the idea they could control Cloak of Darkness, pass a willpower test and its not active, so they can walk around, fail it and they explode in a spectacular fashion, or catch fire in the head and arms kinda way. Hell, i'd like it if psykers could nullify that badboy, it'd make it pretty funny...

I like keeping the same stats are normal, makes it less complex, so to put it in full: Psychon Gland, Cloak of Darkness, and Vampirism/Regeneration, anything else?

Just to clarify, these would be NPC's controlled by the GM, or whomever wasn't taking part in that battle in the campaign. My idea has sort of solidified into a group of Inquisitors are investigating rumours of them. A Hereticus is investigating rumours of Heretics, Malleus investigating rumours of a Daemon running rampant, and Xenos have heard that there's an Alien subset that's being worshipped.

There's even a philosophical side to things, Thorians wanting to find someway to extend their life (or bring back the Emperor), Recongregators trying to use the Vampires as a way to destabilise a planetary government (perfect Assassins?), Monodominants wanting to wipe them out, you get the drift.

[Inquisitor Cade]

If you are running them as aliens then I'd say cloak of darkness, as a daemonic power, is inappropriate. I'd also argue that they shouldn't be too human, I'd make their hands into great claws, and say that they double over to run on all four limbs. I wouldn't apply regeneration either, as vamprism already has a healing affect.

[Hadriel Caine]

Only if you're reading modern versions of Vampires. Portraying Vampires/Werewolves/other supernatural beings in a more positive light has only really come about in the last half century.

Erm. Sorry Marco that's not entirely accurate.

Dracula was published in 1897. 113 years ago.

Count Dracula. The entire novel can be read to represent the fear in society of the female orgasm/ sexualisation. Dracula can be seen to represent love, lust, animal power and incredible social magnestism. Indeed the male characters themselves produce passages with homosexual undertones regarding the count.

the Vampyre, by Polidori was publised in 1819. 191 years ago.

Lord Ruthven is a suave gentleman vamypre and a powerful seducer.

I think Joel is accurate in his depiction of Vampires as attractive figures of temptation. That IS, to my mind at least, one of the major archetypes they hold in western literature.



Adam

[MarcoSkoll]

Dracula was published in 1897. 113 years ago.

Hmm.

Yes, Vampires have long had the power of seduction. But that's attraction to a Vampire. What I'm talking about is the attraction of BEING a vampire, which the idea Joel is running with.
While wanting to be a vampire might come about if a Vampire has seduced you into wanting to stay with him/her forever, having developed an attraction to becoming a vampire of your own accord would require that you saw being a vampire as being a good thing.

And largely, vampires have only really been portrayed as the kind of figure that someone (vaguely sane) might reasonably like to be in more modern fiction. Comparatively, Dracula is not likely to have been a figure that many people 113 years ago would have wanted to follow in the footsteps of.

That's what I was talking about.

[Swarbie]

Well. I've always seen vampires for the 40k setting as being either daemons or a form of xenos, rather than the relatively new, fairly common "people with a virus that makes them appear dead and be allergic to sunlight and other things" idea.

As a daemon, I'd imagine them to be a slaaneshi daemon, sort of like a succubus, but instead of taking a man's  . . . seed, they take their blood. This would represent the alluring side to vampires pretty well, in my opinion.

As a xenos, I think of them as nocturnal creatures, which are very tall and spindly looking, with claws, fangs, pointed ears, the whole "bestial vamp" shaboosh. They might burn very easily, quickly and painfully when exposed to sunlight. These could more represent the "hunter in the night" side of vampires.

And, yeah, I reckon that most people, even oppressed citizens in 40k, would not want to become either of those things. 

[Inquisitor Sargoth]

I don't think you need to create a supernatural 'race' of vampires, or even a xenos race. There are lots of reasons why hematophagy hasn't evolved in large animals.

The old Rogue Trader energy-feeders and the crazier Blood Angels succesor-chapters probably aren't what you're looking for, but a simple daemonically-possessed or chaos-tainted individual could well fit the vampiric mould, and as has been mentioned, plenty of cults have blood drinking habits already.

Perhaps some implant special fangs, possibly with venom-sacs in the mouth for soporific poisons, with crude eye replacements designed to see by night but sadly vulnerabe to daylight. That allows a non-supernatural vampire, and they could induct new members easily enough to swell their ranks.

If taking the supernatural route, I wouldn't recomend vampirism being contagious in the tradition sense, but possibly your chaos-vampire would induct others by use of nasty rituals or, if taking the daemonic route, a specialised form of possession.

Though you prefer a Slaaneshi approach, I'm surprised nobody's suggested a Khornate vampire. He is the Blood God, after all. Though such a being is less likely to be seductive and subtle. And there's always chaos undivided.

[JoelMcKickass]

Sargoth we weren't talking today were we?

I was in my LGW and mentioned the idea, someone simply pointed out that Plague Zombies are Nurgles minions, what about a Khornate equivalent for Vampires (we then went into a bit debate about what would they actually be, Vampires or some form of Werewolf equivalent, and so on and so forth), and someone pointed it out earlier in the thread, have them as a form of plague zombie, just abused by another god. We kinda went of topic then about using Space Marines, but that led onto me not buying any of the new Blood Angels stuff.

However, it did bring up the original variation of the Plague Zombie thing, which does seem quite interesting, and means they can have daemonic powers, however, i wouldn't want to have variations of the same idea for the 4 Gods.

[Vladimir]

So, each chaos god gets a sort of 'infected' human thingy.
Nurgle gets plague zombies
Slaanesh gets Lahmia type vampires
Khorne gets Strigoi tyoe vampires
Tzeench gets... what? Yet more mutants? Ghosties?

Personally, one thing I've always found interesting* with vampires is their 'no longer human' schtick. The idea that they become imortal and powerful, but lose their humanity. This does tie in quite nicely with space marines. When we factor in the general awesomeness of Marines and the potential for genetic degeneration to give them various quirks and weaknesses, I'd say a pretty good vampire-standin could be made from an Astartes.
After all, it strikes me that 'chaos did it' is something of a cop-out aproach to coming up with nasties in 40k.


*before twilight got to it. After that it was pretty hard to take seriously.