Skills - from A to Z starting.... Now.

Some Thoughts about the Skill of Alchemy. 

The science of the black land hangs within the Hobby as a kind of pinata - it's overhead, swinging - it tantalizes us all with bright colors, exciting possibilities.  But everyone who takes a crack at it is blindfolded & swinging wildly while unseen forces pull & push - drag it away.  Eventually someone smacks it open - old Alchemy, and everyone hopes that it was full of the candy that they specifically like. 

Which sounds pretty stupid, actually, when you put it like that.  What I'm getting at, I think, is that a lot of the defined elements of This-Thing-We-Do-Together are rules & they're tried, true & played out practically.  A lot of rules show up & offer different variants of the same sorts of things & those same sorts of things tend to be Fighting, Magic, Skills, Race, Class & Gear - not every game has all of these, but games that don't have one of them are bound to try & explain why at some point.  If they don't have coherent systems of Chemistry & Physics?  Doesn't seem to matter. 

My intuition is that Alchemy, if it's going to be part of your game, really has to ask itself - What It Is.  Is it a precursor to Chemistry?  To Physics?  Is it a mystical tradition based upon the esoteric goal of achieving spiritual perfection?  Is it a magical discipline?  A craft?  Is it merely mixing ingredients randomly in pursuit of some buff or debuff?  I think it can be any of those things - but also, only one of those things.  That is - if it's a talent for mixing up potions, it's probably not also a search for enlightenment.  If it's a science - it probably isn't also an esoteric lodge-based tradition of mysticism.  Now - depending on which of those things you think Alchemy is in your game - then it's got to work by some type of rules.  Because Rules are at the bottom of This-Thing-We-Do-Together. 

Now I've experimented with a lot of different idiomatic variants of alchemy in my games.  I've played with specific potions that may be fabricated in specific situations.  I've toyed with alchemy as an esoteric tradition akin to the Rosy Cross.  At some point I stumbled upon a formulation that I have found myself clinging to so often that I may as well adopt it as my canonical device - the polar elements & the Wave-Form cosmos.  What it is is stated by Geometer Brenner fairly abstractly: 

The Waveform Cosmos – From the Geometer Brenner Water-over-Wind's address to the Essentialists of the Lodge of Six Colors – YK 2036

 We know or at least say and believe the Six Forces.  But the question remains – if everything is composed of forces how does anything have substance?  It was by the incomparable work of Marcus Fire-over-Light (7^th Century YK) that first grasped the unity of opposites – but not until the great work of Hugo Stone-under-Dark (12^th century YK) and his students Johan and Mercar Light-above-Light that the forces were shown to be only forces and thus lacking substance – since all the forces may operate in Void – the definitive absence of matter.  Often we are asked-  and often for the wrong reasons – What is Substance?  There are those of course who have attempted to subvert our mathematics to say that Nothing at all exists.  But this is a misconception.  Energy – that is Forces (not Energie – the force) all are transmitted in waves.  Hold a string and make it move regularly – it gains heights and nadirs-  the forces are just so.  The apogee of Energie for instance is perfect heat, the nadir is perfect cold.  We speculate as to absolute values – that is – a theoretical absolute perfect apogee and nadir – but in fact these are unreachable – the High and Low Infinities as described by Ramen Water-above-Wind (11^th century YK).  The forces that we experience are near the middle of the waves' Lengths and that was how it came to be understood that the forces are given substance.  How does the wave progress in direction?  If energy is a wave originating in an unreachable original infinity – and travels in a direction – it must reach a point – even if it never reaches its final destination – that place being another infinity.  Nevertheless there is 'Place'.  Hugo Stone-under-Dark saw that and understood what we call the Media – the pseudo-material through which the waves travel.  But later still Hugo's students showed that the Media is likewise composed of Forces!  The heights and Depths of the forces are all sequential – meaning they travel through a media – but that media is themselves.  Here the understanding of the Wave metaphor takes on another image.  A wave is a portion of a line – but as the circle is a section of a sphere- the waves are sections of a hemispheric solid – the media is the varieties of overlapping forces transmitted through this shape.  That is upon the innumerable waves of the Force of Air that we breathe-  which are shallow ponderous waves – we are 19 steps from the median.  But it has been discovered in this generation of Geometers that everything we experience is in fact on the 19^th step from the median – whether it is a positive point or a negative!
 Materially there is a correspondence – we exist at what I have described as the "Period" upon all waves and so it seems that in the instantaneous "Moment" of wave-correspondence there is a material expression of a force.  The seconds of time that we experience are the various "moments" of each wave simultaneously existing upon the 19^th "period"!  So time is in fact absolute.
 It has been shown by the tireless work of many Geometers that there are an infinity of other corresponding Periods which cause different Moments of simultaneity upon all the waves.  It is expected that each of the Periods is another entire existence which are by their varied construction unrecognizable to our own.  I won't speak for the Essentialists but I know that they have contended that that among these existences there must be the capacity for transit of portions of forces – which is held to be the source of the Essential Spirits.  Because it is known that the Essential Spirits exist an explanation is required for their existence – nevertheless the Essentiallists and Geometers have not agreed upon this point.

 

That's a quote from a novel of mine.  Brenner speaks here in an intentionally obscure & hard to follow form - it's meant to make it all seem much more complex & technical & specialized.  But - I'll make it clearer - state it more clearly

  

• There are 6 Elements in this system & each has a positive & negative polarity.   
• The high & low points of these poles exist on a wave-pattern.  
• The waves of each of the 6 is part of a larger wave.
• The larger wave is the universe.

So an example is this wave - the Illumans wave which encompasses both Dark & Light - which are in this construction - poles of a single element.  

Now, imagine all the elements are similar waves.  And each of them is woven into a single thread that is the sum of all waves they move through some unintelligible media but along curves set by the Universal Wave.

Okay - now there are many waves making up one wave.  This one wave comprises the entire universe and all possible universes.  The material universe that we know & love - exists only at very specific points along this curve  The distance between these points is the planar-frequency - the interval at which this specific universe exists.  Further up the wave or further down - that's a frequency that corresponds to an entirely different universe.  

Now, the essential waves that make up the universal wave are in some type of resonance so that things exist in a recognizable pattern (e.g.: Fire is hot & bright) & continues to be so on every tick along that planar frequency.  The planar frequency is nice as well because it gives a rationale behind the appearance of sequential time.  

We also have an infinite variety of universes up & down the wave that are very, very close to one another - so close that a universe may seem to be completely identical.  But also far enough away that some basic forces are completely out of sync (E.g.: Fire is not but not bright).  So there are varieties up & down the planes - potentially including ones where the universe is dominated completely by one pole of an element or another - say a universe of pure heat without cold.  

This pattern & structure really checks off the boxes for me in terms of worldbuilding & game-design because:  

• It creates some framework where there are predictable results.
• It has a high degree of randomness
• It allows for higher & lower dimensions with different experiences of time
• It includes the physical material that all things are comprised of
• It has mysterious & inexplicable elements - i.e.: what medium does the wave pass through?

I think that I like this cosmology so much & that it's versatile enough that I can build any amount of settings using it - and it's a big enough idea that needs so much more explanation that I can formulate any number of further ideas from out of it.  So - it's a kind of constant in my worldbuilding.  Maybe all my worlds are just different frequency universes on this same wave - that's fine.  I can work with this as a model & adopt it as my own personal canon.  Done.

So what's this mean for Alchemy?

I love this even as I plan how to remove it forever...

I could, I suppose just invent millions of possible combinations of things & then extrapolate results.  That's possible, sure - Fish + Toothpaste = Dire-Venom or some-such.  I don't really hate this as a thing that people do in a game.  But I think that I want alchemy to be more...  

Pure.  I'm not sure at what point fish+toothpaste=the Chymical Wedding but I don't care to find out either.  I'm Invested in a system that has functional boundaries but also modular components, that has prescribed & expected results - but also a realm of random possibilities.  So for pure, you've got to get to the pure, unvarnished, hidden atomic truth.  

For that - the elements.  I'm sticking with my 6 - because I like them & because they symmetrically apply to the 6 statistics that everyone knows so well.  This matching is helpful - for game design - because it builds in types of effects based on the elements in question.  So here's my pure 6/12 elements that do the lifting for the system to come:

Heat ß  Energie à Cold

Light ß Illumans à Dark

Water ß Floe à Air

Mineral ß Chthon à Metal

Chaos ß Protean à Void

Flesh ß  Viscera à Wood

Naturally, I'm putting it all into fantasy-Latin-Greek-Esperanto - but I could stand to wash it all in the thesaurian bath a few more times.  I'm content with the items - more than I am with the names, the names can be different for different groups etc...  Sticking with the core here-  I have 6 axes & 12 poles to describe effects both.  This is the place I start from when I start to think about Ruling-Up alchemy as a skill.

The Mystic Art Of Game-Mastery - or - The Lightning Path To Sublime Refereeing

Now friend, you might ask & I will answer (I’m taking this in a more conversational route because we’re friends.  You’re a Ref, I’m a Ref – We Make Worlds – that’s a lot for us to have in common, so I say we’re friends) – aren’t you taking something mystical & maybe a bit sacred and making it into something… not those things?  You’re looking at my modification of the tree of life thinking – are you a crazy person?  Just wicked? 

Well, let’s get right down to it friend.  See, we make worlds.  The tree of life, in the minds of the ancient people who devised it, was meant to be a map to understanding the mind of their creator.  Well, here we are.  Creating.  Creating rather a lot.  You might be running your game, building your setting and get the idea that really, you need to rewrite the laws of physics for your setting.  You wouldn’t be the first.  This Thing We Do is an act of vast creativity, and maybe, in our way, in our imaginations we are like gods.  Don’t let it go to your head though – you need players and they’re good at subverting your will – you’re a creator of place & scene & people, but this Thing We Do – it’s still an act of supreme creation & I realized that the map of understanding it from the perspective of those who wanted to understand the mind of the creator was a good place to start at mapping a path toward accomplishing This Thing We Do.  The idea isn’t to subvert anyone’s mystical or religious practice – rather, it’s to co-opt it whole cloth and use it as I see fit. 

Magicians & priests talked about the different sefirot – the different sections of the tree of life as aspects of the world and they devised a path through all of them to achieve the mind of god by passing from the bottom to the top.  Discussed here is the journey from the top to the bottom – it’s a method & a style for running your game that covers all the elements at work & that creates a journey of creation, just for you. 

The top of the tree is called Keter & it’s meant, in kabbalah to be the very peak, the Crown – which is what I’ve positioned there.  The Crown.  In the description of sub-games previously the crown was shown to indicate the Duel.  In this case, for your purposes – it’s a bit of both.  Here, you’re devising your villain.  The villain may seem like a weird place to start, so let’s clarify.  This is the Conflict.  There’s no story without a conflict & creating one is what you’ll have to do to invent the story.  In many cases what you’re creating is not your players enemy – but a slate of potential enemies – a conflict in the game that guides the events of the setting.  This conflict will draw sides & your PC’s will chose one or the other or all sides or none-  all of these are choices & they’re forced, in some way, by the existence of the conflict to make a choice. 

The lightning path that goes from the top to the bottom – the path we’re looking at follows from the crown of Keter to the scepter of Chokhma.  Here we have the spiritual component of the game.  For the players this means vision quests & battles of identity – it’s all very high level, in terms of play.  Not all players are up to this kind of transcendent thinking at the table.  Insofar as you, the Referee are concerned this is the motivation.  Villains exist, conflicts exist – but why are they opposed & what is the threat that they pose to the setting & the players thereby?  This is where you put together the villains ideals, their ambitions & plans.  What’s the thinking that is the basis behind their schemes?  Knowing this, knowing the rationale behind the conflicts allows you to really sell the conflicts as concerns – things that the players can grasp & understand & get involved in.  You’re creating an ethos here – competing ones  - and this creates a spiritual, ethical axis that the PCs are forced to put themselves on – somewhere.  Is this a battle between good & evil?  Where do the PC’s lie on this spectrum?  They’ll have to decide  - you’re just creating the relevant options here. 

From Chokhma we travel over to Binah – the spider.  We’re doing away with Kabbalistic approximation here to address the spider & its web.  The spider is your conflicting forces – they exist, so what then are their manipulations?  Who are their minions, where are they set up?  You’ve got to establish mini-bosses, hierarchies or orders – networks through which the villains & their plans interact with each other & the rest of the setting.  If you’re pitting the gods of Law against demons of Chaos – here’s where you’ll create the churches of Law & the cults of Chaos. 

Now, on to magic.  The sefirot Da’at is the unity of all the other sefira & is also knowledge.  Here we have it as magic & it is your magic, as the referee.  Here you’re combining all you know of what you’ve created to concentrate – to tell the story as it will happen – as it will unfold without the intervention of the players.  This is you, moving your pieces on the board, playing chess against yourself – this is you communing with your creation to really understand it, what forces are in motion & what will become of the world.  You’re creating a future here, predicting it from the hints you’ve placed.  This is the whole of your invention – you’ll return here often, but for now, on the path we are taking – you’ll be consider the conflict you’ve invented, its cause & the groups & forces that work to create that future.  Should good & evil be in collision, should their Templars & Anti-Popes be battling it out – you’ll have to know, in your planning – what will happen if the PCs don’t get involved.   

   

The journey from this introspection flows to Chesod – to love, in Kabbalah – for us it is the talking game – the social game.  Here you’re going to conceive of allies & friends - helpful contacts & allied NPCs for your PCs.  They needn’t love the PCs, they could very well hate them – but you, you should love these characters you’re creating because you are going to portray them.  Create NPCs that you’d have as friends, lavish as much thought & attention as you’re able onto these characters.  The richer they are, the more likable they are – the more the PCs will respond, the more they’ll attempt to protect or serve or help them. 

Now to Gevurah – to the element of fire & to the fight.  Here’s where you need to put together some confrontations.  You’ll run any number of fights in your campaign – some may be completely incidental, those aren’t what we’re thinking of here.  Here we are planning out large encounters, important & pivotal ones.  These are the milestones of the character’s struggles – the points of articulation where the campaign’s secrets will be revealed through some confrontation.  Confrontations can be battles – big, interesting fight scenes with all sorts of embellishment – fighting atop a collapsing, burning castle – or aboard a sinking ship in a whirlwind – anything you wish – but just make it a pivotal scene – something where great matters are decided.  You want to have these scenes in your mind far in advance of them ever being fought out at the table. 

Now on to Tiferet – the adornment, decoration.  Now you’ve got the big ideals, their resultant thematic allies, friends for the PCs and big scenes for them to chew – now you’re into the biggest job – the most rigorous of your tasks – now you’re building the world.  The balance here is the balance between effort & reward & that balance is always in your favor.  This is where you, the referee – can lose yourself into the deep wells of conlang & cryptozoology – you can spend a lifetime on a world, figuring out every type of tree in every woodland and every continent.  This is the place where you are thinking up the details that comprise your world.  It is an endless task but its own reward.  The other aspect of balance here is determining how much detail you can present to players, how much is too much is a very difficult question to answer & it really is something each player determines for themselves – but you can’t even ask the question until you’ve created something for them to seek or ignore.  Good luck.      

Everything below Tiferet – the balance – the Adornment of your setting is a specific aspect of the setting that you are adorning.  These are all deep wells of specificity that all relate to one another.  The first thing we get to is the materialist Sefirot – Netzach.  Netzach suggests permanence & here you’re filling in the blanks on what is, not permanent exactly, but what is permanent in human perception – institutions, symbols, material wealth, magic artifacts.  You’re creating the material culture of your setting – all that will remain for the archaeologists in all the centuries to come.  Corollary to this creation is the invention of material wealth for your players.  Treasures & relics – the wished for & wanted trappings of power & wealth that drive so many PCs. 

When working on Netzach you are creating your own mithril-silver, your own unobtanium & your own master-sword & your own great pyramids – you are making the materials that define your setting’s civilizations – and by doing so you’re implying its history & its likely futures. 

From Netzach we move on the lightning path to the entertainment Sefirot – Hod.  The Glory, the Splendor.  This is your performance – your ability to manifest the setting as a shared imaginary place between you and your players. 

There’s no end of the tricks & tips that have been offered to Referees for making all the player’s minds eyes focus into a single vision – your narrative vision.  Cues, including music, artworks, cast-lists – there’s a lot you can do to try and make the scenes pop out into shared existence. 

For us, at this moment though – for us the thing that really matters – that’s essential – is that this rests upon everything else, it’s caught in a net with the rest of the Sefirot & contextually, it can’t exist without the rest.  Really Refereeing well means being prepared.  You have to have all the rest of the setting, the world & its people well defined enough that you can produce, at will, any variants or improvised elements of that setting.  Should the players choose (as they are so often wont to do) to ignore a plot & to wander off in another direction – you must be prepared with interesting locations, people & events.  More than that you must know what occurs without the players’ actions.  Time must pass & urgent events must transpire whether or not the players intercede – this is a lot to do at the table, and it’s often a virtuoso performance for an audience of three or four – you must find the pleasure in the performance itself, for yourself. 

After Hod we find ourselves in Yesod – the foundation – the base.  This is matched to the survival, environmental game.  Here’s where you’re creating an environment – ecology & populations – maps & monster-lists.  You’re making the world all the more real through devising its rich substance.  Atlases of continents, maps of cities & travel guides – all the distances between all the rest of the things you’ve created comes up here – here you combine all you’ve made & apply it, like pigments to a canvas.  The map becomes the map of your setting, of your whole creation.  It is the reference document, as well, that will guide your players- as the world opens to them, as they experience more & more of it, the map is the graphical chart of the group’s progress through your imagination. 

And from there we find Malkuth – the kingdom – the world – or, in this construction – the Table.  The place where we do This Thing We Do Together.  Here, if all has gone well, if you’ve made the magic that’s needed to invent & populate a world of your own imagining – the game becomes transcendent, the players are moved by your cleverness & the peaks of this hobby rise above the peaks of other activities.  It’s also where the players roll dice, where they interject endlessly with comedy references, where they get distracted & confused – but.  But if you are on your game, if you’ve mastered all the Sefirot – you’ll find that you have an attentive audience, engaged players & a final outcome that is superior to the components that comprise it.

“Alright Methuselah.”  I hear you sighing.  Nice with the rapturous, breathless tone.  Nice work trying to get all mystical with something that should be easy.  Nice.  You clap slowly & smirk.  Well, maybe you’re not a sarcastic jerk, but you might be looking at all of this thinking – well, that’s not how I do it.  I start by making the map – after all, conflicts come from geography – not the other way around.  Or perhaps I start with the unobtainable treasure – the McGuffin – these other steps fall into place after. 

I hear you and understand.  I don’t present this map of creation as a strict system of storytelling grammar – I think of it more as a checklist – you need these things – all of these things – if you’re going to be the best Referee.  The order that I’ve outlined here is one that I suggest, and that is working for me after having made a few dozen pretty detailed settings.  That said- I think that it’s worth looking at the paths between these Sefirot.  The routes are sometimes overlooked – but the ways that the connect from one Sefirot to another does tend to give useful instruction. 

...Some brave soul has done you the favor of prying out the idol's jeweled eyes & they seem to have perished for their trouble. Your trained senses detect the faintest presence of poison but what inflicted this venom? ...

Life & Death.  So this is my third installment of discussing the confluence of these two ideas intersections In Our Hobby.  First – thePhysical with motive force but lacking any anima, and then the Elan-Vital withoutany form.  Zombies & Ghosts. 

I think that there’s a middle ground between the two and that’s where most thoughts of the Undead come from & where it’s easiest to settle into a comfortable groove of ideas relating to stories.  Some of the best stories about living dead people are in this vein – they have the same quality of blood & death & sleep & feeding that people do, just perverted & made macabre.  Naturally we’re talking about Vampires today.

I really like the idea of inherited vampirism, of transmission by biting & generational dilution – all of that.  I really like that but I feel like, also, I don’t have anything to add to that lore beyond approval.  And also – I prefer a different version of the Vampire.  Not the afflicted, not the vaguely biological, and not the hungry dead – rather I like thinking about the Curse. 

There’s the tried & true vampire story – the Mark of Caine & the relevant exposition in Genesis – you’ll be marked & no-one will be able to harm you & so on for being the first murderer.  That’s a solid reason for being a vampire –for The Vampire to come about.

Now, from that you can postulate a fantasyland where sometimes there’s a vampire.  But that’s really in opposition to what I’m interested in considering & talking about.  No Vampire tribes & teams, nosir.  No.  Sometimes there’s not a vampire.  Nope.  Because of That One Catastrophe Now There’s That Vampire.  This is the saga that interests me most. 

(Not to speak against other types of stories, you can have a preference without denigrating the other options – that’s what I’ve got going here.  Communicable vampirism just clings too closely to the physical, and too closely to the prevalent zombie mythos – I don’t need those, not today anyhow.  Today is for cursed people becoming singular & terrible monsters.)

So now I want to think about the terrible things that might occur that could cause there to be something like a Vampire.  I’m working on a list here so maybe I’ll update this as time goes by.

·       

•   The priests of a god all become some-kind-of-cursed-monster when that god is killed off by an adversarial god following some type of protracted war in heaven.  Let’s say that these Vampires, Undead-Horror-Priests linger in their places of worship & that they are compelled to hunger for the music & praise offered other, still living gods – they must consume the faith & love & hope of the practitioners of other religions.  Let’s say that they do this by stealing & eating children.  That’d just about do it no?  A sect of monstrous clergy all venerating a corpse-god.  So – you see – evocative.  Monstrous. 

•          How about the more solitary individual, a mystic, a wizard.  This person has taken to powering her magic with the vitality of the living - sacrificing animals & sometimes people to a point beyond explicable reason.  Even the simplest of her magics begins to demand the shedding of blood – a crushed frog here, an opened mouse there.  Soon she is just the conduit of blood, a crucible in which is alchemically formed not by her wizardly intention – but by its own magnetic attachment to itself.  So instead of being alive with a mentality & ego, this wizard has become purely instinctual, elemental – in helping blood to seek other blood.  She hungers and seeks & still utilizes her magical practices – but lacks for any autonomy & even the rudiments of life & comfort.  Monstrous.

      Or consider the Lothario – a lustful figure of intrigues & base drives, a man of romance in constant search for more & greater passions.  This man who abides, perpetually in love, in a state of constant youth – fueled by the passions & lusts that he inspires in those he seduces – incubus like.  This predator is blameless, though, and at heart remains innocent, uncorrupted by his antics – he nevertheless visits corruption (maybe like diseases?) to those whom he has preyed upon.  Never aging but leaving a string of wrecked homes, dashed hopes & broken hearts.  Perhaps he sustains himself on the forlorn suicides and relishes the perfume on all the fateful tearsoaked farewell notes that mention him by name.  Monstrous.

• ·        Maybe there’s that one.  That’s never grown up, that is or has always been the devourer, born hungry to a withered mother, it, itself withered beyond recognition, it lived though – a sprite of famine, a token of a pestilent year.  This infant grows & prospers without ever being nurtured.  It begins to steal breath & thus vitality – draining the air of its next parent and then its siblings and eventually the whole village.  The starving waif at the side of the road, permanently shivering, eternally famished.  Taken in, it eats up the smoke in the fireplace, the heat from the flame, the savor of the food and yet never does open its mouth – except at the fatal moment in the night when it drinks the breath of its doomed benefactor.  Monstrous.

·        

•             Possibly the dancer.  The model of grace & poise, silent in this world, expressing all through movement.  Drifting, confidently, between life & death as another might stride in and out of a room.  The dancer is too fleet, too evasive to ever succumb to death itself, but is too unreal & ethereal to be properly alive either.  This grace is not without its own demands though, and the Dancer Macabre must afflict others with agues & catarrhs – ailments of the joints & breath as they shrug off age they shed infirmity into the prematurely aged.  Disease & misfortune is the coin with which the dancer buys an immortal fame.  Monstrous.

·        

•            The Warrior.  Essential in this milieu is the one who fights.  This one fights death itself, a knight, killed at war but unwilling to cease the battle, who rises again & again to launch arrows & fire cannon, to cut down the rabble of the opposition.  The blood-covered-warlord whose unlife is made of endless war.  Perhaps guarding eternally against an invader – the city’s last wall & hidden tower, a fortress of a warrior slaked only on repelling the living & destroying them likewise.  Monstrous.

So in my examples I’ve just matched the sorts of monster-vampires to one of the six traditional statistics each.  Just as a guide – a common sensibility that’s reasonably shared among Our Community.  I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to match each of the examples to the CHA – WIS stats. 

Let’s very briefly hold that the six examples above are sufficient explanation for the why of Vampires.  And Vampire here – well, maybe it’s a loose term bandied with some negligence – but we’ll accept it as the placeholder to encompass – dead things that also have dead souls – that’s the bulls-eye for our discussion and now we’ll look at how distantly we can track from that and still have the thing be the thing.  So that answers the what. 

I think that the how is the best area to focus on now.  How do you persist in living when your body & soul are dead?  Traditionally it’s been the eating of blood & sometimes breath that keep the Vampire going - let’s extend & elaborate on that.  Life, other life.  That’s what you’ve got to live on.  Which is strange because – well, that’s everything alive, except I guess plants – and even plants, well.  They’re pretty mercenary in their own ways too.  Life eats life – so why is the Vampire unwholesome?  Maybe we’ll linger on the stalking & hunting of people (ALWAYS unsavory) and bring that up for closer inspection.  Maybe the Vampire needs to eat something more essential than the life of the people it feeds on.  More than the blood or the breath – let’s use those as markers shall we?  Let’s.  Let’s think that blood & breath represent vitality.

Now – in This Thing We Do – we’ve always or frequently had recourse to the draining & removal of Levels.  People don’t so much have levels in real life, but the system of levels really shines in the RPG as a functional mechanic only when levels are things that can be won & also lost.  Just knowing that around the bend there’s that one creature – you know the one –the WORST ONE –that steals your hard won levels, that bites of your HD and chews up your attack bonuses.  That One’s The Worst. 

Which I think is just right.  It sets the monster up as being truly fearful, menacing.  It’s dangerous in a novel way & a somehow more serious one.  It’ll do things to you that aren’t easily undone.  That’s the most monstrous thing. 

Of course this tracks as a meta-game concept but it’s hard to translate into story – one of those instances where game concepts can fill in blanks that we lack precise language for in storytelling.  There, in that world, you’ve got to use metaphor – The skulking creature fell upon her neck, a broad crimson stripe at its mouth as it eased away from her throat, having slaked its thirst and left her hollow and yet, still alive.  Well, she’s hollow & he’s less hungry?  I mean, there’s so, so many ways to look at this that all refer back to biology – eating, sex, life & death, disease – it’s fine – all of those are fine.  But none of them are metaphysical enough to really rub me as I wish to be rubbed. 

So I think you have to go to sins.  Wickedness – bad-deed-doing.  Let’s make the feeding a component of this – that there has to be a sinister act affiliated – now you’re into sneaking, and eating up innocent people, children if you want, or virgins, or maybe one’s own family members?  Make the killing & eating really Terrible and then you make your monster a Monster and not just a kind of person you might end up being.

Which is the line, in the end, that we’re drawing here – in the sand – between people and Monsters.  We’re making a circle around us and then describing everything on the outside of it as a monster.  In this instance we’ve gone and made concentric rings – In the middle – Us.  People.  So you take something away and end up with a monster – I think, curiously, that the first step of removal is to take away the physicality.  That the ghosts & spirits are closes to people and least monstrous.  Next are the zombies & skeletons, the dead bodies without souls – they’re horrible, sure, but not abstractly alien so much as displeasing, depressing.  Furthest away is the thing with a dead-soul & a dead-body – the predatory monster-person who looks at you not as another & not as a peer – not even as prey.  It looks at you as something to brutalize & defile – and that doing so will grant it some furtherance of its brutal, defiled existence.

A Kind of Vampire.  A Mean One.

This…  To me this story, of the addict, sick with despair & hungry for help – who sees people as mere instruments to aid & feed the addiction – that’s the demeanor of the Vampire, properly expressed.  Who else is so desperate and in turns pitiable & terrifying?  So that’s my who of this monster – the person made monstrous, stripped of persona & agency – left only with unrelatable drives & hopeless wants. 

So that – Is That.  On the three genera of undead monsters this is my assessment.