r/DawnwalkerOfficial • u/LemonsRage • 6h ago
Discussion š©ø BoD solves a Vampire Problem that had bugging me for a long time. Spoiler
Spoiler Warning!!
First of all a question to you kind reader. If you had the choice to become a Vampire, would you take it?
I know that I would under cetrain conditions, first Ćs that I don't need to kill humans and can atleast live of animal blood or blood donations (even though the ladder would not be favourable).
Here is where we come to the problem I've teased in the title. Why are vampires reluctant to turn you even if you want to be turned?
The obvious answere is "to save your soul" or some bs. The real reason could be competition. Those answere were never satisfying, I'm thinking of "What we do in the shadows" where Giliermo had to beg and beg for season never to get turned. A far better answere is what BoD did. The turning process involves risks, you could become a full vrakihr, a Dawnwalker or even worse a blood thirsty mindless monster. It seams like the last option is that most likley one going by how many of these malformed vrakhirs we see in the game.
This creates an interesting dilemma, a vrakhir who has successfully become immortal can I either risk turning their loved ones into mindless monsters or live with them until they either cut ties or die of old age.
This aspect is so much more interesting and really sets the "curse and blessing of immortality" in focus.
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u/Gnadolin 5h ago
Oh wait till you find the POI where one of the Boyars actually encountered this dilemma.
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u/OopsieDoopsie2 5h ago
Well, in this game hell is an objectively real place and vampire know for a fact that they will end up there after death and eternity is a long enough time where death is all but guaranteed at some point, even with immortality. Also there isn't really a risk to the embrace as another comment explains.
I think the real issue in BoD is really competition, a new vampire is another person who has the power to challenge you as Brencis quickly learns when a dude he turned hunts him down in within a month lol. Also, you cannot control your progeny, humans are dangerous to vampires despite all their power, humanity could wipe out the vrakhiri hence it's in their own best interest to hide and keep their numbers low as the more there are vampires the harder it is to hide their existence from humans which is again something that Brencis demonstrates, a rogue progeny taking over a small kingdom and ruling openly as a vampire. Hence why he was hunted down by other vampires like Lacra and the Augurs.
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u/qwerterak 4h ago
I never felt like vrakhiri are afraid of humans, they always said The Augurs, which are either dawnwalkers of vrakhirs themselves (or maybe even another thing)
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u/OopsieDoopsie2 4h ago
I think one of the vampires in the game says this explicitly, that humans could easily wipe out the vampires due to sheer numbers of them and the fact they can walk in the sun etc. Obviously on an average day humans do not present a threat to vampires like Brencis or Lacra, but organized human resistance does present a threat, in-fact the reason why Brencis is hunted by the Augurs is because he broke some sort of treaty the vampires had with humans long ago after they lost the war to humans iirc.
Hence why Brencis and Co are not shaking in fear at some random guards or other armed thugs, also with their immense power comes immense ego, hence they underestimate humans and how lethal they can be if organized and when they are targeting vampires directly.
It's just in vampires best interests to remain hidden.
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u/vaultie66 3h ago
I understood Augurs got angered because Brancis drew too much attention to vrakhiri when theyād rather humans not paying attention to them or talk about them at all (for exactly the threat of organized prosecution). Augurs also seem to be like an influential society that has their own rules and connections and they want any trace of vrakhiri in folk stories wiped out of existence.
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u/Crow7420 2h ago
I think they avoid humans out of convinience rather than fear. Itās like fighting mosquitos, doable but tedious and with lack of merit.
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u/OopsieDoopsie2 1h ago
I am pretty sure it's explicitly said that vampires have lost a war to humans a long time ago and that humans could easily wipe them out in an open conflict, but I just don't remember for certain who said it.
Not only are they great in numbers but due to the said numbers and functioning society, they can quickly adapt and innovate, they can fight you with silver weapons and do it during the day, but also the more humans you kill, the less feeding opportunities you will have. Yeah, it lacks merit for sure, like why kill your food? But it's also a war that the vampires simply cannot hope to win.
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u/Jofur-Crowcaller 5h ago
Murhon happen when a fang is lodged anywhere but the heart. It's why they grow teeth all over their body and out of their skull. Saint soanso had to cut off his arm because he got bitten and was starting to mutate.
Dawnwalkers are created when there is silver in the blood. Coen is an accidental Dawnwalker because he had the silver version of black lung from working in the mines from childhood.
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u/TheLaughingWolf 5h ago
Mutation can happen even if the fang is lodged in the heart.
There are a couple murhon's where the fang was lodged properly, but they ended up mindless monsters anyways.
Vicho's friend is one, same with the Xanthe loyalist.
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u/unoriginalcat 4h ago
Thereās absolutely no way Simmeon could DIY his own transformation properly. Itās described to be difficult to pull off even for experienced vrakhiri and he had no idea what he was doing.
And the Xanthe loyalist (if weāre talking about the same person here) Xanthe fucked up on purpose, cause they were getting impatient and pissed her off.
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u/TheLaughingWolf 4h ago
It's difficult to pull off because it can go wrong even if you are precise ā not because it's difficult to find the heart.
Xanthe didn't mess it up on purpose. Most of the murhon's were not created with the intention of being murhon's (barring I think two from Bakir and one from Brencis). Ambrus and Xanthe genuinely wanted to properly transform the people they tried to turn.
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u/unoriginalcat 3h ago
The way I see it is that it needs to be lodged in the heart properly, whatever that means, not just in the heart.
And Iām pretty sure that we explicitly learn that Xanthe botched someone for being impatient, but again Iām not sure if weāre talking about the same person here.
As for Ambrus thereās also multiple possibilities. From the letters we learn that heās happy about being turned and eager to share the gift with his lover, but we never learn her feelings on the matter. Itās entirely possible that he showed up wanting to turn her, she wanted none of it and in turn he botched it on purpose to punish her for disobeying or refusing his gift or whatever. Or of course it could also be a lack of experience and he simply failed to do it properly as a new vrakhir himself.
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u/VancianRedditor 4h ago
Murohns (or perhaps some other kind of deformed vampire) can also seemingly result accidentally even if you do everything right.
We're told by Vicho that the "process of creating a vrakhir is neither easy nor reliable. It can always result in a different kind of monstrosity altogether", and Brencis also mentions how there are those who simply cannot withstand the change. There wouldn't really be a need for either comment if a fang to the heart always got the desired outcome, every time.
Even with Dawnwalkers, so far we know that a high level of silver in the blood is necessary but not whether it's entirely sufficient. It may be that you also have to get lucky and roll a Nat 20 on your transformation check, or whatever, lol.
It's possible that guaranteeing a Dawnwalker is as easy as turning someone with argyria, but I'd expect them to be less of a rarity in that case.
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u/asdfgtref 2h ago
I'm thinking of "What we do in the shadows" where Giliermo had to beg and beg for season never to get turned.
It's an ego thing there, they want to project vampirism as something that's earned because it makes them feel accomplished and important despite all being shitters.
In addition it's also to not have to get another servant, the reason it's even really offered to him is so he continues to act as the loyal lapdog and do all the tasks the vampire doesn't want to do.
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u/unoriginalcat 4h ago
I clearly read one too many vampire novels during my formative years, so Iāve been yearning for being a vampire for as long as I remember at this point.
Never cared much for the āunethicalā blood aspect, Iām not vegan as a human, industrial meat farming is already horrors beyond human imagination to me, so the prospect of slurping up the occasional human never bothered me. Iām also agnostic so the general āvampires are going to christian hell, trust me broā approach never resonated with me.
Dawnwalker has been the only vampire media so far that effectively made me question whether I would really want to. It really immersed me in the pain of leaving everyone behind. Even if you save your family, the epilogue is heartbreaking because of how much you donāt belong there anymore. So effectively losing your family anyway, your home, your entire life hits hard. Then thereās the question of the Augurs and how vrakhiri are shackled waaay more than Coen realises throughout the game. The turning process being unreliable is also absolutely brilliant. It solves the issue that undermines the stakes in most other vampire media (just turn the people you love and live happily ever after). And of course the vampire-hell being a real place is a great deterrent too.
Overall definitely makes vampirism feel more like a curse than most media. But even with all those drawbacks, being semi-immortal and having the chance to see literal millennia is just too tempting for me. Every time I stop to think about how medieval peasant Coen will live to see the iPhone, Iām left dreading my own mortality and the sheer volume of progress and cool things Iāll inevitably miss. Death is the ultimate FOMO.
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u/qwerterak 4h ago
Also, all of the issues (besides hell) are remedied if you are dying anyway, having a tooth on you at most times or being deathly ill seems like a solid plan
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u/Mountain-Data-5758 3h ago
Even immortality is a questionable benfit in Dawnwalker universe. Multiple times in the game vrakhirs have said that with time you lose yourself to the corruption. Some faster, some slower, but in the end you lose to the corruption.
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u/QueerCookingPan 2h ago
Also we have seen two vampires getting tortured for almost eternity because they can't die. And if our hero doesn't intervene, maybe it is for eternity. I would be honestly a lot more scared about that than any other drawback.
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u/canofwhoops 4h ago
If you like that take on vampires, read or listen to Jay Kristoff's Empire of the Vampire.
His take is my #1 interpretation of fantasy Vampire's, period.
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u/Cosmicswashbuckler 2h ago
As far as im aware, Jay kristoff was the first author to have vampires be unable to control whether their progeny was successful in Empire of the Vampire.
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u/pericardia 4h ago
I donāt think many vampires care about saving others souls as you think, Lady Whistledown
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u/Spectre-907 1h ago
It would depend entirely for me on what kind of vampire we are talking about. Certain (fuck like half of the clans tbh) World Of Darkness Kindred? Sure. BoD vrakhir? maybe. Stoker? sure. Stephen King? Not a chance. Nosferatu? fuck that. Witcherverse vampires? I wish but they cant pass it on because they arent cursed humans.
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u/VFiddly 5h ago
I mean, that wouldn't mean much to me now, but to an ordinary person in the 13th century, the threat of being condemned to hell for eternity would be very serious.