Demographics and Urban Fantasy

[Korwin]

I dont care about actual mythology, but about actual gameplay.

And if your game says, Vamps cant cross running water.
You need to definy what is actual fucking running water and how much needs to be there before he/she/it cant cross it anymore (see some water on the street running into the gutter).

[Thaluikhain]

Also what "can't cross" means. Do they stop like hitting a brick wall, or are they just compelled not to cross what looks like running water to them? Different set of exploits either way.

[hyzmarca]

Inability to cross running water basically makes it impossible to operate in a city.

And not even a modern city. Though it would be a cool bit of fluff to say that Rome invented aquaducts to keep vampires out. '

But in a modern city, there's pipes full of running water everywhere. They're underground. You can't see them. But they're there. The fresh water pipes, the sewer pipes, every single building has running water going to and from.
.

[Omegonthesane]

A consistent rule that would not make city play totally unplayable and would preserve Drac having to be carried to and from a boat would be if vampires were psychologically unable to cross running water which they can see. This would lead to some being able to just about cross it by shutting their eyes really tight, you could add something else to stop that but I wouldn't see it as a problem.

Although unless you then said it also only worked if the water was at least a foot wide or something Drac would still have trouble in any city with open sewage lines. Which would be ironic if he's a contagion metaphor, given that open sewers are associated with the spread of disease when compared to closed sewers.

[Username17]

That's a fair Point. I could use "fervent practice" instead of "belief" but it's just semantics when all we talk about is a mechanical representation of the various different practices that achieve the same end goal.
Even within their own tradition, if an exorcism would fail, even though the practitioner used the "proper method"(TM) the blame usually falls to "your god/deity/kami is upset with you and therefore declines to help", which is essentially a faith statement, or they fall into the category of "you must have done something wrong", which is a mechanical Statement.

This is all gibberish. Using culturally appropriate spells to banish evil creatures is not the same as the thing where you protect yourself from vampires with crucifixes. The protection of crucifixes is Christianity-specific. The State of Grace that protects people from Satan's minions doesn't have direct equivalents in other cultural contexts, and most other religions have signifiers other than placing a holy symbol on their neck to protect themselves from Vampires.

Like, a Muslim woman might wear a hijab, but that's not because she intends for it to protect the back of her head from Halflife style crab zombies. The crucifix necklace comes with a whole lot of cultural and religious baggage and it's not universal. Pretending that it is universal, or even universalizable is simply cultural chauvinism.

Vampires in your setting should respond to Christian holy symbols if and only if you want your setting to explicitly explore Christian themes. Which is a fine thing for a setting to do, either as a form of deconstruction or as a serious meditation and discussion of the Christian faith. Taking this as an opportunity to Christsplain to non-Christians about how their faiths are basically just Christianity with a toupee is insulting and also pointless.

Although unless you then said it also only worked if the water was at least a foot wide or something Drac would still have trouble in any city with open sewage lines. Which would be ironic if he's a contagion metaphor, given that open sewers are associated with the spread of disease when compared to closed sewers.

Modern society also has different standards of hygene and no longer has hangups about water being stagnant or running. I mean, when was the last time someone described water to you as "sweet" when it didn't have actual sugar in it?

The plague metaphors we worry about today are rarely cholera, and we don't spend a lot of time worrying about whether water courses are sufficient to carry away our poop. The running water thing is not particularly culturally relevant these days. Modern plague fears tend to be things like HIV, Ebola, and SARS. And these are real things you can use Vampires to talk about, but you wouldn't use running water as a protection from any of those. On account of that would be ridiculosuly ineffective.

-Username17

[virgil]

What would plague metaphor vampires in the modern context be repulsed by?

[Username17]

What would plague metaphor vampires in the modern context be repulsed by?

Hand sanitizer. Covered mouths.

It could be a bit more esoteric. Perhaps high proof alcohol burns them. Or they can't touch you until they see you open your mouth. That last one could result in some real freaky Don't Breathe style setups.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

Condoms, sterilised needles, and recently washed hands?

(although frankly if you did AIDS vampires I'd be more interested in the resultant hysteria and the distortion of the response due to how it disproportionately hit poor queer people)

[Dean]

The idea that all religions have exorcisms is one of the dumbest things I've ever read and a perfect example of why "true faith" sucks. It's someone who thinks they're being open and accepting telling you "all religions are just like christianity! My religion! The right one!"

Lets jump past the fact that demons absolutely aren't present in fucktons of religions so obviously demons inhabiting the body of someone and rituals to exorcise them aren't in most religions that have ever been made. Tell me what a greek exorcism would look like? Your answer to that I assume will be to define terms so broadly as to let them apply to all religions while holding no truth value whatsoever. Something like: If a Thracian priest kills a goat prior to a battle with Athens to appease Athena is that not protecting them from a spirit?

The claim that all religions have exorcisms is just as valid as the claim that I now make: That all religions have Minotaurs and therefore Minotaurs and the belief in them are a cornerstone of faith. The Greeks have Minotaurs, there are multiple bull headed figures in Christianity, Brahma has the head of a bull, even Buddhism believes that human spirits can live on in the body of bulls! This ends my paper proving that all religions true focus is centered around Minotaurs eating people in Labyrinths until they are slayed by Theseus or whoever the buddhist version of theseus is.

If you want to include Van Helsings or whatever projecting burning light out of a cross to burn vampires I understand that and you can still have it. WoD has magic in the world, it has spells and artifacts and all sorts of crazy things. An artifact cross that burns vamps because it's magic and was made by a mage or vampire hunter in the middle ages makes perfect sense. So do spells that do similar things, allowing you to have Constantine like figures who don't have "true faith" in Christianity but will memorize the Latin inscription written by the scribe who first imprisoned the demon because that's what works there. You can have christian themed spells and magic but you should also have artifact, magic, and spells that were written by Buddhists or Hindus in times past that fuck up the supernatural in their own way. This does means you will have to learn about Hindu beliefs and rituals in order to write that material into your setting but if you think about it it was pretty crazy of you to think you could have been inclusive to Hindu's before you ever knew about that wasn't it?

[Pariah Dog]

Lets jump past the fact that demons absolutely aren't present in fucktons of religions so obviously demons inhabiting the body of someone and rituals to exorcise them aren't in most religions that have ever been made.

Let's not because a lot of cultures/religions across 6 fucking continents (and if someone could speak Penguin they probably have their own stories in Antarctica too /s) have myths/legends/stories of demons/spirits possessing or inhabiting hosts (not going to say all because you could probably go dumpster diving and find some rare exception).

[Mask_De_H]

The claim that all religions have exorcisms is just as valid as the claim that I now make: That all religions have Minotaurs and therefore Minotaurs and the belief in them are a cornerstone of faith. The Greeks have Minotaurs, there are multiple bull headed figures in Christianity, Brahma has the head of a bull, even Buddhism believes that human spirits can live on in the body of bulls! This ends my paper proving that all religions true focus is centered around Minotaurs eating people in Labyrinths until they are slayed by Theseus or whoever the buddhist version of theseus is.

I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Omegonthesane]

Lets jump past the fact that demons absolutely aren't present in fucktons of religions so obviously demons inhabiting the body of someone and rituals to exorcise them aren't in most religions that have ever been made.

Let's not because a lot of cultures/religions across 6 fucking continents (and if someone could speak Penguin they probably have their own stories in Antarctica too /s) have myths/legends/stories of demons/spirits possessing or inhabiting hosts (not going to say all because you could probably go dumpster diving and find some rare exception).

So you want to argue about whether religions have immaterial spirits of any kind, when establishing that isn't sufficient to infer that the setting is improved by an agnostic reskin of repelling vampires with a crucifix.

[Dean]

Lets jump past the fact that demons absolutely aren't present in fucktons of religions so obviously demons inhabiting the body of someone and rituals to exorcise them aren't in most religions that have ever been made.

Let's not because a lot of cultures/religions across 6 fucking continents (and if someone could speak Penguin they probably have their own stories in Antarctica too /s) have myths/legends/stories of demons/spirits possessing or inhabiting hosts (not going to say all because you could probably go dumpster diving and find some rare exception).

First of all fuck you you're wrong. Your idea that all religions have incorporeal malevolent evil spirits that inhabit people is absolutely rooted in contemporary christianity. Second to defend your claim you will need to do exactly what I said where the definitions get broadened to the point of meaninglessness. Where you change the claim from "all religions have exorcisms" (which is overtly wrong) to "supernatural belief systems all have some supernatural myth, element, or character that isn't good"

If you need to go dumpster diving through Algonquin mythology to find a story where a Wendigo hunts someone and claim that a wendigo is evil and it's kind of an animal-like spirit in a man-like body so that's why crosses should hurt vampires you've absolutely left the plot. There is nothing that making christian beliefs universal and "generic" gets you that just having spells made by people who were christians doesn't.

If "true faith" beats vampires then Van Helsing should strap a baby with blinders to his chest because better than any catholic priest that baby ABSOLUTELY believes the vampire can't hurt it because it fucking lacks object permanence. There is no series of making generic store-brand versions of christian beliefs that will get you what you want so ditch that stupid bullshit. So make the Thrice-Anointed-Cross made by a Templar vampire hunter that burns kindred like the sun but also make the Ekasha Gada, the mace crafted in Lord Shiva's devotion, which makes it's target's bones break as if being trampled by a hundred elephants in a single blow.

[Thaluikhain]

Does it have to be a magical repellent? As opposed to, say, vampires often being frightened of crucifix wielding zealots due to historical reasons.

[norms29]

Second to defend your claim you will need to do exactly what I said where the definitions get broadened to the point of meaninglessness.

I think he already did...
his first three posts read more like he was gesturing toward (or misremembering from an elective taken in freshman-year) the widely repeated (to the point of cliche) truism of anthropology about the psychology of superstition. everything he's said makes perfect sense if you assume he's already broadened "exorcism" from "expelling incorporeal malevolent evil spirits that inhabit people" to "curing OR repelling OR preventing misfortune and the causes there of"
For example, from three consecutive posts had such gems as

You can continue this list at your leisure. Fact remains, they are all tied to belief and granted protection. The type of protection varies, the nescessary gestures and rituals vary but the Basic concept remains because it is a deep psychological need.
... it is a nescessity, part of their raison d'être . Beliefs in exorcism serve to relief their believers of anxiety in the face of uncertainty, a safety anchor to hold on to when all else around them seems to be in constant flux and out of their control.


The psychological need for a means to combat uncertainty and to deal with traumatic experiences and hardship is too central to human experience not to be a major part of any religious underpinnings. Even scientology has it's form of exorcism through auditing, to cleanse you from those pesky thetans.


: part of the purpose of religion is to provide safety and protection from the uncertainties of life, which are often described as malignant entities from which believers need protection through their faith.

[Omegonthesane]

That there was Jason's arguments strictly speaking but yes, although I should add that the rite of exorcism doesn't even work on vampires so it's already not the hill to die on if you want to defend "crosses hurt vampires despite our setting explicitly rejecting Christian cosmology".

It's noteworthy here that the RPG that introduced the True Faith terminology embraced Christian cosmology within the vampire line.

[kzt]

It's of course possible that, while it is widely believed that crosses repel vampires, crosses don't actually do that in the game. If you assume they are not some sort of evil demon-thing then religious ritual-type defenses of any flavor should be as effective as they would be against a tiger.

Same thing with running water, mirrors, etc.

[Omegonthesane]

Clearly you should be able to repel vampires by presenting a stake due to the practical effect it will have on them when applied.

On a more lore-friendly note, it appears that the use of garlic to repel evil is a bit more culturally neutral - unless "some random fan site of garlic that appeared when I asked Google why garlic repels vampires" has a deep and unexamined Christian bias that is impacting their research into garlic. So Van Helsing still smells of agliata when on the job. Or mojo if you really must.

[hyzmarca]

What would plague metaphor vampires in the modern context be repulsed by?

Modern plague vampires aren't repulsed by things, because our understanding of epidemiology is such that we know that magic rituals aren't effective at warding away microbes.

Rather, modern plague vampires have specific transmission vectors that can be disrupted by treatment and prophylaxis. There'd be a vampire vaccine. A drug you can take that will make your blood toxic to vampires, or make you immune to vampire powers, or both.
Van Helsing would give everyone anti-vampire shots before they go off to hunt modern plague Dracula.

[Username17]

Garlic is genuinely and factually a mild anti-septic, which in the days of not having access to penicillin was about as good as you were going to do. Garlic is good at protecting you from curses and demons and shit in a lot of folklore from a lot of places because before Pasteur, that's what people thought diseases were. And while Garlic isn't a great antibiotic, and I'm not about to replace Doxycycline with it, it's all a lot of cultures had.

That being said, Garlic is native to Central Asia and obviously is completely absent from traditional North and South American culture before the arrival of the Spanish. Also, while Garlic has come up repeatedly as a means to protect oneself from demons, fairies, curses, or other monsters time and time again in folklore all over Asia, Europe, and Africa - these ideas were never universal in time or in place. Garlic's strong flavor and use as a mild preservative wasn't always considered to be a ward against evil but was sometimes considered to be proof of evil.

While Van Helsing attempts to save Lucy with garlic flowers in Dracula, most of England was pretty anti-garlic for most of the last five hundred years. White people in America mostly considered garlic to be low class or possibly even witchcraft until about 80 years ago. It's notable that in Dracula, Van Helsing is Dutch and Lucy's mother throws the garlic flowers out because she doesn't trust them. This is Bram Stoker actually playing with the fact that garlic was viewed differently in British and Continental culture at the time he was writing.

-Username17

[Thaluikhain]

Salt isn't in the popular consciousness the way garlic is, but it is (or was) of importance culturally in lots of places, presumably because it is of importance in a practical sense. It's also used to make less-lethal shotgun shells.

[erik]

I'm not about to replace Doxycycline with [garlic]

Mental note: If visiting Frank, insist on doing the cooking myself or ordering takeout.

Though pasta that treats rosacea does sound a bit sci-fi.

(now back to your regularly scheduled programming)

[phlapjackage]

Garlic is genuinely and factually a mild anti-septic, which in the days of not having access to penicillin was about as good as you were going to do. Garlic is good at protecting you from curses and demons and shit in a lot of folklore from a lot of places because before Pasteur, that's what people thought diseases were.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that mosquitos don't like to bite people who eat a lot of garlic [citation needed], so in my head canon that's where the vampire-garlic-aversion idea came from

[Username17]

Salt isn't in the popular consciousness the way garlic is, but it is (or was) of importance culturally in lots of places, presumably because it is of importance in a practical sense. It's also used to make less-lethal shotgun shells.

Salt is genuinely important in the sense that if you don't eat some of it you will die. Also it can be used to preserve food so that it will be available in times when you otherwise wouldn't have any and would die. So salt being important in a lot of cultures is not particularly surprising. The difference between having salt and not having salt is often life and death in several different but mutually reinforcing ways. Also unlike any particular plant or animal, it's not native to or restricted from any particular continent. Salt is an elemental compound and found throughout the world and even throughout the galaxy.

That being said, the way salt's importance has been represented in folklore is nothing like consistent. Sometimes it has protective magic and you put it on things to protect yourself from evil spirits. Sometimes the salt is dangerous and if you spill it, you need to do protective rituals to keep yourself safe afterward. And so on and so forth.

When you make salt do something magical in your Urban Fantasy setting, you are on firm ground. But you also aren't doing anything universal. You're going to pick some folklore that you think sounds cool and then you're going to riff on that. Which is totally fine. But it's very much not the Jungian "universal monomyth" that a lot of people want to believe in. There is an underlying truth that salt is factually life and death important to people, but the metaphors used to convey that information throughout history are all over the place.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

Garlic is genuinely and factually a mild anti-septic, which in the days of not having access to penicillin was about as good as you were going to do. Garlic is good at protecting you from curses and demons and shit in a lot of folklore from a lot of places because before Pasteur, that's what people thought diseases were.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that mosquitos don't like to bite people who eat a lot of garlic [citation needed], so in my head canon that's where the vampire-garlic-aversion idea came from

The garlic fan page mentioned that mosquitoes flee from the smell of garlic. So there's that. Most vampires aren't mosquito themed admittedly.