Vampyres

I hate vampires.

I have some small experience ghost hunting (which I won’t go into), some experience in supernatural folklore, and my first impulse is to kill vampires immediately. You can’t trust those suckers to be nice no matter what they say.

The Esenwein clan are bad enough, but my sons have recently taken to designing new custom vampires. We have quite a lovely undead drawer, with lots of skeleton cavalry, various spirits and ghosts that can possess other figures. We have a custom haunted forest, Bleakwood, and specialized revenants that haunt it. The Nazgul from the Lord of The Rings have also joined our game, thanks to a lucky find of their metal figures at a yard sale. But none of these things are as powerful as the vampires.

Our game has evolved to the point where we take themed armies, or “drawers”, for every battle. Previously the recipe for vampire demise was Soulberg pie, but now in our game unless you take the metalhead drawer you won’t have any soulbergs in your army.

Recently in an attackers and defenders game my Yorkist forces had to face this new custom vampire, named Kelpei. He had come in from one of the portals guarded by Ullar’s forces and chewed them into dust. Edward of York and his squire Cameron raced over to fill the gap but only succeeded in dying. This vampire has a special called Charm, where he has a chance of mind controlling figures who attempt to attack him. Poor brave Edward was twisted away and ended up slicing some Skaven allies before being devoured by the blood fiend.

Meanwhile George of Clarence led a force of York archers to come to Edward’s aid. Edward was already dead, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. The archers took the shortest route- through Bleakwood and that’s where they encountered fangface.

The Bleakwood curse, as we affectionately call it, penalizes most units -1 A and -1 D. It has no effect on mindless, undead, Soulberg or fearless folks. The Yorkie archers stayed out of the range of “charm”, and filled the vampire with arrows. He took wounds, but advanced each time, killing and life draining, leaving the York dorks dead and me frustrated...

I don’t know how to kill this vampire. We’ve been tweaking his card, and it adds up in our pricing system, but he’s still too strong unless you’re a soulberg. He flies, has eight movement and all those things which make vampires wonderful. But how do you kill him?

We’ve been debating the idea of having a permanent mercenary drawer- one with units that anyone can hire for any battle. We originally thought it would have artillery, catapult and bolt thrower specialists, Repulsors, and perhaps some engineers, but perhaps it should now include some Paladins or other figures who can specifically kill vampires?

I also did a little research in loreland about bloodsuckers. Tales and beliefs about vampires and similar clawers stretch back into antiquity. Our modern day vampire mythos was created by insomniac writers in the nineteenth century, but really it has remained more or less the same for millennia.

“in Europe placing poppy seeds, millet, or sand on the ground at the grave site of a presumed vampire; this was intended to keep the vampire occupied all night by counting the fallen grains, indicating an association of vampires with arithmomania. Similar Chinese narratives state that if a vampire-like being came across a sack of rice, it would have to count every grain; this is a theme encountered in myths from the Indian subcontinent, as well as in South American tales of witches and other sorts of evil or mischievous spirits or beings,”

I found the above most entertaining. Connecting Vampires with OCD is an interesting concept. It suggests the origin of vampirism as some sort of mental illness.

Some believe that “spirits” return when they are unfulfilled in some way- and who is more unfulfilled than those of us with OCD? There is always something to count, clean or put away. What spirit would be more inclined to haunt than one obsessed with some task that can never be completed?

The idea of vampires in so many different and diverse cultures suggests there is a truth somewhere behind it all. It is a statistical probability that there is or was something- whether it is a mistaken mental illness, poor medical practices resulting in too many premature burials, or the real biting McCay.

But if it is all true, where are the real vampires today? May I suggest they are still here and are organizing themselves with Facebook and Twitter, disguising themselves with state of the art hair pieces and sunblock and are active as political lobbyists when they’re not laughing their fangs off watching the twilight movies....