Assuming 450 calories/pint, the dietary requirement for a normal human of 2-3,000 calories would demand about 6 pints/day. To sustain supernatural strength and other powers, lets multiply that demand by 4 so the beast needs 24 pints/day. At a safe donation level of 1/2 pint/month it takes a village of around 2,000 people (because smaller kids aren’t going to be donating) to keep it fed.
Physical strength of, oh, 10 adult humans with similar enhancements to muscle twitch speed.
Well above-average intelligence and thoroughly amoral (sociopath?)
Accellerated healing & immune system allowing it to recover from severe flesh wounds within 24-36 hours, repair damage from posions as fast as the poisons cause it, can regenerate limbs over time (maybe a week for an arm?). The result is a child vampire can continue to develop to maturity, but age-related degeneration never happens.
A series of nonlethal bites can convey vampirism to a mortal. Probably it’s a viral disease.
The “horror” of a vampire comes from its willingness to exsanguinate at least 3 humans every day (which kills them) in order to sustain itself. Theoretically, a ‘moral’ person afflicted with vampirism would sooner starve than kill another person, therefore the vampires that survive must naturally value their lives well-above the lives and loves of all humans. They’re not nice people.
Wooden stake through the heart will kill it.
So, you live in a good-sized village/town and after a week or two it becomes clear a vampire has moved in. Times are hard anyway and there is constant fighting between walled cities of the realm. You, being a supersmart medieval 'Doper, come to realize the guardianship value of a creature that has superhuman strength and no moral qualms about killing. So you quickly manage to get the town onboard with a plan that you, personally, pitch to the vampire. You locate and creep into its lair at dusk and rest a wooden stake and mallet on its chest. Then you take a seat and wait for it to rise. You explain the whole village knows about him and where his lair is, and that he can be killed whenever it suits the locals. But how about this instead: we’ll keep you fed by donations, we won’t harass you, you’re welcome to be our honored guest. In exchange, you slaughter our enemies when they attack. Vampire says, “Blah! OK, sounds good.”
Anything wrong with this cunning plan? I’m particularly worried about if an adjascent town does the same thing with a werewolf. However, those are notoriously ravenous, difficult to control, and well, it’s tougher to sustain a human flesh donation pool.
Eventually, the vampire will turn on the village. Sociopath, remember? Or a neighboring village will discover the secret and offer more for a betrayal.
Other than the basic flaw of trusting a **sociopath **(who is freakish strong and inhumanly durable, and who regularly kills and eats villagers with no difficulty) to honor a deal with said villagers?
The vampire has been at it for two weeks, you said? So by your calculations, he has already drained 20 people. So you have already 20 times 4 = 100 people who won’t agree with your cunning plan and will demand bloody revenge on the vampire.
I don’t see this going well. Invariably, the vampire will fall in love with the mayor’s daugher and want her for himself. Potentially making two vampires for the village to support. Equally invariably, the son of the village tailor will also be in love with the mayor’s daugher (after all, even a tailor deserves a little happiness!) and he’ll end up breaking the detente.
Trust me, if I ever publish anything I will have no qualms at all about attributing ownership to someone else. As long as I get the money, y’all can have the fame.
And I know it’s dicey trusting a sociopath, but as long as the deal is a net gain for him it seems like it could work. Unless he just plain likes killing and longs for warm meals straight from the neck of a struggling maiden. I could see things coming apart if he’s that sort.
So in exchange for somehow managing to convince the villagers to institute a nauseating ongoing welfare program for the benefit of a murderous demon who has already killed many of their friends and family, I get… what? Access to the catacombs rec room? A bat-shaped charm to hang on my cell phone?
Doesn’t seem like the vampire’s got much to leverage, here.
Well the math here is really fuzzy anyway, but 2 weeks of killing 3/day is about 42 dead, and the angry folks would be a factor of 4 (immediate family members on average) so we’ve got something approaching 200 people waving pitchforks and torches if you add in a few recreational outrage cases. It’s not a pretty scenario and really calls into question the possibility of a vampire living (for long) in a dwelling as conspicuous as a castle without having some sort of understanding with the locals. Seems like a nomadic life would become a necessity–all the more reason to cut a deal I say.
colander: The vampire gets peace and welfare, and no small amount of respect to sate his psychotic grandiosity complex; and the village gets a guard dog. If the vampire renegs, he’s got to deal with a sizable force who already knows where he lives; if the village renegs, well, I dunno. Maybe the vampire’s power works the same way as holding 3 dozen people hostage with a single pistol with 6 shots: nobody wants to take a bullet.
Others have already mentioned the trust issue. Why should the vampire keep his end of the deal once he’s no longer got a stake to his heart? Then there’s the issue of foregoing justice for the people he’s already killed. And how do you stop him for creating some new vampires to shift the balance of power to his side?
Here’s another one. How are you going to guarantee a supply to twenty-one enemies a week for him to feed on? You’re no longer talking just the town’s self-defense. You’re going to need to launch some raids of your own on neighbouring towns to capture victims for him.
I say put him on trial for the murders he’s already committed and then kill him when he’s found guilty.
Yeah, I don’t think most sleepy medieval villages got attacked by roaming marauders to the tune of losing three people per day.
The villagers are not ever going to respect a vampire who has already killed 40 of them, and if I make a deal with that dude, they’re gonna kill me, too. And I would deserve it.
No, blood donations only. Like 1/2 pint a month per person or less. Vamp doesn’t get to bite people, he eats out of a bottle.
The temptation to secretly make minions is a noteworthy problem. But even then I’d have to think a vampire would normally like to keep a low profile considering the numbers he’d need just to keep himself a live. Minions compete for resources and increase the risk of drawing unwanted attention.
Interesting concept, ultimately it would hinge on the vampire’s personality. He or she might be a psychopath, but if a lazy psychopath found such a deal to be in his or her best interest, it could work out quite well for the villagers. The original Subspecies movie started with a legend somewhat like that of a medieval Christian village being saved from invading Ottoman Turks by vampires.
Won’t work. The enemies of the village (Vikings, Huns, Picts?) would kill the Vampire more efficiently and sooner than the Medieval villagers upon which they ostensibly prey. I’ll bet the barbarians or warlike clans who threaten your village are tougher than the townsfolk, and lopping off the Vampire’s head … well every superstitious Dark Ager knows that’ll kill him if you bury the head separately.
I disagree that a “moral” vampire must choose to starve rather than feed. Regardless, it’s still a good plan. The premise of a book called “Twelve” was essentially a Russian special ops team contracting a gang of obvious vampires (obvious to us anyway) to help with the Russian war effort. They didn’t even want anything in return, just carte blanche to kill (and therefore eat) as many French as they wanted.
Depends on the moon, but, yes, without electricity the night was a lot darker back then. The increased starlight from a lack of light pollution doesn’t make up for it. And towns were even darker, with closely-built buildings blotting out a lot of the sky and nobody wanting to waste a torch to illuminate the street.
And you have to specify what kind of vampire: Traditional ambulatory corpse from actual European folklore or suave highborn gentleman from 19th Century fiction? Because if it’s the former, it’s pretty much an animal and not something you can reason with, and if it’s the latter, the villagers are cattle in his eyes even if he’s not actually a vampire.
