Werewolves -- How do you stop them?

For crying out loud, those are movies! We’re talking about real werewolves here.

Worst case of gingivitis you’ve ever seen.

You mean THIS wouldn’t work?

Warning: Video above may not be SFW, as it features bathroom humor and noises (it IS Robot Chicken, after all).

Take off and… no, I just can’t go there.

Of course you can’t; the dropship is out of commission.

I think that’s the best in-universe reason.

Someone wrote a math paper showing that even with modest ‘infection rates’, if vampires existed in real life they would very quickly take over the entire human population. So this may be one of those things you just have to ignore for the sake of fiction (except for that Daybreakers movie, which used that as its premise).

In some werewolf stories (and some vampire ones too), you can break the curse and turn back to human by killing your own maker. In one vampire story, you could turn human again with a massive blood transfusion, so that might work with werewolves.

And of course in season two of the UK version,

Humans capture werewolves and try to cure them by sticking them in a hyperbaric pressure chamber during the full moon, but it just seems to end up killing them.

I assume that’s why a lot of modern vampire fiction (what little I’ve seen) usually requires some “give and take” as it were, some conscious decision to “sire” another vampire. I assume the creators of the earliest legends didn’t really think that part through. :slight_smile:

Regarding vampires: Does anyone still hew to the idea that dead werewolves become vampires? Seems like an interesting mixing of the mythologies, and a distinct disincentive to killing werewolves.

(Doesn’t make as much sense symbolically, though: Vampires are things that look human but do terrible things for selfish reasons (sociopaths), werewolves are normal humans most of the time until something breaks through and they lose control (rage disorders), and zombies are not human and can’t even act human and are, ultimately, inevitable (death). (Or, vampires are sexual libertines capable of un-repressing urges better left repressed in late Victorian society, werewolves are self-loathing homosexuals or something, and zombies are still Haitian robot-slaves most Europeans have never heard of.))

What would happen if a werewolf in human form (the other 29 days of the month) bit someone?

Supposedly, that is only the case for those who deliberately choose to become werewolves.

According to Cursed, sleeping with a werewolf in human form can pass the infection. According to Buffy, not.

And since in some traditions vampires were not people who’d been the victims of other vampires but people who’d practiced dark magic or committed great sins in life, it makes sense that a person who chose to become a werewolf would rise as a vampire after death.

I always figured you had to be drained mostly dry of blood before drinking a vampire’s blood would make you a vampire. Like how an embalmer takes the blood out of a corpse before they pump it full of fluid. Symbolically, taking the delicious human goodness out of you before filling you full of their vampire corruption.

I also always figured lycanthropy needed to be passed through saliva, which might theoretically mean if they bit you in human form you would have a chance, albeit smaller, of contracting it.

That makes more sense. This moralistic overtone has largely been lost in modern vampire and werewolf stories. (I’m sure there are exceptions.)

The title character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula is actually described as having become a vampire due to his study of black magic a the Scholomance, but this is barely mentioned in the book and is easily forgotten. (I’d forgotten it myself until another Doper brought it up in a past vampire thread, and I’ve read Dracula several times.) I don’t know that this bit of backstory has been used in any of the countless Dracula-inspired plays, novels, movies, etc. More significant to the plot of the original novel are Dracula’s attempts to turn innocent Englishwomen into vampires by biting them, so that’s what tends to be emphasized in derivative works.

Stoker also describes Dracula as being able to take different forms, including that of a wolf, so the Count is arguably a kind of werewolf. It’s not clear whether he learned how to transform into a wolf while still alive or if this is something any vampire can do. IIRC then the vampirized Lucy Westernra (who wouldn’t have studied black magic while alive) and Dracula’s three brides back in Transylvania (who may or may not have) are never described as changing into animals, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t.

Modern technology suggests a “stop” or “pause” button. D&D methods include a mortal blow with a silver weapon.

If you’re bitten by a werewolf, you still have a chance to fight off the curse, much like fighting off a viral infection. Infusions of belladonna help fight off the curse, but be careful not to use too much (it is poisonous, after all). If you can make it through the next full moon without changing, you’re in the clear. If you change, the curse is with you for good.

AFAIK, the Scholomance has NEVER been touched in a Dracula-themed anything. I have not gone thru 100% of Dracula movies & books, but neither Fred Saberhagen’s A MATTER OF TASTE & THE DRACULA TAPES nor Jeffrey Sackett’s BLOOD OF THE IMPALER- the best Dracula origin stories I’ve read- dealt with it.
I think both Saberhagen & the Marvel 1970s comic mag “Dracula Lives” had Vlad as the target of a Gypsy curse for slaughtering her people. Sackett had him making a personal deal with the Devil on the eve of his execution by the Turks, with the implication that he may eventually become the AntiChrist.

More to it than that, to paraphrase:

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a volf when de volfbane blooms and ze autumn moon is bright.”

How often does that happen?

And it wasn’t really vampire lore. In Dracula, a single bite only weakened you; the vampire had to drain you completely over a period of time. Then, after you were buried, they’d unearth your coffin (which you kept to sleep in during the day) and you’d be a vampire.

You also were not hurt by sunlight. You gained your powers in the night and had to sleep in your coffin during the day (which is when you were vulnerable to a stake in the heart – during the night, a stake wouldn’t harm you). But you were the equivalent of a third-shift worker – if you woke up during the day, you could function normally (though perhaps a bit tired).

Also, vampires were walking corpses – they were always at room temperature.

There’s also the implication that sunlight is at the very least rather annoying to vampires: Whenever Dracula has to be out and about by day, he wears a wide-brimmed hat. Still a far cry from “reduced to a pile of dust by a single pencil-beam of sunlight”, of course.