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I got wondering about this when thinking about the "free walls grown on my body" capability of the gardener to put up self-healing barriers to slow traffic to supplement natural water-barrier moats that vampires might come across on boats steered by their mind control minions.

Splicers if they wanted to help vampires would be an AMAZING asset for them too. "free walls" are also "free bridges" that could allow land passage over rivers, and they would similarly self-repair.

By strategically placing walls as ROOVES would allow guarding vampire clans against bombardment that might expose their root cellar SDC wood coffins to sunlight during the day if the CS knew where to bomb.

Vampires would be pretty useful allies in battling AI since they're immune to a lot of normal weapons so the robots would need to have stakes to counter them

vampires're also kinda terribly evil, since there's the whole "vampire intelligence" thing in rifts....the fact you aren't able to think of an argument to side with the vampires against technocrat fascists kinda hints you're trying to force a door the wrong way.

I don't know much about the Splicers, but I do know when two evil entities join forces against a third (evil) entity someone is using someone else.

Did the Splicers approach the Vampires or the other way around? Who gains the most? If the tide turns, which faction would be the first to turn tail and run?

Answer as many of your "What if...?" questions before starting the campaign and thing will go so much better.

I wouldn't expect splicers in general to *voluntarily* team up with the vampire kingdoms. now, the vampire kingdoms do have ways of making people their thralls, and have powerful hypnosis abilities, so it isn't impossible, but throwing their lot in with monsters that think of humans as nothing more than cattle is not something I would expect out of most splicers.

No, they wouldn't.

True. The Splicer House or clan would have to be a straight-out EVIL group willing to feed the vampires(either their own people or outsiders) in return for some sort of assistance only the vampires could provide. And while the Splicers would see in the CS and their armies of robots and skeletons echoes of NEXUS, the ultimate goal I could see for the Splicers is to purge the land of hard technology(especially AI) and rule the lands of humans themselves, something which would ultimately clash with the vampires' goals of feeding on all the humans.

Vampires in Splicers would be in an even worse situation, as, while some of their powers make them effective infiltrators against NEXUS, even if the meta-deficient atmosphere of the Splicers world would allow them to work, vampires are pretty useless again robot legions(especially if NEXUS decided they were enough of a cheat to start arming its 'bots with silver and fire hoses). And with humans so rare on the ground, the bloodsuckers would be starving. The Houses would see them as deadly parasites a d launch their own extermination efforts, though some depraved humans might see vampirism as an attractive augmentation to survive NEXUS(a vampire or clan of them ruling a Splicer House and feeding on troublemakers, would make an intriguing villain).

Orin J. wrote:vampires're also kinda terribly evil

Scarecrows are "typically evil or selfish", not that far off.

Orin J. wrote:there's the whole "vampire intelligence" thing in rifts

who could plausibly live in symbiosis

Regeneration: Super (Splicers 84) can heal pilots super-well, if it can regrow limbs it probably shouldn't have too much trouble regenerating lost blood supply

taalismn wrote:clan would have to be a straight-out EVIL group willing to feed the vampires(either their own people or outsiders) in return for some sort of assistance only the vampires could provide

I could plausibly see selfish or even good alignments making "alliances of circumstance" they intend to only be in briefly as a means to an end.

taalismn wrote:while the Splicers would see in the CS and their armies of robots and skeletons echoes of NEXUS, the ultimate goal I could see for the Splicers is to purge the land of hard technology(especially AI) and rule the lands of humans themselves, something which would ultimately clash with the vampires' goals of feeding on all the humans.

Of course they would be destined for a messy divorce, I just mean as an initial means.

taalismn wrote:vampires are pretty useless again robot legions(especially if NEXUS decided they were enough of a cheat to start arming its 'bots with silver and fire hoses).

I think their biggest threat would be infiltration (they can get places splicers can't) via cleverest uses of mist / bat forms.

Orin J. wrote:vampires're also kinda terribly evil, since there's the whole "vampire intelligence" thing in rifts....the fact you aren't able to think of an argument to side with the vampires against technocrat fascists kinda hints you're trying to force a door the wrong way.

Also given splicers are well acquainted with doing harsh/bad things to try to protect their people I don't see that they would overall have much problem with the CS or how they operate at all. Splicers are humans I don't see them working with vampires and evil entities from beyond to enslave other humans as cattle because of political disagreements that may not even be that far off of what the splicers would otherwise be.

The problem with CS they could have is largely how they're just a bunch of tech that NEXUS can take over.

Who says the vampires need to enslave anyone? They could be enlightened vamps willing to feed on meaty splicers warriors.

Axelmania wrote:The problem with CS they could have is largely how they're just a bunch of tech that NEXUS can take over.

Who says the vampires need to enslave anyone? They could be enlightened vamps willing to feed on meaty splicers warriors.

But why would they have more of a problem with the CS than everybody else using tech stuff other than maybe the lemurians. How does grouping up with vampires make that situation anything but worse. Nexus now ripping up the CS so surely VAMPIRES make that better.

Here are some questions raised by the introduction of vampires to the Splicers setting, for which I'm pretty sure there aren't any definitive answers: Are there any rules issues with vampires travelling between dimensions? Given the Master Vampire's position as an initial tether between an Intelligence's essence fragment and the dimension the Intelligence is looking to expand into, I could see some games limiting their travel options. Assuming they are able to exist at all in a strongly anti-magic environment, to what if any degree would a Master Vampire's ability to communicate with a Vampire Intelligence be compromised? While a Vampire's I.S.P.-based native psionics would be subject to penalty, how might abilities such as transformation and regeneration be affected?

I suspect it would be more fun to not involve Master Vampires in a Splicers game. While pg 167 of the Splicers Main book, regarding imported characters, states "Most demons and supernatural beings feel the same as creatures of magic and want nothing more than to leave this mystical dead zone as quickly as possible", there is a narrative appeal in supernatural beings normally bound to a greater power feeling that less keenly in the setting, and not finding a reduction in certain abilities that heavy a price to pay for potentially reclaiming some of their lost humanity. At least until some of their weaknesses are sussed out by the Machine a group of Secondary and Wild Vampires could wreak havoc, and given the elements of lost and confused history on Splicers Earth who's to say there's any cultural record from which to learn of them?

There are some fun options for how vampires might interact with different Houses. As Axlemania suggested above I don't see why a Librarian couldn't whip up some sort of blood dispenser to satisfy dietary needs, whether a free-standing bio-device, a semi-autonomous creature with enough human DNA to slake a vampire's thirst, enhancements to service-model Biotics, or removable marrow packs to be worn by volunteering non-combatants/criminals. If these were in order of increasing quality (in a vampire's estimation), limiting access to such could serve as a social lever by which to incentivize cooperation with humanity. I don't see vampires as being subject to the Nanobot Plague, which between that and their metamorphoses would allow them to easily interface with Great Houses, Retro-Villages, and Technojacker Clans. With the potential for high individual social status, easy feeding that would otherwise be difficult to manage on the surface, and an endless outlet for aggression, I could see Secondary Vampires separated from their Intelligence, if not outright following a spiritual path like the Reformed Demons of Yama's Diyu, then at least more commonly being of selfish alignments.

I think Bio-Tech's potential interactions with vampires beyond blood supply would be fairly limited. I don't think there should be any sort of genetic knowledge to glean from a vamp, and anything requiring a neurological connection couldn't be used by one. Bio-Energy weapons, which draw on the user's P.E., would be out as well, but the sorts of weapons not reliant on neurolytic triggers would be fine. While they would be limited to conventional M.D.C. armor, I could see vampires finding access to a Bio-Comm useful, whether mounted in a living helmet fed via extractor or in some sort of hand-held variant. Similarly, vampires can exert control over canines and vermin, but I'd argue that Gorehounds shouldn't much care for the undead, and Chigs/Migs/Swarmlord bugs woud be naturally resistant. That said, there might be a place in this blended setting where an enterprising Librarian made a blood-rich Elixir of Life, and hybrid Scarecrow Vampires might develop such an ability.

If one were to go whole-hog on a kitchen sink Splicer game I'd go ahead and throw in the Necron race from DB6. Being magically oriented they're hampered in much the same way as vampires, but have some interesting things to contribute. Not only would any Necron stuck on Splicer+ Earth be wildly opposed to the robot hordes, but their equivalent to Host Armor provides SNPS and flight, and their fighter class Posh ships give challenge to the Machine's air supremacy. While much of their Bio-Tech isn't listed as dependent on P.P.E. and would function as normal, the Necron would have to adopt a stance of sporadic action punctuated by communal pooling of P.P.E. led by the hamstrung Witches in order to maintain their offensive capabilities. Additionally, they would be likely interested in incorporating Bio-Tech not reliant on magic or psionics with their current arsenal. Conversely, Librarians would be acutely interested to analyze and incorporate any bit of alien DNA, and might make more headway with the Necron's approach to the supernatural than that of the vampires. What precise level of technology the Necron zealots are willing to accept isn't clear (washer/dryers being HF10 is a listed example), so whether or not things like ceramics and explosives would prove intolerable is up for debate. In such a game I'd limit if not eliminate any Necrol access to their Behemoth Destroyer ship. One approach is by having it almost immediately die near a Lagrange point during whatever dimensional accident caused them to be stranded, forcing them to quickly make arrangements planetside. Another is to have the ship pass through a rift inside the planet's gravity well, from which they're unable to either escape or make use of their most destructive armaments, but must spend considerable time meditating to simply maintain their home's health.

These groups would probably be best utilized with different human factions. Cooperating with the Necron would lead to advancement of Bio-Tech, potentially combined with techno-primitivist sentiments, intense secrecy over hiding "impure" technology, and possible mystically-oriented religious fervor directed towards making contact with the Necron Witches' patron. Dealing with the vampires leads to the creation of a new warrior class which not only provides a low-cost alternative to Biotics but helps unite disparate human forces on the surface. There is something fun in an over-the-top way to be said about a House incorporating both groups: Necrol become S.D.C. beings in low P.P.E. environments, and thus are arguably eligible to be turned into vampires.

kaid wrote:why would they have more of a problem with the CS than everybody else using tech stuff other than maybe the lemurians

I'm sure they'd have similar problems with NGR if they landed in Europe, I'm just picturing if they dropped into North America where the CS would be the biggest tech bastion.

It's also because the CS is hostile to magic which gives one of the larger "tech-free" options to battle which I'm sure that Splicers could appreciate.

kaid wrote:How does grouping up with vampires make that situation anything but worse. Nexus now ripping up the CS so surely VAMPIRES make that better.

Vampires will want to keep some humans alive to feed on. Unless this is like The Matrix where humans are going to be kept alive as some kind of power source, I'm not sure that Nexus would have any such incentive.

Vampires also might be seen as a lesser threat that could be dealt with later, not capable of the mass destruction that NEXUS might manage using stuff like long-range nukes.

Curbludgeon wrote:Here are some questions raised by the introduction of vampires to the Splicers setting, for which I'm pretty sure there aren't any definitive answers:
Are there any rules issues with vampires travelling between dimensions?
Given the Master Vampire's position as an initial tether between an Intelligence's essence fragment and the dimension the Intelligence is looking to expand into,
I could see some games limiting their travel options.

First step to answering that is if killing all master vampires in a dimension automatically kills any secondary/wild vampires for that intelligence.

If not, then leaving the dimension shouldn't cause any problems.

While the Light of Destruction detailed in the Vampire Sourcebook states "the total destruction of the Mulac Vampire Intelligence wipes out the source of the vampire contagion within that kingdom, and every vampire whose lineage can be linked to that Intelligence, even those who may be thousands of miles away, cease to exist", that may be specific to the usage of that item. The optional variant vampires described in Rifter 49 are normally destroyed when the Vampire Lord from which they descend is destroyed, for whatever that's worth. I figured it might just be better to ignore the entire issue and state that in such a hybrid campaign only some Secondary Vampires, already somewhat predisposed towards rebelling against the Intelligence, came through.

Curbludgeon wrote:While the Light of Destruction detailed in the Vampire Sourcebook states "the total destruction of the Mulac Vampire Intelligence wipes out the source of the vampire contagion within that kingdom, and every vampire whose lineage can be linked to that Intelligence, even those who may be thousands of miles away, cease to exist", that may be specific to the usage of that item.

The optional variant vampires described in Rifter 49 are normally destroyed when the Vampire Lord from which they descend is destroyed, for whatever that's worth.

Nightbane 149 has one of the more concise talks about Vampire Intelligences:

Every vampire the master creates will serve to solidify the vampire intelligence's essence in this world.
The more vampires, the stronger the intelligence's power, and the master's as well.
When thousands of vampires exist, all born from that first evil essence of the master, the intelligence may enter that world through a dimensional Rift

This makes me wonder if even though a Vampire Intelligence knows the Dimensional Portal spell if they have some kind of racial inability to interact with dimensional rifts leading to dimensions with 1999 or less of their vampires in them? ...

Actually RiftsWB1 answers that: they actually need 2500 per pg 10 (so 500 more than "thousands" actually)

that's just to cross rifts, once they get someplace they can stay there if it drops below 2500...

I actually never looked that closely at what vampIs can do to nexi... quite impressive really. Can reduce PPE others can draw by 2/3... nobody can use it to rift... and it seems like they actually habitually keep a rift open to where they came from (for a quick escape?) because it mentions "nobody can enter or leave through the nexus rift"

The "stronger the intelligence's power, and the master's" I just figure "I hold social strength when I have minions to do stuff for me" since AFAIK there's never any gain to HP or PPE or attributes by having more vampires created... you'd think there might be something like vampires sending small bits of PPE from their kills to the intelligences (kinda like Reapers in Shadows of Light) but that's never been something specified either...

multiple master vamps per intelligence is something I don't think Nightbane dealt with, though Vampire Kingdoms did, like you needed a certain amount of secondaries/wilds before you could create a 2nd master... Kingdoms 11 says 1 master per 1000 secondaries...

I wonder if that means to create the 1st master in a world without secondaries that the intelligence must have 1000 secondaries elsewhere? The intelligence is able to create secondaries itself, after all, so that is feasible.

The need for an unspecified amount of PPE (they park on a nexus) is interesting if we try t oquantity it, like for example to define a rare situation where it might want to venture off of a nexus and rely on just a line's PPE supplemented by worshippers and PPE batteries...

Nexuses used to give a lot less PPE in the original days, so with the boost from RUE this increases the implied PPE requirements an intelligence would have.

If we assume the 2/3 reduction is mandatory rather than optional (it's not available because it's being eaten) then that could be something...

10 PPE / round from a line and 20 PPE / round from a nexus is the standard...

Reducing 20 by 2/3 is basically reducing by 14 points (assuming we round down to 6) so we could say that an intelligence requires 14 PPE per melee round to avoid starvation?

To make it less immediately, I would say that in moments they can't get that you could just take it off their PPE base as a start.

So say for example an intelligence wanders from the 20/round nexus (which can fully feed them) to a 10/round line: the line only feeds 10 of the 14 PPE they need, so they should lose PPE at a rate of 4 per melee, 16 per minute, 960 per hour.

They have 2d6x100 PPE so the average w/ 700 couldn't even last that long... some might be able to go a bit longer while some, less.

This should probably also mean that while using the 10/m to feed themselves, the nexus couldn't draw on that to cast magic, and if on a nexus, they could only draw on the untapped 1/3 (6 per round) to cast magic.

You could probably let vampire intelligences draw upon their minions (vampires and worshippers) PPE to cast spells of course.

We would need some kind of "slow death" outcome for what happens when intelligence PPE reaches 0 and that 14/round debt needs to be paid.

I'd like the idea of giving a vampire intelligence "Life Source" and let them spend their HP to stave off whatever this consequence is. Their usual fast healing of 4d6 per round (average 14) won't be of help since RUE 203 mentions it resists bio-regen and magical healing (plus has other problems besides HP loss such as penalties that last some indeterminate length of time... maybe until damage heals naturally?)

Interesting idea: maybe a Vampire Intelligence who casts Life Source using Ritual Magic could sacrifice the HP of vampires instead of his own in the same fashion that helpers can provide PPE as if they were the caster? That's an interesting idea where forcing the intelligence off-nexus will doom a vampire horde as it effectively cannibalizes itself.

This could explain some of the incentive for creating vampires, so that an intelligence has a bunch of HP/PPE batteries as a cooperative food supply. Things victim to mind control could probably also be compelled to give HP/PPE in these situations, though obviously milking the nexus is preferable.

Life Source does have one work around: the Healing Touch lesser psi is neither "magical" or "bio-regeneration" so that could restore HP lost to Life Source AFAIK. Vampire Intelligences have this (all lesser healing) but RUE 165 prevents self-use, so the intelligence could only use this to restore HP lost by other creatures, not itself. All the more reason to have minions to pay your Life Source needs.

You could in theory have a Master Vampire who used to be a Mystic w/ Healing Touch use this on the intelligence, though more likely what you'd do is send out secondaries to find minor/major psi with this power and bring them to live w/ the intelligence so they could use HT on it.

RUE 165's "Increased Healing" is the next best thing since that's not Bio-Regeneration (RUE 166) but does increase normal healing rates.

RUE166's "Restore PPE" could also in theory be of some use in restoring the intelligence's PPE pool quickly if you lower it by it going off-nexus for a period of time. The very existence of this ability implies to me that when mages draw upon others' PPE it can only be used to cast spells but NOT to restore their base PPE pool, otherwise this power would seem largely pointless.

We still need some kind of actual consequence for PPE reaching 0, like effectively having it go negative or something...

What if as PPE goes down we just treat intelligences as having some kind of growing compulsion to cast Life Source to pay the PPE debt? Like maybe a 10% chance per 10% missing PPE so at 0 PPE they have a 100% chance of being unable to focus on anything except casting Life Source?

The only problem there is at 0 or 1 PPE you can't cast life source (it costs 2 PPE) unless I'm misunderstanding and you can always cast it, but if you lack 2 PPE then that needs to come out of SDC or HP?

I'm actually fuzzy on the mechanics of that, like when you cast it, how long do you have to use the PPE you got from sacrificing life force? Does it last indefinitely? Does it restore lost PPE? Does it follow standard rules of PPE drawn from nexus as setting rules dictate (RUE and Heart of Magic have slightly different rules, I don't know if HU or Nightbane have any at all)

well when dealing with an entire race of humans you can never truly rule them out of doing anything. There are bound to be some that would work with a evil force to try and whip out another evil.

Blue_Lion wrote:well when dealing with an entire race of humans you can never truly rule them out of doing anything. There are bound to be some that would work with a evil force to try and whip out another evil.

The only answer in this thread needed

kaid wrote:

Axelmania wrote:The problem with CS they could have is largely how they're just a bunch of tech that NEXUS can take over.

Who says the vampires need to enslave anyone? They could be enlightened vamps willing to feed on meaty splicers warriors.

But why would they have more of a problem with the CS than everybody else using tech stuff other than maybe the lemurians. How does grouping up with vampires make that situation anything but worse. Nexus now ripping up the CS so surely VAMPIRES make that better.

The problem spliecers would have is not the use of tech but policies on D-bees. Splicers would be D-bees that look human not something the CS high command likes. Basically the CS would discriminate against the splicers. That is the problem the Splicers would have with the CS.
Turning to vampires for acceptance after facing a CS death squad may make sense to some one new to rifts earth. Vampires can provide through their thralls food and shelter, and a promise them a place at the table.
They could also see the use of skelebots as a rising of a new skynet/NEXUS threat.