#so I'm just gonna wear all my nerd rambling on my sleeve

[lacreatricefortune]

Fantasy Worldbuilding Idea: Vampires are actually fucked up succubi.

I've seen fantasy worldbuilding theorizing that vampires and succubi are different species that branched off from a common evolutionary ancestor:

boring, lame, overdone

CONSIDER, what if vampires and succubi only assumed they are different species, and then made the horrifying discovery that they were actually not different species, and that all the differences between them were actually the product of nurture, not nature.

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So how would that work?

Let’s go with a 'scientifical' interpretation and argue that vampires/succubi are human hosts carrying a supernatural symbiote/parasite/infection. These supernatural beings can survive on any "vital fluid" (blood, semen, vaginal secretions, lymph) as long as they consume it in sufficient quantities. In fact, they normally prefer to consume sexual fluids.

Obviously there's a lot more blood in a human body than any of those other liquids I listed. So it makes sense that a creature that can consume any of these fluids would go for blood if it were unusually hungry.

A lot of media makes a big deal of "the hunger" that vampires experience. Which begs the question,

Who fucked up a perfectly good succubus? Look at it! It's got an eating disorder.

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Consider how vampires are made.

In most western vampire media, “turning” is a two step process.

A vampire drinks a human’s blood, draining the human to the brink of death.

The vampire then feeds their own blood to the dying human.

Any person who undergoes the traditional vampiric turning process is starting their supernatural existence in a state of emergency.

They’ve been drained of nearly all their blood prior to being turned. This would put their body in extreme starvation mode. They’d awaken ravenously hungry, with the taste of their maker’s blood still in their mouths.

Of course they’d have uncontrollable bloodlust.

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Now imagine there's another way to turn a vampire. One that doesn't cause the vampire to wake up starving.

You're trying to get a human body to host a supernatural symbiote. The first step of the turning process prepares the host for the symbiote, and the second step transmits the symbiote into the host.

Why drain the human of blood? What does that accomplish?

Extreme blood loss does two things:

it compromises the host’s immune system (hardly any blood means hardly any white blood cells to fight off the invading supernatural entity)

it lowers the host’s body temperature dramatically (presumably making it a more hospitable environment for the symbiote)

Following this logic, a human doesn’t actually need to be drained of blood in order to be turned. They just need to be immunocompromised and hypothermic.

A human doesn’t necessarily need to drink blood either. Any “vital fluid” would get the job done. A person could conceivably achieve supernatural symbiosis via unprotected sex.

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A “succubus” who was turned via sexual transmission would never have to experience the ravenous bloodlust that a newly turned “vampire” experiences.

Because their turning process didn’t involve extreme blood loss, they don’t start their supernatural existence in extreme starvation mode. Furthermore, they were never fed blood by their maker, so it probably won’t occur to them to view blood as food.

When they do eventually get hungry, they won’t necessarily know what it is they’re hungry for. All vital fluids will smell equally appetizing to their new, enhanced demonic senses.

They’ll figure out on their own that sexual fluids can sustain them the next time they have sex.

They’ll probably never resort to drinking blood unless a desperate situation (a long period of starvation, a grievous injury resulting in extreme blood loss, etc.) forces them to go into survival mode .

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If vampires are fucked up succubi, that means someone invented the vampiric turning process. It wasn't the normal method of turning. It has a lot of undesirable consequences that "normal" turning lacks.

Unless they weren't undesirable consequences.

Unless someone had a really good (evil) reason for wanting to create a ravenous destructive beast that is too hungry and desperate to think clearly and therefore easy to manipulate.

Perhaps someone discovered it while running morally dubious experiments on succubi in the interests of turning them into weapons for the military.

Perhaps succubi invented it themselves in a desperate bid for survival when human society turned on succubi and tried to wipe them out.