Totally agree! Ironically enough with how vampires work with the spreading of there curse, I can actually see a scenario where he wiped out ALL or at the very least most, vampires on earth.
Project: Gamer Ver. 2 (Young Justice/Gamer/Multicross OC)
- Thread starter Mister Ficser
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Woo, alright boys and girls, we got ourselves a numbers game! Do any of you like statistics?
Because I sure do!
Starting off, let's try and determine how often a vampire typically sires another one!
...Well, actually we don't have that information. Not in canon. And the myths vary wildly from source to source.
Let's just say that the average vampire sires one new vampire a year.
So, patient zero. He gets hungry and he sires a new vampire. And, for the sake of brevity, let's assume that v1 doesn't sire a new vampire in the same year he's raised.
The family tree is pretty simple right now. v0(1) -> V1(1) What about next year? v0(1) -> v1(2) -> v2(1) Well, we've gotten our numbers a good bit higher than when we started. An average person is now four times as likely to get bitten but they only have a 25% chance of it being from generation zero!
Well, that doesn't look -too- bad! How about year three? v0(1) -> v1(3) -> v2(3) -> v3(1) hmm... getting a little uncomfortable living in that village, eh?
4 -> v0(1) -> v1(4) -> v2(6) -> v3(4) -> v4(1) = 16
5 -> v0(1) -> v1(5) -> v2(10) -> v3(10) -> v4(5) -> v5(1) = 32
6 -> v0(1) -> v1(6) -> v2(15) -> v3(20) -> v4(15) -> v5(6) -> v6(1) = 64
7 -> v0(1) -> v1(7) -> v2(21) -> v3(35) -> v4(35) -> v5(21) -> v6(7) -> v7(1) = 128
8 -> v0(1) -> v1(8) -> v2(28) -> v3(56) -> v4(70) -> v5(51) -> v6(28) -> v7(8) -> v8(1) = 256
9 -> v0(1) -> v1(9) -> v2(36) -> v3(84) -> v4(126) -> v5(121) -> v6(79) -> v7(36) -> v8(9) -> v9(1) = 512
Now, I could go on and on, start tossing in variables and try to come up with some fluid formula that might factor in losses along the line but that's really not the point.
The point is that, while there is a risk of being bitten by a cro-magnon vampire, the odds of it happening get worse and worse every year. Eventually, while Dracula or Kain might still be hanging around, the likelihood of actually getting bitten by them and not one of their many-times removed grandchildren is, honestly, downright negligible.
Problem: are you only tracking vampire generations, or human genetic generations too? The nazi had parents, grandparents, etcetera. Did he also have siblings? Cousins? Nieces and nefews? If anyone in his family tree was also a vampire, that's another vector of Entanglement transmission, though at a reduced number of jumps remaining.
That's probably how it hit that unknown Zatarra in Shadowcrest or it's a possibility that neatly explains Constantine throwing a fit about his lung cancer regressing against his will.
It also backtracks a generation and then goes down that tree, just at a reduced number of jumps. Let's combine that with a 90 year old vampire who was probably sired by a vamp that was turned a few years earlier than him and has been turning more people ever since.
This is complicated enough that, while I can envision it, I'm having a hard time describing it. To me it's easiest to imagine as a shockwave traveling down a handful of lines and then spreading out further and further with every node it strikes until it loses momentum.
- Location
- Mt. Holly, North Carolina
Sort of like detcord then.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Did John Constantine suddenly find that his lungs are perfectly healthy, so he has to go through all the effort of ruining them again so he can smoke without half-dying each time he tries?
It'd be hilarious if that was his biggest complaint.
Also, I wonder how many drug addicts OD'd because they thought they still had their old resistance to their drugs and so took way too much the next time they tried...
It'd be hilarious if that was his biggest complaint.
Also, I wonder how many drug addicts OD'd because they thought they still had their old resistance to their drugs and so took way too much the next time they tried...
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- Location
- CT
They might still have all or most of their resistances, Cure runs off of positive energy, and it seems to work off concepts like "get better" and "heal," not necessarily "return to your previous health state of existence." That would be time magic, after all, not positive energy/invert charge necromancy.
In short, my guess is that drug resistance will remain, while tar deposits, excessive chlorestoral, heavy metals, infections, and other stuff of that nature gets purged.
Hmm. Yeah, if the spell goes forward and back along connections indiscriminately, it makes a lot of sense that it would be a global phenomenon. Every single vampire to ever live also had a human family tree, after all.
So a hypothetical pathway where the healing reached an orphan might look like: Nazi(0), sire(1), grandsire(2), 2's mother(human)(3), 3's father(4), 4's son(vampirized)(5), 5's childe(6), 6's son(human)(vampirized by someone else)(7), 7's childe(8), 8's daughter(9).
And that one line of incidence doesn't sound super impressive but you just healed an orphan in the ass end of nowhere and in the mean time you've infected two different vampire lineages, one with four jumps left to go and the other with two.
Repeat for every single connection for every single person or vampire affected. It very quickly turns into a sea of spiderwebs of connections.
Looking at it this way, I would argue it's actually pretty likely Alchemist nailed a few ancient vampires. If they, their childers, or grandchilders were actively turning people even remotely close to nazi-boy's turning or hunting grounds, or his sire's, or his grandsire's (etc), geographically or year-wise because either would provide more familial connections, then their lineage may have gotten infected or re-infected much further up the line than Nazi boy alone would have reached.
It just takes one incident where a couple vampires claimed a small family, or maybe a pair of twins.
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- Location
- Toronto
The problem is that this assumes all vampires survive to keep making more vampires. If a vampire turns someone once a year, every year, we'd all be vampires within a century because of the exponential growth. But young vampires die a lot more easily, and a lot more often, than older, stronger vampires. Your average vampire actually lives long enough to sire 0 other vampires because they're detected and killed in the first year.
Which means that an old vampire who is a couple hundred years old and thus has sired a couple hundred vampires is actually a much larger presence in potential vampire 'family trees' because something like 90% of the vampires they spawned are already dead by the time Alchemist's spell happens.
On top of that, there's no reason elder vampires would allow their progeny to reproduce recklessly like that - mortals are touchy and tend to wipe out vampire nests with extreme prejudice once they're detected. Vampires survive by stealth and disguise, and going hidden among mortals. Any young vampire being reckless and turning someone every single year is not only creating competitors for the limited amount of blood/lives you can take out of circulation without drawing attention but also adding a new person who can fuck up and expose you all and get you killed. Most vampire mythology and fiction indicates vampires are very selective about who they turn for this very reason.
To use the World of Darkness as an example, strictly because its a setting where we have firm numbers on vampiric generations, killing a moderately powerful vampire who is a major influence in a mid sized city (call it 12th generation) and their ancestors going back 9 generations would kill vampires who were turned before Rome was founded.
That said, this isn't World of Darkness, it's DC, and in the absence of canon sources on how numerous vampires are and how they're organized in the setting, the authors version is good enough, though it certainly suggests a very, very serious vampire problem in the setting. As in, The Light are small potatoes compared to the dozens and dozens of vampires in every city.
Which means that an old vampire who is a couple hundred years old and thus has sired a couple hundred vampires is actually a much larger presence in potential vampire 'family trees' because something like 90% of the vampires they spawned are already dead by the time Alchemist's spell happens.
On top of that, there's no reason elder vampires would allow their progeny to reproduce recklessly like that - mortals are touchy and tend to wipe out vampire nests with extreme prejudice once they're detected. Vampires survive by stealth and disguise, and going hidden among mortals. Any young vampire being reckless and turning someone every single year is not only creating competitors for the limited amount of blood/lives you can take out of circulation without drawing attention but also adding a new person who can fuck up and expose you all and get you killed. Most vampire mythology and fiction indicates vampires are very selective about who they turn for this very reason.
To use the World of Darkness as an example, strictly because its a setting where we have firm numbers on vampiric generations, killing a moderately powerful vampire who is a major influence in a mid sized city (call it 12th generation) and their ancestors going back 9 generations would kill vampires who were turned before Rome was founded.
That said, this isn't World of Darkness, it's DC, and in the absence of canon sources on how numerous vampires are and how they're organized in the setting, the authors version is good enough, though it certainly suggests a very, very serious vampire problem in the setting. As in, The Light are small potatoes compared to the dozens and dozens of vampires in every city.
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I'd think any vampire problem that's grown large enough to demand its own infrastructure is a serious vampire problem.
More seriously though- Any in-depth examination of vampiric spread is always going to come up weird. There's no way to look at it without reaching the conclusion that, honestly, it should be a bigger problem than it's ever treated as.
I love the odd discussions that happen here.
Personally, I love it. Sometimes I have to defend an assertion, which I really don't mind. Sometimes I've had to re-review something and make changes, which definitely irritates me because it's usually something I should have caught myself and I'm left brooding on how I made that mistake all day long.
Honestly a lot of what gets brought up ends up making its way into future chapters, too. I just finished a segment about the actual Roy Harper and how the apprentice league is being utilized along with his feelings on it. Which I know nobody asked for but it does cover a few things that people -did- ask about.
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
could mean that there are groups that helped keep it from becoming a big problem.
Hunters, Turncoats, e.t.c
Which fits with the general theme that once you move into the magical side of DC, it's a fucking bloodbath, especially in the middle tiers.
Personally, I like the Baldur's Gate 3 explanation: What's the biggest threat to a vampire? Other vampires.
- Location
- Mt. Holly, North Carolina
DC has maybe four main lines of vampires with at most 2-3000 members per line. There biggest problem currently? Supply. Hence the Warehouse. Meanwhile Marvel has entire cities accidentally turned vampire and they just have Blade.
Mostly they don't know anything, because they're a lot of piles of inanimate ashes now.
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- He/Him/His
How many of the surviving vampires would Al need to hit with this to complete a vampire genocide? Like... Given the rapid breeding of the DC vampires, that has to mean even more rapid deaths. It's the insect/arachnid principle: one mating pair can create several hundred (or more) progeny from one mating, but we aren't completely overrun by spiders because they end up competing for resources to the point that many end up eating each other. Is that what happens with vampires in DC? They can rapidly reproduce but instead of causing full ecosystem collapse they just cause their own population to collapse due largely to cannibalism and territorialism?
So even a generational effect like Al uses wouldn't have the kind of reach necessary to catch all of the vampires, at once, and now the rest are going to hit stealth mode pretty hard.
So even a generational effect like Al uses wouldn't have the kind of reach necessary to catch all of the vampires, at once, and now the rest are going to hit stealth mode pretty hard.
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It's very likely given the sudden unexplained dusting of a huge number of vampires, that the majority of the non-stupid (and thus easily stopped) vampires remaining are currently in extreme turtle mode, and won't poke their heads out of hiding for at least a few months.
This is just classic original DC comic lore, it's nothing special at all. Actually, the big surprise to me was how Alchemist described the Phantom Zone. It was always a timeless, boring, lonely place, not an actively malicious one.
I have to ask: Is this nine generations from the original target, both up and down, or nine generations UP from the original target, and nine generations DOWN from the nine targets above him?
Because that would actually have a MUCH smaller effect, since going up five generations means only going down four generations. But if you are going UP nine generations, and then going down nine generations from that point, well, that's a lot of spread for a vampire.
In other words, is the fulcrum point the vampire nine generations up (and any other vampires of its generation), and then possibly spreading eighteen generations down, if it is also going nine generations down from the original target's generation?
It will also cure their addiction, since that's a side effect of the drug. If they are going to go clean, they'll never have a better time. Since it would banish weaknesses from the body, it's likely they are even more resistant to the drug than they were before!
Nine levels out means nine up and nine down. So when the spell goes one generation up to the sire, it can still spread eight generations down from it. From the grandsire, that'd be seven generations back down. So on and so forth.
I figured that, even so long as the vampires were reasonably active, there would probably be about ten years or so of difference between each generation, hence my assertion that Hans's direct line would probably run out of steam around the time it hit a vamp from the eighteen hundreds.
As has been pointed out, cross contamination absolutely could allow the spread to hit vampires that are significantly older, I just don't expect they would've been the targets that would suffer the most.
Rather, this eliminated a majority of the modern vampires in Europe while picking off oddballs elsewhere. 300,000,000 is a big number of people hit by Heal, it's half of the current population of Europe, right around four or five percent of the global population and still less than what you could do with four mages and a chaos lord.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
But it only took a single mage a mere ~3 seconds to do, while the other required several people (one of which is, in some ways, greater than a god), some major artifacts, and a lengthy ritual.
Yeah, but Alec is a gamer, and as everyone knows: gamers are bullshit.