Wyluli's RPG Forum

I missed an enormous opportunity last night.

I've cut open hundreds of dead people in my time. Once, I even got to autopsy a destroyed vampire, though she was too rotted to make any informative observations. But I know of no one who has dissected a "living" (for lack of a better term) vampire.

What happens to our bodies when we begin unlife? What becomes of our internal organs? Does the digestive system still function, repurposed to process blood? Do we produce any of the various hormones and enzymes that keep a living body running? Or does our entire physiology just shut down, our meat now driven by an invisible force that lies in our blood?

I don't get to start answering these questions until I start cutting open some vampires. And what better opportunity to cut into someone, than when we have a prisoner who is driven into torpor by her own freaky shadow-arms? Someone who is unconscious, unaware, won't feel a thing -- and as a Sabbat criminal, her fate is already sealed. A perfect subject.

So did I take the opportunity to transport our shadow-wrangling Sabbat buddy to my house, open up her torpid form, and see what makes her tick? Nope, I cut her head off. I was in a rush to take action for some reason. Did my duty as a Deputy, I guess, making sure she would never wake up. But I feel like a kid who was given an old watch, to take it apart and see how it works, but decided to see what happens when he smashes it with a hammer instead.

I suppose another shot will come up eventually, but it could be ages. In theory, sure, I have all the time in the world. Maybe. But I guess it takes another century or two before you learn to be that patient.