QUOTE (hermit @ Jul 19 2008, 11:30 PM)

Actually, many diseases (pretty much all serious ones that may end lethally) cancel the sex drive. Sex is very low on your priority list if you face organ failures or crippling pain or serious exhaustion due to very high fever.
True, but HMHVV is not that kind of disease. Vampires, nosferatu and wendigoes that keep a suffiicent diet of Essence and blood/flesh are in top-notch physical condition (Immunity to diseases, poisons, and regeneration) and can expect to remain so for a very, very long time. So they aren't going to experience any symptom that could mute theri sex drive.
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Additionally, the HMHVV is not 'integrated into the host's DNA'. It wouldn't be easily detected (as a Virus, at least) then. It would also be unable to go on infecting other hosts (jumping genes are essentially malfunctioning viruses, not active ones). A Virus essentially is parasitic DNA using foreign cells to propagate itself, but does NOT integrate into the host DNA usually, it prefers to stay separate.
Virii that do integrate with the host's DNA also keep re-expressing themselves in the host's tissues and body fuilds, so you have both the integrated and the free-floating virus around.
Anyway, if you prefer, I can state that HMHVV rewrites the host's DNA instead. No way it couldn't perform all the kinds of changes it creates otherwise.
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Now, this HMHVV has a magical compound to, which is propably what keeps the corpse that is the infected by the standard strain going (and causes minor to major changes in physiology), since it has to be 'fed' with mana gained from draining other creatures' life force.
YMMY in your game's verion of SR, but otheriwse I feel the need to invoke Occam's razor and state the consistently genetic basis for magic and magical bodily creatures in SR makes the Infected being persons with a chronic viral Awakened disease who has rewritten their DNA (and as an Awakened virus, its genetic code has astrally-active shadows that channel mana to power all sorts of permanent changes in the body, just like metagenes), not animated corpses. SR magic does not work that way. You want an animated corpse, you need a spirit animating it, just like shedim. Since everything so far indicates that vampires & co. are peopel with a chronic magical flu, and not possessed corpses, the assumption they are the latter should be rejected. Really I do not understand the fixation to make all possible versions of the vampiric archetype, a magically-animated corpse.
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I seriously doupt somethinga s deformed as a Dzoo-Noo-Qua, Goblin, Nosferatu or Mutaqua has intact sexual organs, when all else about the Infected has been drastically changed.
As it concerns nosferatu, last time I checked, loss of body hair, pale skin, and enlarged canines were far from representing a severe deformation which would justify losing sexual organs, too. Repeat with me, the Infected are not corpses, so they ought not to be expected to lose their genitals.
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This may not go for banshees and Vampires and Wendigos, but still, as there is no need for them to have sex, and there is a need to conserve energy (being an essence sink and all), it makes perfect sense that vampires and other infected are sterile.
Dude, I have no strict need to have sex either, but prolonged deprivation can surely make me quite grumpy.
Please do not make up rules on the fly to sustain your point. Sex an "essence sink" ??? Funny, I totally missed the part of the rulebook where it tells you risk to lose Essence every time you do the horizontal dance.
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Sure, and it's quite easy, you find them in the Romanian commcode registry, usually ...
Finding vanilla vampires isn't that much easier. Legwork is legwork. Obviously she was so sloppy in her research that she missed the fact that many, probably most vampires are magically active, whereas all nosferatu are.