Question: on the last run, i killed some vampires and took blood-samples from them. I play an elven-char and basically I wanted to infect myself with the virus to become a banshee. According to the runners companion, being a vampire/banshee/whatsoever is a quality. According to the core-book, qualities can be granted by the GM during the game, but you have to pay the karma-costs to gain the benefits. So even if i infect myself successfully, i would have to pay 120 karma (60 karma to become a banshee x2) to "mutate"? Errrrhhh...sounds odd.

And keeps people from trying stuff like that to get the goodies for free.
Apart from that, infecting yourself with vampire blood doesn't work anyway, as HMHVV Type I can only be transmitted by virtue of the infection power.

I am a black mage seeking for power. I don´t accept such limitations...baaaah.^^

You get the quality and benefits immediately, but the universe begins demanding payments on the loan.

Vrykolakiviridae (HMHVV I) retroviruses are only spread through transmission of bodily fluids (amounts necessary vary and simple contact is not always a guarantee of infection) in conjunction with a vampiric attack. The actual retroviral transformation is triggered when the victim’s life energies are depleted; the dispersal of the victim’s aura is apparently halted and partially reversed by the virus

You are right. I checked the infection power description, but i also noticed that ghouls don´t have the infection power anymore. How do they deal this if a siple contact/injection of the virus ain´t enough?

Ghouls are created by another form of HMHVV (Type III, IIRC) which doesn't need the power. See Runner's Companion.
So you could ghoulify yourself with their blood, if you so desire. You'd still have to pay the karma, though.

Yeah, but ghouls stink...really.^^

There's also the fact that - per RC - Vampires and Banshees come from the same type of HMHVV but a different strain. At best, your elf would become a carrier of the vampire strain, but he could in no way benefit from it.

I have no idea where people get the diluted ideas on wanting to be a vampire. I will point out that most runner groups should also be trying to stop you from intentionally infecting yourself with any strain of the HMHVV virus. All infected creatures are effectively outlaws in most countries in the SR universe (Asamando being the exception). If the GM is doing their job you should have random slayers coming after you all the time (again another reason your group should be trying to stop you). And if you do get infected your group should be kicking you out for being a dumb @$$. You pull too much attention to yourself and the group as an infected.

I don´t know in which setting you play, but...

1) ...that somebody belongs to the infected is only noticeable through an medical analysis and usually i don´t get into something too often

2) ...even the little characteristics that become visible, are easily to be misinterpreted as cyberware-, bioware-, cosmetic-, surge- or other modifications. Somebody with enlarged canines will only be eye-catching, because he is the only one in the room who looks at least close to normal in comparison with all the other freaks that roam around the SR-universe. (have you ever seen a piture of a troll or an ork?)

3) ...the mutation means power. I just try to play my char. according to its wishes and needs. And you have to admit, that becoming an vampire etc. is a quite quick way to gain a lot of power/advantages.

But to answer your question: most players want to become/play vampires because they think its cool. I want to play one, because after 15 years of shadowrun, i need something new.^^

The whole feeding thing can really really get in the way. If you dont wanna leave a calling card, you have to have at least that 1 body per run destroyed, and not just left behind. It could amount to some trouble, but probobly is going to only be a little trouble for a well-thought out run.

1) shadowrunners are outlaws. telling a shadowrunner that he shouldn't become a vampire because it will make them an outlaw is frankly absurd. unless of course you're talking about some part of the world that is ok with breaking and entering, kidnapping, threatening people, murder, theft, assault, blackmail, vandalism/destruction of property, and so forth, but which actually still somehow manages to have any actual laws at all.

2) there should probably be random police/corporate groups coming after you from time to time as well. you're a bloody shadowrunner. you are a professional criminal. you break into secured facilities for a living and shoot people right in the face for money. there are already people looking for your shadowrunner team, and the ghoul hunters are quite frankly the least of your worries. you should spend more time worrying that MCT has decided that the latest shadowrun on their facility fits your MO, and less time worrying that someone is going to try to stab you with a sharpened piece of wood.


once per run? did you read the rules? once every 6 months, chummer. a little bit less if you eat someone who has reduced essence. and if that someone is joe sinless ganger who lives out in the barrens, or even bob the mindless ghoul who ambushes people who enter his territory and tries to eat their flesh, odds are good that nobody you should be worried about is going to care all that much. the star doesn't check every person to see if they're missing a pint of blood, or if they had all their essence before they died, particularly if those people are out in the barrens. in fact, if they're out in the barrens, the odds of the star (or anyone else, really) even hearing about the murder and thinking anything of it are pretty slim.

now, don't get me wrong... HMHVV has it's drawbacks (being dual-natured for one) but these are not them.

Yeah, and this can be fixed with masking. ^^ I love the concept.

It was meant a little light-heartedly. Obviously you dont need to feed every time to go on a run. Unless your characters wait 6 months to get a job because theyre waiting for a huge payout

Sorry, but since i play SR, the only thing that was always available without wanting it, were dead bodies and useless squatters. Before the people think about a vampire on the loose, they would blame tamanous, other squatters or one of the several hundred critters in the town. Never forget: every critter that exists, seems to have a problem with humanity. ;.)

For the Essence, yes. Still need 5% of body weight in blood each week, which is still a non-issue if you go to the barrens or know a doc.


HMHVV I does not impose Dual Natured, & I cannot remember if II does or does not.

Strain I virus types do not impose dual nature (not even for Nosferati - albeit them being dual beings in previous editions and originally being cretaed by a very different strain than normal vampires)
Strain II virus types do impose it onto Bandersnatch and Loup Garou while Fomoraig aren't dual natured
Strain III [a.k.a. Krieger strain] imposes dual nature on all Ghouls

Think anyone that can survive past about 50karma of shadowruns is probably pretty qualified to survive as a HMHVV and not get caught out too often, in some cases running like some skinny emo freak, teeth implants and bad hair is probably just fitting in with the scenery.
Sec Guard: It was a vampire!
Lonestar: Yeah, right, what did he look like?
Sec Guard: Tall, skinny, kinda elf-like, wearing black, sharp teeth
Lonestar: ...great that only narrows it down to about 58,000 people in the greater Seattle region.

I sort of understand the long-time player wanting something new as well, given how limited the vamps are in some respects I think its probably best to just have one consigned to the spare character pool for 'special' occassions.

Infected are eligible for citizenship in several industrial nations and corporate jurisdictions, including practically all usual SR settings.
This could, especially in cases of vampirism or in conjunction with the carrier quality, effectively come down to a criminal SIN (if you have a SIN in the first place and if you are dumb enough to get your infection registered), but random groups of slayers coming after you aren't that likely anymore.
Well, still more likely than an ork character getting beaten up by humanis thugs, but i wouldn't overemphasize that part unless it's a campaign centering around protecting the local Ghoul ghetto from angry mobs with torches and pitchforks.




Or a single hit on an Assensing test, but that can be worked around with aura masking.

We are talking about SR4, one single hit doesn´t show you anything:

The general state of the subject’s health (healthy, injured, ill, etc.).
Th e subject’s general emotional state or impression
(happy, sad, angry).
Whether the subject is mundane or Awakened.

You only know THAT he is sick (and I´m not sure that this infection is a sickness as we understand it at all) not of WHAT.

Wait, i was wrong.
You don't even have to make an Assensing test, the condition chamges the aura in such a profound way that it is always visible :

Iiih...that sucks. Youre right.

It probably would have been easier if you'd had a live vampire... just put him in some kind of inescapable "saw" device (preferably one taking advantage of alergies / weakneses) and make him infect you. If he doesn't, kill him. Then repeat the request when he regenerates.

Barring that, maybe its not a vampire that needs to drain your essence to trigger the infection to go active? You could infect yourself with the virus, then find some other way to loose essence.

Or, I'm sure some sort of astral quest(s) or other big mojo could let you (or a powerful spirit you pay control / pay off) mimic the effect of the infection power. I'd imagine working with blood spirits and their home plain could give you some info about HMVV.

The assensing table in the BBB says you need 2 hits to determine "The class of a magical subject (fire elemental, manipulation spell, power focus, and so on)." It's always visible, but that doesn't mean it's obvious. Heck, right in your quote: "this may be masked by Metamagic as normal." Masking adds your initiate grade to the threshold of any assensing test against you. How does that work "as normal" if you don't even have to make a test?

At least you can´t get transformed just by being in contact with contaminated body-fluids. Quite Safer, eh?^^

That depends on your definition of safe sex. (Somebody had to go there.)

Right, i´m well known to lower the niveau of a conversations quite quick. After my template you had no other chance to go one step further...so you are not guilty for this.^^

I'm pretty sure that's not RAI, i'm not even sure it's RAW, but the idea has something intriguing to it...



Yeah, i totally see where you're coming from and it makes sense that one needs to make an Assensing test to note the infection, but i'm still unsure as to how many hits are needed.
Of course, one could argue that Infection turns the victim into a magical subject for the sake of Assensing and therefore one would need 2 hits to notice the Infection...but specifying a medical condition needs 3 hits...hm.

Personally, i'd rule that it takes 1 net hit to notice that the subject is sick (as usual), 2 net hits to recognize it's a magical disease (or even that it's HMHVV?) and 3 net hits to identify the specific strain.

But can you really specify the kind of desease if you don´t really have a clue about medicine? Maybe you feel that he is sick and even what part of his body has a problem, but how do you know what desease and if it is a poison, a genetic illness etc? This should require a separate medicine / diagnose test.

To become infected with HMHVV I, the infectee must use the Infection power on you, which requires the infectee to use Essence Drain to reduce you to 0 Essence.

In addition, a Vampire (with rare exceptions) cannot infect an Elf, meaning attempting to do so would simply kill the character.

But who used Infection on the first Vampire?

This entire scenerio could be the basis of an entire run or story arc. I'm pretty sure that somewhere within all of the laborotories, arcologies, under ground silos that some corp isn't putting a poor disenfranchised group of researchers and scientists into creating genetically enhanced vampires using DNA from the infected. So who's to say it can't be done. The great th ings about the SR creatorive teams in the past and present is that the story is left in the hands of the GM.

According to the Assensing table, the answer to that question is a definitive yes.

Hrhrhrhr...i think this is why it is called "magic". It requires no explanation, it simply works.^^

My own pet theory is that HMHVV-I was purposefully created by some talented but ruthless biothaumaturgical researcher back in the Fourth World as a semi-successful attempt to a viral magical genegineering vector that would bestow immortality, magical aptitude, and a rack of useful critter powers to the subject.

As much as I hate WoD, the Cainite theory is seductively simple.

You could use the one from Underworld too. Patient 0 caught a magical disease, which was passed onto his sons. In the sons the virus mutated, and they were able to pass it on thereafter via a bite.

Parting gift from the Horrors?

- J.

Maybe, but I was under the impression that HMHVV-I was something born out of ruthless metahuman ingenuity rather than direct creation of the Horrors. Of course, this does not mean everybody's favored world-munchers did not lend an helping claw in its genesis. IMO there are several good candidates for the creators of HMHVV-I: some Horror cult, the Denairastas clan, the Therans, the Blood Elves.

Oh, absolutely, I bet that multiple corps and organizations are running this project. By the way, this would be my (NPC-only) template for a super-vampire (created by inserting genes from the Goblin, Wendigo and Banshee strains on the Nosferatu strain):

Dracul
Cost: 200 BP

This quality may only be taken by dwarf, elf, human, or ork characters. After purging their organs, Infected characters slowly transform into dracul over a period of a couple of days. They lose all body and facial hair, their skin becomes pale and slightly translucent with veins more visible on the surface of the skin, they lose weight often becoming emaciated, skin taught over wiry muscle, their incisors and canines grow more pronounced and sharper, and their nails harden into claws.

Powers: Compulsion, Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell, Low-light Vision, Thermographic Vision, Vision Magnification (1)), Essence Drain, Fear, Immunity (Age, Pathogens, Toxins), Infection, Influence, Mist Form, Natural Weapons (Bite/Claw: DV Str/2+2P, AP 0), and Regeneration. Moreover, the maximum Essence the character can drain is equal to three times its natural maximum Essence. Additionally, all characters with this strain are magicians; the character loses any other quality that gave them a Magic attribute, if any, and gains the Magician quality (or Mystic Adept quality, if they were previously adepts) at no cost. The character’s Magic attribute does not change.

Weaknesses: Allergy (Ferrous Metals, Moderate), Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Allergy (Wood, Moderate), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Blood), and Essence Loss (every 6 months).

Crucify him at night, and wait for the sun to finish him off. Bwahahaha!

Seriously though, that's simply retar-diculuously powerful. And why hasn't anyone here thought about some HMHVV strain for dragons or other critters? Can you imagine a vampiric barghest, for example?

Been there, done that. My players still hate me for that particular run.

Yeah, it does. But, you asked a real super-Infected, and I gave you one. I honestly meant it as an NPC-only template (yet I statted it out like it was a PC quality since I strongly believe that defining everything like it were PC stuff helps game balance a lot in the long term), the kind of unstoppable cutting-edge experimental combat monster you may expect to emerge from secret megacorp/policlub lab on HMHVV. It assumes the researchers in question are rather successful at their genetic optimization effort. Sorry If I forgot to make my intent clear.

If you instead wish something that IMO would be more suitable as a "Prime Runner"-level PC option, suitable for a high-powered campaign, here it is. It assumes that the researchers are still fairly sucessful at improving the Nosferatu strain with genes from the Wendigo strain, but added genes from the Banshee and Goblin strains do little more than making the super-strain compatible with almost all metahuman types.

Dracul
Cost: 185 BP

This quality may only be taken by dwarf, elf, human, or ork characters. After purging their organs, Infected characters slowly transform into dracul over a period of a couple of days. They lose all body and facial hair, their skin becomes pale and slightly translucent with veins more visible on the surface of the skin, they lose weight often becoming emaciated, skin taught over wiry muscle, their incisors and canines grow more pronounced and sharper, and their nails harden into claws.

Powers: Compulsion, Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell, Low-light Vision, Thermographic Vision, Vision Magnification (1)), Essence Drain, Fear, Immunity (Age, Pathogens, Toxins), Infection, Influence, Natural Weapons (Bite/Claw: DV Str/2+2P, AP 0), and Regeneration. Moreover, the maximum Essence the character can drain is equal to three times its natural maximum Essence. Additionally, all characters with this strain are magicians; the character loses any other quality that gave them a Magic attribute, if any, and gains the Magician quality (or Mystic Adept quality, if they were previously adepts) at no cost. The character’s Magic attribute does not change.

Weaknesses: Allergy (Ferrous Metals, Moderate), Allergy (Sunlight, Moderate), Allergy (Wood, Moderate), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Blood), and Essence Loss (every 6 months).

In fact, it's like a nosferatu without the nifty attribute modifiers, mist form and 50 BP more to pay for the quality, plus the option to choose it if you're not a norm.



Actually thought about HMHVV making the jump to carnivores and planned to stat out CVV for added feline, canine and ursine goodnes, but i'll wait until Running Wild comes out before i put any effort into that.

Joke: what about an vegetarian-flaw for an vampire? That would be fun for the GM^^