Was watching “Trinity Blood” (anime) last night and was thinking about introducing their version of a vampire into my game. Basically they are the result of nanite technology that feeds off of the hosts blood at a destructive pace. If the host wants to live it is forced to provide the nanites blood from other sources.

These vampires have a prolonged lifespan, superior strength, and enhanced speed. They also have healing and regeneration abilities as long as the host offsets the nanites need for blood.

In addition to their athleticism and stamina, these “techno-vampires” also possess varying individual powers. Most frequently, this power manifests itself in the form of a blade that comes out of the arms, claws, or even as sharp, prehensile hair. Some techno-vampires have displayed an ability to produce an elemental (fire or ice) offensive capability akin to elemental Aura or ranged attack”. All techno-vampires are capable of going into "haste mode" in which they can achieve incredible levels of speed for short durations by stimulating their nervous systems. If used too long, they can become severely fatigued.

The techno-mapire must drink blood in order to replenish the blood they have lost to the Bacillus. Their fangs serve as hyperdermic needles in a blood transfusion. Unlike vampires of myth, these can have children and they can and must eat normal food. However, they must avoid sunlight, as it will cause the Bacillus to rapidly devour their body instead of just their red blood cells. Also, silver can cause them serious injury and death as it acts as an antibiotic to the Bacillus.

So I see them as having the equivalent of the following:
• Enhanced Strength
• Wireless Reflexes but with a limiter akin to that used for certain adept abilities.
• Enhanced Body (for healing tests only)
• Regeneration - Basically trading boxes of health in drunken blood to offset damage received. Figure the infected can only hold as many physical boxes of blood as their body rating.
• Razor claws/forearm blade/medusa hair (one of)
• Elemental Aura – Possibly elemental ranged attack.
• Extended life (Fluff but the reason many would infect themselves)
• Allergy to the sun moderate
• Allergy to silver severe
• Health lose of one box of physical a day

This is not something for PC’s but rather something a corporation may have come up with and either lost control of or are attempting to turn all of their people into.

If done by Nanites, it wouldn't be permanent. Nanites wear out after time in the body. They'll last permanently if there is a nanohive, but that could destroyed or removed as well.

Why do they have the sunlight or silver vulnerability? I mean the magical vampires have a "belief made manifest" vulnerability to sunlight, but these guys wouldn't have anything like that.

Which means you need to go back to your Street Doc for another "Bump".

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we found a new drug for Shadowrunners!

I was putting it down as they appear in the show. Silver acts as an antibiotic or disroption to the nanites in Trinity Blood. As for the sunlight it causes the nanites to go into overdrive eating the body of the infected rather than just their blood. So they are not burning from the sunlight but rather being eaten by overstimulated nanites.

In Shadowrun I would say you would have to have the nano-hive installed which means the condition can not be transmitted by bite or at least only for a short time. However once the hive is installed raw material for the hive is distilled from the blood the nanites consume. I know that would go against RAW for nanites at this time but would make for interesting bad guys.

I like the idea of it needing new infusions though as it could then be a nearly perfected combat drug that is being tested on the streets.

I find this somewhat interesting as it is almost a controlled "grey goo" scenario with nanite machines. I wonder if groups of nanites of different kinds working together would evolve some sort of emergent intelligence and replace/fuse to the original person. Could lead to the whole "vampires are the mysterious other," basically an AI with a meat body.

That's what they get for making solar-powered nanites!

How would nanites be solar powered? The light is blocked by the skin.

Could be tied to an optimized chloroplast skin or a set of nanites that live in the skin like nanotats specifically for supplementing the hive energy supply.

....and it could even make them sparkle in the light

Only if their sworn enemies were nano-werewolves.

Nano-vampires are doucebags?

To slightly edge back toward the topic, I think the idea of a nano-vamp (or a drug-vamp) to be intriguing, but it would probably benefit if you scaled back the powers a bit. It would be a bit more believable for the players to deal with.

Indeed, although it would depend on what level you were trying to set it up as. Is it a street drug, a new metatype (a la Infected), specialty cyberware? You can scale the benefits and costs accordingly.

Personally, I like the idea of an Infected style character that requires input to survive and is effectively a number of mutually interconnected nanosystems that require constant food source to make up for the lack of a nanohive. That seems to be closer to your original concept.

I'm always a little leery of anything that starts off "I was watching <insert name of show here> and I thought I'd try to replicate it" simply because you end up having to balance off pseudoscience and technology of SR setting, with the rule of cool + cinema + pseudoscience of a different setting.

That said if you really wanted to you could have certain specialized nano-ware with a transmissable nanites which also functions as a nanohive. So long as you keep getting regular dosages of blood or what have you. Lack of outside sustenance could cause the nanites to start consuming the host's body (essence loss? drain?) to approximate deprivation of blood and the like. I honestly haven't seen TB in ages so I don't remember exact limitations etc.

All in all I still feel the TB setting is rather ahead of SR technologically. Still you should be alright as long as you don't try to replicate the Krsnik as PC-able characters. Or you know, start naming people after famous Europeans (Vaclav Havel, William Wordsworth etc.)

This looks like a really cool idea and i will probably make use of it in my campaign.

As for them getting tired for the use of their wired reflexes I would have them make 2 tests, a just Body test to see how many more init passes they get (max +3) and a Body + Willpower test to determine the number of combat turns they can go before taking stun damage and they take one box of stun per combat turn over that test.

You know there might be a way for the nanites to work without a nano-hive. They are hijack the red and yellow bone marrow in your bones to make new nanites. This makes it so that the technovamp has to get a new supply of blood from somewhere else. The nanites in the bloodstream remove any ABO incompatibility so that host can use the ingested blood effectively. This also makes going back to being a regular human being a tad more difficult.

Also the nanites rework the digestive system so that it can use the ingested blood, but these modifications also make it so that they can't eat regular food or drink anything other than water.

Alternatively, it could work like the Rush Adept Power from WAR!. It gives you an extra init pass, but you resist drain equal to twice the init passes that you took that combat turn.



Also: Could this be used to make resonant vampires rather than the standard magic vampires?

Was thinkiing of that, too. How about sligthtly technomantic, new vampires instead of a cybered alternative to the "classic" ones? Sounds cool to me.
There are a lot of resonance-based powers in "Running Wild".
Self-replicating nanites are a can of worms I would hesitate to open: As far as science has gone in the 2070's, a self-sustaining nanite colony is still some kind of the holy grail of nano-science.
I'd rather go with a tribe of technologically enhanced suprematists: They simply like their way. At some time, they tend to recruit other people, maybe even randomly selected, and implant them with a nanohive. If they can provide the necessary resources, it can even be alpha- or betaware. One thing this won't be: cheap. Getting a few (dozen) nanohives and lots of nanites is kind of expensive. If you can get access to a nanoforge, it becomes way easier.
The sixth world has seen less realistic conspiracies...
Personally, I like the idea.

I like it as a plot point for a new nano-drug that is fast taking over the Sprawl but leaving a lot of mayhem burned out bodies in it's wake.




-k

Also, if you make them too good, think of something to keep your players from getting it, too, if you don't want them to gain the huge bonus with way less negative sides than usual HMHVV (e.g. no essence loss) - specialized betaware nanohives cannot be salvaged for own use.

Hmm, a little quick mock up if the Nanovamps then...

Nanovampire: 10 (As Adept)
Each additional level up to rating 5 cost 10 points
Level 6 cost 25 points.
Cyberware: Retractable Fangs (no essence cost)
They also have free floating self replicating nanites in their bloodstream of the following type:
-Oxyrush
-Nanosymbiotes
-Trauma Control
-Anti-Rad
-Implant Medics
-Nantidotes
-O-Cells
-Smartskin & Altskin (Shifter) [Gaining a more bestial appearance when smartskin activates)

Smartskin and Altskin nanites reacts violently to ultraviolet light and breaks down, taking the underlying meat with them...

The level of these function very much like that for vampires – level is equal to Essence.
Essence is also limited by Cyberware and Bioware.

Dietary Requirement: Blood
Allergy (only the actual smartskin really): sunlight

Powers: Essence (blood) drain
Drawback: Looses 1 point of Body & Essence DAILY. 1 pint of blood per essence point needed.

Should there be powers of infection? You know, nanites moving to surviving victims...

Just use the normal nanoware but it feads on blood and does not require a nanohive to be sustained. There might be some side effects.
I would not introduce new nanoware, since this is often not taken well by players. (Right, the NPC gets this not in the book tech and if we want to use it...)

An important side effect would be some kind of mental kondition. Thats an easy way to keep players away from it.
If you take it, you will turn your character in a NPC sooner or later.

I would also make it deadly addictive. Yes, it's temporary, but if you let it lapse, your brain shuts down and you die. Hence, effectively permanent and incurable.

This reminds me, I have to get off my lazy hoop and write up Drug Spirits...

Just variations on a theme for "Plant" Spirits, "Guidance" Spirits and "Toxic Chemical" Spirits... Why create new ones, when you can just aspect the spirit to your Tradition. "Cult of Ecstasy" anyone?

Lot of interesting ideas. The draw backs of the nano-vampires are the severe allergy to Silver which disrupts the nanites ability to communicate with each other and the allergy to sunlight or more to the point UV which causes the nanites to start rendering the hosts body down instead of just its blood.

The Silver allergy acts as "chaf" in the body against the nanites.

UV light has an adverse effect on the modified cells the nanites produce which causes the nanites to attempt a massive restructuring of the body (ie. using the whole body as raw material) to protect itself from a precieved attack.

As far as adding addictions; the fluff part would be the extended life which comes to a crashing end if the nanites are removed. If the host has lived past his species normal life span the body collapses and begins to decay much like "Dorian Gray". Game mechanic wise I would say the host needs to feed off of a living victem (Blood in a bottle does not do it) which would also lend itself to the developmment of several mental issues (ie. humans are just cattle, I enjoy causing pain to my victems). The mental issues would all lead to any player character being converted to an npc at some point. As I don't think anyone wants to play a serial killer.

One of my groupmates is doing it terrible wrong then...

Indeed, so is one of mine... Though I would not shed tears if he were to be apprehended by the authorities. Oh Wait, he has been. Sweet.

This seems to be a common problem. Worst cases are when the serial killers use things besides guns...

Like STDs. Oh god!

I divested our group of mine as well (much easier as player than as GM). Although it took me a number of simultaneous plans to make him burn all four points of edge in a single session....

Seriously though I would add an addiction for blood to the whole thing so the story teller could call for a will check to see if the host goes on a feeding rip. Very upsetting, especially if the only "things" available to eat are your fellow runners.

Sigh, I new as soon as I said "who would want to play a serial killer" a lot of people would come up with examples of just that. Granted a lot of Shadowrunners "could" be labeled as serial killers from the body counts they leave behind them on runs.

"Yes I am looking at my own group" >>

I believe we are more commenting on the...questionable levels of sanity ...in our group members and less on your comment, which should totally hold with the majority of the populace

The one in our group actually has a Obsessive Compulsion to Kill innocents, preferrably daily, If I remember correctly. In a very specific manner, of course (Thus the Seriel Killer Moniker). It is quite disturbing, actually. Fortunately, that character is now in the hoosegow... Hopefully for good. If not, I am sure that he will likely suffer an accident of some sort. Might even happen in Prison, if it can be arranged.

I have never had someone go so far as to take an Obsessive Compulsion to Kill innocents in character creation. I have had players push a witness off a bridge before in cold blood but I see what your saying about the sanity level.

Yeah, sometimes it gets crazy.

I don't really like the idea how these nanites affect essence ein a way only magic does by now, thus recreating a magical effect via technology... why not just go with a severe addiction to haemoglobin? Then put in some effects more common to certain drugs ("Woad", for instance): the urge to bite!
Did you ever think of just using a system of special wildcard nanites (found in "Augmentation"), maybe even two or three? Therefore not all boni are availiable at one time...
Personally, I'd like to scale them down a bit...

A character in one of my groups just wiped out a team of five men last game... well, they were attacking us. We could still have let them go, though...

"Wait... You can get PAID to shoot people in the face? Why has no one told me before! ... Can I get retroactive pay if I sign up?"