Imagine a world parallel to ours. A world where inhuman and semi-human creatures alike lurk - vampires, werewolves, faeries, warlocks - and yet pale compared to the demons that threaten to snuff out humanity on a daily basis…
And now, imagine the sort of person it takes to fight back against those demonic shadows.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the world of Shadowhunters. It is much like our own in many ways, and yet hides an alternate reality of magic that most mundanes never see, a Shadow World inhabited by various supernatural entities, and assailed on a regular basis by demons desiring the destruction of all other life on our planet. Protecting Earth from these deadly foes are the Shadowhunters, or Nephilim: humans with angelic blood in their veins, granted superhuman strength and speed, as well as the runes and weaponry necessary to fight back against the demons that have menaced the world for a thousand years and more.
Generally speaking, people who are already familiar with the Shadowhunters universe would be preferred as players. If you’re not, however, then before you can get started, there’s a few important pieces of terminology we need to go over, bearing in mind that massive spoilers to the setting and stories may follow, specifically from the six books of The Mortal Instruments and other stories set in that time period:
Mundane - Normal humans, unaware of the Shadow World, usually lacking the Sight to see past the glamours hiding it, and generally not introduced to it to avoid causing a panic. The equivalent of Harry Potter’s Muggles, for comparison’s sake.
Downworlder - Any denizen of the hidden Shadow World, from vampires to warlocks. Technically includes Shadowhunters themselves, though it is uncommon to hear them described as such.
Glamour, and the Sight - Magic used to hide the Shadow World from mundanes, as well as the true nature of things in general; and an ability necessary to see past glamour that mundanes generally lack, with greater strength allowing the bearer to see past stronger glamours.
Shadowhunters - The Nephilim, part-angel and part-human. Shadowhunters are trained from a young age to defend Earth from the demons that assail it, with both physical prowess beyond human norms and many angelic gifts such as seraph blades, the holy runes called Marks, and the Mortal Instruments, all gifted by the angel Raziel. They reside in Institutes in cities across the planet, or in their home city of Alicante in the hidden city of Idris, and are all participants of the Clave, governed by the Council which in turn is presided over by the Consul. Note that in breeding pairs, Shadowhunter blood is dominant, and will always produce Shadowhunter children with both mundanes and all fertile Downworlders.
Vampires - The Children of the Night, these are humans infected with a demonic virus that turns them into undead, yet highly powerful beings. With superhuman strength, grace, speed and senses, as well as powerful regenerative abilities and the ability to mesmerise others with the encanto, vampires are very similar to how they are depicted in fiction, though this applies to their weaknesses against sunlight and blessed substances and materials too, amongst other things. Vampires and werewolves are inherently opposed to one another on an instinctual level, and though this instinct can be overcome with effort, it nonetheless negatively affects their relationships with one another on a race-wide scale.
Werewolves - The Children of the Moon, these are humans infected with a demonic virus that transforms them into wolves in the light of the moon, though they may also Change at will when trained to do so (and for their own sake they are encouraged to do so). With enhanced strength and speed even in human form, they gain powerful claws and teeth in their lycanthrope state as well as enhanced senses, and can spread their lycanthropy through a bite, though their regeneration is cancelled out by both the angelic fire of a seraph blades and weapons made of pure silver. Werewolves and vampires are inherently opposed to one another on an instinctual level, and though this instinct can be overcome with effort, it nonetheless negatively affects their relationships with one another on a race-wide scale.
Warlocks - Lilith’s Children, unaging and sterile beings that are born half-demon and half-human, usually through unsavoury means on the part of their demonic parent, and who possess the power to invoke demonic magic in various forms, up to and including the illegal summoning of demons. Of all Downworlders, Shadowhunters are most likely to work with Warlocks in order to benefit from demonic magic that the angelically-aligned are forbidden from using, namely the creation of Portals to allow transportation from place to place.
Faeries - The Fair Folk, believed to be part-angel and part-demon, yet possessed of human souls nonetheless, as well as their own brand of magic aligned to neither angels nor demons, supernatural swiftness and grace, and an ethereal beauty underpinning their varied forms and cunning natures - though pure iron is toxic to them and they are unable to tell lies, they are masters of social manipulation, often tricking mundanes and Shadowhunters alike with wordplay and subtle magical manipulation. Though they tend to keep to their own affairs in their realm of Faerieland, also called the Faerie, their tendency to meddle in the affairs of others is well-known, and for their actions in the Dark War have been heavily sanctioned for the time being.
Angels - Winged celestial beings who oppose demons in all forms, both directly and by proxy via the Shadowhunters, whose patron and creator is the archangel Raziel. Angels are rarely seen on Earth, as their primary concern is with Heaven and the war against Hell, though in the rare circumstances that they are brought to Earth, they are considered powerful beyond the scope of any mortal being.
Demons - Evil creatures originating from Hell and the Void, these are beings of pure destruction: they seek to destroy all worlds, turning them into horrific places inimical to non-demonic life, and generally take on monstrous corporeal forms that reek of death in our dimension depending on the demon in question. Though they are very weak to holy weapons such as seraph blades, and cannot detect angelic magic, they are nonetheless terrifying foes which are more than capable of slaying even a Shadowhunter if they are unwary, especially those Greater Demons that occasionally make an appearance on Earth, and rather than dying the demonic energy powering them simply returns to the Void upon their physical body’s destruction, ensuring their ability to come back to our dimension again some day.
The Covenant, and the Accords - A set of rules that all Shadowhunters live by, enforced by the Clave and providing both the basic moral code and the overall legal system that Shadowhunters, and to a limited degree Downworlders, have agreed to abide by. The Covenant has been amended several times via the Accords, a series of treaties agreed upon by Shadowhunters and Downworlders to further improve Downworlder rights and minimise discrimination, with revisions taking place roughly every fifteen years. As of present, the punishments set out in the Cold Peace after the Dark War means that Faeries do not currently benefit from the Accords’ protections.
The Mortal Instruments - The most powerful artefacts of the Shadowhunters, gifted to them by Raziel himself. Includes the Mortal Cup, allowing mundanes to Ascend to become Shadowhunters by drinking from it (though the process is rarely used without extensive testing for suitability); the Mortal Sword, which compels Shadowhunters to tell the truth when held; and the Mortal Mirror, thought lost for ages until its recent rediscovery as Lake Lyn in Idris, whose waters are poisonous to Shadowhunters.
Recent conflicts within the Shadowhunter universe have largely been spurred by the Circle of Raziel and its agents, radical Shadowhunters whose leader Valentine Morgenstern sought to purify the world by killing all Downworlders. These include the Uprising, the Mortal War, and the Dark War, in that order. The Circle’s ideals first coalesced into violence during the 1991 signing of the Ninth Accords, where they tried and failed to kill all Downworlders present at the meeting, only to be fought off by a combination of Shadowhunter and Downworlder forces. By 2007, the Circle had reformed, and attacked Idris directly along with an army of demons, though with the assistance of Clarissa Fairchild an alliance of Shadowhunters and Downworlders again managed to fend the Circle off, with Valentine dying in the process of summoning the angel Raziel with the Mortal Instruments. However, his son Jonathan would then corrupt many Shadowhunters with the Infernal Cup, creating an army of Endarkened that fought alongside Faerie allies to try and destroy Alicante again only three months after the Mortal War, though all Endarkened perished after the Infernal Cup’s destruction.
Further information on all of these topics can be acquired here. Once again, bear in mind the possibility of spoilers for the setting in general.
As far as the game itself goes, it will be Co-GMed by @Nallore and @JaceBeleren, and set in the city of San Francisco in 2010; a High Casual level of writing ability will be expected of players, and as stated awareness of the terminology is very important. Note that the setting involves significant amounts of romance throughout the canonical stories, so those who are interested should expect their characters to get involved in romantic subplots with either PCs or NPCs.
@BCTheEntity Just to clarify, all PC's are supposed to be the titular Shadowhunters, correct? I have a great weakness for vampires ever since my teenage years and a lot of V:tM experience.
@Keksalot Actually, you can play as a Downworlder if you'd like. We will need Shadowhunter PCs, of course, but you're certainly allowed to play as a vampire, so long as you've made yourself aware of what they're capable of, what they're weak to, and how the race in general handles politics in this setting, and likewise for any other Downworlder. For anybody who wants to play faeries in particular, that's doubly important, since they're a fair bit more complicated to utilise, and certainly more alien in mindset, than most other Downworlder factions.
@BCTheEntity Vampires do seem quite interesting to play. Can you direct me to some other material that'll expand on their qualities and capabilities in greater detail? I've already thought up some ideas that I'd love to play out, but I am not sure whether or not they would be viable and possible in the setting. For example, if a vampire forcefully introduces some sort of change into his body, like Tzimisce in World of Darkness do through the use of their techniques, will it immediately begin to heal or can a vampire stop his body's regenerative capabilities at will if he so desires? For example, in theory, what if a vampire opens his chest and relocates his heart in order to fuck up all attempts to stake him, will the change stick?
@Keksalot All the information about this setting's vampires that I'm aware of is located in the Shadowhunters Wiki page, as seen here, though I recommend looking for the relevant wiki pages yourself in the future, given that a link to the wiki has been provided in the first post. To answer your question specifically, I don't believe vampires can typically alter themselves in that fashion - accelerated healing in general is automatic in this setting, though Shadowhunters need to apply an iratze Mark to heal their wounds more quickly, and I imagine a vampire removing their own heart would probably die in about the same fashion as a vampire getting staked through the heart, since the sentiment is about the same in both cases.
@BCTheEntity I've read the wiki, which is why i am currently asking for more information - there's not much stated on physiology of vampires in there. For example, one big thing nobody ever explains is whether or not a vampire dies if his heart is pierced in ANY WAY or if it is only pierced with a wooden stake. What is the case in this game?
Additionally, I didn't mention removing my heart at any point - what i want is to quite literally move it to another part of my body without ever detaching it, just so that staking me would prove problematic - that is not exactly damaging, is it? Would it be somehow "healed" by the body simply because a vampire's flesh is, i don't know, magically frozen in time at the moment of their turning which serves as a point of reference for their recuperative abilities?. And of course the question on whether or not removal of heart equals staking it with a wooden spike and whether or not staking it with wood equals piercing it with any other material still stands. Demonic diseases don't really follow laws of logic, do they?
@Keksalot Pardon me, I thought you hadn't read the wiki. My mistake. A vampire is, in a sense, basically a corpse possessed by its own ghost - there's a demonic virus involved that keeps the living corpse alive, and consequently powers it up and so on, but anatomically, vampires are pretty much identical to humans, save the bright red blood vampires have and a tendency to burn like kindling. That said, I think in this case it's safe to assume the wiki holds true: it does need to be a wooden stake to slay a vampire via heartstab, but as stated there, beheading a vampire or forcing it to bleed out completely does also kill them.
As for "moving the heart around" as opposed to "removing the heart", that's basically the same thing: the heart is essentially held in place by four separate major blood vessels, two of which lead to and from completely different areas of the body than the other two, meaning that to move the heart around the body would require also moving those blood vessels in a way that doesn't sever any of those blood vessels- because of the bleeding out, remember, which answers your question on how lethal heart removal is too- which so far as I can see is practically impossible in this setting. Along the same lines, the heart is a direct part of the circulatory system, as opposed to just being "attached to it", so sliding it somewhere else in your body doesn't exactly work out so well either. Furthermore, vampires, and for that matter werewolves, don't have their own demonic magic to call upon; it's just "in them", so to speak, as opposed to warlocks, who can use demonic magic, but evidently lack the physical power that vampirism grants, and even then, I can't say either way that any spell exists in setting which would allow one to move somebody else's heart around like that, or that any warlock (and/or surgeon, before you ask, mundane or otherwise) exists that would willingly cast such a spell (or surgically move the heart to another location).
Long story short, I don't think what you're asking for is particularly viable. It's a good thought, mind you, but you'll want to consider other options than that.
@BCTheEntity I do have other options, which arise further questions. Firstly, if vampires are basically animated corpses that are not really alive in biological sense, their "life" processes work in a different way. If possible, i would like to learn about how exactly vampiric "metabolism" works, since it is clearly stated that they do need blood for prolonged existence. What exactly in their acvitiy expends blood? How is it physically stored in their bodies? Do vampires actually have circulation in their bodies or do they run on some sort of mystical energy derived from the blood they consume as a ritualistic depiction of stealing someone's life force? For example - i know how nonsensical that sounds, but still - if a vampire had his organs and major bones surgically removed and had his "shell" filled with blood that they require to exist, would that vampire be capable of living, acting, comfortably moving and employing his mystical powers? Do vampire bodies actually care about their physical integrity or really anything other than having a head, heart and blood within them?
Also generally sorry in advance for nitpicking and digging too deep and generaly acting like a lil shit, i'll stop and won't try to pull anything retarded if you ask me to and play a vampire properly.
I admit I'm not as well-versed in Shadowhunters lore as BC, but as far as I've seen there is no occurence of a vampire who's done anything like you described. Doing so could make their life very difficult (they probably don't need a stomach, but removing their bones would make things very unpleasant for them). They do have a circulation, sort of (their heart doesn't beat, but they bleed as if it did), and they drink blood, there is no mysticism or life force involved. Use of blood is over time rather than physical activity (I think, check with BC for that). It is also worth noting it does not have to be human blood - almost all vampires use cow (or other animal) blood, because it is difficult to get human blood without breaking the Covenant (I just imagined a vampire turning up at someone's funeral, asking for a blood donation from the deceased).
@JaceBeleren Well, of course such stuff wouldn't really be given attention in a modern urban fantasy, it's a pretty tenuous and vampire-centric thing to ponder. Hardly any setting save for games dedicated specifically to vampires like WoD's V:tM and V:TR go to such depths.
@Keksalot Don't worry, it's no trouble. They're good questions to ask. That said, I don't know the exact answers to them, but as far as metabolism goes, I'd assume the answer is "magic demon virus handles it" - assuming blood they've drained is stored at all, which from the way drinking blood is described it probably isn't, it'd probably be contained in the vampire's existing blood vessels and converted via magic into energy, both to fuel the vampire's continued ability to do things (by making the cells do stuff they'd normally do, or by just keeping them from decaying whilst the body functions through magically-powered means) and to keep their soul latched to their body. Circulation is a known "no", since they have no heartbeat, but I can't imagine filling the abdominal cavity with blood would help them in any functional capacity, nor would tearing out their "non-vital" organs, even if they're technically vestigial for the undead, and especially not their bones.
Alternatively, what Jace said. It could be either, neither, or both. As he says, most settings don't go into extreme detail about how vampirism does what it does, and Shadowhunters is no exception.
If it helps for the future, the main question to ask yourself for queries like this is "What reasons exist that other vampires might not do this thing?" For instance, and to give an example with one of your previous questions, "Why might a vampire not tear out their internal organs and fill their abdominal cavity with blood? Because the other internal organs might actually be necessary, there's a risk of bleeding out during that process, and storing lots of blood like that is probably not helpful due to its location and the need to tear open your abdominal cavity again to drink it, especially given the chance that it'll go bad in a place that, whilst not warm, is nonetheless unrefrigerated." If you can't think of any reasons the thing might not be done, then ask the GMs about it to confirm whether there's no particular reason something might not be done by a vampire. Generally speaking, though, vampires generally don't make alterations to their body because they either can't make a given alteration, or because doing so probably isn't going to help them in any way, especially given their tendency to live in clans alongside others of their kind.
Good points. I'll probably make a very old and exceedingly military-minded vampire knight who has became very excited with idea of playing soldier in the past sixty years, WW II and all. A vampire is extremely strong, fast and durable, doesn't need to breathe and has literally no needs to satisfy other than the thirst for blood, right? That means a vampire can carry ten times as much hitech armor as a normal infantryman can without any hindrance, swing a massive silvered sword one-handed and wield a flamethrower in his other hand without any fear of getting burned thanks to his armor, all to better slay anyone he can manage to without breaching the Covenant. Maybe a legendary mercenary somewhere in south america or a wildcard motherfucker feared and disliked by the rest of the vampire community due to prospensity for showing up and murdering absolutely everyone whenever there's a clan war going down?
@Keksalot That sounds very much like a guy intent on committing war crimes which, I am almost positive, would warrant a breach of Covenant Law, if not before then almost certainly in the modern era. I love it. Just keep in mind that metal, glass and cloth does not prevent sun death for vampires, said Covenant breaches would almost certainly make him an enemy of basically everybody else I may have misread "can kill anybody not under the Law's protection" as "can kill literally anybody without himself breaking the Law", my mistake... and that having more strength does not mean you are impossible to hinder, only that said hindrances need to be greater in order to stack beyond a weaker person's hindrance capacity. In other words, loads and loads of armour will probably make him comparatively slower and less able to strike than an unrestrained vampire. Just so you know.
Also, how old are you thinking? Vampires did not exist before 1444 A.D., meaning the absolute maximum time somebody could have been a vampire as of 2010 is 566 years (not including years lived as a human before Vlad III's mass sacrifice), and most vampires created around that time have long since died. Considering that vampires become stronger as they age, with no officially-stated limit, I'm going to say the maximum age for any vampire is 250-300 years.
It's a real shame i can't be 666 years old, fuck. That'd be the edgiest thing.
Honestly, thought about being Vlad's court executioner or a champion of his armies, but if I can't be that old then I'd like to be a brutal and famous ataman of the zaporozhian cossacks that emerged somewhere around 18th century. Perhaps the very person that gave birth to the stories about fabled Kharakternik sorcerers.
By the way, I've another question. The wiki stated that at least one vampire managed to gain the ability to walk beneath the gaze of the sun unhindered by drinking the partially-angelic blood of a Nephilim whose angel ancestry was really prominent. In theory, can the same sort of shit be pulled on other species? For example, can a vampire gorge himself on the blood of a very potent warlock in order to gain the capability for spellcasting? Because if yes, i will make that my character's big motivation that he took up in a flight of fancy.
@Keksalot Well, I can't say I know much about Cossack history, but if you can keep it reasonably accurate, then I don't see why you couldn't play as a significant military leader from that time period. As far as Daywalking goes, however, I'm going to say "no" to other alterations along those lines - becoming a Daywalker is specifically a counter to a common vampiric weakness, whereas "drinking warlock blood to gain the ability to use magic" has no particular basis in, well, any media I know of.
Seems reasonable. I'll just have to find other means to compensate for lack of versatile magic other dudes possess - like superior firepower and the element of surprise, or maybe some sort of a unique personal trick that'd make me a more interesting and exciting opponent to fight. I'll try to throw up an alpha version of a charsheet later today.
