A nearly inescapable part of vampiric life is living among humans.  Yes, it is possible to retreat to remote corners of the earth and avoid human society, but that can be difficult, hazardous, and difficult to sustain let alone sustain and advance research into Metamorphosis.  So living among humans successfully is a challenge that we must solve.

The humans are ignorant to our existence, but exist in overwhelming numbers.  We are superior in almost everyway, but vulnerable.  They are prey, yet dangerous if awakened.  To catch their attention is to invite annihilation.  Their world offers abundant food but demands rent, utilities, and taxes.  One can hardly work full time and expect to push back the frontiers of our science while doing so.  One can live off the grid, as the Nosferatu do, and that option remains a viable choice for those able to manage it.  We are, however, are not forced into it.

Those of us able to superficially pass for human can make use of the human world and its resources.  With our disciplines and the blood bond we can acquire human slaves with which to deal with the human world.  Wealth, daytime actions, a feeding herd, bodyguards,  bank accounts, investments, proper identification, signing of documents and so on can all be accomplished by your slaves, allowing you to reap the benefits of the human world without distracting labor once the appropriate servants are acquired.

The human world is full of benefits once properly exploited.  Skilled craftsmen for custom equipment, weapons, money, feeding vessels, space, and so forth.  Thus the ideal arrangement is to extract maximum benefit from minimum engagement, leaving the vast majority of the student's activity for other activities.  There is an already existing model for this kind of parasitic relationship:  the psychopath.  Not the dreary serial killer of human fears and fantasy, but the free rider who exploits human altruism and trust as well as the weak points in human society as well as doing high value stock trading.

It should be noted that the psychopath is a poor model for vampiric relations.  The comparatively small local vampire population and the reciprical favor exchange economy means psychopathic behavior will quickly be identified and punished.  It should further be noted that the psychopath is a poor overall model, particularly their poor impulse control.  Nonetheless, they do exploit human weakness well.  Surface charm, self interest, and emotional disengagement turn out to work quite well.

That being said there less conventional uses for humans.  Sometimes the thirst is great.  Sometimes we need slaves that will not be returning to human society.  Sometimes we need subjects for experiments.  Sometimes we need to make childer.  In all these cases, humans are available and the psychopath continues to be useful as a model.  The only issue is if you leave a trail that the police or other parties can lead back to your door.  Use them as you see fit.

The Dunyain Dilemma

 

The path upward for the Metamorphosist is not unlike the Dunyain's attempt to seize the absolute.  Just as the Dunyain do we must ruthless reshape ourselves into instruments capable of attaining the ultimate goal.  Perfection of the mind, body, and soul are both incremental steps and the ultimate destination.  What the neophyte might be incapable of grasping like the ordinary human ancestors of the Dunyain' the master of Metamorphosis might grasp as the transhuman Dunyain monks outshine their forebearers.  That's the theory. 

But reality is not always kind.  In fact, it rarely is.  If the Noddists are correct an ancient force cursed out antecedents with a hunger for blood and superhuman powers and let us hunt his people.  The creator, if there is a creator, arranged for their to be countless species of parasitic wasps and blinding worms that can only complete their lifecycles in the human eye.  All evidence suggests the world is horror, that if there are gods that they hardened, callous, cruel, or impotent.  What if our assumptions are wrong?  What if, like the Dunyain, we have erred in our initial estimates.  What if the Road of Metamorphosis does not lead to Azhi Dahaka?  What if we, like the Dunyain, have taken a road that leads us away from the absolute?

Denial is, of course, the first response.  We shall dispense with such privileged hubris.  We are not the enlightened.  We do not see the whole picture with the sense of the superior being, we do not reason with postvampiric power.  We are blind moles, crawling through moist mother earth.  We are blind bats, perceiving the night sky with sonar because we lack clear vision.  We are trying to find the road to enlightenment, the path to perfection using definitionally inferior senses, reasoning skills, and knowledge.  We can err. We can take the wrong path, We can miss the absolute.

How do we deal with the possibility of error?  How does one follow a path to perfection when you know the road map may lead nowhere?  The answer is, of course, found within the path itself.  We hone the mind, hone the skills, hone the powers, and improve the flesh.  We do not follow blindly but with eyes open.  When we encounter data that clashes with the tennents of the path we reevaluate.  We apply the scientific method which allowed merely human scientists to overcome their own preconceptions and the errors of those who came before them.

Metamorphosis is not just a destination.  It is a process.  The practitioner refines and improves himself as he advances down the road.  As he becomes more capable, he becomes more capable of refining the Path of Metamorphosis, of stripping out errors and creating doctrine.  The walker is reshaped and reshapes the road.

And, if at the end, he discovers that Metamorphosis is not the right direction?  That the path is fundementally flawed?  If it, in fact, leads nowhere?  He is not lost.  To reach that point the path has demanded that rigorous intellectual challenges be embraced, that the mind and senses sharpened, the body perfected, the flesh shaped and reshaped with the skill of a Renaissance Master.  Such a being is well suited to survive and prosper in these nights, perhaps even to find truths and ascend.  Like the Dunyain we may be pursuing the wrong path but like the Dunyain the fruit of our failure might be the best equipped to seize the truth.

The Hedonism Trap

Pleasure is one of the most powerful instruments in managing an organism's behavior. Along with pain, its antipoint, it compels actions and channels passion to overcome barriers. Its place and purpose in guiding the organism are easy to understand. Hazardous situations that do not offer reward are avoided, healthy environments are sought, food is consumed, thirst is quenched, the species is perpetuated, the young are cared for and so on. The utility of such tools in obvious, yet they are also a trap.

Consider the vampire. Consider our urges. We are resistant to the extremes of heat and cold and so feel less response to them. Feeding, which combines both the function of feeding as well as reproduction, is the utmost pleasure. Fire and sunlight are both serious threats to our existence and they cause both primal fear and great pain. Lesser injuries also manifest a pain response, but represent a lesser hazard to us. Pain and pleasure responses seem then to serve the vampiric organism well. And on the surface they do. The Beast exists for reason and its responses have purpose. Unfortunately, there is a limit to their utility.

Feeding is not the only response to generate pleasure. Mimicking sexual activity has utility to the hunter, but feeding is in itself reason enough to do so. The goad of lust is not needed and yet some vampires still pursue it. Underneath the changes of undeath our brains remain the brains of humans, hardwired with atavistic lusts and desires that shape the living and have left their mark on the vampire that remains. We have become vampires, but we were once humans. The impulse to obliterate the former human identity, to make the time of our Embrace the Year One of Darkness is understandable, but dangerous. For a Metamorphosist it is important to recall our goal: to transcend vampirism as we transcended humanity.  To become a higher being, the ultimate vampire if not postvampiric.  We have the intellect to understand the limitations of our impulses and instincts, what is required is to have the will resist the impulses to flee pain and embrace pleasure when those actions will not serve us.

What serves the human does not necessarily serve the vampire and what serves the vampire may not serve the transvampiric organism. With the destination unknown and presented by the choice of which of the many possible paths to pursue to a transvampirism, the aspiring Metamorphosist must avoid getting sidelined by indulgence.  Wallowing in sensual pleasure produces pleasing sensations but that is all it does.  It advances nothing and so has no value for its own sake.

It is not merely human carnal indulgence or vampiric gluttony that are traps for us. There is another trap. Our Tzimisce heritage leaves us with a particular obsession with pain. Our lust for inflicting it has generated our cognomen. It is also a sensual indulgence. I suspect that many Metamorphosists, perhaps nearly all of them, have lost the path because they have indulged in sadism or masochism while rationalizing their actions as scientific experiments or spiritual aesthetism. The lack of ascended torturers and saintly vampire monks leads me to suspect that wallowing in pain, whether giving or receiving, is not the road to postvampiric ascension.  To be the dragon we must not luxuriate in the pleasures of the fiend.

Leto II: Failed Tranhumanist

Leto II is one of the earliest transhumanist characters to be extensively detailed in fiction. It is useful to analyze the limitations of the character as depicted in regards to our own attempts to master our own vampiric nature and attempt to transcend it. For the purposes of this endeavour it is irrelevant whether Leto II's failure to master his condition originates in the author's limitations, the author's deliberate attempt to portray the character as such, or necessary traits to drive the plot. Leto II simply serves as a useful example of a being that has mentally and physically deviated far from the human norm yet remains psychologically an adolescent human male.

Leto II is absolute master of human space. He controls the spice melange and thus engages in hydraulic despotism on a near absolute manner. This power is further augmented by being worshiped as a god-king and having military and economic supremacy which is further buttressed by his presience. People and nations scheme against him, but as he is a nearly invulnerable immortal with absolute military, political, and economic dominance as well as reliable foresight, such plots are essentially toothless.

His stated goal is the survival of humanity and protecting it from domination of prescient tyrants, a goal that could have been accomplished before the God-Emperor of Dune begins. The required elements, breeding for anti-prescience genes, no-rooms, and no ships already exists. The social conditions, where much of humanity yearns to break away from the stifling enforced orthodoxy, also already exists. Leto II could pull the metaphorical trigger anytime he wants. That he does not suggests that he is not ready to give up power. It is the dream of a tyrant who wants to leave a beautiful legacy and be forgiven for the damage he has done. But Leto likes being a god-emperor and playing with the lives of people.

His continued manipulation of the Atreides members and the cultivation of the family bloodline along with his endless numbers of doomed Duncan Idaho's tell us this much as well as the endless games of intrigue with the Bene Gesserit and so forth which inevitably end with Leto winning and possibly some amusement. Leto likes playing god. These could be argued as being appropriate for a posthuman god-emperor and that is true but they also point to Leto's stated motives as being unreliable. Like a human, he is prone to justifying doing things he desires with rather elaborate arguments. And so we come to the Fish Speakers. His all female army is justified with an argument that male armies are intrinsictly predatory and rape prone while female ones are more inclined to matriarchal domination. A dubious assertion considering the hierarchical and theocratic nature of their authority, but it serves as a smoke screen. The voyeuristic possibilities open to prescient by surrounded by an army of women where homosexuality and sex with with the Idaho ghulas is tacitly encouraged do not need to elucidated. The book touches on them, nonetheless. Then we come to the Ixian ambasssador, the lovely Hwi Noree.

A perfect woman to be placed on a pedestal and worshipped by a moonstruck adolescent. She is intelligent, compassionate, naive, and insipid. She is what a teenage boy might call "good" and an immortal might call "boring". She takes Leto's heart. And then Leto dies. He dies in a dramatic fashion, giving a long speech about how he has assured the future of humanity. It is the ultimate teenage death expression: he gets to go out while making everyone who killed him appreciate how wonderful he really was. He dies vindicated.

In short, Leto II remains psychologically human and an adolescent. He clings to power and engages in self deception about why he does so. He surrounds himself with a harem and manipulates them to engage in activities that will grant him voyeuristic gratification, the only gratification his altered body can support. He pines for a pure innocent companion. He is the prescient god-emperor and an sexually frustrated adolescent who longs for a pure, beautiful girl to be his soulmate. He has utterly failed to cease to be a teenage boy and that eventually kills him.

Wondering how to get started? Here are a few tips:

1. Invite your players

Invite them with either their email address or their Obsidian Portal username.

2. Edit your home page

Make a few changes to the home page and give people an idea of what your campaign is about. That will let people know you’re serious and not just playing with the system.

3. Choose a theme

If you want to set a specific mood for your campaign, we have several backgrounds to choose from. Accentuate it by creating a top banner image.

4. Create some NPCs

Characters form the core of every campaign, so take a few minutes to list out the major NPCs in your campaign.

A quick tip: The “+” icon in the top right of every section is how to add a new item, whether it’s a new character or adventure log post, or anything else.

5. Write your first Adventure Log post

The adventure log is where you list the sessions and adventures your party has been on, but for now, we suggest doing a very light “story so far” post. Just give a brief overview of what the party has done up to this point. After each future session, create a new post detailing that night’s adventures.

One final tip: Don’t stress about making your Obsidian Portal campaign look perfect. Instead, just make it work for you and your group. If everyone is having fun, then you’re using Obsidian Portal exactly as it was designed, even if your adventure log isn’t always up to date or your characters don’t all have portrait pictures.

That’s it! The rest is up to your and your players.