Vampires, the Spawn of Molag Bal | The Elder Scrolls Podcast #53

[Music] what is up ladies and gentlemen welcome back to fudge muppet my name is scott here with michael andrew as always and today on the elder scrolls podcast we are talking all about the vampires so which one of you guys would like to take the reigns well vampires are quite the interesting undead creature because unlike other undead they're not made by a necromancer they're made by a curse i guess from molag bao or disease really is what it eventuates into and spreads with and one of the most interesting things is there's all different kinds of vampires so as we'll get into in today's video it's not like this is how they are for sure because some are different to others and if anything that's a good thing because it means that in elder scrolls six if they change them and do different things it still makes sense in the law but primarily i guess they're like superhumans in a way undead vampires big fangs lust for blood they want to drink everyone's blood they can get stronger the more blood they drink or um weaker as well depending on the strain i believe yeah i think um i think too um it's worth uh mentioning like we always kind of say for these kinds of things but we need to sort of consider the gameplay functions like so for example if you go to morrowind or oblivion like these there's lots of buffs to like hand to hand strength and speed and like all of these kind of things that make them feel superhuman whereas if you play a vampire in skyrim it's pretty tame like you you get a few powers and like a buff to illusion and and sneak but it's nothing it you're just general like physiology doesn't seem enhanced and you know you go like oh it's the different strain or whatever but it's like i don't know i feel like the volca vampires and stuff that you meet should have a little bit of like you know supernatural strength beyond just what the the strain in skyrim gives you if you know what i mean well from a law perspective the only reason i can see you'd ever want to become a vampire is for the immortality which obviously in a game setting doesn't matter too much as soon as you just reload your save if you die anyway but yeah they are kind of just glorified zombies really you know they they do say oh you know we don't there's no necromancer involved so we're not you know we're different to the other undead but really molag bao is just their necromancer i'm not super like i mean vampires i i don't love vampires but you know some of the lore in this is pretty cool and original see i'm on the opposite end of the spectrum i i love vampires like i've really a big twilight fan always has been always you know actually you know the series um underworld at all like that was like a modern sort of one and so i was really into that as a kid and so on but like you know bram stoker's um dracula and so on and like all of the and you know even the movie with gary oldman and like funny performances in it too but like i really like that like my favorite thing about vampires which is something i really liked about the dawnguard dlc introducing in the form of the vampire lord was the sort of contrast of the kind of you know beauty and sort of seductiveness of a vampire with the underlying sort of ugliness and beastial sort of nature of a vampire like you know you can look at the vampire lord and it's basically modeled off dracula's sort of true form like bat form in the dracula movies yeah um i mean i'm i'm very similar in this sense that i really like vampires although and i do appreciate the vampire lord form you've got one on your t-shirt as well yeah but i think i think one of the the better things about vampires at least to me that i really like and i suppose vampire lord form gives contrast to it but it is the very seductive you don't know i'm a vampire type character who who's like basically like a human with supernatural reflexes lots of strength obviously they stay out of the sunlight things like that but the kind of cyrodiilic vampire vibe where they blend into society and get into positions of high power i really like that and i think that's really really cool which is one of the reasons and you can just put it down to the strain although i know they retconned it where when you downloaded dawnguard all vampires had glowing orange eyes but i actually prefer and if that's a strain that's fine kind of what i was getting at at the start they can do different things with different bloodlines which is a good thing but i do like the whole idea of you can look at a vampire and their eyes aren't even red if they if they've fed you know when when they go into stage one their eyes are red and then stage two and three and four you can look worse and worse yeah like they're just having withdrawals but when they're you know when they're fueled up they can kind of blend in with greater society yeah i remember being um absolutely bummed because i tried deliberately to get to like you know fourth stage vampire and everything to see if my like face would change into the bat kind of look and i was really disappointed that didn't happen i always thought like it would be best if if that stage sort of four was that kind of bat look that those um that the faces of the volckerheart castle have like the people in there and if they sort of you know as you staged up it sort of you progressively looked like there's something wrong with you and so because it becomes kind of silly like how can you blend into society when you just go full bat mode like yeah you know even if the eyes weren't orange like your face looks far too different i would almost prefer kind of like oblivion that like uh the very beginning of being a vampire when you're fully fed you look no different like it's that it's that idea that no one can tell the second you're into stage one sure look look different look worse they do have slightly pale eyes don't they it's like there's tiny little bits in in oblivion yeah at the very beginning fully fed i'm not i'm not 100 sure i can just look that up while you guys are talking but there's a photo i'll go i found it already there's a photo and i don't know how they characterized their character um but they have brown eyes and then their eyes are red i don't know for some reason i just remember absolutely being so cut because i got i've got random vampirism on my like what elf character that started and i did back then i was a kid i didn't know how to cure anything or start that so i can just pop my eyes out of her character went really ugly and got like gaunt cheeks and like sort of so as well and the complexion just messed up a bit like it went really pale like in the inner parts of the face but the outer parts went we're still tan yeah okay load up the picture i just sent to both of you in our chat you can see that i like i'm guessing the face on the far left probably was changed by vampirism i mean who would create that as their character it's just my just my reason we can show the image on screen um but you can see the eyes are definitely still brown and i know that when you do the um vampirium order quest in oblivion when you meet sarader who turns out to be a vampire and i just played this quest recently um i'm looking at his eyes they're just normal like i couldn't tell and i guess that's the whole idea you couldn't tell he was a vampire to begin anyways i i agree with the sentiment anyway that like vampires if they are fully fed and everything should look at the very least the closest to human possible like even if there's like there's even mods in skyrim and so on that change the glowing eyes to when you're like engaging night vision it like that's what that's called that's cool and like stuff like that yeah because that is kind of the appeal isn't it like uh you know the idea of having to invite in the monster who seems like a charming good person at first you know you don't want them to look too monstrous but then the ability to become really monstrous it's without derailing it's one thing i really liked about the witcher free games interpretation of them with like regis and detlaff that they can totally blend in they just look a bit goth but then then when they go absolutely berserk the the creatures they become are really awesome and it's the same with the vampire lord form in skyrim and is it the same with the netflix series like it was like really good let's not let's not go there let's not talk about netflix well i suppose we better start with the origin um of the vampires and that is a a touchy one so and also because of youtube's uh algorithm i feel like there's certain words i'll avoid but i feel like you can um get the picture but it all starts with a very very ancient um nedik tribe and basically um there's lame lame bail is the very first one um and her like i forgot what merlot bell was trying to spite arcade he's a troll he's like i'm gonna troll the cycle of life and death so he he killed and uh forced himself sexually upon um la la may bail and then she died and then another group of needs came and found her and she was laying there dead and then they and basically on the funeral on the uh pyre the funeral pyre for it which they were giving her a burial um she came alive and as a vampire and then killed them all and then she so basically lame bail balefag or they call lemay bell um is the progenitor for basically all of the vampire well i guess it kind of depends like for most vampires and the diseases you get and there's certain like bloodlines but then there's other ones that have been given directly to people such as serana and serrana's mother um via the process involving like what they call a daughter of cold harbor which is very uh it's implied to be the exact same thing that happened to lemay uh something that you know you you undergo as part of a ritual and then you become a pure blooded vampire and that's sort of the where the volkah bloodline started for example but yes so it's um it's an absolutely it's an it's a thing intertwined with um molag bell it yeah the corruption the spiteful element is is very strong in it because you know the the the fact that immortal i think is what makes them is one of the main things that at least makes them reprehensible to the gods like mortals dislike them because they're kind of you know they're basically creatures that want to feast on their blood but um if any aedra worshiping society um is generally going to look down on vampirism because you're you're removing yourself from the the revered cycle of life and death rk's process of you know like burial rights and all of this you're taking yourself out of it as well as being a menace to society it's funny too though it's interesting that um assuming this is a similar story that happens like two examples i can think of one what i'm about to say um is that the gods sort of forsaking them so lemay after goes on that crazy rampage um and killed her a bunch of needs and so on you know i should just add how hardcore it was she forced herself upon the men that she was killing as well yeah like it's it's extra gnarly and she becomes um but she hates what she'd become at first and then she's praying to rk for help but there's like zero response like rk is just like you're undead now i'm not answering the phone and then so she got score on that hand but she also hates molag bal for what happened to her and then so there's reasons and they're just sort of exploring all scrolls online well maybe for white for her special bloodline you know maybe if the gods had been more um facilitating to her wishes you could have prevented vampirism from becoming something it did so you know in in a way it's very much like victim blaming in that you've got this victim who wants anything to get rid of this curse and then just gets abandoned and then the curse manifests and infects tons of people so yeah well i guess not to the same degree but like remember the arch curate um vither in um in the dawnguard dlc he was like you know in quotes abandoned by so like as well just all the gods i don't know bad bad age yeah just yeah or just not involved enough they seem very black and white in their thinking yeah even though a daedra caused the problem initially yeah but it would be in their best interests right for them to take things on a more case-by-case basis yeah absolutely yeah well i think you know as a general rule it's why getting into daedra worship can become so enticing to mortals across like a bunch of cultures because the daedra are always going to be more involved with daily life for a mortal then than the than the aedra unless you're kind of seeing their spheres manifest and kind of take that as their intervention but actual aedric intervention is very rare yeah true well um essentially so from here so that's sort of generally the origins but and you know some origins vary like we said with a volca um bloodline but we end up with a skyrim filled with heaps of different bloodlines um even even seemingly within the same sort of strain so there's like the uh paphyric hemophilia which is like the one that was in uh oblivion and morrowind i'm pretty sure and then there's the sanguinara vampiris which is the skyrim one um introducing skyrim and then noxiophilic sangoviria that one is uh eso but that's the glazed one isn't it yeah um and then but even with that like so for example in the oblivion one the poffer hemophilia um there's lots of different uh clan versions so like in morrowind there's like the quara clan and and the burn clan and ande clan and and they're all like it when you get it it's all the same disease it's not like it but it's turned by each one and i'm i'm pretty sure that's how it goes and the same thing in um daggerfall i think well the clans all have different um bloodlines i suppose well i mean yeah so like what i mean is like of those certain diseases there's like certain bloodlines like of those strains if that makes sense yeah it gets a bit confused it's not it's not made particularly clear but you could almost imagine it as just look at it's not exactly this but you could you're safe to look at bloodlines and diseases kind of separately in the sense that there are bloodlines within the same disease group that have varied powers to other bloodlines like i mean taking the example from morrowind like the kwara clan they're the strongest physically like the other one i think it's um there'll be a magic one and there'll be like a stealthy one is as how they do it the the burn clan very agile and sneaky on day clan mages blessed with dark powers of the mind their path through the darkness relies on their mastery of magic um they're all ultma vampires actually that clan yeah they're and and also like with the various methods there's been various methods of curing like there's the skyrim one which is kind of lackluster it's just like a black soul gem and a little the most convenient one but then yeah but then in oblivion for example curing that was a was it much harder you needed a bunch of alchemical ingredients including things from oblivion like i mean when i say i mean um the dead lands like the realm you needed to get like close because i was playing on 360 i believe in the first time and i had that same wood elf character the vampire when i went to cure it because i you didn't get updates and stuff if you weren't connected to the internet which i wasn't there was a glitch and i think it was the blood grass like even if you had the blood grass you go to the witch you press a blood grass but it's like it does she doesn't wretch she's like go get me more blood grass yeah so yeah so i could never turn my character from an ugly vampire into a normal one i was so good yeah it's fine it was a different era back then like you were more used to dealing with game breaking glitches or just like well this is how it is it's the same thing as i got you know like they sold the shivering aisles in disc form um as an expansion that you could install on your xbox and i installed it and everything and then i couldn't it would never proc um sherry gorath's speech before you walk into the gate um because of a glitch now it got fixed in the update but then so i basically never got to play the shivering isles until um a bit later when the game of the year edition i just bought that up and it was all like together but i could have connected to the internet but i was a kid i didn't and my parents wouldn't let me on i feel like most of the times you figure out that you've contracted vampirism is just because you'll try to turn in a quest and someone will hate you or be really rude to you and that's your like way of knowing that you've contracted this it's do you know oh yeah i remember that because the one thing i do like about oblivion too is when it makes it really abundant because you have to sleep more but when you sleep and you have those like warped dreams you have nightmares essentially nightmares yeah like that's cool as well like i mean it was just text but it is it's a cool addition like i like when they explore the sort of peripheral elements of being a vampire and stuff like that not just sometimes text on screen is really nice it's like even leveling up where it would have a unique thing of like your you know about your self-improvement or whatever but all those little things or as you beca hit a certain milestone in a skill you know you would get a message and saying you are now a master swordsman like you know all this practice and cuts have paid off and stuff like that is really cool but i guess we could continue to go through some of the other bloodlines because they are quite interesting i guess the initial fact that we i think we skipped over was that when you contract one of the vampiric diseases you need to go and get cured um you have three days and you can cure it like any other disease you can cure it with a cure disease potion if you don't get cured you will turn into a vampire and that actually reminds me of another really bad thing that happened in oblivion is when you were like a bad character so say you're in the dark brotherhood of the thieves guild and you would go to like a shrine i remember for some reason not knowing about the potion and i was going to every chapel and i would press it and they're like no repent and pray for you have committed wicked crimes or whatever the message was and i was doomed see even but we don't want to derail this too much a quick little anecdote there but it is like that was a cool function of um of the shrines like if you try to pray to the divines and you're a really evil character like they'd say go and repent because they used fame they used fame and infamy um which even mattered in quests and i guess this is still on the topic of vampires so i'll just go into this before we go through different bloodlines but in oblivion the order of the virtuous blood quest only begins when you reach five in the fame area and you get approached by one of the members wives and she's like come meet in the basement of this house and basically it's like an old men's club um in the sense that they're all old and they're like oh we're all old dudes and we like studying vampires and hanging out down here but uh we're not strong enough to go fight them so can you help us basically and the leader of them turns out to be a vampire um but yeah that i mean there's an instance where fame is involved they only contact you because they see you as this like you know high rep person perfect to take out it reminds me actually sorry it reminds me of the um cyrodiilic order even though it's not explicitly mentioned you know the vampire order in cyrodiil what is it is it literally called the order well i was going to say like while we're on the topic of cyrodiil and oblivion yeah we may as well discuss that seriously the most uh powerful vampires of cyrodiil are that order but one thing i like about that is it's because of the like dealings with clavicus violence someone that has allowed them to sort of blend mask there and blend in and mask their sort of monstrous side of them and i just like that extra sort of dynamic and especially for like clavicus file who's like you know always giving them deals and stuff it makes you wonder how much clavicus file actually impacts kind of politics and mortal affairs that you don't know about because like if he was making pacts with these vampires because in that order the whole idea is you must amass power and and wealth at any opportunity given like they're real ruthless like you know yeah it's a proper conspiracy theory isn't it like the idea that the vampires have infiltrated imperial politics and stuff like that and it's like it's pretty explicitly said in their manifesto that it's all about you know it says here by the virtue of imperial structure and bureaucracy we're you know we're not um a tribal group we're a civil fraternity and it's all okay so we've got vampires running the show according to this but it's like go on no you go you go i was gonna say i feel like it's very much a thing kind of like in real life with vampires in that paranoia and wives tales and things are really um ingrained in the idea of vampires because you know i think it's in um the what's the dark brotherhood vampire's name oblivion vicente um but it's like there's the belief that vampires are um weak to garlic but he just actually has an allergy to garlic yeah and and like we're going to talk about the vampire clans now but a lot of what they do seems like terribly impractical the kind of thing that you'd imagine stories around a campfire to try and scare you of of vampires because there's a lot of paranoia when it comes to vampirism not to derail this but when i was saying that these vampires in this order acquire power and money by whatever cost all i was hearing was that song the sigma acquire power by any cost replace the intro music for the podcast with the scene [Laughter] but um yeah the and will they have kind of i don't know well he's not explicitly connected with i don't think but janice hasseldor the count of skingrad is a vampire yeah and his you helped cure his wife and that's a very interesting thing because his wife refused to feed um but instead of becoming like she hated what she was but instead of becoming really powerful she fell into a coma and then basically you give him the cure to kind of like give to her so that she can drink it become not a vampire and then die because she's not a vampire which goes against other law which should mean like they're immortal and that i mean like serana you cure sorana she doesn't die perhaps it's her bloodline but we don't know i'm just itching to say this but it's just like i do um dislike the whole um not feeding to become stronger because then it kind of like takes away i guess a bit of the sort of moral conundrum i feel like like if you need blood to survive and you've basically become like a human leech like it kind of that's the kind of moral driver and then it's like oh i choose not to drink and then you become weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker but although we all do need blood to survive in fairness that's not what i was going to say but um but on the other end couldn't you say the moral thing is it's kind of like you know he is this disease cursed blessing whatever you want to call it you have to go away from society away from this life that you've become accustomed to and you know probably like to be this powerful monster or to stay in it you're doing the selfish thing of feeding on blood do you know what i mean it's kind of like i have to continue to drink blood so that i can stay here and it's but i feel like that's the drive like the interesting sort of drivers when you do become like you have to because when you do have to eat blood to be like people's i would feel that most people want to be a part of society still rather than living in a cave by themselves yeah growing more powerful so therefore like the driver should be oh you know eat bloody you know have blood and so on because you have a dependency on it like having to need it i kind of like both i don't know i can i can see cool cool elements of both because it is a cool i do like when you find an undercover vampire in a city and he's got his you know contraband stash of human blood in bottles and like that's how he's staying under the radar like i don't know it's definitely a controversial topic but i'm sure there are ethical ways to do it or at least more ethical ways like you know you've got the wetfang tribe of black marsh who it says capture victims alive and keep them in a magic induced coma allowing the vampires to extract blood at their own leisure i put that on the more unethical side of the scale but there you know there may be alternatives like even just there are donations or something there was um there was this whole idea with one of the clans i think it could have even been in elder scrolls online where they want they decide to drink animal blood i think it could even have been a khajiit clan um might be wrong but there is a clan and they decided to drink animal blood whereas the other part of the clan like there was a clash clash of clans um and one of them basically one group wanted to keep drinking human blood or mortal blood and the other part of the group growing weaker or something was drinking animal blood now that's such a cough out like just even though that because i i don't know why i for some reason i thought yeah yeah yeah here we go it is it is elsewhere it is so the clan mother feared they would spread the flu uh sorry this led them to feeding on thin blooded animals um causing the members of the clan to weaken and their blood to thin they were unable to defend themselves when necromancers came in and killed the clan mother um then a power struggle occurred between those who wish to stick to feeding on animals and those that wish to expand their palate to people so they're wait wait they were weaker when the with animal blood if they're weakened then that kind of makes doesn't that make but wait if they're weakened by animal blood wouldn't that imply that you're stronger if you have the correct blood or like blood in general yeah so what do you what do you mean well like you know if you're you know how typically you're supposed to get stronger if you have no blood right yes but they're getting weaker by having animal blood as opposed to human blood but human blood should make you weaker yeah i don't know this is what i'm saying is it's the contrived part of it i feel like look the most quintessential part of a vampire is fangs and feeding on someone right i feel like neglecting that part of it kind of it's probably like their equivalent of having a plant-based burger or something like that but hold on on hold on just just to clarify the beyond i think i think the the main aspect here is not that it is that drinking animal blood didn't just like oh make them human and mortal i think it like made them weaker as in like weak like weaker than even just immortal who doesn't have vampirism i feel like the vibe is like decrepid or like it's strange and this is obviously the thing like that uh we're sort of saying it's like there's all these different elements that are kind of mixed from different games that are like oh we like because you know like eso not um vampires not being affected by the sun because you can't control like you can't go and sleep in an mmo and then wake up and the sun's kind of gone kind of thing you know what i mean like that yeah so it's like this constant sort of deal i don't know i feel like some of the law gets con like you know mixed around and so on but i i feel like i like the way that a lot of the mods do it where you have to feed to stave off the sun but also the more you feed over time like your like total feed count makes you stronger and stronger and you basically upgrade in levels of vampire and ability i kind of like rather than like i don't mind i guess is what i'm saying i don't mind it but it's just like if it's one of those things i guess if you were like oh you could make a look they like like our last episode we're talking about law changes it's like that's an example of where okay vampires feed together i suppose you do feed to um like with uh perks and stuff like that it was kind of like like to get vampire purse yeah wasn't that involved yeah i guess like maybe as well you could look at it as being a bit different to werewolves because werewolves kind of keep feeding and like keep their momentum going whereas vampires don't really do that like i said i can appreciate both i actually wanted to talk about the that elsewhere story a bit more because there is this clan the tenon zelveets who are an ancient khajiit vampire clan um but they actually had the donation system that uh drew was suggesting so basically they coexisted with the living khajiit by watching over their dead in exchange for blood offerings um but it was the it was the heart and flu that ruined everything so basically that caused a massive increase of clan members um as flu victims were kind of aided by being turned into vampires you know you don't have to die you can become a vampire but then there's so many vampires and not enough mortals to give blood offerings to so it's like that whole that whole setup gets destroyed right and then it's like okay now we can either go out and basically have to hunt humans because we can't get blood offerings anymore or we can just have anima thin blooded animals but see that that's a really cool story but i think that's creative because it's under the implication that like they need blood like from somewhere is the kind of thing do you know what i mean like they can't just go live in a cave and be eternal forever it seems like and maybe it is just to stave off the sun like if you're giving the benefit of the data it's like they need it to interact with normal societies i mean particularly in elsewhere imagine that like the sun would be more brutal there compared to other places i imagine yeah like it wouldn't be easy but that's a cool take i i like things when they do like that story that's a cool little story yeah and i mean like i said we we can just do it bloodline specific yeah and just you know why not both well and on the topic of elsewhere there's also the holofang clan which is it's interesting because they seem to revere sangin which is their version of sanguine as the blood god and uh you can kind of see the connection because it in elsewhere as well as the rest of tamriel sanguine is associated with you know distractions and vices and and to them it's taking you off the path so the path to the heavens to the sounds behind the stars um if you stray from the path which it makes sense because if you become an immortal vampire you're straying from the the path the process of dying and ascending to the heavens so as well as him being the blood god it makes sense for him to be the patron of vampires because becoming immortal is inherently to stray from the path um see what you mean it's also what's interesting though too that always with sangan is that obviously it sounds the most like sanguine but it's kind of like mafala's sphere like god of death and secret murder saying what's where she was hidden like for who can control the urges of blood but like it's just an interesting and obviously that's like an older piece of law and maybe they're sort of softly tried to like you know not bring that part up anymore but that's always one thing that stood out in the elso pantheon to me is that sanguine takes on a very different sphere in some way yeah well i mean that goes all the way to the top doesn't it with like anura and fatimize that the the the primordial force of light is kind of the more negative one in their creation story i think it's too like how yeah who they make more because i'm pretty sure uh mafala has like a better better view to the khajiit as well like isn't like because they like those they like essentially the three sister data consider as well though that elsewhere society is very involved with moon sugar right so that kind of like they're already used to that sanguine's got a uppie's game you can't be like oh skooma for everyone because they just do that anyway uh yeah for some reason what i was saying yeah well shea gorath gets called the skooma cat i feel like he might take on a little bit more elements of the sort of like debauchery and stuff for them like just that it's also like moon sugar or on other races is much more likely to kind of um have the negative effects and drive you a bit mad but even khajiit if they abuse the substance too much yeah will have more powerful negative effects so i guess that's where it's kind of like if you if you take too much moon sugar if you get too into the skooma then you know you head into the chevron isles i feel like it would have to be the skooma like the the real concentrated powerful stuff um because they just put moon sugar on everything it's actually funny that clown you were talking about drew they were trying to drink a vampire's blood uh sorry a dragon's blood in the elder scrolls online to strengthen themselves and they'll be so they're seconds themselves well there's another example of drinking blood to get stronger scott yeah well since we just did elsewhere we can like kind of duck over to valenwood next door because they've got some really cool um vampires so there's the t i get them confused telboth is the kid yeah one yeah so the tellwath vampire basically go into a family kill a kid impersonate that kid and then the family comes back it's like i'm living with my kid and then you know obviously then the kid kills the family see this specific example is kind of what i was getting at with the the paranoia and the wives tales like imagine you just want to to feast on some blood you could pretty much just kill the family out right but the idea of you know taking and eating the kid when they're on their own and then replacing the kid and mimicking them and infiltrating the family making them love and trust you and then killing them after like potentially years seems a little bit extreme and it's sadistic it is it is what makes vampires scary sometimes because it's very different to like a werewolf you get the impression they're not really going to play with their food if you know what i mean they're going to kill you they're going to eat you but it's very much in the way that a human hunts and eats an animal oh i mean it's a bit different but there's less of this element that vampires can have which is i find this fun you know or i'm going to i mean simply look at the you know her scene and his realm and his sphere versus molag bao you know yeah it becomes more obvious when you look at it like that um the other clan is the karil clan that can disintegrate into mist and that just sounds cool but it sounded cooler i guess in the law before you have things like the turning into bats ability or the miss stuff in in volca skyrim but like i do like those sort of more the supernatural elements of a vampire like going to a cloud of bats or turn into a mist or you know it's funny but like shape-shifting is even a vampire thing in a lot of traditional sort of law like being able to turn into a wolf and stuff and that's other things but but turning into a mist but what's interesting and i'm assuming this has been added in eso is that they feed using um horvals which are like these big like tick looking things that drink blood so to survive so then they feed off the ticks in the reclusive and then i feel like yeah they also have the the yeck f clan who's apparently swallow men whole which could be just a story but it also makes you think a bit of the say see snake men of akavir the idea of kind of like like a serpent just engulfing the entire person yeah it's kind of like a mention like a super sized version of you know when um um you know in witcher when the vampires like they turn into that bat form they get angry with that but then getting bigger and bigger and bigger like this big needle team yeah it's kind of cool and there's also the bonsamu vampires who we don't really know much about we we know that they're indistinguishable from normal bosma unless seen by candlelight so i get the impression that that means that no matter how much they wouldn't feed they wouldn't turn into like some obvious vampire um at least you know why go to the point of saying that they're indistinguishable yeah unless seen by a candlelight although what defines candle light i mean could be a dumb question could we light from a candle i guess it's why why not other light yeah well it's interesting it's like the difference is fire light gives them away but not sunlight but which is weird isn't it but yeah but would would it be fire light or do you reckon it's more mythical than it is candlelight like if i cast a fire excel if i cast a fire spell will that work or is it specifically like scott you're saying like a wax based fire i don't know i mean if you're at the point of casting a fireball spell at out they're probably toasted yeah and that's another thing we should say vampires do have um not just strengths they have weaknesses you know primarily to sun and fire and things like that and i i really want to see that in elder scrolls six let's give us more advantages and more drawbacks and i want advantages in humanoid form not just vampire lord go crazy into a big creature mode there's something else i desire out of elder scrolls six is actually like a really stupid bloodline yeah i was about to say the game itself but like morrowind like you know how morrowind had um the ande and burn and so on um three different clans with different sort of specifics but if you go back to like daggerfall um so the high rock hammerfell iliac bay region there's lots of different bloodlines that have their own specific advantages like some of them might even be like a a paralyzed thing or one of them might be like you know profound intellect or or stuff like that um and they had their own bloodlines and what actually like something older scrolls online added so there's like there's all these bloodlines like anthotis and like lyresi and seleno but a few of those were actually killed directly by lma and turned into vampires and so it was like a needy guy called selena for example or actually maybe it was a girl i can't remember but um called selenu um there is a girl i think i don't know anyway so anyway but they actually become the namesake for the whole bloodline so in the same thing with like la rezzy or something like that it actually becomes the namesake for these bloodlines that then existed um yeah selena was a female um she ordered lemay's cremation and was attacked when she awoke on the pile to be fair too they are the seven differences uh in the daggerfall games and so on between the different clans they're relatively small like oh this bloodline's resistant to elemental attacks and so on i would prefer i think like if they were more distinguished like if you had fewer but more if i if you want i can i agree with that i mean you i can read them off like reset is um you know a very nimble bloodline um we've got thraphae which can restore damaged tissue i don't know it's some kind of wolverine type thing um seleno um like you said resistant to elemental attacks which is kind of not particularly special montalion can cure paralysis and can teleport which is kind of cool lyresi can turn invisible and magically silence their enemies kolari can paralyze their prey dominates an area of hammerfell venue gifted in destruction magic particularly elemental attacks which might sound funny to people who have only played skyrim because that's all destruction is to them but in previous games destruction had a lot more applications and garlicy can magically shield themselves from damage and fotus have great intellect wow so i agree with you i mean if you look at skyrim and you just look at powers and perks and things that they gave vampires there's a lot of stuff there you know what i mean like um vampire seduction whereas it seems like in um daggerfall it was kind of like oh we're gonna make a whole vampire line and you're the seduction power one whereas and i can cluster them together more i still want lots of different ones but you can pull in maybe three or four factors together and have less but more fleshed out clans than there were but i also like the sort of unique takes on them that they can they could have just like kind of like you're talking about even the the night stalker vampires and the khajiit ones and like just even not so much their biology but i guess their unique like cultural take but like when you hear about the volca vampires in the law they're like these sort of um they stay in these frozen lakes and then they sort of like appear through and like sort of like you know can just sort of come out of the ice just like they're just going straight through it and then come out and attack their victims and like that kind of stuff's cool but when you see the vault car vampires they seem more like traditional like dracula they were pretty cool but i have to admit i didn't know that law before playing dawnguard back in did it come out in 2011 the dlc 12. oh it would have been of course because it was november release yeah yeah um yeah but all that laura it makes them sound so much more skyrim nords than than what we saw like icy caves and it just makes them sound more like monsters whereas they gave them this very not even just traditional vampire well i suppose it is traditional but this very regal court and like you know politics and hierarchy and it's like which is fine but and it's like i like that that's good but it should be like one of the three options or if there are three or one of the two do you know what i mean like just sort of it should be one sort of vibe it kind of feels like they their vampires kind of became a little bit more like what you'd feel like the cereal vampirium order no not so much the vodka where it gets a bit more monstrous but you know what i mean the aesthetic the very transylvanian type castle the very like you do you know what i mean all of the the batmotion well i don't know i know what you mean the cereal order one though i feel like wouldn't even have a castle they're just like blending incognito tab but you know yeah yeah but yeah i just feel like they should try and um hone in on a few different and an easy way to do it is like a stealth warrior mage archetype but obviously do something a little bit like morrowind did but something a little bit more interesting than just that you know what i mean like in terms of abilities and stuff like that like even if the vampire like here's cool idea like what if those vampire lords looked different like if there was three the bloodlines like you know you can have the more traditional sort of looking one but then maybe one is a like if there was a was it quora are the handheld ones in morrowind right like imagine if a vampire lord of them were um was like a very like beast you like hands like bigger talons or something looking one or i don't know or it could be cool but i know i know in um the elder scrolls online they created a whole bunch of other vampiric-esque like i don't know if i'm the biggest fan of them but like cut off things like you have um completely feral vampires called blood fiends and again this kind of goes differently with the law where it is based on like when a vampire starves and loses their sanity and turns feral um like it's like okay so do they do they get stronger or do they get weaker this this is the problem with like a game series that lasts like for ages and so on but like obviously old vampires in the in the previous games um were how they were but in the newer games it seems like they're slowly trying to like transition towards like because everything a lot of the things that you've listed off in eso law like the whole khajiit stuff and like this and even um lemay bell's bloodline and so on like they kind of seem to be kind of shifting it towards a uh uh feed to get powerful kind of deal and then there's all these penalties for starving and it's not ideal because you would even resort to using animal blood but could it around couldn't you also say that um you can become more powerful but more insane i'm not saying that's the case with the blood fiends but almost like a real sith lord vibe like you can't handle the power like so they just became this insane feral kind of beast whereas because i mean even in oblivion it's again it depends on the nuance you can always like make it work in the law by being creative and doing some mental gymnastics but um lord leviticus the father of the um grand champion yeah yeah yeah what's his name agranach so when he the whole story with him is that he's insane he's in this four and he's so hungry that he's turned insane yeah yeah it's just you know what's your take true what are you doing i think it's the case that eso kind of just needs new enemy types it's it's the same with the blood knights the idea that they've kind of absorbed other vampires seems seems a bit unusual when these you know you don't really have these kind of like uh cannibalistic vampires who are you know breaking each other's immortality to become stronger themselves and then they're kind of just like extreme like vampire lord looking creatures they almost have it's weird vibes sorry they almost have thalma vibes in the armor aesthetics yeah i i think it is it is kind of just a case of oh we've got a vampire themed section of a dlc we need different enemy types for them they all look different too i mean even look at a male vampire lord lord um falgriven he just looks like you know dorian yates just possessed a vampire lord's body he looks like a massive bodybuilder tank one thing one thing i won't say too much because it's actually our next episode in lycanthropy but they do a similar thing with like werewolf types of in um in eso where they've needed a bunch of enemies but they can't just all be like running at you like werewolves so they've created like man beasts like man bear pig that's a life ink off when i hear it but it's like and they've even got like this vicosa the ascendant a werewolf lord it's they're all like humanoid but with beastial qualities like a halfway point but it's kind of like just this big but big you know mob of enemies that you've got to get through for a dlc it's the same sort of deal yeah another another one with vampires in older scrolls online is the the blood science um which involve lemay so initiates must undergo the right of the scion while infected with noxiophilic in order to receive the blessing it is um involves the mortals blood being fully replaced by that of lemay bowels and it that transformation is meant to rival the power of a vampire lord they grow more powerful the more they feed they can sense their prey through walls and envelop themselves in a swarm of bats they don't even have the aversion to fire some that lesser vampires possess and if you look at what a blood cyan looks like they kind of don't look i don't like the look of them um they kind of look like a generic demon slash like they look like molag bao fused with a vampire lord but then became smaller more like a scamp i don't know like yeah the daedric elements are massively played up yeah can you you looking at the same picture as me i think so the blood sign yeah yeah so and that's from having lemay's blood yeah yeah do you think she's oh blood type like lameo [Laughter] i don't know maybe but uh and then there's also the the sorry the blood notes or did we go over that kind of yeah like the idea that they absorb other yeah vampires to become uber vampires and and someone lady a senior was able to create her own blood nights by blending the bloodlines of several vampires using azure plasma as a catalyst she would then infect vampires with this mix with this mixture she dubbed it chaotica vampiris it only affects those already inflicted with vampirism pretty gnarly yeah um what else is to say about vampires we could talk about their artifacts a bit like they're they have a few artifacts um although it they're not particularly interesting at least the ones in skyrim like the ring of the the beast and ring of gosh is that pronounced erudite or is that how you see rudolph i always forget how to say that i don't know the um yeah there's a lot of a lot of the rings and stuff and amulets and things like that and i feel like a lot of these like they're nothing uh special i i wonder if you actually want to talk about like just some of the things that kind of are vampiric but not vampire like so just just to make some distinctions for people in case i don't know but like um the vampiric elements of like say essie or as they're referred to um pretty sure is just referring to the way that they sort of steal and like that could even interpret it with like culture and stuff but it could be like you know literally their bodies and so on and drinking the blood but there's also the ash vampires of degoth er which have nothing to do with molag bell they're just just called ash vampires because i feel like that's it's a cool name like they're a technical they're like an undead-ish kind of thing in the same way that uh that there's an ash ghoul but it's not it's different it's degother stuff it's not like related to my leg bell i mean his his mesa is sometimes called the vampire's mace that's one of its names which is cool and it's called that harken has an akaviri katana as his sword as well like it kind of plays into that whole thing i like that i do think i think molag bal is most interesting when we are talking about the corruption of things so obviously uh what is essentially forced sexual assault or like like a you can look at as that or like you know bloodlines like vampires sort of state like corrupting the cycle of life and death and you know when he's his whole role the corruption part is a far more like demonic and i guess scary element rather than things like i want to take over tamriel like dominate like i find the domination part of him less compelling like the corruption part it makes him so much more evil do you know what i mean like yeah yeah i don't know yeah it's like he probably wouldn't have even created vampires were it not for rk's fear and that you know the importance of the cycle of life and death and things like it he does a lot of things in spite and that's kind of you know what is how his domination should be is that he puts in this insidious illness or something like this that spreads among mortals and corrupts them all and that that's a better way of getting domination than just coming in with a big whip like putting everyone in chains and stuff but yeah well i feel like that brings us to the end of vampires um yeah they may be immortal but this podcast today is not so thank you ladies and gentlemen for watching and uh social media links in the description and we'll be back to nerd out with you all again very soon

Channel: FudgeMuppet

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Length: 51min 40sec (3100 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 11 2021