Elf_Ariel said:
Perhaps Than's right though...maybe they should be animalistic and driven only by needs rather than the minds they once had.
No no, Than's that other guy.
And that's not quite what I meant, either. I personally despise 3E's take in having vampires as feral animalistic predators, because it's another support for the "Chaotic Evil = raving idiot" stereotypes that have taken over 4E's demon concepts. But that's more a matter of the company's continued lack of understanding their own material than anything else.
What I meant was that it's part of their nature to prey on others, and view their food sources as cattle. They're predators, and no matter how gentle and sweet a predator might pretend to be, that's ultimately all that it can be - an act, an attempt at being something other than what drives them to feed. It's all part of placing that secondary mindset behind the character that really isn't human anymore, and that applying human logic to only seems to create strange situations (Like the often referenced angels and demons sitting at a table drinking tea and having a good laugh like old college pals).
Then again, I'm extremely fond of leaving my human comfort zone behind when playing my non-human characters. Whether it's a drow, a demon, a vampire, a weretiger, an elf, or one of the obscure original races from my Veghinix writings, I try to drive as much human-baggage away as possible in the process. Understanding the "otherness" of something is often the best way to present it, just like method actors getting into the mindset of their roles, even if they have no prior experience.
Akea said:
... but there's rules and morals set in place to justify themselves as being deemed good or holy. In White Wolf, there's vampires that are high priests and protrude the demeanor of being holy. Opinion is in the eyes of the holder, right? Same goes for the definition of good or bad in anything! Most folks just holds a bias against blood suckers to be evil because of what they must do to survive.
They have morals to justify themselves being more humane, and even then, they demonstrate how unrealistic it is for vampires to not slide away from humanity in short order when so much of what they have to do is bound to cause degeneration.
And they're still bloodsucking undead that have to feed off of the living in order to survive - if your survival is dependent on the harming of others to survive, you are, at best, morally neutral. Is a mosquito evil? No, it's not capable of reasoning - and there's where vampires fall into the territory of evil, and why the "They're just doing what they have to in order to survive" defense holds no weight. They can reasonably be expected to understand that feeding by drinking another's blood is causing them harm, and is therefore, not a 'good' act, especially when feeding from other sapient beings. And they understand that because, before they became undead, they were the very same sapient beings that they now have to harm in order to survive. Without that understanding, it's morally neutral, at best; with it, it becomes evil, since understanding the consequences of our actions and having the judgment to act under that understanding is the very definition of sapience.
They might try to justify it, mind you, sometimes for their own sanity. Or they might try the "I'll only feed a little bit, but never kill anyone" approach. They might even try to only feed off of animals (and hey, then PETA can go after them for animal cruelty
) for a time, to ease their conscience. But underneath, they know what they're doing isn't benign or morally right. Yes, by subjective morality, they can believe whatever they want to believe, but only a sociopath with no regard for life would be able to reason it as a good action, and conveniently enough, that would create the Ding! on the Evil-o-meter too. But objectively, they're fooling themselves if they believe otherwise. Even without the alignment wheel, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that feeding off of another sentient being isn't a "good" thing. Opinion may be in the eyes of the beholder, but objectivity does hold merit in some things, this being one of them.
And since you brought up the Lancea Sanctum, I presume, there's a difference between religious fervor and genuine benevolence. Requiem presents a good deal of that religious fervor, but if you want to call having a holy demeanor justifying being deemed good or holy, then the Crusades were entirely justified as a good thing. Religious =/= righteous, never has, never will. Just like the other Covenants, the Lance are still monsters, and they know it. Hell, go back to Masquerade, the Sabbat had as much fervor as you can get, and no one would suggest that they had holy demeanors.
