museyboxy | Vampire AU

Vampire AU

In Thedas, vampirism is a rare, powerful, and highly unusual form of blood magic that can be directly learned only from hunger demons. It differs from all other forms of blood magic in that it directly changes the user's body, making them into essentially a monster.

How to become one: Becoming a vampire is far more involved than learning simple blood magic. It's a ritual that must be conducted in the waking world, rather than the Fade. Therefore, the hunger demon needs a body. In other words, vampirism requires sacrificing someone to become a hunger abomination. The hunger abomination then feeds the mage their own blood, and drains the mage's blood in return. Once the last drop of living blood is gone from the mage's body, they collapse and the abomination takes them, feeding on them for a night and a day. The second night, the mage rises again as a vampire, and the hunger demon is freed from the bond between them. Most vampires let the abomination go, but many choose to kill their demonic sire, to cover their own tracks.

How common: The choice to become a vampire is a serious one, requiring a real, extremely risky deal with a demon. Albeit one that many end up betraying. Vampirism is most common in Tevinter, but not as much as one might think: the weaknesses of vampirism make the prospect unattractive to many magisters.

Outside of the Imperium, vampires are the subject of legend and folktales, but most folk, common and educated alike, believe them nothing more than ghost stories. The Chantry teaches nothing about them, and most templars believe them a fiction.

Abilities: Vampires can turn others, of course, in all the usual vampire ways. Vampiric abilities (speed, strength, hypnosis, etc) are immune to templar cleansing and dispels, and vampires cannot be tracked using their mage phylacteries.

Vampires have abilities similar to those in True Blood: speed, strength, the ability to sway the minds of others (glamouring/hypnosis), and heightened senses. Vampire mages can all do blood magic (even if they weren't directly turned by a demon, and never directly learned blood magic). Vampiric weaknesses are similar to those in Buffy: sunlight, though they can handle being in shadows, staking, silver, and certain holy symbols- though, ironically, not the Chantry symbol.

Vampires can walk in sunlight, but it hurts their skin and weakens their abilities. If mages, their magic is hampered, giving them the strength of the average Circle mage and nothing more. Their ability to tolerate sunlight increases the more recently they've fed. However, they will always be stronger at night.

Prompts:
1) Sire - make someone a creature of the night.
2) New Blood - maybe you wanted this, maybe it's being done to you. Welcome to vampirism.
3) Victim - some fanger's sticking a straw into you like you're a Capri Sun.
4) Hunter - did a vamp kill your family? Are you a Templar off the reservation? Idk.
5) Harem - that hypnosis thing? Yeah, you're some vampire's pet now.
6) Wild Card - roll your own. Let's get weird.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Directly inspired by that convo on Plurk: 'what if a group of vampiric blood mages turned Anders into a vampire to make him care enough to include them in his cause'

It was a damn good idea and I tried to do it some justice!

... ehehe, justice. ]

The past few days were a haze of fear and pain in Anders’s memory. He knows he’d been drugged at some point- there was no way Justice wouldn’t have manifested before tonight otherwise, they must have given him something- but he’s still sure he didn’t imagine any of it. There’s also the blood. His robes are absolutely soaked with it. If he doubted his memories, the stains were still there, wet beneath his palms. At least none of it is his.

They’d wanted to make a point, those blood mages. And they had. But what they had thought Anders would do after the fact was still a mystery to him. They’d kept him bound in the dark for days muttering madness about blood magic and hunger demons. Making themselves out to be no worse than any other mage and insisting that his resources be extended to help their kind. As if Anders had resources to extend. As if being kidnapped and trapped in a cellar somewhere in Lowtown would make him suddenly sympathetic to their cause. Why yes, I see it clearly now. Thank you ever so kindly for the abduction. Introduce me to your lovely demon friend. Right.

Still, the amount of death he’d had to cause to escape, and the rather insane amount of blood coating his robes and body, turns Anders’s stomach. Makes him sick. Makes him feel…

Nope, he's not thinking about that last one. He can’t. He just needs to get somewhere familiar, see someone familiar, and then maybe the insanity that has been the past few days will start to make more sense. They’d done something to him before Justice had finally snapped, but it’s all too much to process. Currently, Justice’s presence is an angry buzzing in the back of his thoughts, permeating everything. His head is pounding to boot. And on top of it all, his stomach is cramping, his body aching, his throat bone dry.

He doesn’t realize it’s the Hanged Man he’s moving towards until he hears drunken laughter and the first few strains of music. Not the place he would have chosen if he’d been thinking clearly. Anders obviously can’t just walk in looking like a murder scene. He settles into the alley beside it instead, slumping to the ground as a shudder wracks his body. He’s gotten this far at least. With any luck, he can sneak in after closing… or someone he knows will find him in the meantime.

Shit. Fuck. Maker's sweaty swinging sodding balls and Andraste's entire ass.

She's going to kill them when she finds him. Whoever did this, whoever's responsible for Anders being gone for almost five days- when she finds them, she will paint the walls with their blood, then bring them back from the dead so she can kill them again.

Sometimes Varric tells her to chill the fuck out. Some days, she understands why.

It's not his absence from Wicked Grace night or their outings that bothers her. No, it's when Lirene says he hasn't been seen in his clinic for a few days that the alarm bells really go off. Anders doesn't abandon his patients for anything.

So the last three days have been a blur of searching and exploring and beating people for information. Varric keeps pushing her to the back of the group, says she's too "compromised" to be any good at getting answers this way. His spy network is working double-time but isn't doing any fucking good; it's been days and nobody has any idea of where he might be.

When they aren't sending search parties out, Merrill and Hawke have been splitting time at the clinic. Neither of them is much good at healing, but they do what little they can, and at least they can offer cold for swelling and heat for aches. It's not much, but they try. They try, because Hawke doesn't want to let Anders down. She's let him down in so many ways already: not reading his damn manifesto, not getting involved enough with the mage underground (not that he would let her), never telling him-

-that thought always makes her stomach twist, and then she has to go home. The path home from Darktown could be simple: it could be as simple as taking the passage through her basement. But Marian needs some air, she needs some night sky, so she takes the long route through Lowtown and tries not to think. She tries not to think about Anders dying before she ever got the chance to tell him how she feels. She tries very hard not to think about Anders in the Gallows, the Templars finding a way to pry Justice from him so they can give him the brand.

Her feet steer her towards the Hanged Man, knowing how badly she needs the comfort of a friendly face. Rather than take the front door, she uses the side entrance these days, hidden in the alley. But then-

"Anders!" The cry tears from her throat like something breaking. She runs to him, heart pounding in her chest. That can't be him, can it? Covered in that much blood? It looks like him, it feels like him when she gathers him in her arms. "Oh Maker- Anders? Anders, please say something."

It takes Anders a second to really process that Hawke is there, her arrival an overwhelming mix of sensory input that his body is just starting to learn how to process. He swears he can hear her heartbeat, the rapid pulse of it, even from the entrance of the alley. And it’s as if he can feel it when she holds him, her body thrumming with heat and life. It’s so distracting that he doesn’t consciously notice who it is that has found him for a second or two.

Then he realizes that it’s Hawke, and the relief hits him so hard he feels almost dizzy with it. It’s almost enough to drown out the rest, his strange new awareness of the world around him and the hunger gnawing away at him from the inside. Almost.

“It’s not mine,” he croaks out, grinning weakly. Is that his voice? He barely recognizes it. He clears his throat and tries again. “The blood. It’s not mine.” That’s a bit better. Much as Anders would love to sit up on his own and show Hawke there’s nothing to worry about, he’s finding the concept a lot more difficult to execute than it should be. He lets his weight rest on Hawke instead, indulging for a moment in the reality of her presence there. He’d had his own regrets down there in the dark. Of course he’d thought of the clinic, of his cause and the unfinished work he still had to do. He’d driven himself half-mad over it.

But just as often his thoughts had turned to Hawke and how many things he wished he could have told her. Things he knew he couldn’t say but had ached to speak regardless, especially now that he feared he’d never have the chance to again. How would she react to him vanishing, he’d wondered? Would she think he had picked up and run away again? Or would she do something foolish and impulsive in her worry? He’d tried not to mull over it, but he’d had plenty of time to do so. His captors hadn’t exactly given him anything better to do.

For now it’s enough to just be in her presence and, for the first time in days, feel safe.

“I’m alright,” he reassures her, even as his voice cracks. “I’m fine.” He lets out a shaky breath as another shudder runs through him. "You have no idea how good it is to see you."

"Oh, I don't know," she sniffs, mildly appalled at her eyeballs for Doing The Thing. "I love seeing me. Give me five minutes and a mirror, and I might even beat you."

Will she ever stop making stupid fucking jokes at inappropriate times? No, no she will not. The dipshit humor is offset somewhat by the tender way she brushes his hair from his eyes, and calls some healing magic to her fingertips to find any injuries.

The magic has nowhere to go. He really is unhurt. Hawke lets it dissipate with a confused frown that deepens as she looks him over. There's something strange, something different about him- exhaustion, probably, and starvation- Maker, he probably hasn't eaten in days.

"Come on, let's get you up," she insists, trying to stand up with his weight on her. "This isn't the time for my roaring rampage of revenge, but if I have to keep looking at you all bloody like that, it might just start happening now."

Anders laughs weakly at the joke, grateful for the humor. Leave it to Hawke to make him laugh even in the strangest and darkest of times. It’s a trait he wouldn’t trade for anything just now. He does what he can to help her prop them both up, an arm around her shoulders as he finds his footing.

“Unfortunately for you, I don’t think I left anyone behind for your rampage.” His slight lingering smile vanishes at the memory. He can’t be sure he destroyed them all, really. Just the ones who had been there at the time. They had made it sound like there were more of them- if not in Kirkwall, then elsewhere. How many were there, prowling the streets and feeding off people like animals?

“They were blood mages, Hawke. An entire group of them.” He looks at her, his eyes flashing strangely in the dark. It’s not the lyrium-glow of Justice’s presence. More like the way a cat’s eyes shine in low light. “They wanted me to take part in a ritual, and I refused. Then they…” Another shudder, his skin crawling as he remembers. “… did something else.”

"Please tell me it didn't involve nugs or feather boas," she quips tersely. "I don't think the chorus lines of Hightown could survive the image."

Covering up the sick lurch of fear in her gut? Probably. Smoothing down the rising gorge of rage and heartsick that made her want to cry? Oh, definitely.

Anything was better than looking back at Anders's fearful expression and strange eyes.

"Just- try and walk with me, okay?"

Hawke took the heroic and incredibly intelligent approach of walking Anders right up to the nearest guardsman and demanding their help. Seeing as everybody knew Serah Hawke, most acutely as the woman who helped fix their Captain up with Donnic, the Guardsman Brennan was more than happy to help. After she was done freaking out about what the sodding shite happened to Anders, of course. Hawke had said something about blood mages, then given Brennan a nod that said I took care of it. She believed Hawke; everyone believed Hawke. Nobody believed that Hawke would leave someone alive who hurt anybody she cared about.

With the guardsman's help, they got Anders to her manor in Hightown. Bodahn let them in, Sandal got a bath running, and Ox stood there unhelpfully and growled at Anders, to Hawke's utter shock.

"Get off, you idiot! Can't you see it's Anders?" she snapped, entirely too distressed at seeing her dog react badly. That couldn't be good- not even a little.

Anders can see the tension in Hawke and the telltale sheen in her eyes, and he wishes he was in a better position to do something about it. He’d like nothing better than to reassure her. If only he wasn’t so uncertain himself, didn’t feel so strange inside of his own skin.

He does his best through it all- the guard and the rush to Hightown, the attendants and the process of preparing the bath. But there’s a disturbing shift about halfway through: the buzz in his head becomes less unfocused and agitated, coalescing into a single lucid thought.

Send her away.

It’s not that Anders and Justice ever talk. They’re too much a part of each other for that. Was it really possible to have a conversations with yourself? But when there are thoughts and emotions they don’t outright share, they come across as impressions and quick bursts of emotion. It’s all very abstract. Rarely does a single thought come across so explicitly.

Anders ignores the foreboding feeling that thought brings with it and focuses instead on staying upright. And there are other distractions, unexpected ones. Is it his imagination, the way he can see things so clearly in the shadows? What about how he can hear the murmur of conversations from behind the closed doors on the street? Then there's the rhythmic, almost hypnotic beat of Hawke's heart that knows he shouldn't be able to hear. If he's lucky, he's not actually hearing it at all. Anders would like nothing more than to find out he's hallucinating all of these little changes

He’s feeling dazed by the time they get to the manor. This is more movement than he's had for days, even without all the added weirdness. The sound of growling brings his eyes down to where Ox stands, tense and on-guard like Anders has never seen the animal. He frowns in response, more puzzled than anything. He’d never been fond of dogs of course, but Ox was fond of nearly everyone. The foreboding weight in his stomach grows heavier.

“It’s fine, it… must be all the blood.” He knows it isn’t, but what else is there to say? Anders reaches up to begin the process of peeling off his blood-encrusted coat, wincing as the smell of stale blood reaches his nose. It’s sharper than it should be.

Send her away.

“I can do this on my own, I think.” Anders forces himself to let go of Hawke, only swaying a little on his feet after. It’s progress, at least.

Hawke looks from Ox to Anders, confused and rapidly becoming stressed as hell at the disheveled state and weird behavior from the mage. He's too quiet, too withdrawn, too reluctant to talk- at least since he said that they did something to him.

"Please, you can't even feed yourself without someone having to blackmail you into it," she protests, somehow letting a thread of sarcasm infiltrate even this moment. "How can I trust you to go an entire bath without breaking something?"

Without further ado, she reaches over and helps with the rest of the buckles on his coat, getting it off of him easily.

The word ‘feed’ does something unpleasant to Anders’s stomach, sharpening the hunger there that has been gradually getting worse this entire time. It’s all starting to make a terrible kind of sense now. If what they had said wasn’t just insanity after all, and they did to him what they said they were going to do…

“Hawke,” he protests as the coat slips off his shoulders. It takes him a moment to get his fumbling fingers on her hands, stilling their progress. He appreciates this, he really does. He can’t help but be a little charmed by her insistence that she help him (even if she did throw some shade his way in the process; though really, it’s not like she’s wrong).

“I’ll be alright. You went through all the trouble of getting me here in one piece. I’ll not undo all your hard work.” He smiles, the expression not quite reaching his eyes through all the worry there. Worry for himself. Worry for her. “I just need a few minutes.”

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i mADE A HAWKE JUST FOR U

AAAAA I'M SO EXCITED

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6- dramatic rescue and 2- new blood

btw, he's got Teo. (because otherwise Teo is dead, and No)

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obviously, let me know if any of this doesn't work

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for burning_manifesto

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