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

Varric is busily adding whiskey to his tea, because fuck this day, and fuck everything else, too. He makes a point of sticking his head out the door and yelling out, "Bodahn! Wine cellar- help yourself to anything, and I'll replace it. Day off."

Of course, he does that knowing that Bodahn won't actually take the day off for anyone but Hawke, but shit. The man deserves a drink or twelve after what Varric just put him through.

After spicing up his own tea, he goes and shoves the flask in her hands.

"So what's the plan? Did our nighttime gang fights just become grocery runs?"

"Somehow I never made a plan for getting turned into a monstrous creature of the night who sucks on necks and is allergic to silver." Hawke has a dark sense of humor. Always has. And a good thing too, in these circumstances. It's what keeps her from throwing up, or screaming, or destroying the rest of her furniture. "Seems to obvious now that I should have gotten around to that one."

She lifts the mug to her nose and inhales the smell of it, closes her eyes, tries to pretend it smells appetizing, or at least comforting. It doesn't.

The hands that gave it to her are another matter.

She walks across the room, not looking at his face. She doesn't want to see whatever expression he's wearing. "And no. No nighttime grocery runs. Period."

“So the plan is starving?” he asks drily, taking another pull of whisky before again attempting to make her take the damn flask. “Sounds fantastic. Just as long as you keep me in the loop.”

There’s no quibbling or denying or bullshit. He has plenty of what-the-fuck in him, but that look in Hawke’s eyes is scaring him. The most important thing is making sure she still has some will to live. Hawke is a vampire- massively fucked up? Yeah, no shit. But it’s a thing and brooding won’t fix it. All that’s left is taking care of her. Figuring out how to move forward.

"I wouldn't call it a plan so much as the likeliest outcome," she retorts, going back to pacing, since that worked so well before when they were grilling Fenris. Hawke has plenty of will to live--but not at any price.

Still, she doesn't look as though she's planning to go out and sit in the sunshine. There's that.

"But who knows? Maybe it means I just live a floppy, pasty existence confined to my bed because I'm a picky eater and refuse to eat my vampire vegetables. I'm immortal now, right? Can't starve to death if you're immortal." She stops abruptly and falls on her back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. "Of all the sick jokes The Maker has played with our lives, this is one of the most impressive."

Edited (I edit a lot okay) 2018-04-24 16:00 (UTC)

"I don't know," he drawls, before walking over to her and parking his ass on the chair by the bed. "City full of blood-magic-paranoid templars, and the biggest non-mage pain in the ass gets turned into a bloodsucker? As an author, I can appreciate the grand irony."

Still, he looks at her. Varric can accept a lot of things, but losing Hawke isn't one of them.

"Stop looking at me like that." She'd swear he hasn't blinked for an hour. She might not have looked at him directly, but she doesn't have to; she knows him. "I promise I'm not going to sharpen a stake and throw myself on it. Not without trying to find some way to undo this crap first, at least. Whatever Fenris said."

“I’ll shake every tree and hit up every connection I got,” Varric concedes. “Meanwhile, you’re no good to anyone hungry and weak.”

Not that he knows the first thing about vampires- but he knows stories and lore and people. Anything that hungers, starves. Anything that starves grows desperate. Desperation is more dangerous than any enemy Varric has ever faced.

“You think you’re dangerous now? Remember how hungry feels. Haven’t eaten in days hungry- remember the Deep Roads? Multiply it by weeks, marinated in predatorial instinct, and you have a recipe that can’t possibly be healthy.”

Aware that this topic is less than helpful, he forges on.

“Lucky for you, the edible scum of Darktown, and your legion of loved ones, I have an idea.”

She looks darker and darker the more he talks, because he's right. She doesn't like it, but he's right. She'd like to think she can keep things under control, but it's not going to be like when they were underground and thinking longingly of food that wasn't there. There was no danger of coming across a stray steak and devouring it, and even if they had, the steak wouldn't have cared.

She closes her eyes, distinctly aware that despite what she only just now promised, staking herself would probably be the smartest option, assuming that she wants to die as herself more than she wants to live as...she doesn't know what.

But she did promise. And they're still collecting information, really. She makes a silent note to have a word with Fenris later, however. Contingencies. Varric will no doubt make his and she'll make hers.

Hawke already forsees them keeping a lot of secrets from each other, and she already dislikes it.

"I hope your plan is a really, really good one," she says, still staring up at the ceiling. "Because I frankly admit I'm at a loss here. Except that I am not going to prey on people. I don't care of they're criminals, gang scum, or Meredith."

It comes out pretty heated by the end; someone is more freaked out by this situation than she's letting on, clearly. But she calms down enough to finish, "And she'd probably poison me anyway, vampire or not."

He waves a hand dismissively. "Perish the thought, I won't allow my lady to dine on such filth. For you, my dear, I would offer nothing but the best."

He lays a hand on his own chest. Lets the implication sink in.

"Don't freak out. Hear me out." Does he know her, or what? "My plan includes having Fenris standing behind you with silver, ready to, ah, get you to stop if needed- and Blondie, healing magic and crazy-powerful spirit roommate at the ready. Plus, I'd work out a signal with them ahead of time for when things get too much- something I'd be able to do while... not at my best."

If the wording is delicate, it's to avoid offending her sensibilities too terribly.

"No."

Succinct.

Obviously. Varric heaves a long-suffering, infinitely patient sigh and starts in again.

"Look, Hawke, you can't do better than this. It's a plan with consent, a healer, spirit cavalry, witnesses-"

"No."

She flings herself off the bed, walks towards the window, paces back, circles her own steps in the room like a dog chasing its tail. All the while she's talking, a stream of words gushing out like a dam breaking, or air escaping a balloon. "No, Maker, no, fuck, no, never, never. First Teo and now you. No. How can you ask that? How can you even suggest that I could just--just feed on you, like you're a piece of fucking meat instead of--and do it with an audience, surrounded by people prepared to put me down like a rabid bear if I lose it, and, and--"

It is more like air escaping from a balloon, because suddenly all the air is gone. Not just the words but the air. She's on her knees retching and doesn't know how she got there, and she can't breathe and maybe she shouldn't, maybe she doesn't even need to anymore but something in her chest is burning and wanting air so probably she does, but there isn't any, and Teo shoves his way into her face and she pushes him away hard enough that he rolls halfway across the room because no, no, no, no, no--

Varric freezes, caught between warring urges. His instinct is to hold her: take her in his arms and surround her with comfort and press the panic out of her. The rest of him notices that she just flung a goddamn full grown mabari across the room like a feather, and given that he's the cause of her panic, he's not sure if he should be near her. It might make the fear worse, to have him so close after suggesting she feed on him.

It's just then that the door slams open and Bodahn and Orana pour in. Orana, poor girl, looks terrified out of her wits, and Bodahn appears to be having a conniption of some kind. They add to the confusion in the room, overlaying Teo's sounds of distress. The poor dog, after getting up, sets to making a strange tinny whine that doesn't stop. Apparently, seeing Hawke in pain and not being able to help has finally broken him.

While Varric tells them to give her room, and Orana fearfully asks if Mistress is losing herself like her last mistress did, and Varric and Bodahn both tell her to quiet lest they panic Hawke more, something happens. They all miss who slips through the door next, except Teo- whose noises change pitch, but keep going.

Bodahn cuts through the bullshit with a nervous, "Sandal? Sandal, my boy-"

The dwarf ignores his father entirely. Kneeling in front of Hawke, he takes her face in his broad hands utterly without fear, and raises her head to look him in the eyes.

He doesn't say anything. He just gazes, meeting her baby blues with his own, wide and sad and kind. "Shhh," he soothes gently. The way he's holding her, she might as well be one of his delicate, impossibly precious enchantments.

She doesn't hear the others come in, doesn't hear anything past a roaring in her ears. There's a pressure in her chest and darkness closing in (fuck, fuck, Maker, that's too accurate, that's really too accurate), and there's no air and no light and then there's a pair of hands cradling her face and it all stops.

It's that sudden. The noise, the closing-in, the lack of breath--all of it halts, slowed down so much that time seems motionless. There's just Sandal's eyes, large and guileless, pools to fall into. There's nowhere to hide in them. There doesn't need to be.

She gasps suddenly as the ability and need to breathe comes back to her, and his hands press just a little harder to keep her attention. Automatically she matches her breathing with his. In, out. Slow, calm. Just breathing, just air, nothing else. There's nothing in Sandal's eyes that judges her, and nothing that's afraid.

After a few lifetimes of this she's back in herself enough to realize she has a raging headache and that Teo is keening. She closes her eyes, her expression pained. Sandal leans forward and rests his head against hers. "Shhh," he says again, and then he lets go and the rest of the world comes back.

It's a bit of a mess, the world. Orana is scared, Bodahn is somewhere between angry and worried (for her or Sandal? Either way it's one of the rare times she's seen him being less than perfectly urbane). Teo crawls back along the floor back to her, scooting on his belly, and her heart stops for a moment with the idea that she might have injured him and starts again the next second as she recognizes his body language as being not injured, just deeply unhappy. And Varric--

She doesn't look at Varric. She still can't, not yet.

"Thank you," she manages, and what conversation there was in the room abruptly stops. "I think we're done here, for the moment. And I need a word with Varric, please." She reaches out and rubs Teo's fur, tugging lightly on one of his ears. "There's a few changes coming, and as soon as we figure out what they are we'll let you know. For the moment you'd better refuse entry to anyone who isn't on the list, however." 'The List' being Hawke's actual friends, the ones she most trusts. "Just...say I'm indisposed. For now."

There's a little more conversation, well-meant. Orana offers to make her some soup, and Sandal has a quick word with Varric that Hawke misses. Teo's stopped keening and is letting himself be comforted. Hawke tries to do the same. The staff all let themselves out and the room is quiet again.

She still can't look at him. She takes a breath. "From a cup, maybe. If you can stand to be that cold-blooded about it, pardon the phrasing."

She doesn't doubt it won't be as satisfying, won't be what she'll crave. But it's a compromise she can maybe accept. It doesn't make her shudder with horror the way his idea did, though it takes a certain amount of detachment even to suggest it.

When Sandal gets too close to Hawke Bodahn makes as if to move, but Varric puts a hand on his arm and tells him to let Sandal go. Orana is still scared, wondering if they should go help Mistress, and Varric's patience snaps as he tells her for fuck's sake, stop calling her that. It's stupid, but Hawke cuts through it all by speaking again.

Varric has to take Sandal aside. It's remarkable, really. He's always thought the lad has more going on upstairs than people give him credit for, but this kind of intuition is... really something. "Look, Sandal..."

Sandal cocks his head. "Help!"

"That's right," he smiles, patting Sandal on the shoulder. "You helped better than I did, kid. Thanks."

Sandal leans in close. "She's sharp and pointy now. Hun-gry. Hungry."

"....Right. Thanks again, Sandal." With that disturbing exchange, Varric lets Bodahn hustle his son away to help Orana with the soup.

Then it's just the two of them. He doesn't look at her, either.

"Alright. When?"

Edited 2018-04-27 22:10 (UTC)

"I don't--" She swallows, stops, takes a breath. She probably doesn't need it. Old habits die hard.

A lot of things die hard.

"...tomorrow. We shouldn't wait longer than that." Another breath. "And you shouldn't stay here tonight. Not in the same room, at least. We don't know if I can be trusted." She looks up and gives him a smile that's a pale imitation of its usual self, much like the rest of her. "I don't want to wake up and find myself fancying a midnight snack."

He agrees with her but insists on staying the night, in the spare bedroom. On the way out, he and Bodahn quietly arrange to have someone awake at all hours. Orana agrees to get up occasionally, to keep an eye out for Hawke, as well.

They aren't obvious about it, but someone else in the house is awake all night.

The next day is pretty easy. It's easy to see what they need: someone nobody would mind bleeding. Everybody's favorite former slave has just the best idea for who, so off to the tunnels he and Varric go, to hunt for a slaver. Fenris plays his role admirably: the prospect of retrieving the prized, infamous Wolf of Seheron has the slaver stalking him through Darktown and right into a certain set of tunnels. Unfortunately for Stunt Vint #3, those tunnels connect to Hawke's basement. Then Fenris's day gets even better. The glow-elf gets to reach his hand right into the man's chest and hold on, keeping him still while Varric and Merrill bleed the guy into a large wine skin.

When the blood flow slows down, Fenris helpfully squeezes the guy's heart a few times.

Gross as hell, but effective.

Once the guy's dead, the elf plops down on an empty trunk and starts cleaning his sword. "I will be here if you need anything," he remarks. "Good luck with her wrath when she realizes the blood is a lethal amount."

Varric suggests a creative solution for where to stick it, and makes his way to Hawke's basement, and up into the manor. Oversized blood canteen in tow.

Hawke doesn't sleep that night. She barely even makes the attempt. She spends most of the night in her training area in the basement. Even weakened by lack of food, she's stronger, faster. It will take time to learn how much and how to control it.

She definitely needs to talk to Fenris again, sooner rather than later. And Merrill. And everyone. Maker, Aveline is going to love this.

She knows she's being watched (how could she not, when she can hear their hearts, the blood pumping in their veins?), and has a few words with each of her servants when it's their turn. She explains very bluntly what's happened and what's being attempted. Orana, to her surprise, not only takes the news in stride but has some useful secondhand knowledge to offer. Bodahn is shocked and horrified, but shakes his head in refusal when she offers to release him from her service.

She gives orders for all of them to purchase silver neck rings from her account, and to wear them. And gives them all a substantial bonus. Orana still doesn't understand the concept of being paid, but Bodahn handles her accounts.

Hawke wonders more than once if she's making a huge mistake.

In the morning she goes to bed, which is probably why Varric is willing to leave the house. She sleeps like the dead until nightfall.

Damn.

Varric waking her up with a canteen is a surprise. She'd actually meant to go through with his original plan of donating his own blood, keeping herself a room or five away, so it'd still be fresh enough to be useable. His plan had been good but Merrill would probably have a better method, to say nothing of knowing how to help Varric recover from the loss afterwards.

As she eyes the canteen with suspicion, she thinks they'll probably end up reverting to that. Whatever's in here will be congealed and disgusting in ways she doesn't want to think about, and Maker only knows where--who--it came from. No one who'll be missed, for certain, no one who the world isn't better off without. No one who survived. She doesn't need to gauge how much blood is in there to be sure of that. She knows her friends.

But she doesn't ask, so Varric doesn't have to lie to her. She just grits her teeth and opens the canteen.

...oh sweet Andraste, the smell. Even like this it's overwhelming. She's been able to ignore her cravings for the past day or two only because all the blood around her has been nicely contained inside people she cares about, but now she's growling and drinking down the contents in a flash, gulping it, and it's cold and disgusting and clotted and her skin crawls and she'd like to vomit and it's life, so sweet, so rich, second-hand and old and what would it be like fresh and warm from the vein and she gasps and oh Maker it's almost obscene how good it tastes and she wants, wants, wants...

When she finishes her mouth is stained red, and she licks her lips so as not to waste a single drop, and she raises a finger to her mouth to feel the sharp fangs there. Not large, but she could expand them, she knows, if she needed to feed. If she decides she wants more.

And Varric is standing right there, and it's a damned good thing he cleaned himself off thoroughly before coming to her--she can smell the soap, strong stuff--or she'd be on him. Yesterday her heart would have sunk at the realization but now she's jubilant, her eyes shining, and she feels stronger than she ever has.

Varric just watches her with bemusement. She takes to the blood like she hasn't eaten in a year and makes a whole richly complex symphony of ravenous sex noises. It's kind of gross, but seeing the color and vitality come back to her is worth it. Her eyes are bright, cheeks pink, lips a vivid red that he'd mistake for lipstick if he didn't know any better.

It's actually a really good look for her. If he's entirely honest with himself.

He tilts his head and chuckles. "Feeling better?"

The change in Hawke is dramatic. She's always been a striking woman, for all that she's cavalier about it, but her features now have a more seductive edge. Her answering grin is downright erotic. "Much," she says, and it's half a purr. She feels...not sated, but the sharp edges poking inside her are gone.

She stretches with a feline grace and stands up, cricking her neck. "I've been inside too long," she announces. "Shall we go find out what I can do now? I sparred my own shadow last night, and the results were interesting."

That’s... different. Sudden. He frowns thoughtfully. “You sure you don’t want to take it slow? Let your dinner settle a little?”

There’s no denying that she looks better- Varric’s having a hard time taking his eyes off her, actually. Regardless, the deshyr learned a long time ago to be wary of sudden changes like this. It usually means weird shit. Not that that’s any different from their normal lives.

She chuckles, a low, wicked sound. "I don't think it settles. It's not as though it's getting digested the way food does." Fucked if she knows how it all works, actually. Just at the moment she doesn't care, except in an abstract, distant manner. "And I've been in bed for days. I want to make sure the rest of the world is still out there."

She stands up and walks over to her wardrobe. She's still in a sleeping shirt, and wants some proper clothes to wear. Something she can move in. She pays absolutely no attention to the fact that Varric is watching as she strips off.

Granted, they are a couple, for all that they haven't yet become lovers. But they both know that last step is just a matter of time.

Perhaps fortunately for the overall weirdness of the situation she doesn't suddenly have an urge to dress only in black or red and take up spooky makeup. She puts on the same sorts of clothes she would usually wear, then puts on her favorite set of armor. She rolls her shoulders experimentally as she buckles it all in place. "You wouldn't believe how light this feels now," she says confidingly. "I bet I could lift you with one hand."

Hawke's normal chuckle is pretty low and wicked, so it actually serves to set Varric's mind at ease. The stripping in front of him- that... that doesn't put him at ease. It makes him cough a little, but goddamn if he doesn't watch every blessed moment of it.

The easy boast she comes out with doesn't help his slightly-turned-on situation at all.

"The real trouble is finding where to lift from. We dwarves aren't like puppies, I wouldn't recommend picking us up by the scruff."

It's not entirely true that Hawke pays no attention to the fact that Varric's there as she strips. It's true that his watching doesn't bother her at all, but she definitely notices the way his breathing changes, the way his heart rate speeds up. He gets another wicked chuckle and a heated, heavy-lidded glance for that. She knows what you're thinking, Varric, and it's just fine by her.

"That's just it, I could lift you with the palm of my hand. Here, try it."

She actually kneels next to him and puts her hand on the ground for him to step on, grinning all the while. "Don't worry, it won't hurt."

He gives her some serious hairy eyeball for that, as if asking her if she's actually nuts, but what comes out is, "You're not gonna turn into one of those obnoxious strong-man types, are you? If I see you grunting and challenging guys to arm wrestle in the Hanged Man, I quit."

For all his ribbing, though, he does tentatively step on her hand. Slowly at first, looking at her to make super-extra-double sure that it actually doesn't hurt. Then the other foot follows, with all of his weight.

Vampire AU

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"Italian chef gesture" made me laugh a lot <3

ur welc <3

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swelling dramatic background music here

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I'd rather timeskip fight scenes somewhat. Afraid I'll get blocked if we drag this out too much.

turns out the key to doing tags is "trying" >_>