Friday, April 5, 2019

Team Succ in the City Finds Their Vampire Flying Through the City


Build Your Own Vampire Project

Objective: The goal of this project is for your team to create the rules and attributes of your own vampire universe. While creativity is necessary, research is actually the focal point. The caveat is that your vampire universe must be based on research your team completes about stories associated with vampires from any point in time, history, folklore, or fiction.

Team: Succ in the City (Period 1)
Members: Tiffany Liu, Stephanie Chu, Caitlin Schroeder, Sandra Cangelosi, Alicia Tan, Jack Sheridan

Vampire’s Ethnicity: Greek
Justification: In Greek Culture and folklore, there is an undead creature known as the Vrykolakas. It is an undead creature that is often equated to the vampires of neighboring Slavic countries. The Vrykolakas are unique to other vampires in the fact that they don’t suck blood at all. Actually, a person can become a Vrykolakas simply by living a sacreligious life, being buried in unconsecrated ground, or being excommunicated. Oddly enough, one can even become a Vrykolakas by eating mutton that was previously eaten by a werewolf. The Vrykolakas spreads death through disease, which is unique in that direct contact is not required, and they don’t have an affinity for blood. They do this by knocking on doors, to lure people outside of their homes. If someone answered on the first knock, the Vrykolakas would disappear and the victim was soon condemned to death and would become a Vrykolakas themselves. However, our vampire is unique in that he possesses many of the characteristics of a Vrykolakas as well as the well known Slavic vampires. That means he stills loves to feast on blood!

Bibliography:

Vampire’s Abilities: Shapeshifting, photographic memory, immortality/accelerated healing, flying
Justification:
  • Our vampire must be able to shape shift because they can use this to evade authorities if they ever get caught feeding off of someone. They can also use this ability to lure in their next victim by transforming into someone that would best attract their attention.
  • Our vampire will also have photographic memory because memories start to blur together after many years of being immortal go by. By having a photographic memory, it will help our vampire remember everything that will help them to thrive, for example, who to avoid and where to look and find people to feed on.
  • Our vampire will also be immortal because it will allow for our vampire to become immune to aging. Although living forever has its pros and cons, it’s pros outweigh the cons. By being immortal it allows our vampire to also have another skill which is its ability to quickly heal oneself. If our vampire gets injured falling from a building then their body will immediately start healing itself, and it will all the wound to fix itself at a faster rate. For example, a wound that would normally take about a month to heal can be mended in a couple of days.
  • Our vampire will also have the ability to fly. This ability will allow our vampire to glide over the horizon at night and get to different locations more efficiently by avoiding high security places like the airport and risk getting exposed. This can also aid our vampire when trying to escape from authorities.

Bibliography:
  • “Vampire in Brooklyn.” TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/VampireInBrooklyn.
  • Schuemann, Nancy Loyan, and Paul Seaburn. “A Real Immortal Vampire in New Orleans.”   
                  Mysterious Universe, 26 July 2018, mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/07/a-real-immortal-vampire-in-
                  new-orleans/.
  • Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. Ballantine Books, 2014.
  • “Accelerated Healing.” The Vampire Diaries Wiki, vampirediaries.fandom.com/wiki/
                  Accelerated_Healing.
  • Bradford, Alina. “Bats: Fuzzy Flying Mammals.” LiveScience, Purch, 24 Oct. 2018,
                  www.livescience.com/28272-bats.html.

Vampire’s Weakness(es): Sunlight, bodies of saltwater, impaling, cremation, exorcism
Justification:
  • One of our vampire’s weaknesses starts before actually rising as a vampire. In ancient times, fear of vampires led to murderers mutilating their victims. This way, the murdered victim cannot return bodily to avenge itself on the murderer.
  • There are many burial procedures used to prevent vampires from being created, some being cremation and impaling.  Even simply burying and mourning the dead was a way to avoid vampirism. Leaving a corpse without mourning and proper rites would invite the soul to linger around its home and possibly haunt it. In a way, these can be considered weaknesses of our vampire, since these prevent them from becoming one.
  • To get rid of a Vrykolakas, people can exorcise it with prayer until it turns into dust. If that method fails, cremation would kill the vampire. Vrykolakas rest in their graves on Saturday, so these actions must be taken on those days.
  • Our vampire is also highly sensitive to sunlight, and can even be killed through exposure.
  • Our vampire is also unable to cross running water like streams or rivers, and other bodies of saltwater. Greeks would bury a suspected vampire on an offshore island to prevent them from coming back and attacking people.

Bibliography:
  • Arthen, Inanna. “‘May the Ground Not Receive Thee’ An Exploration of the Greek Vrykolakas and His Origins.” By Light Unseen - Vampires in Media and Culture, 1998, http://bylightunseen.net/vrykolak.htm
  • Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. Ballantine Books, 2014.
  • Luna, V. “Vampire Myths.” Myths, July 2017, www.real-vampires.com/myths.html

Vampire’s Reproduction: Blood transfer, Eat what the wolf ate, Be sinful
Justification:
  • To make vampires, our vampire will drain their blood until they’re near death and then replace the missing blood with our vampire’s blood. This way, the vampire venom will make its way into the new vampire’s body, eventually turning them into a vampire too.
  • To become a Vrykolakas like our vampire, the person would have to eat mutton that was previously eaten by a werewolf.  
  • If none of these options appeal to the person, then they are out of luck. The only other way to become a Vrykolakas is by having lived a sinful life, got excommunicated, or buried under unholy ground.

Bibliography:

Vampire’s Camouflage: Makeup/ Tourist Items
Justification:
  • Our vampire will use foundation shade that is two shades darker than their skin so they can blend in with the humans and not look so pale.
  • Being in NYC, our vampire will easily find many items that will help him blend in. A simple NYC dad hat and an I <3 and="" another="" be="" bother="" clueless="" do="" he="" him.="" just="" less="" like="" likely="" look="" ny="" o:p="" people="" shirt="" the="" to="" tourist="" trick.="" will="">

Bibliography:

Vampire’s Home: New York City
Justification:
Within a city like New York, it would make it possible to make people disappear easily due to the massive population and fast pace. If there were any strings of murders, it will be attempted to cover up because New York is such a large tourist attraction, so they wouldn’t want any negative publicity. If the murders were to be reported, we still doubt that our vampire would have any issues due to the immense population as well as the large number of tourists, because he would never seem out of place. If anything, he can often change his attire due to the wide variety of jobs in NYC.

Bibliography:


Vampire’s Preferences: Blood, material things, moonlight
Justification:
  • Our vampire, like most other vampires in literature, prefers and is attracted to blood. Whether it be human blood or animal blood, it is our vampire’s source of food. Almost like a mosquito, vampires suck on the blood of people.
  • Since our vampire is vulnerable to sunlight, they will prefer to spend their time in the dark, especially in the presence of moonlight. They are able to be exposed to moonlight due to its weak ultraviolet rays. The moonlight also being a representation of their mother-goddess, they enjoy its presence.
  • Like many vampires seen in contemporary art, our vampire will lead a wealthy life full of luxurious goods and riches; including exquisite art, real estate, cars, etc. Being a vampire who is immortal with a photographic memory, they would be wise “beyond” their years, thus, such a luxurious lifestyle would not be difficult to achieve.

Bibliography:


We hope you enjoyed our vampire! Please feel free to leave any comments!

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1 comment:

  1. Lord MarkJuly 27, 2019 at 2:14 PM

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