I only just found this thread, or probably would have given my two knuts earlier but here goes thoughts at 3am, which are probably not all that clear. In fact rereading it just now after typing it, its totally jumbled but Imma post anyway lol.

I think the biggest factor from an IC perspective is safety. We can all agree that younger characters, regardless of what kind of beast, being, witch, wizard, whatever they are, in theory should be less in control of their abilities, and while in canon their are laws about not being able to hunt Vampires and all that sort of thing, we have to remember that Vampires are Non-Wizard Part-Humans (Magical Beings who are considered to be neither a wizard, nor truly Human), and not witches or wizards, which is what Hogwarts is for.

Now a possible exception to that might be a part-vampire, which we know is possible since theres Lorcan D'Eath, but what we don't know is if Lorcan had any magical ability to speak of at all. Who is to say that vampires are ABLE to do magic? That's a factor, since after all, it is a magic school and it'd be pretty important to be capable of magic in order to actually attend. Taking your debate approach we could also say that part-Veela who we know CAN do magic might indicate that the same is possible with vamps but unfortunately until more information comes from JKR we don't know for sure. Either way, in the books there aren't Veela at Hogwarts, but there are at Beauxbatons and in a way that supports my personal thoughts on vampires in that:

due to safety of students, part-vampires are not permitted to enrol at Hogwarts.

and additionally, they are in canon from Eastern Europe so if any of them actually are magical and needing education, it stands to reason they're probably at Durmstrang. (but don't get me started on the whole concept of going to Hogwarts when you don't live anywhere near the school and haven't actually worked out a legit reason for your charrie to be there hehe)

It seems that JKR's vampires are inspired by those of myth and legend, with the blood and the garlic and all of that, and they certainly aren't harmless. Personally the parents of my characters probably wouldn't want their children attending school with someone that could lose control and attack them.

Then we have the OOC perspective which I think is more relevant to our RP on SS. You mentioned about them being powerful and it being unfair to other players, and you mentioned the blood-drinking and SS being family friendly, but honestly I don't think those are the underlying reasons. They contribute, sure, but I think there is another factor.

Because we know so little about HP vampires (aside from tiny hints, and speculation regarding myth and legend) and because in the last.... 8 or so years there has been an EXPLOSION of vampire related books, television, and movies, I think the main consideration is that we aren't a crossover RP and we want our RP to be as in line with canon as possible, and most people (not all, definitely not all) would likely get their inspiration for vampire stuff from popular fiction. I'm not just talking about sparkling vegetarian vampires, I mean there's also Vampire Diaries and True Blood plus a whole myriad of other popular media where vamps make an appearance. While its fine to be inspired or whatever, the fact is the lore surrounding all this media is so varied and different, it'd be nearly impossible for the thousands who have and will RP on SS to be on the same page with it, and anything that is approved will become SS canon and we don't want to be using canon that has the potential conflict HP canon AND with the head canon of other potential Vamp RPers.

"Well my vampire can fly!"

"Well mine has to be invited inside or he can't come in."

"Mine gets burned by crosses."

"Mine sparkles and is super strong."

"Mine is a vegetarian." and so on.

Additionally, I really don't think allowing vampires at Hogwarts would add to the RP in a way that is conducive to everyone having fun. Special charries require permission so that it can be monitored in a way that facilitates everyone's enjoyment, and doesn't make anyone uncomfortable or forced to participate with someone else's canon IC.

Once we allow ONE person to do it, it opens the door for everyone, and at that point its kind of not fair to say this person can and this one can't. Its overall just easier to have a blanket no. Then the ooc of it can be explained away IC easily enough.

The only way vampires would ever potentially make an appearance would be via an arranged plot, one that can be controlled and monitored.

SS isn't really a dark-inspired RPG and there are plenty of places out there where a person can go RP if they want to explore that side of the wizarding world, and I think vampires and vampire lore tend to fall under that umbrella.

TLDR? In summary, the idea of it 'always being that way' is actually because there are reasons its always been that way. And there are IC and OOC concerns surrounding vampires in our RP, particularly the school.

You bring up some good points which I hadn't thought of before. I'll try to post ways that some of these problems could be handled, though some of these points I can't really answer. Here goes.

Well, what you said about the safety issue and about parents not wanting to send their children to a school with vampires is partly true. But how much more dangerous would a few vampires REALLY make things? From what I can see, Hogwarts is already a very dangerous place. It seems that not a term goes by where there is not some degree of danger. Pirate ghosts control students, plants eat teachers, snow monsters attack students on sight, an orb causes accidents, weird anti-statute people lower the safety on Hogwarts, mermen and mermaids attack, and everything in between. I think the parents who are ok with taking the risk of sending their children to Hogwarts with all these above things going on wouldn't be especially outraged about a vampire or half vampire.

But you're right about us not knowing if vampires can do magic, I can't really answer that because we don't know. And the whole point of Hogwarts is to learn magic, so vampires wouldn't want to go if they couldn't learn magic. But I have very strong reason to believe that a half-vampire CAN use magic, as you pointed out. Giants can't do magic but half giants can. Veela's can't do magic but half-veela's can. In fact I think we can say for certain that half vampires CAN do magic, because they have wizard blood in them. Rowling has stated in multiple interviews that the blood is what causes the magic. (This makes me wonder if a Muggle injected with magic blood would have some power. Ah well, something for a different topic I guess. )

Vampires may live in different regions, but that doesn't mean they ALL live there. They are sentient beings, I assume they can just move if they want to. Maybe a half vampire stayed with his/her pareents who live in England? Who knows.

We actually do know little about vampires in HP, but from we know, it seems as if they are just like the ones from old stories. I guess we would have a problem with everyone trying to make vampires their own way. The only solution would be if Rowling puts more info on Pottermore or if the mods simply define vampires themselves.


"Once we allow ONE person to do it, it opens the door for everyone, and at that point its kind of not fair to say this person can and this one can't. Its overall just easier to have a blanket no."

Maybe I don't remember correctly, but isn't that exactly how the current system of getting special characters works? You have to get permission to play a special character, and that alone suggests that the answer might be No. How do you at the moment determine who you say yes to when someone wants to play a werewolf at the Ministry? What is the system? Most active people get in? The ones who never broke a rule? Whatever sytem you use now could be used for half-vampires.

"SS isn't really a dark-inspired RPG and there are plenty of places out there where a person can go RP if they want to explore that side of the wizarding world, and I think vampires and vampire lore tend to fall under that umbrella."

I already talked about this complaint in the starter post, there is nothing that makes vampires darker than the current vbad guys at Snitchseeker. I think a depraved human who enjoys torturing people is scarier than a vampire. What about the bad guys in Knockturn Alley? I've read several os those posts and I am pretty impressed at the grit that goes in in there. That one Trelawny guy actually cut of a wwoman's toe before he kidnapped her. He and another guy go around terrifying and attacking any child who wanders in there alley. Creepy guy, no? The bio of Dorin is pretty dark too, as is most of the Knockturn Alley cast. A hag who dragged a boy into the woods and that boy was never discovered again and who now spends her time dreaming os snacking on small kids fingers? This is much worse than just a half-vampire who can easily be toned down. But the darkness is not just confined to KA. The anti-statute guy Alexander Wrekin(something like that) actually killed a MLE's(Lights) unborn child when he thought an unforgivable at her. (Well this, combined with a KA bad guy who had done the same thing.)

I think what we HAVE established is that it would be unwise to allow vampires to go to Hogwarts, because we don't know if they can do magic. So now I am changing my case to half vampires.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful response, you really made me think.

I think Tegz has done a fantastic job at addressing most of the things you brought up, so I'm just popping in to address this: And the et cetera paragraph it is included in.

The things you brought up were plot points, aka things that parents and students don't expect, plan for, or assume will happen. Yes, the school has been attacked by merpeople. Yes, we've had pirates and orbs and students being kidnapped and forced to duel. But these aren't things that are established and expected at school. You can't objectively approach vampires the same way. I'd let my child attend Hogwarts as it is, because there's no reason to expect that harm will befall them. But throwing in vampires and saying "yes, a person who survives solely by feeding on the blood of others will be rooming with your kid" presents an entirely different hazard, one that I doubt many parents would be willing to accept. You're not comparing apples and oranges here, you're comparing apples and octopi.

But you are assuming way too many things. Who says it would be revealed that a vampire was attending Hogwarts? Dumbledore certainly didn't reveal Lupin was a werewolf, he even ordered all the teachers to NOT say anything. Second of all, we don't know vanpires exist only on blood. Many of the traditional ones could be waned off it slowly. Even if they had to drink blood though, they could easily drink animal blood, in which case they would only be slightly worse than humans who eat animals.

Next, it doesn't make a difference that all the above dangerous events were not planned. The fact is that an adventure happens literally every term. Once every other term something dangerous happens as well. Tell me, are any of the characters REALLY thinking the rest of their terms are going to go by without incident? I think not, though many might hope so. Yes, these events were not planned. Any parent who is not concerned after all these events should not really care if a half-vampire is staying at Hogwarts.

Most importantly of all though, the case for vampires has been dropped, I have switched my case to half-vampires. It stands to reason that half-vampires could either survive on blood and food, or can survive on neither but instead on a combination on both, or is even easier to take off the blood standard.

How do you propose that these half-vampires even come to exist? The way I interpret vampirism, you either are or you aren't - there is no in-between. (pause for Kelvin to fish chips out of his shirt because some just fell down there) I don't understand how the undead could possibly produce a child with a human (but then again, I also don't really understand how veelas and the lot can produce a child with a human). This gets into a WHOLE nasty mess of genetics and whatnot (for example - what DOES make a vampire? Is it a genetic evolution of sorts that occurs when one is turned? Or is it simply the fact that vampires are undead?).

Personally, it's never made sense to me to have ANY half-human characters in the RP (but that's because I think too much and want to understand the biology of it all....Ravenclaw in me, I guess). I always thought of special characters pertaining more to seers, animagi, etc.

Anyway, point is, until there is proof from the Potterverse that half-vampire-half-wizards even EXIST, I'm not sold. We have proof that werewolves/half-werewolves (or whatever the percentages are) exist, and we have proof of people who are part veela, but there is no mention of anyone who is half-vampire.

Well, there are part-vampires. Honestly the only thing that makes sense to MY ravie brain is the concept of someone's mother being bitten while they are in the womb, so that they'd be partially infected but not actually directly a vampire.

Then again, its possible Lorcan d'Eath wasn't actually, and he just did it for publicity and wore make up etc. Part of his look and all that.

Half-vampire, full vampire--potato potato. The main issue of this debate comes down to one fact--that you have someone who genetically has PART of their brain that craves human blood or needs it to survive. Saying that they're vegetarian just defeats the purpose of even having them vampire in the first place. It just provides them an extra talking point in conversations, in my opinion. However, I'm going to pretty much put aside all the "Well half-vampires might exist, how would parents respond, etc) because that's all IC stuff. I'm going to focus more on the OOC aspect of this and how it would affect the RP as a whole and how it makes matters very complicated for the staff members that work so hard to make the school fun for everyone.

One reason I think that vampires--or magical creatures of any kind--really shouldn't be allowed, is that we WANT you guys to come up with CREATIVE characters and realize that people don't have to be part magical being to be special! You don't HAVE to be a magical creature to have fun, especially on our site when there are plenty of plots, as you pointed out, that are fun and exciting and really shake things up at the school!

Also, one important note about the plot points. The people who end up being kidnapped/controlled via mind control/etc are, the majority of the time, asked for their permission to participate OR given a substantial heads up that something will be happening with their character. And, unless given permission, it very rarely has a LASTING effect on the character (unless the RPer wants it to, for example, being emotionally scarred from being kidnapped by pirates, etc) like being bitten by a half-vampire would. As a former staff member, I can strongly say that allowing students (even good RPers) to be half-vampires could be extremely risky because it's not the STAFF guiding the plots around them...its the RPer who controls the vampire. And if someone decides "Hey, my vampire is going to suddenly go insane and attack a bunch of people!" I know if that happened and Alex was attacked by a vampire, I would NOT be happy at all. So then I would ignore the post, and what if that person doesn't WANT me to ignore it and starts harassing me over PM? What if they attack a ton of people and half of them want to be REAL bloodthirsty vampires, and suddenly we have a rogue vampire army on the loose? As a former staff member, I can tell you that this HAS happened in the past, and it often causes a major headache for everyone involved and can spiral out of control in the blink of an eye. Not on that extreme of a level, but it could DEFINITELY happen. Making people half-vampires would just add unnecessary fuel to the flame.

Like I said, there are SO many other ways to go about creating a special and meaningful character to play than making them extra magical Harry, Ron, and Hermione weren't part magical creature, and they all had something about them that made them downright awesome. I wouldn't focus on what you CAN'T do to your charries and focus on what you CAN do! The personalities you can create are limitless! What about a Slytherin who feels they should have been a Ravenclaw because they love to read all the time? Or someone who has such an intense fear of werewolves that they can't even hear them mentioned without fainting? There's all sorts of things you can do to make your charries AWESOME, without the extra garlic-avoiding gene

Tegz and cake ninjak: Thanks for posting that link to the Harry Potter wiki, I didn't even know about it myself before I made this thread. Okay so I guess that issue is settled.

To Lissy Longbottom:

Okay thank you, I agree, I always thought OOC reasons should dominate IC reasons. IC reasons are important too of course, but shifts in rules should usually depend on what is happening outside the RP.


"One reason I think that vampires--or magical creatures of any kind--really shouldn't be allowed, is that we WANT you guys to come up with CREATIVE characters and realize that people don't have to be part magical being to be special! You don't HAVE to be a magical creature to have fun, especially on our site when there are plenty of plots, as you pointed out, that are fun and exciting and really shake things up at the school!"

That's true, you don't need a magical character to have a magical RP time.
You said that you were opposed to ANY kind of magical creature, but most ARE allowed. Vampires are the only banned ones. It should be everyone or none. I take it that you yourself would change the rule so that Veela's, werewolves, giants, seers, etc are not allowed either. That would be okay, because it would be consistent. We don't need magical creatures, but of we are going to have them, why allow all of them except one?

"And if someone decides "Hey, my vampire is going to suddenly go insane and attack a bunch of people!" I know if that happened and Alex was attacked by a vampire, I would NOT be happy at all."

Agreed, that demonstrates bad RP'ing. Then again, I also would be none too happy if someone decided, "Hey, my werewolf student forgot to take his potion and now he is going to run around the castle biting people." I mention werewolves because they are allowed, while vampires are not.


Anyway, I am going to close this post by saying that for the record, I wasn't really planning to make a vampire character, my character that I made for the coming term is non-magical. I doubt I would be making a vampire for the school any time soon even if the ban was taken away. I guess the point of this thread is just to say that it should be all or none, and then to say how it might be possible.