Objects of faith and the supernatural

@Daimonnes & On The Other Handle: There's a lot of rings like mine out there - just google "snake ring". It's similar in shape to the Thomas Sabo design you can find there, but a lot less pretentious. My first version was from a cheap market stand years ago, but the one I'm wearing nowadays was handforged by a goldsmith friend of mine. (It's silver, actually, but in Germany, goldsmiths do jewellery, silversmiths do cutlery.)

Feel free to kill any vampire and woo any bride with it. :) I'd still go with 'off with their heads'. (The vampires, not the brides.)

But I agree, physics books and the like is bordering on the ridiculous. You don't repel them with bibles, you repel them with crosses - so it has to be a symbol of your faith, not a description of it.

edited 2nd Feb '11 3:42:26 AM by kurushio

Me? I'd rather not take a chance. I'll go with the good old-fashioned "drive a stake through their heart" method.

Have you ever tried to shove a short pointed piece of wood through a person's sternum? There's a reason it was traditionally done with the aid of a mallet, while they were asleep.

^ Have you?

I use two pieces of amethyst I allows have on me, personally. My faith in them, is faith in my own will power, and there is no faith stronger than pure faith, and that I can put in myself, cause I actually know I exist.

That being said I believe in faith as supernatural but very human concept, not a religious one.

Have you ever tried to shove a short pointed piece of wood through a person's sternum? There's a reason it was traditionally done with the aid of a mallet, while they were asleep.

Well, you don't want to go through the sternum, that's just a waste of effort. You want to drive in a longer stick underneath the sternum angled upwards so it pierces the heart from underneath.

edited 2nd Feb '11 2:17:55 PM by nightwyrm_zero

Or down beside the left collarbone.

Bad idea - it brings your arm into the reach of the vampires teeth.

Both would require something longer than an ordinary stake, and the oblique angle would make penetration difficult even with less obstruction. Also the collarbone doesn't offer that big a gap, and the heart isn't on the left, it's in the center, but the left side is closer to the surface.

^ Have you?

Never on a conscious adult.

Or, or, we could use a really big gun, blow out the vampire's chest cavity or even blow the heart out of the chest and then stab it with some wooden chopsticks we got from last night's Chinese take-out.

I'll admit, I've never actually seen a stake. I was picturing a huge, hulking thing like five feet long. My biggest worry was not if it would kill the vampire, but if I could actually carry it.

I would have gone with the gun idea, except I thought vampires couldn't die of anything other than stakes, garlic, and faith?

^There's also holy water, which in some stories burns as if it was flaming oil, and sunlight. I always theought it'd be cool if there was a raygun that could harm vampires but be nonlethal to humans.

EDIT: come to think of it, I think they tried that with spotlights in Blade - the vampires figured out they could wear protecive gear, IIRC.

edited 2nd Feb '11 7:19:28 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

I would have gone with the gun idea, except I thought vampires couldn't die of anything other than stakes, garlic, and faith?

Well we're not trying to kill the vampire with guns. We're just using guns or grenade launchers to blow apart the vampire's chest to gain easier access to the vampire heart so we can stab it with wood.

OP@ I actually remember a character from the webcomic Bruno The Bandit, who was an Abritrary Skeptic in the fantasy world the comic takes place in. Despite living right alongside countless creatures of myth and magic users, this guy was actually able to cause magic to malfunction and magical creatures to vanish just by using atheism and rational thought against them. This unfortunatly also left him physically incapable of actually accepting any magical assistance when needed, the closest he could get was accepting that there are certain phenomena that science and rationality cant explain, which was enough for things to work around him again.

in Bram Stokers ideas as stated in his notes for Dracula any symbol of faith works so lng as its older then the vampire himself. so Dracula was NOT alive before Christianity. just anote there.

Being an ex-La Veyan satanist, who still carries much of the philosophy, current humanist who believes in the potential of the human race to overcome all which we confront once sufficiently motivated, and a big believer in the power of Awesome, I'd basically see ourselves as a symbol of focus of conviction.

So basically, while people are casting about for symbols of faith, I'd merely wade into the vampiric horde as a living "holy" symbol. Also, turn would be victims into fonts of "holiness."

'twould be epic indeed.

As for the "well, if anything can be a symbol, what's the point of vampires?"... True Faith is what is necessary. It is also exceedingly rare. It takes a really arrogant, conceited bastard to have enough true faith in themselves or their species to kill vampires with it.

Hi.

edited 13th May '11 2:50:06 AM by Korbl

Holy necro, wait........never mind.