Undead creatures feeding on the living | Dungeons & Dragons
Alright, it's the perfect season for Halloween one shots.
Let's take a bite outta one of the most well-known spooky creatures, the vampire. These teeth-y things have an entirely liquid diet, can transform into both mist and a bat, and can transform others with a bite. Now, I get it, your party gets a little murder hobo-y, and they want to know what they can loot off what they beat.
Sure, you could plant loot – you know jewelry and such. But I know, sometimes you want to know everything you can take.
So, that's why I'm here: to answer all the weird questions! These are just ideas to enhance your experience,
scratch your curiosity, or help answer inevitable weird questions. Also we (try to) abide by ethics.
Curiosity is a good thing! On to vampires!
Vampires: Introduction
We'll be working off of the Dungeons and Dragons stat block on vampires. I know vampires are found in media everywhere, but we'll be focusing on ones that roll initiative.
Let's get one thing squared right away, though: vampires don't drink blood through their fangs like little straws. I'm sorry but, biologically that doesn't make sense. The blood would have to eventually end up in the stomach, right? So, if a vampire drinks blood through their teeth, the blood would have to move through the gums first. Directly above the gums is the maxillary sinus cavity. Sadly, that's just one of the limitations of the human skull, and vampires still have a human skull. Unless there's something about the vampire gaining nutrients through distribution around the skull, the teeth just make puncture wounds.
Yeah, I hear you, what about snake fangs? Well, snake fangs are used to inject venom into something, not draw something out. Now, if you're making a vampire that injects an anticoagulant or painkiller into their victims, then that'd work fine. Otherwise, there aren't any animals currently in existence that intake in fluids through their teeth.
Let's Talk Teeth
I'm sure you already know I'm gonna draw a parallel to vampire bats. Despite humanoid vampires and vampire bats being vastly different, we can make some educated guesses about humanoid vampiric teeth. First of all, vampire bats lack enamel on their teeth. Enamel is what coats normal human teeth to prevent wear. The lack of this coating on vampire bats is what keeps their teeth sharp enough to make thin, precise cuts in their prey. But what sets vampire bats apart from humanoid vampires is that vampire bat tongues do most of the work.
An article on the evolution of vampire bat skulls explains, "Horizontal surfaces on the teeth [like a human's flat front teeth] and their crushing function disappear completely, and the protrusible tongue with its lapping function takes a more central role."(Freeman, 1998) So vampire bats are dependent on the slice and lick, which isn't quite like our human vampires. Their jaw structure is also built for accommodating their tongue, and we're working under the assumption that a vampire has a human jaw.
So if a vampire bat is almost perfect but not quite, now what? The thing is, when talking about most vampire bats, the one that comes to mind is Desmodus rotundus (Fig. 1, B), the Common Vampire Bat. Desmodus rotundus are the bats that lick. Allow me to introduce another member of the Bat Family: Diphylla ecaudata (Fig. 1, A ), the Hairy Legged Vampire Bat.
According to a study on how the edge of vampire bat incisors are relative to the slope of the rest of their teeth, Diphylla ecaudata have a set of teeth that are developed for sucking blood rather than giving paper cuts and licking (Davis, Nicolay, Williams, 2010). The reason behind this seems to be that they feed on birds, specifically biting at their feet. Avian feet aren't as fleshy as the rest of the animal, so biting and sucking is more optimal than trying to cut and lick. Not only that, Diphylla ecaudata have continuous incisors along their bottom jaw, similar to a humanoid vampire.
Great! We have a bat with a close mandibular makeup to humans – prominent fangs bordering a row of flat incisors! And it also sometimes feeds on humans... Wonderful!
There is one thing, though that needs to be considered when creating/roleplaying vampires in general, and that is the amount of and shape of teeth. Listen, we're assuming that the vampire has a human tongue the whole time (something not built for lapping), and is relying exclusively on piercing damage; the best biological way for a vampire to drink blood like a fifth grader at the water fountain after gym class is to have both upper and lower fangs. Their incisors allow airflow as they suck.
Granted, that's not surprising or shocking, but biology could influence the style and mannerisms of the vampire you make. Upper maxillary vampires would have to take a longer time to feed, and this is often seen in the, uh, more romantic styles of vampirism. Lower mandibular vampires would have teeth similar to a boar, so the biting would be more focused on aiming towards that sweet carotid artery in the neck and letting the victim's blood pressure push the blood out. Full fanged vampires (like 30 Days of Night) are quick, gory, and brutal. They maul their targets. They're not built for delicate feeding.
In attempt to add to the Monster Manual (MM), here are some ideas about bite damage:
Exclusively upper teeth: (1d6+4) +10, we know this, it's in the MM, we're good here
Exclusively lower teeth: (1d8+6) +12
Upper and lower (like plastic toy teeth): (1d10+8) +14
The whole mouth: Death save, yikes
Let's Talk Saliva
Vampire bats' saliva contains a potent anticoagulant, allowing for continuous blood flow from the puncture wound. An article on the immune response of prey bitten by vampire bats states, "The saliva of the bat contains anticoagulant [cannot form blood clots] and fibrinolytic proteins [prevents blood clots from growing], which are inhibitors of coagulation, plasminogen activators [the pre-enzyme form of plasmin that binds to fibrin to produce blood clots], and inhibitors of platelet aggregation [small cell fragments in the blood that stop and prevent bleeding]." (Delpietro, 2009)
I get it, that was a mouthful, so let's simplify:
Their saliva contains tissue-type plasminogen activators, also known as t-PA. When the vampire bat is ready to feed, its saliva, an anticoagulant, prevents the formation and growth of blood clots in soft tissue (t-PA) by breaking down fibrin, activating plasminogen to turn it into plasmin – plasmin ruins any chance of blood clots forming, and platelets can't hang out together. Boom, bloody waterfall.
Forming an educated guess, we can infer that humanoid vampires may also have something similar in their saliva.
Since they don't draw blood in through their fangs (more on that below), and they still have a human tongue, they gotta exclusively rely on sucking blood. They rupture surrounding blood vessels with their bite, creating more blood, and then an anticoagulant makes sure the blood flows easy and copiously.
It's like insurance. It's probably better to use both force and an anticoagulant to feed, that way they can get the full benefit of their meal.
Healing and Digestion
The weirdest subject is digestion. A vampire has a strictly liquid diet. If we're assuming they have a functional digestive tract, their bodies have to have undergone some kind of change in order to switch to a sanguinary lifestyle. A study on bat gene evolution discovered that, "Some [gene] deletions were responsible for reducing insulin secretion, which is less important, thanks to the animals’ low-sugar diet. Others reduced the amounts of sweet and bitter taste receptors, making the bats less sensitive to the noxious taste of the blood they lap up." (Tamisiea, 2022) I don't blame you if you want to turn back now, or skip to the bottom, because these are things that might be left without an educated guess. We'll be discussing bat bowel movements and intestines (from a biological viewpoint). Alright, how does a vampire digest blood? That depends on your style of vampire, first of all. Was your vampire brought back with the same organs and is now on a strictly blood diet (Angel and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer)? Are they dead and need a "life force" to survive (Jiangshi vampires from Chinese mythology)? Or, perhaps, is vampirism a disease that changes their body composition (Edward in Twilight)?
Here are some ideas for why vampires might need blood:
Blood = New Diet: Eating blood to them is like eating regular food for us. They need it for nutrients, specifically glucose, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and fatty acids. Their stomachs might be able to utilize the water and plasma found in blood to further maintain homeostasis (whatever that looks like for them) in a way similar to a living person.
Blood = Life Force: Jiangshi vampires in mythology eat qi. Qi is the energy believed to circulate around our blood in currents. No blood or digestion needed here.
Blood = Possibly New Organs: Vampire bats have a stomach shaped like a wind sock meant for sustaining an entirely liquid diet. Their digestive tract removes plasma and water, leaving the good stuff behind. But because of their high iron diet, they cannot digest all that they eat. In fact, they have a mucus on their intestines to prevent an iron overdose. So, they shed their intestinal lining after each meal, along with the unused liquid and iron.
"... the [gastrointestinal] tract of the vampire bat is modified to accommodate rapid consumption of large quantities of food. The tube-like stomach is highly distensible [able to swell from the inside] and well-vascularized, facilitating rapid absorption of water and nutrients. In turn, the kidneys rapidly process the water, such that the bat is able to excrete the bulk of the blood volume even as it continues to feed."(Blumer...Hiller, 2022) Do with this what you will.
Anyways, so our undead buddies in D&D heal immediately when they consume blood. The vampire's insane stats (specifically looking at that 18+4 in CON) could be responsible for speeding up its digestive process, in the same kind of way we see with vampire bats and their speedy kidneys. The way I see it is that the vampire would feed on its target, get that initial heal, and the regenerative healing comes from their digestive tracts at work as it processes the blood. The initial heal would be like it feeling full and invigorated, and as the rounds of combat progress, the blood gets metabolized, so they're able to heal on each of their turns.
"But Chelle, I want a vampire that sucks through the teeth"
Yeah, so I polled dozens of tabletop players about if they think vampires drink blood by sucking it through the mouth, teeth, or if they lap it with their tongues. 15% of people said through the teeth, and that was honestly 15% more than I thought. If you want, you can participate in future polls here! We touched on bat tongues earlier and what I said pretty much sums it up.
Okay, you've twisted my arm, you know I can't resist getting weird about biology. I do have a jellyfish on my head – specifically a Pelagia noctiluca! So, you want a vampire that sucks blood through their teeth, eh? First, we need to talk about mosquitos, butterflies, things with a proboscis. Creatures that have this protruding appendage to drink blood use it, or a system of parts surrounding it, to create punctures in the skin and draw blood through their proboscis using negative pressure. For new friends of the blog, negative pressure is suction pressure that both plants and animals use for one reason or another, usually to draw nutrients directly into the organism (see more about how the Shambling Mound uses it here!). Well, the good news is that the vampire's teeth would cover the puncture part. This might make your teeth chatter, but that means that the vampire's teeth would have to restructure into including some kind of a fluid pump in the sinus and pump muscles in the inner layers of the teeth. In insects with both short and coiled proboscises, a fluid pump inside their head works in tandem with the appendage to split the amount of labor needed to draw in fluids and distribute it to the next stage of digestion.
Clearly, vampires would have a short path to intake in fluids from the teeth into the upper body, and a fluid pump prevents the accumulation of stationary blood inside the head. A fantastic piece titled, "Structural and physical determinants of the proboscis–sucking pump complex in the evolution of fluid-feeding insects" states, "For example, some Notodontidae [moths] with short proboscises pass a significant amount of water by jetting it rapidly through the body. Over evolutionary time, this jetting mechanism might have been enabled by shortening the proboscis to significantly reduce energy dissipation of fluid transport."(Kornev, 2017)
There we go. Beyond that, the blood would have to end up in the esophagus/stomach somehow, and we covered digestion already.
Would Looting a Vampire Technically Be Grave Robbing?
Let's think about the biological things we can loot from a vampire: the elongated canines and saliva. Saliva sounds funny on paper, but I promise there's an item you could make with this. Apparently it's not uncommon for D&D players to want to loot vampire fangs after fighting them. Especially in gothic heavy campaigns, I'm sure it's been thought of at least once.
Right? Right.
Uses for Teeth
A pen nib... yeah
Anything you'd use a small needle for
A really cursed bottle opener
A spell component for Necromancy spells and poisons (maybe think of it like the universal substitute for any missing component)
Teeth enamel is about as hard as steel (5 on the Mohs Scale). I mean, if you fight enough of them (and take enough teeth), you could make a teeth weapon? I don't judge. You know those nail bats, but like, do it with sharp vampire teeth. Deal some necrotic damage with it (and make a tooth decay joke, for my sake)
Uses for Saliva
Yeah, so, Dungeons and Dragons doesn't have hemorrhaging as a form of damage.
Here's how I would do it, keeping in mind the vampire stat block:
There's a Drow Poison in 5e that's a DC 13 Constitution Saving Throw and the effects last for 1 hour. The Drow Poison also says that if the check is failed by 5 or more, the target is also unconscious unless someone takes an action to shake them awake or if they take damage.
I would use vampire saliva to make a modified version of Drow Poison (which has to be made away from sunlight anyways) with the breakdown being:
DC 15 CON Save (stronger poison due to adding in vampire saliva.) You could go even higher if it was like a vampire lord's saliva or lower if its like a vampire spawn
Target takes 3d6 necrotic damage (from the Vampire MM page) and cannot be healed for an hour (representing the anticoagulant/the target bleeding)
If the check is failed by 5 or more, their hit point maximum is reduced by the necrotic damage taken. These hit points can be regained after a long rest (from the Vampire MM page)
Effects last for 1 hour, and the poison has to be made away from sunlight and running water
You could take this further and have them take 1d6 or 1d6+4 of a neutral damage type (a damage type not affected by immunity and resistance. This is to account for hemorrhaging not currently existing as a form of damage) every turn to represent them bleeding out. These rolls are pulled from the Vampire MM page.
Vampires: Final Thoughts
These creatures are a staple in any gothic, Halloween, and horror campaign. Whether you're playing Curse of Strahd or brewing something up for Halloween, you're now equipped to answer the weird questions your crew might throw at you. You've also got a couple new items that you could cook up for your players to use. By combining life science and fantasy, we were able to further expand on the Monster Manual page. I think the conclusions drawn from science definitely make vampires seem scarier.
Have a happy, spooky, safe Halloween!
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