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[WillowLuman]

If everyone in the fort is a vampire, doesn't it crumble? I'm pretty sure once the last mortal dwarf gets converted/drained, the game ends. Vampires also remain in the fort upon abandon/reclaim, I'm pretty sure, but become hostile.

There are many stories where vampires don't need blood, but it is extremely compelling to them. Perhaps an all vampire fort would be shunned by the Mountainhome, and the dwarves become unable to venture outside at all for fear of the sun, retreating into the caverns for eternity. And then the fort would fall if something had to be done outside, like a digging project, or killing a Necromancer who keeps sending minions down into the tunnels.

[Keldane]

A perfect example of what we could look for in this case is the one of Sylvania from Warhammer 40k,

I'm sorry, I realize it's minor, and you mean Warhammer Fantasy, not Warhammer 40k. =P

There are many stories where vampires don't need blood, but it is extremely compelling to them. Perhaps an all vampire fort would be shunned by the Mountainhome, and the dwarves become unable to venture outside at all for fear of the sun, retreating into the caverns for eternity. And then the fort would fall if something had to be done outside, like a digging project, or killing a Necromancer who keeps sending minions down into the tunnels.

I thought Vampires, even in Fortress Mode, weren't at odds with undead?

[WillowLuman]

I'm talking about in the future, when Necromancers will be able to direct their minions better.

[Eric Blank]

Currently I'm fairly certain an all-vampire fortress won't crumble simply from everyone alive being a vampire. They might, however, suffer a great tantrum spiral when the vampires begin feasting on the non-vampires and subsequently lose their ever-loving minds.

They're also fun for adventurers to romp into, as Darkerdark discovered visiting my old fortress.

[arkhometha]

I used the word exploit rather loosely back there, that's why I put quote marks on it and put on the doubt it could be called one.
I know it's not necessarily an exploit, but it's not intended to work that way either, as Knight Otu quote explains. Should a vampire really go years without blood? decades?  Without consequence? Is it right, lore-wise? (medieval lore wise, I know DF is fantasy but it has it's standards)
But LordBaal is right, they should be immortal. But they die if certain conditions are met and drinking blood is a necessity, not a luxury, something should happen.
Hibernation, as Knight Out pointed out, is a good compromise, though I don't know how close it is to "reality". Maybe it could be stages: going berserk, going mad, hibernating. Or maybe it will depend on the curse, as he himself suggested. It would make sense. I will check what medieval lore says about vampires.
I'm not against people playing the way they want, I don't want Toady to end danger rooms or develop a way to prevent players from doing magma cubes to avoid diggers when they come. People play DF as they want, with mods, without mods, etc. The thing is, I wanted to know Toady's opinion on it and if he plans to do something about, like, if vampires will endless live without drinking blood and without this bringing any consequences in future updates.
Do you know of any lore, HugoLuman, where vampires can endless live without blood without having any consequences whatsoever?

I don't know, vampires are defined for being blood-suckers. It's in their nature, and it should have consequences, IMHO.

[WillowLuman]

Vampires are defined for being bloodsuckers, and that's about it. Lore varies wildly.

[arkhometha]

Vampires are defined for being bloodsuckers, and that's about it. Lore varies wildly.

You are correct, but what happens when the vampire doesn't do the thing that defines him? That it's his food? Nothing?

EDIT:
That's the strange thing, and it should be fairly easy to fix it.

[WillowLuman]

It varies wildly. Sometimes they don't need it but feel strongly compelled to drink it, sometimes they die without it. I was thinking, for eternal bureaucrats and pump-operators, it would be no averse effects to themselves but they would pounce on the first mortal they had a chance to kill.

[Urist Da Vinci]

If everyone in the fort is a vampire, doesn't it crumble? I'm pretty sure once the last mortal dwarf gets converted/drained, the game ends. Vampires also remain in the fort upon abandon/reclaim, I'm pretty sure, but become hostile.
...

Nope, from actual experience, you just get to play a 100% vampire fort. Future migrant waves tend to not last past the first sleep, because the entire fort will dogpile them in their room. That is, unless you isolate and convert the migrants.

[arkhometha]

It varies wildly. Sometimes they don't need it but feel strongly compelled to drink it, sometimes they die without it. I was thinking, for eternal bureaucrats and pump-operators, it would be no averse effects to themselves but they would pounce on the first mortal they had a chance to kill.

Blood is the life force of humans and vampires. While drinking and eating is humans sustenance, drinking blood is the vampire only mean of sustaining itself. Since they are dead, it's usually considered they don't produce their own life force, blood. In Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs the authors define vampire as “a revenant, reanimated corpse, or phantom of the recently deceased, which maintains its former, living appearance when it comes out of the grave at night to drink the blood of humans.”¹ and they continue by stating "These creatures must suck blood from humans or mammals for sustenance"². The Oxford English Dictionary is the first known lexicon with an entry for vampire in 1734 defining it as “a ghost who leaves his grave at night and sucks the blood from the living.” They are defined by sucking blood yet nothing should happen when they don't do it for a long time? Sometimes player fortress take up to 30 years in game! Or should they only become more slow for not getting their sustenance, their life-force, for years? Doesn't make sense to me.
I don't believe they should be able to live (or un-live) centuries or millenia without their sustenance, their life force, while being without blood for a year should probably make them hibernate, insane among other things.


¹Carl Lindahl et al, Medieval Folklore: A Guide to Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs and Customs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 424
²Idem, ibidem.

Also, another question, does anyone knows of a vampire in DF who doesn't live in a city? Never heard of one in vanilla games.

[WillowLuman]

Don't cite sources on myths, DF doesn't follow the rules of any particular setting or universe and a single book is hardly definitive of the immense variety of medieval folklore. Toady's not trying to do a strict recreation of Romanian folklore or anything, he's trying to create a fantasy world generator, influenced not just by mythology but by fantasy conventions and tropes.

Vampires will eventually have variable traits, semi-random. Judging by the common depections of vampires in fantasy, effects of blood starvation could vary between each world/curse lineage:
-Become less human in appearance
-Become weaker
-Become stronger but more desperate
-Nothing, except they'll drain the first living person they get their hands on
-Revert to corpse
-Crumble
-Revert to human (though this one is rare)
-and more

[Lolfail0009]

It also depends on where you place your vampire on the gothic (like Nosferatu) to romantic (like Dracula) scale.

[WillowLuman]

Like I said, it's not going to be constrained by the strict definition of any particular convention or setting, the only constant thing will eventually be consuming blood/life force. You can have the tragic vampire driven to murder by their hunger and survival instinct, or the evil vampire who doesn't need blood to survive but loves nothing better than to drink it.

[BradUffner]

It also depends on where you place your vampire on the gothic (like Nosferatu) to romantic (like Dracula) scale.

You forgot the Sparkly end of the scale. 

[WillowLuman]

It also depends on where you place your vampire on the gothic (like Nosferatu) to romantic (like Dracula) scale.

You forgot the Sparkly end of the scale. 

I don't think Toady's going to touch on that, except via RNG insanity.