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Thoughts on psy vamps

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Thoughts on psy vamps

Postby Rene » Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:47 pm

I thought I’d jot down a few notes on psychic vampires since they’re something most practitioners are going to run into eventually. Psy vamps are people who drain energy from other people so they can use it for themselves. There’re two things that might lead someone to do this. They might have some sort of energetic damage or abnormality that doesn’t allow them to adequately use their own natural energy, or they might be energetically normal but are uninformed, foolish, or greedy.

The effect these two types have on those they use is generally the same, but the cause for psy vamp behavior is drastically different. In one, you’re dealing with a person/entity that is damaged. A normal spirit will effortlessly generate enough energy to maintain itself and there will still be energy left over for things like doing magic. A psy vamp that has to feed (an obligate psy vamp as opposed to an opportunist) can’t process their own energy well enough to support them, let alone create a surplus. This is not a recipe for success for them and in order to sustain their own spirits many turn to the biggest, most abundant, most similar source of energy around them—other people. By feeding off them they’re able to meet their energetic demands. Many of these psy vamps have been vamping off others for most of if not their whole life and may or may not be aware of it.

The other class of psy vamps generally falls under the category of uninformed, stupid, or cocky. They usually have at least some basic ideas about magic and energy and may be low-level practitioners. While there’s nothing wrong with them, they have stumbled upon feeding on others as a substitute for or addition to using their own energy. Maybe the buzz of sucking energy off someone else makes them feel good and they convince themselves that need it, or that absorbing someone else’s life energy makes them more powerful/wise/enlightened. Maybe they don’t realize that they’re drawing off others to power what they’re doing when they cast. Maybe they lack self-control. And then there are those who have a very good idea of what they’re doing when they use someone else and simply believe that it’s their right, no one will notice, and who’s going to hold them accountable anyway?

Both kinds of psy vamps, when aware of their vampirism, tend to be somewhat to very magically active. Being aware that they want/need additional energy to sustain themselves tends to get them interested in other aspects of magic once they’ve figured out how to feed.

Psy vamps in general seem to be drawn to practitioners because practitioners often have more energy to offer than the general populace. Ironically, practitioners are also the ones most likely to notice and do something about it.

Omnimancy frowns heavily upon any type of psy vamping. Why? Well, if you’re so damaged that you can’t interact properly with your own soul’s energy, what suggests that you can take from another safely? The same goes for the ignorant or wrongly informed. If they’re so misguided that they feel they need or have a right to someone else’s energy, there’s a very good chance they don’t know enough not to damage that person in the process. And there’s the simple fact that it isn’t their energy and hence not free for the taking. The behavior can range from annoying to downright dangerous to people being fed on. And it’s not necessarily good for the psy vamp either. The soul needs its own energy, not someone else’s, and it’s possible to be slowly poisoned by an incompatible enough substitute. There’s also the chance that they’ll bite off more than they can chew and feed off someone who’ll notice and attack them.

The under or wrongly informed need some sort of intervention, be it some gentle instruction on appropriate power sources or a smack upside the head. So what about the psy vamps who are damaged and DO need to feed? They’re out there all right, and they have options other than feeding on people. With a little effort almost anyone can be taught to feed off the ambient or waste energy found all around rather than tapping directly into another person. It’s free for the taking and less effort than trying to wrest the spiritual substance away from another person who, on some level, doesn’t want to give it up. If they can find a qualified practitioner who knows something about spiritual anatomy there’s also an excellent chance they can be healed.

So that’s my take on psy vamps.
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Rene
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