Steven Tempest:
"Well, in lots of sources it isn't the vampire drinking your blood that makes you into a vampire yourself; it's you drinking *its* blood, after your own has been drained."
Check Fred Saberhagen's sympathetic Dracula series for a fictional source which predates Buffy, VtM and Rice (though in the case of Rice, by only one year). Draining wasn't necessary in his version, just mutual exchange. The vampire's lover would rise after a normal death, if the vampire was strong enough for the influence to last that long.
In fact, I couldn't actually find a folkloric source which listed blood exchange as a vampire-creation ritual, though I found many other alleged causes (including being fed on by a vampire). Stoker may actually have made that one up (ditto fear of the crucifix).
Though not relevant to Glorantha, some of the many predispositions for vampirism in Romanian and Slavic regions included being the 7th child of the same sex in one family; being born out of wedlock, with a caul, or with teeth; dying before baptism; if one's parents had intercourse on prohibited days; if the mother didn't have salt or was looked at by a vampire during pregnancy; forswearing oneself; being apostate, a suicide or dying excommunicate, etc.
Basically, once the cattle started to die, the village started looking around for a vampire. In Glorantha, it's much more likely that you'll start looking for a Mallia worshipper than a vampire if plague strikes.
With regards to the most recent discussions, I'm not nihilistic enough to accept that the soul wound can be inflicted unilaterally. The last thing that Glorantha needs is the Romantick Vampyre. These wretches are just so cowardly and bloody minded (pun intended) that they are willing to take a particularly lousy way out of death, if offered. As servitors, they must be willing beforehand to do their vampire master's every disgusting bidding before their transformation is allowed as a reward. Any PCs should be suspicious long before the final ritual occurred, if they're around the character much at all. In summation, I don't think that PCs fit the bill as potential vampires, MGF or not. If you've got a PC that cowardly about death, then he's sure as heck not a 'hero'! YGWV
Alison
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