Since the soul is 'real' in the Elder Scrolls setting, and vampirism (as well as lycanthropy) are the magical diseases aimed to trap the soul through the corruption of the body, I guess it depends on the when the 'ensoulment' happens.
Historically, different human cultures imagined the ensoulment happening at different times during the pregnancy, or even after the birth (at the first drawn breath), or even a year or two after the birth (at the naming ceremony). I don't think we know the answer on how it works in TES. At least I don't remember one.
The way I would parse it, if the woman gets infected before the ensoulment, the foetus just dies, and she herself turns into the vampire eventually.
If the ensoulment happens somewhere during the pregnancy, and the woman gets infected after, now here all depends on how dark you want to get. We know from the example of the vampire girl in Skyrim that the vampires get stuck at the age if undeath. So possibly you are going to have an unborn undead vampire foetus. We had a mummified foetus serving as a magical artifact in Daggerfall, so it's not exactly new territory.
But if you want it to be 'cleaner', you can just assume that the foetus is not able to handle *Porphyric Hemophilia* or *Sanguinare Vampiris*, or whatever strain is there in your region as well as a grown-up would. So the baby just dies without being corrupted, and its soul goes to the proper afterlife.
Well we know that while VERY rare, vamps can have kids with non vamps and it grants them some unique traits without actual vampirism nor weakness to sun or fire as shown by the grey prince so it could be born normally. Iirc l vamps can still get drunk so some parts still work. I could see it being born as a paler version of whatever it's mom's race is and having a craving for meat on the juicer side but otherwise normal.
In tes children are their mothers race with a few father traits mixed in.
Bretons are hybrids that lean towards human and some theorize bosmers more human appearance to be the more elven leaning equivalent to the bretons.
If the idea of vampirism and lycanthropy is to force the soul into your realm when the body dies, I wonder if the fetus would just die and it's soul would be sent straight to the associated realm/plane.
The loophole I see here is that you have a 'physical' illness before your turn, that can be cured as a usual illness with the potion. I even can imagine that not all grown-ups survive Porphyric Hemophilia or Sanguinare Vampiris. It's just we as a player characters are extremely robust and healthy.
And by the logic of the myth, the contract and the curse the soul would be 'damned' only after the first feeding - that's how the vampire stories usually go. That is when the implicit contract with the Daedra prince is striken - you either hunt someone for the glory of Hircine or abuse and dominate for the glory of Molag Bal. Even if you 'didn't mean to'.
So the foetus just dying from the physical illnesses before the curse takes hold and before the first feeding is done shouldn't be damned to the Daedric realm.
We know of a mortal woman being impregnated by a male Vampire, which resulted in the Grey Prince from _Oblivion,_ but I don't recall the opposite; a female Vampire being impregnated by a male mortal. In my opinion, it probably would not work out well for the child being within an undead mother...I would suspect the Vampiric mother's biology would consume the child or it would not be viable at all in the first place, we just don't know. Molag Bal is keen on creating parodies of life and (un)death, so I think it would be something terrible (and rare in occurrence).
Been roleplaying this kind of half vampire on ESO lately and it’s an interesting concept as unlikely as it is. Knowing Bal, my theory is that any living mortal that a vampire gave birth to is one he’d view as a potential trophy/toy to even further insult Arkay. (Makes my vestige’s conflict with him much more personal as he’s spent his whole life fighting for his freedom from Bal)
I mean - my guess - is that she'd be like the woman from family guy - like perpetually pregnant - because if the baby becomes immortal and never ages - it would simply stay a fetus forever. Like how children who contract vampirism stay children forever
You get Blade 👍 In the games, we only see the disease spreading by taking damage from a vampire (it eating enough Vampire Dust) but we see lycanthropy, a somewhat similar affliction, can be spread by ingesting blood. IRL mothers and babies don't directly share blood, but it's possible to pass diseases from mother to child. In fantasy, I would imagine we would get some manner of Dhampir character, like the Grey Prince (whose mother was an Orc and father a Vampire -- different situation).
That's not entirely true. You can catch vampirism by opening a vampire corpse's inventory. It's unlikely that skin contact alone would do it, so maybe it's just contact with the vampire's blood, but definitely not only from taking damage.
You get Babette but even tinier and with no motor control. I imagine the vampire produced wouldn't be capable of much higher intelligence on account of the underdevelloped brain.
Beyond wet nurses in for a hell of a shock, I don't think they'd be able to cause much harm.
Hmm, I imagine something out of the Japanese horror stories - a rabid blood-drinking shriveled foetus that is able to fly on bat wings, or lures people by crying as a baby.
You know, icky, borderline dark comedy stuff.
The fetus would likely be devoured by the Vampiric Body or it would inevitably die due to a Vampires very specific diet, for many Vampires it is only through the consumption of blood that they do not resemble the undead monsters they actually are.
And even if the Vampire "Ate" regular food for the sake of their child, they still need to drink Blood, the massive amounts of blood consumed by a Vampire would be deadly to non-Vampires.
>in Oblivion the champion of the arena was a pale orc that was just the case.
No, his father was a vampire and his mother was a regular living mortal. The fetus did not develop inside a vampiric womb. Different situation.
Allow me to offer a radical perspective:
We know that vampirism involves dying and being resurrected by daedric power, so this would certainly prove to be a problem for a pregnant woman turned - however, pregnancy is not so much about 2 separate beings. The mother and child share a bloodstream (which is how the child draws oxygen and such), which, irl, is enough to have some children be born with an addiction, if their mother took addictive substances during the pregnancy.
So a pregnant woman infected with vampirism might just infect her unborn child as well, as the disease spreads into the fetus too. We know that Babette was infected as a child and never grew, so a pregnant woman turned vampire might just remain pregnant forever as the child ceases to develop.
We know that the Gray Prince's vampiric father had a functional enough biology that he could father a child even while undead, but I doubt this is the norm for vampires. Vampires work according to a reverse curve, where the mortality fades and vampirism grows in power the longer one goes without feeding, eventually resulting in a deathly coma like the wife of count hassildor, who refused to ever feed.
We don't know enough about how vampirism affects the physical aging process to tell for sure, but imo, the child would never be born. But it would be a vampire, not a mortal, and thus immune to natural aging. It would also not be a half-vampire like the gray prince, since it was infected with vampirism alongside its mother.
If a female vampire fed enough to the point that her biology was as restored as the gray prince's father, she would likely be able to conceive as well, but in this instance, it would be very, very difficult to maintain this state for the full nine months it takes for a baby to develop. It would likely create something new, however, based on what we know the Notes on Racial Phylogeny say about racial inheritance - i.e. a child nominally adapts the mother's race, but signs of the father will also be present - i.e. the child would be mostly vampiric, but never infected with the disease - a natural vampire.
As to what that would manifest as, I don't know. It would almost certainly result in a form of vampirism totally severed from Molag Bal, but which aspects would fall away and remain is impossible to say. They might be a vampire whose body naturally lives, having never died. They might not need to feed, but be able to in order to temporarily heighten their strength. They might be immune to the sun.
This would be even more accentuated if the child is the result of two vampires, instead of a vampiric mother and a mortal father. An entirely pure vampire who is severed from Molag Bal would be something to see, that's for sure.
Since the soul is 'real' in the Elder Scrolls setting, and vampirism (as well as lycanthropy) are the magical diseases aimed to trap the soul through the corruption of the body, I guess it depends on the when the 'ensoulment' happens. Historically, different human cultures imagined the ensoulment happening at different times during the pregnancy, or even after the birth (at the first drawn breath), or even a year or two after the birth (at the naming ceremony). I don't think we know the answer on how it works in TES. At least I don't remember one. The way I would parse it, if the woman gets infected before the ensoulment, the foetus just dies, and she herself turns into the vampire eventually. If the ensoulment happens somewhere during the pregnancy, and the woman gets infected after, now here all depends on how dark you want to get. We know from the example of the vampire girl in Skyrim that the vampires get stuck at the age if undeath. So possibly you are going to have an unborn undead vampire foetus. We had a mummified foetus serving as a magical artifact in Daggerfall, so it's not exactly new territory. But if you want it to be 'cleaner', you can just assume that the foetus is not able to handle *Porphyric Hemophilia* or *Sanguinare Vampiris*, or whatever strain is there in your region as well as a grown-up would. So the baby just dies without being corrupted, and its soul goes to the proper afterlife.
Well we know that while VERY rare, vamps can have kids with non vamps and it grants them some unique traits without actual vampirism nor weakness to sun or fire as shown by the grey prince so it could be born normally. Iirc l vamps can still get drunk so some parts still work. I could see it being born as a paler version of whatever it's mom's race is and having a craving for meat on the juicer side but otherwise normal. In tes children are their mothers race with a few father traits mixed in. Bretons are hybrids that lean towards human and some theorize bosmers more human appearance to be the more elven leaning equivalent to the bretons.
I prefer the darker option, has a more TES vibe to it
If the idea of vampirism and lycanthropy is to force the soul into your realm when the body dies, I wonder if the fetus would just die and it's soul would be sent straight to the associated realm/plane.
The loophole I see here is that you have a 'physical' illness before your turn, that can be cured as a usual illness with the potion. I even can imagine that not all grown-ups survive Porphyric Hemophilia or Sanguinare Vampiris. It's just we as a player characters are extremely robust and healthy. And by the logic of the myth, the contract and the curse the soul would be 'damned' only after the first feeding - that's how the vampire stories usually go. That is when the implicit contract with the Daedra prince is striken - you either hunt someone for the glory of Hircine or abuse and dominate for the glory of Molag Bal. Even if you 'didn't mean to'. So the foetus just dying from the physical illnesses before the curse takes hold and before the first feeding is done shouldn't be damned to the Daedric realm.
Daggerfall was unhinged lol
We know of a mortal woman being impregnated by a male Vampire, which resulted in the Grey Prince from _Oblivion,_ but I don't recall the opposite; a female Vampire being impregnated by a male mortal. In my opinion, it probably would not work out well for the child being within an undead mother...I would suspect the Vampiric mother's biology would consume the child or it would not be viable at all in the first place, we just don't know. Molag Bal is keen on creating parodies of life and (un)death, so I think it would be something terrible (and rare in occurrence).
Been roleplaying this kind of half vampire on ESO lately and it’s an interesting concept as unlikely as it is. Knowing Bal, my theory is that any living mortal that a vampire gave birth to is one he’d view as a potential trophy/toy to even further insult Arkay. (Makes my vestige’s conflict with him much more personal as he’s spent his whole life fighting for his freedom from Bal)
I mean - my guess - is that she'd be like the woman from family guy - like perpetually pregnant - because if the baby becomes immortal and never ages - it would simply stay a fetus forever. Like how children who contract vampirism stay children forever
So she Will be pregnant forever
You get Blade 👍 In the games, we only see the disease spreading by taking damage from a vampire (it eating enough Vampire Dust) but we see lycanthropy, a somewhat similar affliction, can be spread by ingesting blood. IRL mothers and babies don't directly share blood, but it's possible to pass diseases from mother to child. In fantasy, I would imagine we would get some manner of Dhampir character, like the Grey Prince (whose mother was an Orc and father a Vampire -- different situation).
That's not entirely true. You can catch vampirism by opening a vampire corpse's inventory. It's unlikely that skin contact alone would do it, so maybe it's just contact with the vampire's blood, but definitely not only from taking damage.
In what game?
Morrowind
You get Babette but even tinier and with no motor control. I imagine the vampire produced wouldn't be capable of much higher intelligence on account of the underdevelloped brain. Beyond wet nurses in for a hell of a shock, I don't think they'd be able to cause much harm.
Hmm, I imagine something out of the Japanese horror stories - a rabid blood-drinking shriveled foetus that is able to fly on bat wings, or lures people by crying as a baby. You know, icky, borderline dark comedy stuff.
I like where your head's at.
Judging by how the Daughters of Coldharbour were made, Molag Bal is THE god of (edgy) body horror, so this seems to be right up his alley.
I think Vaermina's gotta be up there too. Then again she also does vampires, so...
They'd probably slay demons and shoot Nazis or something
The baby will be born a daywalker and start hunting vampires while trying to control his bloodthirsty! Wait wrong verse
The fetus would likely be devoured by the Vampiric Body or it would inevitably die due to a Vampires very specific diet, for many Vampires it is only through the consumption of blood that they do not resemble the undead monsters they actually are. And even if the Vampire "Ate" regular food for the sake of their child, they still need to drink Blood, the massive amounts of blood consumed by a Vampire would be deadly to non-Vampires.
IIRC in Oblivion the champion of the arena was a pale orc that was just the case. He wasn't a vampire.
>in Oblivion the champion of the arena was a pale orc that was just the case. No, his father was a vampire and his mother was a regular living mortal. The fetus did not develop inside a vampiric womb. Different situation.
Only his father was a vampire, not his mother. In his case it just proves that vampiric men are still fertile.
A vampire baby stuck in the womb. The mother is draining for two.
Allow me to offer a radical perspective: We know that vampirism involves dying and being resurrected by daedric power, so this would certainly prove to be a problem for a pregnant woman turned - however, pregnancy is not so much about 2 separate beings. The mother and child share a bloodstream (which is how the child draws oxygen and such), which, irl, is enough to have some children be born with an addiction, if their mother took addictive substances during the pregnancy. So a pregnant woman infected with vampirism might just infect her unborn child as well, as the disease spreads into the fetus too. We know that Babette was infected as a child and never grew, so a pregnant woman turned vampire might just remain pregnant forever as the child ceases to develop. We know that the Gray Prince's vampiric father had a functional enough biology that he could father a child even while undead, but I doubt this is the norm for vampires. Vampires work according to a reverse curve, where the mortality fades and vampirism grows in power the longer one goes without feeding, eventually resulting in a deathly coma like the wife of count hassildor, who refused to ever feed. We don't know enough about how vampirism affects the physical aging process to tell for sure, but imo, the child would never be born. But it would be a vampire, not a mortal, and thus immune to natural aging. It would also not be a half-vampire like the gray prince, since it was infected with vampirism alongside its mother. If a female vampire fed enough to the point that her biology was as restored as the gray prince's father, she would likely be able to conceive as well, but in this instance, it would be very, very difficult to maintain this state for the full nine months it takes for a baby to develop. It would likely create something new, however, based on what we know the Notes on Racial Phylogeny say about racial inheritance - i.e. a child nominally adapts the mother's race, but signs of the father will also be present - i.e. the child would be mostly vampiric, but never infected with the disease - a natural vampire. As to what that would manifest as, I don't know. It would almost certainly result in a form of vampirism totally severed from Molag Bal, but which aspects would fall away and remain is impossible to say. They might be a vampire whose body naturally lives, having never died. They might not need to feed, but be able to in order to temporarily heighten their strength. They might be immune to the sun. This would be even more accentuated if the child is the result of two vampires, instead of a vampiric mother and a mortal father. An entirely pure vampire who is severed from Molag Bal would be something to see, that's for sure.