Is it possible to kill a WC Hunger Demon?

[Wizard Sibelis]

It is obviously not a bacterie or a virus, we are talking magic here. IT is a spiritual infection Just like nemesis is a spiritual infection.

But not a parasite then, an infection, a disease?

Blood is not enough to carry it over but ask Susan about it.

Now what kind of advice is that lol? Have YOU asked her?

The vampires see those who they infected and turned  (taken over) as their children, that was mentioned several times. Normal parent child  relations are not mentioned.

Another word for spiritual infection is of course possession though the relation between the resident spirit and the invading one does not have to be that straightforward and there all the different parasite and symbiotic possibilities appear.

and I say a infectious disease which changes the host into a new form isn't the same as a parasite that attaches itself to you and more or less want's to supplant you entirely. The Reds are not the inhuman replacements the Blacks are, the Hunger fuses to and changes them, in that way it was originally more symbiotic, but I doubt it has any differential from the transformed vampire.... Mmm I think in that way the Full Ramp is the result of what by Bob might be described as 'the afterlife' of spirit and soul fusing into a new form, except it somehow co-opts the one murdered for the transformation instead. Letting the original victim continue to be considered part of the mortal plane.. A parasite would rightfully consume the host first and not look for another to use as the catalyst.
*however, nothing about Arianna screamed transformed bloodline, Cause then calling her daughter at all is oxymoronic, all the tier lower than him would be his primary children, and ergo applicable somewhere in story to be mentioned, not some upstart who hadn't made it that far yet. She was young for a monster.

[Arjan]

But not a parasite then, an infection, a disease?

You can be infected with a parasite. And what it is depends also on how you look at it.

Malaria for example is an ilness and you get infected when a musquito bites you but what enters your blood stream is a parasite.

Language is a wonder sometimes.

Now what kind of advice is that lol? Have YOU asked her?

No but I have read a lot about her so I can imagine what she would say.

and I say a infectious disease

An infectuous disease is a disease that can infect, that spread via infection.

which changes the host into a new form

An illness can have so many symptoms...

isn't the same as a parasite that attaches itself to you and more or less want's to supplant you entirely.

Most parasites just want to live their lives feeding on yoy. You dying is a side effect. 

The Reds are not the inhuman replacements the Blacks are, the Hunger fuses to and changes them, in that way it was originally more symbiotic,

I don't see it that way because it sterilizes the host and spreads not horizontally by generation but vertically. If you view procreation as essential human activity then the reds have lost what makes them human.

but I doubt it has any differential from the transformed vampire.... Mmm I think in that way the Full Ramp is the result of what by Bob might be described as 'the afterlife' of spirit and soul fusing into a new form, except it somehow co-opts the one murdered for the transformation instead. Letting the original victim continue to be considered part of the mortal plane.. A parasite would rightfully consume the host first and not look for another to use as the catalyst.
*however, nothing about Arianna screamed transformed bloodline, Cause then calling her daughter at all is oxymoronic, all the tier lower than him would be his primary children, and ergo applicable somewhere in story to be mentioned, not some upstart who hadn't made it that far yet. She was young for a monster.

The bloodline curse actually proves it. The vampire hosts were not related with each other at least not all of them but they are all spiritually related through the infection and transformation.

The vampire part in the half vampires was also related, not the human part. the bloodline curse followed infection not birth when used on vampires.

That is how red court vampirism spreads so it is logical to call those you turn and infect your children, spiritually they are. Much more than your human children you might have had before your infection and later turning.

[groinkick]

I don't see the Red Court as a spiritual infection.  When they rip their human flesh off to attack it pretty much shows that their human parts are just suits.  They aren't human anymore.  The essence of the human remains but they are much more vampire than human...  They are more like monsters with nice human suits.  The White Court is more like a spiritual infection.  Their bodies are basically human that are augmented with increased capabilities.

I'd say the Red's are more like an virus that rewrites your DNA, and mutates your entire body into something else.  I'd say the Blood Line curse was good evidence of this.  The humans they once were are not related but the vampire side came from a single source, and the rewriting of their DNA made them all related.  The White Court is more like a parasite that is attached to your spirit from the NeverNever.

[Wizard Sibelis]

You can be infected with a parasite. And what it is depends also on how you look at it.

Malaria for example is an ilness and you get infected when a musquito bites you but what enters your blood stream is a parasite.

Language is a wonder sometimes.No but I have read a lot about her so I can imagine what she would say.

So your expert witness is any greater than mine? this isn't a standpoint, and her opinion isn't even an issue to the facts anyway.... Never would be.

An infectuous disease is a disease that can infect, that spread via infection.An illness can have so many symptoms...Most parasites just want to live their lives feeding on yoy. You dying is a side effect. I don't see it that way because it sterilizes the host and spreads not horizontally by generation but vertically.

No citable proof. Indeed, why wouldn't it then sterilize with the initial infection making Maggie an impossibility? Saying the bats can't successfully mate with a human is entirely different from being able to propagate within a species anyway... and nothing I know of says this.

If you view procreation as essential human activity then the reds have lost what makes them human.The bloodline curse actually proves it. The vampire hosts were not related with each other at least not all of them but they are all spiritually related through the infection and transformation.

Some may have been? So they could mate but it's negligible somehow now?

The vampire part in the half vampires was also related, not the human part. the bloodline curse followed infection not birth when used on vampires.

Oh yes, and despite the fact the halves only had the spirit of a demon, and the reds transformed entirely it still targeted both, by blood. This is more proof towards it being a full transformation, and in no way says they can't mate... however you can't say it didn't follow the 'birthed' because that's exactly how it was put, and that again, doesn't address if they had natural births or how those familial relations effect the concurrent effect of using a bloodline curse upon the reds.

That is how red court vampirism spreads so it is logical to call those you turn and infect your children, spiritually they are. Much more than your human children you might have had before your infection and later turning.

And still says nothing on proving Reds cannot mate or Ariana was not his biological daughter... doesn't really refute the point, Ramps are a contagion not a parasitic(or symbiotic) creature... well THEY are a parasitic creature but not internally.

[vultur]

and I say a infectious disease which changes the host into a new form isn't the same as a parasite that attaches itself to you and more or less want's to supplant you entirely. The Reds are not the inhuman replacements the Blacks are, the Hunger fuses to and changes them, in that way it was originally more symbiotic, but I doubt it has any differential from the transformed vampire.... Mmm I think in that way the Full Ramp is the result of what by Bob might be described as 'the afterlife' of spirit and soul fusing into a new form, except it somehow co-opts the one murdered for the transformation instead. Letting the original victim continue to be considered part of the mortal plane..

I think that's about right. But I don't think it's mutually exclusive with the parasite analogy... although a Rampire infection is, IMO, technically more equivalent to a parasitoid (fatal to host... like a caterpillar-eating wasp larva, or the xenomorphs from the Alien series). The infection grows within the human host, and at "maturity" (when the infected makes their first fatal feeding) it matures into an adult Rampire, consuming the human host and using its material (likely both physical matter and spiritual energy) to build its new full-Rampire form.

*however, nothing about Arianna screamed transformed bloodline, Cause then calling her daughter at all is oxymoronic, all the tier lower than him would be his primary children, and ergo applicable somewhere in story to be mentioned, not some upstart who hadn't made it that far yet. She was young for a monster.

Rampire parent-child relations have to be infection/turning-based, not conventional reproduction-based, otherwise the Bloodline Curse wouldn't have worked with Susan... Susan wasn't the biological child of any Rampire. And the chain went from Susan to her infection-parent Bianca, to hers (Ortega), to his (Arianna), to the Red King.

Arianna was directly turned by the Red King... so were the Lords of Outer Night (the ones one tier below him). There just weren't enough positions on the Lords of Outer Night for all his direct infection-offspring.

(And I don't think there is any reason to think Arianna is young as Rampires go... Luccio calls her older than writing. The RK is said somewhere, maybe Proven Guilty, to be 4000 years old. Technically that's inconsistent, as writing is more than 4000 years old, but if Luccio just means writing in the New World/Mesoamerica, which is likely, Arianna is still 2500+. There's no reason she couldn't have been turned in the Red King's early years as a vampire... we don't even know that positions on the Lords of Outer Night were given out based on age, Arianna might be just as old as them but lost out because of lesser power or the Red King's whims or something else.)

[vultur]

I don't think that the problem is that Mab isn't gentle, so much as that there's no sharp dividing line where Thomas Raith, human being, stops, and the Hunger begins, they blende into each other and are sort of one thing.  If Mab rips out the Hunger, she would take a lot of Thomas with it because they are merged.  Trying to be gentle, I suspect, would just produce the same results more slowly.

The WoJ specifically says it's because Mab isn't gentle, though.

I don't think the two are that closely merged, it appears that the Hunger can take over in situations of extreme "starvation", against the will of the human-host.

And there's a comment in Changes that the Bloodline Curse would probably kill the human part of Thomas, leaving his Hunger Demon trapped in a "vegetable" empty-shell/mindless body (presumably the Hunger could keep the body alive at least temporarily until it ran out of energy, but the human soul & mind would be gone). IMO that strongly implies a reverse effect would be possible, killing the Hunger Demon and leaving the human intact, if you could put that level of power into it.

[Wizard Sibelis]

Rampire parent-child relations have to be infection/turning-based, not conventional reproduction-based,

We can't prove it to be an either Or methodology. We know the spell was originally designed for humans and not specifically to target Ramps. It accepting a non standardized form of birthing, when as we know spells are made by intention and this particular ritual work done by the reds themselves, is all very suspect to 'plot device' to me. As such I don't think the idea was specifically fleshed out in such a way, however. I do find this idea palatable for a different reasoning, mainly because in the cycle of the Dresden files, I think the Red King was his generation of 'Harry' which would imo make Ariana... Maggie. A highly ironic factiod I'd think. But I look toward the mirror/inversion in happenstance principle(as I just now coined it lol) Harry killed to protect his child, Nico killed his child to protect his own self interests, and RK's daughter wanted to kill HIM for hers. The cycles of Aeon produce many a possibility, but always the same starborn archetypes I'd say.

[Gman]

The hunger demon can likely be destroyed or banished from the host. The problem is doing it without killing the host or leaving a vegetable shell.

[morriswalters]

By implication the answer to the OP's question is yes.  Otherwise Thomas is in deep shit.  Of course JB may consider my idea as foolish given his superior plotting skills.

I tend to hold the superficial view the vampires are infected with some kind of virus, maybe developed by an outsider.  Who then infected the oldest Court, possibly the Blacks.  And that the various courts are mutations of the original.  And that the phrase demon is not literal.  The Skin Walker refers to Thomas as "little phage".

[Wizard Sibelis]

A. Black court is probably the youngest. B. Phage means, roughly eater, Remember the Phobophages? Phages is generic... and not even denotive of vampires as we know them in the DF directly.

[Quantus]

To the OP: We know that they can be killed by the host experiencing True Love (or the equivalent dietary Bane), but only prior to the first feeding and it was implied that the hunger became too strong after that.  We also know per WOJ that the Hunger of a fetus is perfectly capable of feeding off the mother to survive.   Those two things make me think that a mature Hunger would simply take the Host down with it, exerting more animalistic control (as we saw with Thomas in TC) until both starved to death, or rather the hunger would drain the host to death and die with it. 

[morriswalters]

A. Black court is probably the youngest. B. Phage means, roughly eater, Remember the Phobophages? Phages is generic... and not even denotive of vampires as we know them in the DF directly.

I'm ok with that.  But why do you think the Blacks are the youngest?

[Wizard Sibelis]

I'm ok with that.  But why do you think the Blacks are the youngest?

Cause 1400's is, iirc when was wojed Drac became the first one.

[vultur]

We can't prove it to be an either Or methodology.

Well, I guess it's just maybe imaginable that Rampires could reproduce their own kind biologically... but there's no evidence for it, and it doesn't seem to fit with how other supernatural types work.

The Red Court infection is IMO pretty clearly the RCV's version of the "scion/Choice" mechanic. All the "living" supernatural species - things with biologically alive bodies, not pure spirits or undead like ghosts, zombies, and Black Court Vampires - that we've seen enough of to know use that mechanic. Faerie and Changelings, White Court and the whole "first feeding" setup, Kincaid is apparently some kind of scion that made his Choice by his actions, even Foo and Temple Dogs (though admittedly it's not clear how the Choice works for them...)

(OK, wizards and werewolves don't work that way, but wizards aren't really a "supernatural species" -- according to GS anyone could theoretically learn magic. And werewolves are either specialized minor practitioners (Alpha-types) or people with a spell put on them (hexenwolves, loup-garou), thus just humans also.)


I guess it's just maybe imaginable that Arianna could have been the Red King's biological child pre-Rampire ... but even if that's the case she probably also would have been his turning-child, because the Red King was the first Rampire and would have turned all the other early Rampires.

We don't even know the Red King was ever human. With what Odin says about 'mostly retired gods, the power of their blood spread among their descendants', I think it's at least as likely that the RK (and maybe the LoON as a whole?) were originally Nevernever beings who infected humans to create the Red Court as a species.

We know the spell was originally designed for humans and not specifically to target Ramps. It accepting a non standardized form of birthing, when as we know spells are made by intention and this particular ritual work done by the reds themselves, is all very suspect to 'plot device' to me.

Ah - but whose intention? The Reds just accumulated energy (human sacrifices) and did the preparation, Harry finished the spell... I think Harry's intention was sufficient to change it to target a different kind of bloodline. IMO it's more or less equivalent to Harry redirecting the Outsider powered entropy curse at the Black Court vampire (falling turkey) in BR, except that in this case Harry was actually the one doing the final casting and so had more control.

[Wizard Sibelis]

Ah - but whose intention? The Reds just accumulated energy (human sacrifices) and did the preparation, Harry finished the spell... I think Harry's intention was sufficient to change it to target a different kind of bloodline. IMO it's more or less equivalent to Harry redirecting the Outsider powered entropy curse at the Black Court vampire (falling turkey) in BR, except that in this case Harry was actually the one doing the final casting and so had more control.

The one that used specific props to level said curse. If it was a loaded gun and Harry merely fired it, then he didn't choose the ammo or it's inherent intention/properties. I'd sooner compare it to what he does when he redirects fire to make ice. It wasn't quite the original intention, but an ingenious usage of what was already there.