Healing, Vampirism and the Conservation of Magicka

"There are many tales told of the Nerevarine. One of the lesser known stories recounts how he encountered vampires while exploring a Grazelands tomb. This was before Ilunibi and Dagoth Gares, before he even knew he was the Nerevarine, and thus he came to be infected and in time to carry the curse of Vampirism. He always claimed this was through no fault of his own. It should be noted however that he made no attempt to cure the condition, despite claiming to know how this might be done..."

If every play-through of Morrowind is a tale that is told of the Nerevarine, then a passage like the above would feature in many of mine. In fact I usually load Vampire Embrace and Vampiric Hunger so my Vampire Nerevarine can socialise more easily. And that's what started me thinking. You see, my usual approach is to get a thrall, feed, heal the thrall, and feed again. This works nicely in terms of game mechanics and since the magicka gained from feeding is just slightly greater than is expended in healing it's possible to use the loop to replenish your magicka.

This bothers me on several levels. The Scientist me in thinks that this should be a zero sum game and that magicka can be neither created nor destroyed. The Occultist in me thinks that not everything needs to be a zero sum game, thank you. The Hacker in me thinks it's really cool that my Nerevarine found a back channel to pull magicka out of the universe and my inner Game Designer reluctantly concedes that the gain is small enough that it probably doesn't count as an exploit and that I'd be better off brewing a mana potion. They all get overridden by the Game Player who is having fun with it the way it is and has no desire to change anything.

Still, it makes me wonder from a Lore perspective. Is this a reasonable thing to have happen? There doesn't seem to be any reason why a vampire couldn't cast a healing spell. Whether or not feeding should restore magicka is another question, although intuitively it seems reasonable. But should it be possible to make a profit on the deal? I mean should we regard magic as a conserved quantity, or it there a limitless amount to be had and we just need clever ways to tap into it? And if a vampire can heal his cattle and restore whatever he took from them, what stops him from crafting a spell to recharge himself directly? Or does it require some sort of "magicka laundering" exercise where the vitality has to be channelled via one of the truly alive for the spell to work? And if it isn't possible to restore everything by spell that is taken by bite, then what is it that does not get restored, and what are the likely long term consequences for the thrall.

I don't have any answers, but I'm finding the questions interesting. Perhaps some of you will as well.