Dibella and Vampires

“Dibella says: ‘Open your heats to the noble secrets of art and love. Treasure the gifts of friendship. Seek joy and inspiration in the mysteries of love.’” – The Commandments of the Eight Divines

Dibella calls us mortals to live happy and fulfilled lives through taking delight and with child-like awe in the world around us, rather than preoccupying ourselves with other realms. She encourages us to experience life as a place of beauty, friendship, and harmony, with a focus on the quality of love.

"If your affection is pure and untainted by coercion, it is blessed in the eyes of Dibella. For has she not said, 'No matter the seed, if the shoot is nurtured with love, will not the flower be beautiful?'" - Augustine Viliane Answers Your Questions

And yet, this celebration of all love, is not extended to vampires. Even when questioners to the Most Esteemed Lady Sybil informed her that "..even though I know what she is, it doesn't change my feelings for her"; Sybil Agustine Viliane maintained the position, in line with Father Rangouze (a prominent priest of Arkay) that vampires are inherently a corruption, and "the pull you feel...is not love, nor even joyous lust, but a darker urge that you must try and put behind you Be not willful, but rather strong, and turn away..."

Yet are vampires truly incapable of love, or even lust, are they unable to take part in the joyous sacraments of friendship and love that Dibella calls us towards? To find out the truth behind this matter, we must look at the vampires we know of from history for examples.

First we must consider how the Count of Skingrad, Janus Hassildor, despite his aparrant affliction with undeath from Porphyric Hemophilia, has love for his wife that never dwindles. His sympathy, his grief, his empathy, and love. He displays all the emotions characteristic of deep love despite his condition.

Or let us consider the case of Lord Lovidicus, who fell in love with an orc woman. Remarking that he "...loved her, as deeply as a man has ever loved a woman, and I wanted nothing more than to bring our baby into this work and embrace my new role as father.” Yet he is slowly driven mad by isolation, heartbreak, and starvation, as he is betrayed by the very woman he loved.

That leaves us with the question, if vampires are not only quite capable of both physical and emotional variations of love, but also capable of finding beauty in the world, then they are not as they are said to be by Sibyl Agustine Viliane and Father Rangouze.

This highlights the point that we must admit. While it is true that not all vampires are good, like all men and mer, we must admit that we are the ones who make vampires monsters. We hold such a stigma against them, we hunt them for who they (often un-consensually) become, we force them to flee to isolation, we repeatedly call them monsters and fear them, that they start to believe they are monsters themselvves, and, as Lord Lovidicus remarks, "Perhaps I should have proven her right…” Alone and with no other ties to humanity, it's as if the only path they have is to become monsters.

We must admit that vampires themselves are not monsters by default, for they retain their humanity, but, in the way we treat them, we drive the humanity from them, and create the monsters we fear in a self-fulfilling prophecy of fear.

Even the criticism of vampires as servants of the Deadric Prince Molag Bal is not the natural truth. Lest we forget the tale of the first vampire, and that she and her kin, according to the "Rite of the Scions", profane the symbols of Molag Bal out of hatred for him. But then again, when so fervently rejected by the Divines, or at the least their priests, how are we surprised that many vampires turn to Molag Bal, for they can find no higher power among the Eight that cares or accepts them.

We must be careful that our own stigmas do not corrupt our own perspectives of the will of the Divines. We can consistently see that vampires are undeserving of the criticisms leveled against them by those who let their prejudices influence their interpretation of the Divines' will. That they are not truly separated from love, that they can engage in friendship, companionship, and love like any other member of men and mer. All we must do is change OUR attitudes about them, to expand the mysteries of love, and spread them among all men and mer.

And this is why I write to your Most Exalted Ladyship, and to the public. Though I have the greatest respect for you, I cannot find legitimacy in your beliefs, and so with the greatest respect I submit this letter.

Eyrin (last name redacted), Female Breton, 28th of Last Seed 4E 189 A Vampire-inclusive follower of Dibella.

(Wow I didn't think that'd turn out as long as it did. Please let me know what your thoughts on vampires and Dibella are! :D)