Things To Do In Dallas When You’re Undead
(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)
As with most other exonormal beings sharing space with humanity, information on vampires filled voluminous spaces in the St. Remedius Medical College Library, that archive of applied esoterica that disappeared with the rest of the college and now sought with the intensity of the original Amber Room. Some of the contents focused on specific vampires, such as the famed Warsaw war heroine Agata Wiśniewski and how she met Advanced Technologies professor Bennett long before he ever met her. Most of the publicly disseminated contents involved the different types of vampires, usually classified based on the range of consumption habits from cosmic energy to earwax. What was kept quiet was the services St. Remedius performed for many species of vampires, from haven construction to vampirism reversal, but the most profitable was its business in props for vampire hazing.
Contrary to non-vampire lore, most vampire species are immortal in every sense of the term. Even when faced with complete disintegration by overwhelming forces, they tend to regrow from chunks, and many escape at the moment of “death” to quantum pockets to rest, reinvigorate, and wait until the heat dies down. Of surefire vampire killers, only chunks of nuclear reactor shield window, carefully knapped into blades and arrowheads, lead to permanent extinguishment. Religious symbols, holy water, sunlight, hallowed ground, sesame seeds, and wolfsbane, though, have no effect other than psychosomatic on most vampires, and the older ones take advantage of the legends baby bats heard all through their pre-lives to have some fun.
The fabrication shops attached to the Advanced Technologies and Metaphysics departments had a reputation for the best tools and techniques available anywhere on the planet since shortly after the Order of St. Remedius went commercial in 1640, and that reputation was why travelers in time, space, and quantum pocket came, hats and comparable weather protection in hand, to request unique items or repairs on existing ones. They came from up and down the timestream, sometimes leading to shock among non-college observers who had no idea of the range of the Chukchuk civilization of the Late Cretaceous or any conception of the acolytes of the Wolfram Tor of the post-Anthropocene, but the shop crews took each assignment in stride. Compared to them, the fab crews working on vampire artifacts received little attention, mostly to keep the element of surprise as vampire elder after vampire elder plotted evermore-elaborate pranks and japes, both for new members of the fold and for their contemporaries.
After a few centuries of life, most vampires settle into a routine of comfortable poverty. Those who attempt to set up financial investment vehicles for a life of sybaritic abandon usually lose everything in subsequent crashes (most of the money gathered by Duke Cuda to restore and revitalize Castle Urquhart on the shore of Loch Ness was lost during the Denver Depression of 1893, for instance), and the allure of blood showers and all-night goth club court holdings lose their appeal about the time the bills start stripping a significant amount of an inheritance or irrevocable trust. The smarter vampires hide in plain sight, keeping their consumption of both fluids and art to a dull roar. However, no matter the source of vampirism (bacteriophagic infection, thaumaturgical curse, ley line intersection, and zero-point energy explosion being just a few of the more popular causes), those first moving to a post-life life tend to look at their circumstances as blessed, and leap into popular perceptions of vampire life with glee. St. Remedius artifacts usually stopped this in its tracks.
Crucifixes with batteries capable of inflicting electrical burns when touched, with small chemical reactors like those of a bombardier beetle to spurt steam. Carefully antiqued maps and books promising wealth and power to those who followed them to the end, and “holy artifacts” that dispensed vital mystical advice from the other end of a Bluetooth connection. “Silver bullets” with a thin layer of silver over a core of metallic sodium that tore free when fired into vampire flesh and plastic hand and face prostheses that burst into flame under sunlight. Pillar candles loaded with mild hallucinogens and “flying cloaks” with dweomers that saved wearers from severe injury when they jumped out windows or off church towers. Appliances to expose and retract porcelain fangs and transmat devices that instantly replaced a wearer with an equal volume of dust. Plans for ultimate vampire killer weapons that required phlogiston or loyargil to activate them. Activated garlic “ascension tablets” and “communion blood” that was really nothing more than red velvet cake batter thinned with vodka. The more pompous and entitled the youngster, the more elaborate the prank, with a famous example involving one certain that her faith in life protected her from usual “repellants,” only to be locked in a coffin with Dobbsheads made of thorium-232 fastened to the inside. These also worked incredibly well on especially annoying vampire hunters, especially by convincing them that they had joined the ranks of the undead. By the time of St. Remedius’s disappearance, the mail-order catalog of vampire pranks and japes ran to 50 pages, with a handy phone number (and email address for the more technologically inclined) to discuss more specific needs with a fabrication shop representative.
After the college’s disappearance, of course, all production ceased, with only a couple of customers expressing displeasure at unfilled orders. Since then, most vampire prank customers do business with SPG, but everyone agrees that the inventiveness just isn’t the same.
Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.
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