Though, we do know Liches are undead. So, to me, "to the unbound dead, to the Vampires and the Liches." sounds like reiterating the same thought. If it meant as all three as separate nouns, it would've been "to the unbound dead, the Vampires, and the Liches." (note the extra comma and the removed 'to').

Or, the speaker is just long-winded? According to your logic, Liches are not undead.

I always figured the "undead" in TES were a bit more scientifically defined.

On the Preparation of the Corpse shows that skeletons and zombies are just matter that is animated to the caster's will. Kind of like a puppet or organic automaton, if you want to think of it like that. The soul already left for the dreamsleave to get recycled, the body isn't that important.

vampirism is a disease/curse crafted by a Daedric Prince.
One possibility: the give Arkay the middle finger, the body dies but the soul doesn't leave. This would be like liches, right? Get rid of the mortality of the body, and the soul can stick around without having to get recycled.

Another possibility: the curse alters the body (like lycanthropy). Part of this transformation may include significant biological changes such that few of the original functions are needed any more. Think of it like the difference between a phototroph and a chemotroph. If mortals were all photosynthesizers, and then they saw this being that doesn't need the sun (breathing, blood, heart beat) to perform biological functions (energy, motion, thinking, etc), what would they think? So, likewise, we've got vampires who don't need to consume organic matter, but instead need blood (and whatever mystical crazy properties it has regarding the vampire's condition). It's a completely different mode of "living" that uses the same body + some Daedric voodoo juju magic.

EDIT: Why blood? Aside from being a DnD holdover, how can we reconcile it with the TES universe? If mortals are made of creatia, then would drinking blood some how give the drinker creatia? Does a Daedric prince somehow then siphon that off, and in return has the vampirism curse give the vampire benefits? Or, does the blood somehow also contain a mortal's magicka reserve, and this fuels the curse's benefits? Given that this is TES, I wouldn't be overly surprised if blood is more than hemoglobin and heme and whatever - in other words, blood would have other uses/functions aside from biological (transporting oxygen and metabolic waste).

true. perhaps what the vampires are really drinking is part of the soul/magica, while blood is only a vessile.

I was in there for 1462 years, I'm so powerful I need very little blood to survive. One or Two rats a month, and perhaps a lost adventurer every couple of years.

Will people stop trying to compare real life with fantasy? Yes, vampires are Undead. Just because Lovidicus had a baby boy, he is immedietly alive?

But...they're not dead, they're cursed.

They are living dead. Neither dead nor alive. All in all, they are cursed or blessed, depending on the point of view. Vampires were made to spite Arkay, to moack his rythm of life and death.

Mocking Arkay's rhythm of life and death doesn't require them being undead, only immortal.

Immortal and Undead, they are still a mockery to the prideful Aedra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7dxX_QE5u0

But Vampires never really died so they're not undead.

I think it is a curse, if you actually died and were undead how would you become cured?

They die on the third day.

I'll never understand why we need both zombies and vampires. Right, experience points.

Nor very silly necromancy. It's just communion with the spirits. Hell, that's what magic is.

I didn't know death was curable.

This topic would be the body in evidence though.

It's the Witches' secret

so witches can bring the dead back to life? That sounds kinda scetchy. I thought vampirism was made by molag bal as a curse

The joke was, if being a vampire makes one undead, then the coven witches, who are able to cure vampirism, also hold the power to bring people back to life. This is where the whole vampires are undead has some holes, as it is curable, though only a select few know how to cure it. And, well, curing someone from being dead isn't really all that possible. Hell, once a lich is a lich, it cannot go back to being mortal, as it would need to cure itself from death.

As to whether Molag Bal created the vampires, that became sketchy in MW. You see, when trying to cure vampirism, Molag Bal got the cure from Vaemirina (the daedric prince of Nightmares, I just can't spell her name right). To make matters worse, as a vampire, your character will constantly have nightmares after sleeping, which is Vaemirina's representation. Add in the fact that vampires are very nightmaric and operate at a time when everyone is asleep, one could deduce the prince of nightmares had something to do with vampirism. If you ask me, I'm under the notion that the curse was created by the prince of nightmares, and its initial spread was carried out by Molag Bal. Another idea is that the two conspired to create the curse. What I won't accept is that it was purely Molag Bal, until proven otherwise or new evidence comes up.

If magic can take life, it can give life; but we aren't talking death, in a vampire's case, because they're undead. They aren't alive and they aren't dead. They're in some extreme psychosis, between the two. These psychopaths let their minds wander too far into the Oblivion. Without a guide, they became trapped in Coldharbour. Whatever tortures they live in Coldharbour, surface on the Mundus side. Vaernima seems to rule their physical self. The intense nightmares are the consequence of leaving Arkay's sleep-maintenance. One or the other; deprived of that renewal, they become the nightmare. Both Princes are happy jailers.

It actually doesn't matter so think whatever you want!

A vampire is undead. It's a state of being that's not really dead, but not really living, either. Their body is in some kind of stasis/hibernation. A lich's body, on the other hand, is dead. Just like zombies, it's in a state of decay. Also, the Glenmoril witches aren't averse to necromancy. If the Rite of the Wolf Giver wasn't involving necromancy, I don't know what is. So I don't see an issue with them "curing" certain types of undead-ism/vampirism.

That, well, really doesn't refute or endorse my statement. Did you just miss my point or what?

Or Vearnima gave Molag Bal the clap.

Undead in TES are souls bound to Nirn in some way and sustained via magic. Turn undead interferes with the magic binding the soul, breaking the control.

It works on zombies/ghosts/skeletons/etc for obvious reasons
It also works on liches because they've bound their own soul to their corpse.
It does not work on Vampires. There's nothing to interfere with. In other words, the soul never left in the first place.



Given that they have a scroll to cure lycanthropy, it seems more like a ritual to please Hircine than curing undead. No one in the ritual is cured of (un)death. A (not so) simple summoning of Hircine's Hound. Hircine is a pretty good sport on things. Lose, and you're entertainment for his hound, win and Hircine reverses the change.

Also, from now on I shall view heart transplant surgeons as necromancers.

It doesn't work because they are NPC, so it's technical reason. Actually the book Vampires of Vvardenfell might suggest otherwise, well it is not said there directly, but it's the logical interpretation.