That’s silly. Vampires can only enter when invited. A warrant is not an invitation.
What if the judge uses eminent domain to legally take ownership of the house when handing out the warrent? The state would become legal owner of the house, sends in the vampire police, and hand it back to the original owner later?
I like the rule lawyering, but the fuzzy conception of vampire law is that they require an invitation to enter a home, but nobody would expect an abandoned home to stop them, indicating a holistic rather than a technical definition. The state can repossess the home, but if the entire police force is vampires they’ll be unable to cross the threshold so long as those living there view it as a home.
For example, a worker drone that keeps a bed at their office and lives there part-time, it makes sense that a vampire could enter their office without invitation because it isn’t a home despite living there. However, alter the situation to an even sadder worker drone that lives full-time in their office and considers it to be their home, can the vampire enter? I posit nay, the vampire will need an invitation to enter their sad office home.
It’s not about house ownership. You can be in someone elses house and still not let them in.
The concept is that the people INSIDE the house must let the vampire OUTSIDE in. A warrant doesn’t accomplish that.
So you could steal a vampires house by going there when he’s not home, and then just not let him come back in?
Maybe this is why they dont like to go out much.
The act of living there for a time and turning it into your home sanctifies it in a way.
Or if the actual owner is the bank that the resident is in debt with. You fail to pay your debt and the bank invites repossessers and the police to evict you and take your stuff.
If I was a vampire, I’d definitely look for a job as a repossesser or a cop.
You’d be really bad at your job since magic cares not for the laws of man
Yes. They won’t be able to but they can.
This is the correct answer.
Reminds me of a riddle:
- A hungry dog is standing by a river and there is a steak on the other side, but he’s not allowed to cross the river. What does he do?
- Starve?
- He swims across and eats the steak.
- But you said he’s not allowed to!
- He’s not allowed to, but he does.
I have garlic in my house extensively everywhere. So they can but they may burn quicker.
I think a scenario works best: John the vampire cop is planning to enter your house tonight. You haven’t given him permission, but he has a warrant. He is dead set on entering. By morning, John has not entered your house no matter how much he tried.
I say no. It’s like if I give a vampire permission to enter my neighbor’s house - that won’t work.
The only difference between me and a judge is legal authority. Why should vampire magic care about the laws of man?
Why should it care about the religion of man, then?
For that matter, why should it care about the invitation of man?
If there are rules a vampire must follow, and those rules can be satisfied through the agency of human beings, having been interpreted by human beings, then we have to consider what a human being means by invitation.
If a 4-year-old invites a vampire into his parents’ house, does that count? It’s not his house, either. If you think that a vampire can enter on the invitation of a 4-year-old then you must concede that people other than the owner can invite someone in. If you think that invitation is not valid, then you must concede that a vampire respects a hierarchy of rights.
I think that the state asserts a right to invite other people into your house which supersedes your right to prevent them. We call that overriding invitation a warrant.
I don’t agree with that at all.
I don’t think the deciding factor here is literal ownership - what does a vampire care if you’re owning, renting, paying a mortgage, or living with your parents? Rather, it makes most sense that the deciding factor to whether you can validly invite a vampire into a given location, is if that location is where you live. So the 4-year-old can invite the vampire in because the 4-year-old lives there. I might also accept that a vampire can be invited in by anyone who is already inside. There are plenty of more consistent options than just those you described.
In your hypothetical scenario, if vampires were to somehow gain control of the government, could they simply pass a law stating all vampires are invited in all domiciles? Legal systems change and can vary wildly depending on location - it’s silly to think they’d have an effect on something based in magic, not law.
I think it’s easy to get sidetracked on “magic” vs. “law”. It seems clear to me that both of these ideas are tied up in human interpretation, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to have a disagreement about them, we’d simply look up the correct meaning for “magical rules that govern vampires”.
I suspect that we have a fundamental disagreement that we’re not going to resolve with debate, but I’ll take one more shot anyway.
I appreciate that you’ve given a pretty succinct definition of your position: to summarize, you can only invite someone to a place where you live, although you can also invite someone into a place when you are already inside that place, regardless of whether you live there.
Can a person who lives on the street invite a vampire? If so, then a vampire is circumscribed from any outdoor location where a person lives (sans invitation); and if not, we see that “where a person lives” is not actually the deciding concept.
If you own multiple homes, which of them do you “live” in? Can a vampire enter all the others? Do you have to be in the home at the time of the invitation, or could you invite a vampire to use your summer house for a month while you’re in your winter home?
All of these things cloud the idea that “living in” a place is not actually all that straightforward, and still requires the interpretation of mankind to be meaningful to the vampire. Indeed, I think the magic relies on the consent of a human, not the literal words of an invitation, and consent is innately tied to interpretation by the person consenting.
However, if anyone in the home can make the invitation, then I think the way this plays out is: the vampire cop gets a warrant, one of the other cops goes inside, and then shouts at the vampire to come inside, and then you’re boned anyway.
Some other possible loopholes:
What is a “home”? Does it need to have a roof or a door or walls?
What happens if the vampire is knocked unconscious and then the resident tells another person to bring them inside?
This is definitely more complex than I originally thought.
What happens if the vampire is knocked unconscious and then the resident tells another person to bring them inside?
The another person can freely drag the vampire into the house. The vampire is not entering the house, he is being entered into it which is a different act.
Now I’m very fascinated by this thread and I want to jump in, so thank you.
I would like to make a few points: 1. I think that the limitations of where you can invite a vampire into are scoped to where you reside, that is, the indoor location that you own or that you rent that you are currently occupying. 2. A warrant is not an invitation. A search warrant, for instance, gives authorities the ability to legally enter a location for a specific purpose where they would otherwise be unable to. In the case of a vampire cop they would legally be allowed to enter but physically unable as there was no invitation. 3. The only case I can think of where things would get murky (kind of) is in the case of a legal seizure of property. In that case a vampire would be able to enter, however, because the property was seized it no longer serves as the residence for the individual and so there can be no invitation in the first place.
And so I would maintain that any vampire, regardless of occupation, would be unable to enter a potential victim’s residence. If there were a vampire judge who could issue a seizure of property, that is a potential loophole that would enable a vampire to confront a victim.
Also I’d be super down to continue this conversation.
In your hypothetical scenario, if vampires were to somehow gain control of the government, could they simply pass a law stating all vampires are invited in all domiciles?
Yes, but it wouldn’t have the effect you expected because the people still living on those homes have not invited them in.
Invitations are not associative and not transitive. If I invite John to my enter house, that doesn’t allow James to “infer” that he’s also invited, nor does it allow John to invite James into my house.
I mean, mythologically speaking, vampires care about the religion of man because god actually exists and literally defends the faithful from their predation. Vampires also aren’t lawyers, barring an exceptional sci-fi series, so the rules they operate by are mystical and holistic. They can’t enter a home because it is a threshold defined and empowered by those living within, not by the laws that declare their ownership.
Squatters would be safe so long as they saw the place they lived as home. Generally someone who lives within the home and therefore contributes to the threshold is required to invite them in, but sometimes agency can be granted to others (i.e. a doorman or friend), but agency cannot be taken (i.e. the state). So the 4-year-old can invite them in, because it is their house until their parents kick them out. They also can’t cross running water because it purifies evil, same with why they’re burned away by the sun.
That said, it’s not like there’s a clearly defined foundation for their operation, and modern authors have modified how vampires work numerous times, so it really varies on a case by case basis.
Why should vampire magic care about the laws of man?
Because they might find a loophole that affects their own laws that they can use for their advantage.
Could the property owner invite a vampire into a tenants apartment?
How about if you rent out a room, could the tenant invite the vampire into your house?
Vampires don’t care about ownership. If you’re in the house they want in, you can invite them in.
So, if someone invites a vampire to an apartment building he is free to roam in peoples homes?
Vampires try to stay away from apartments. They’d need permission to enter the building and permissions for each apartment it wishes to enter. Unfortunately, once in new york city in the 1800’s a vampire was getting a meal at a new apartment complex and had permission to the building. As he was making his way through trying to get an invite into an appointment he went to one of the penthouses that take up a whole floor. As soon as the elevator opened he’d made entry to a home without permission and turned to dust. So vampires have been weary of apartment buildings since.
They must be the masterminds behind the suburbs then!
Maybe next time you are joining a friend group ask a different question.
My coworker asks if people are more scared of space or the ocean.
I like your coworkers question. I was in the Navy and have a deep respect for the ocean. I have been in the middle of the Pacific near a storm. Our ship was in danger a couple times. Being woken up to general quarters alarms and practically standing on my bed rack was an unforgettable experience. The ocean is scary and it doesn’t give a fuck about you. It will kill you and ask for more. Even on a nice calm day, it can kill you if you don’t respect it.
Space is the type of thing that scares the ocean.
I’m way more scared of the ocean. I’ve had to change plans multiple times because of tsunami warnings but I’ve never really even had to think about the dangers of space. Plus realistically any space based threat I face is like a societal problem whereas I could just get a little careless at a beach alone and I’m dead.
And how are your coworkers friend groups going?
A warrant is a government invite by the laws of man anyone presenting a legal warrant for your home is required to allow you entry as a result the vampire may enter your home provided they are actually a cop and haven’t stolen it from a cop or glamored a judge into giving them the warrant ie the warrant must be legal and the vampire most actually be a cop
Holy run-on sentence, Batman!
