Why does vampirism bleach khajiit fur...

Minyassa

...but only part of it? I'd really like to see some reasonable rationale for this that does not have to do with "we just wanted the same look across the board." It needs some sort of explanation. I'd like to ask the Loremaster about this one.

NotaDaedraWorshipper

Same could be asked about argonians scales, tattoos, make up and face paint.

These things shouldn't get faded, but thanks to how (badly) the vampire fading is implemented, it fades everything. Illogically so.

Claudman

Honestly, the forced pale vampire look in ESO honestly is a bit goofy even by lore standards, vampires can mask their vampiric appearance and even have been known for doing that. The members of the Cyrodiilic Vampyrum Order are supposedly indistinguishable from mortals. You can summon a swarm of bats, drain the blood out of someone with your palm and turn into pure mist like a powerful vampire, but cannot use a simple illusion spell to hide your vampirism?

I think players should be given an option to hide vampirism honestly, especially since S4 vampirism in ESO makes your character look like a skooma addict. I don't get why they allow you to use Argonian skins on a non-Argonian, but don't let you hide your vampirism.

Minyassa

I honestly don't mind the vampiric look, where it makes biological sense. But keratin does not have blood flow, so being dead/lacking circulation should not bleach out fur or scales. I imagine they wanted to be "fair" with the disadvantage of being fugly in exchange for vampiric powers, but those disgusting eyes and the gross veiny stuff on fleshy parts like around eyes should be sufficient. I feel like they were just kind of lazy with that, especially since it changes mer eyes to human ones.

I think vampirism cosmetics need a....re-vamp.

VaranisArano

Hair is the same as fur, so it makes no sense.

ListerJMC

I don't mind the earlier stages on those who were pale to start with, but the change is way too dramatic on the rest (I was shocked when I had my Redguard turned after being told stage 1 was "barely noticeable"... He turned white/pale lavender, and I had to remove his blue war paint because it looked like faded bruising ).

And it absolutely should not affect markings, make-up, fur, or scales. I believe the idea was to make them really stand out, but that point doesn't really make sense given you can cover the whole body up with armour and skins anyway, and some races can already be made a bright white colour (Khajiit and Argonians).

I would love a redesign which makes the colour change work better and adds a hide function, but I'm not holding my breath - they said they were looking into a hide function a couple of years back and nothing has changed.

jmaes

Vampirism basically makes their fur white right? This is just personal perspective but maybe it's a case of Marie Antoinette syndrome - becoming a vampire, dying and undying, is probably very taxing and stressful on the physical body. So much that it damages the hair/fur follicles or something. But the issue with that is human hair, as mentioned already, so..yeah.

It's probably just a gameplay decision so you can distinguish a khajiit vampire more easily, maybe?

Ilision

jmaes wrote: »

Vampirism basically makes their fur white right? This is just personal perspective but maybe it's a case of Marie Antoinette syndrome - becoming a vampire, dying and undying, is probably very taxing and stressful on the physical body. So much that it damages the hair/fur follicles or something. But the issue with that is human hair, as mentioned already, so..yeah.

It's probably just a gameplay decision so you can distinguish a khajiit vampire more easily, maybe?

So as jmaes stated above it really does have to do with the death. Same applies to pale skin and temperature of the body. Below you can find a scientific explanation from good explaining what happens with age and death in general to our hair:

*"As we get older, the pigment cells in our hair follicles gradually die. When there are fewer pigment cells in a hair follicle, that strand of hair will no longer contain as much melanin and will become a more transparent color — like gray, silver, or white — as it grows."*

When you die your body fails to produce certain chemicals that help us and make us the way we are when we are alive. One of the examples is the *melanin*. Even though our body does not produce melanin, we consume it when we consume vegetables, etc. When you become a vampire, you stop consuming food because your body gets its nutrients from the blood. Put those two together should answer your question as to why.

Same applies to the scales.