The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

The antagonism inherent in RPG interactions (in which you have a scenario in front of you that you have to best in some way) misses the point of a question like this. I'm not a GM and there are no XP at stake here. It's not an opportunity to rules-lawyer a situation or demand information the decider doesn't have.

For instance, several people have been talking about demons and souls, but the whole point of having the child unaffected by religious symbols is to take that sort of easy moral certitude off the table. That didn't stop people from turning immediately to euthanasia for quality of life issues.

Also, people need to make all sorts of difficult decisions without knowing exactly what will come from it. You've read Child of Fire and will probably not be surprised to hear that I'm interested in the way people make decisions based on imperfect information. In a way, stripping away easy predictability of the outcomes changes the hypothetical from a less interesting question (How would you maximize happiness in this situation?) to one that interests me more (What seems to be the right thing to do?)

Which is why the gamer/genre tendency to argue the rules ("Vampires such as you describe should be extinct!" "I'm going to uncover the secret vampire subculture!") misses the point, which is to ask: Would you give over your life to care for your own child? Would you risk taking on her illness in the hopes of protecting her, whatever that might mean?

The "gamer" response loses you a chance for self-examination and self-reflection.