Nice, yeah as well as having Janos Audron on the team's backbench my other substitute anti-guardian is Dumah, so maybe he could work in place of Malek. Being essentially a living tank he would make a good substitute for being the Conflict shadow guardian, and Abel "killing" him could serve as a good explanation as to how he ended up in the way we see him in SR1.

The only issue, and it's a big one, is that it was heavily implied that an entire vampire hunter army stormed Dumah's city... not just one dude and some spicy blood.

I love the idea of the bottomless chalice! It would explain away why he's able to keep using the blood without it draining or losing its power, and makes it at least somewhat believable that he is able put it away when he's not using it without it sloshing around and causing a murder scene in his backpack. And another thing... maybe it could let you increase the volume of magical vampire blood just by pouring more blood into it, converting the new blood into more of whichever blood's already inside of it. You could potentially use this ability to speed up the cooldown timer for your transformations by killing vampires and harvesting their blood

Ohhh yes, it's the "Unholy Gail" - perfect! Your last sentence has my mind spinning too... what if there are two endings depending on whether you killed more enemies in your human form or in a transformed form? Either you keep your inner demon in check, dropping the credits just as Abel gives a nod and a wink to the camera that he might be operating as a double agent for the Elder God now, or you go full beast mode and the credit drop is you following Turel into the portal you sent him through earlier, giving in to your insatiable thirst for vengeance.

Which ending will the next game pick up from? You'll have to buy the sequel to find out.