My Vampires

So, I gave a lot of thought as to how I'd have my vampires be if I had the choice. I mean, I read about them on TVTropes. I looked at the old legends I haven't seen in a long time. I thought about what vampires meant to me. I'm very much against a lot of the modern vampiric practices, but at the same time, I understand where they come from and why. In short, I kind of took what I liked and threw out what I found idiotic, pedantic, useless or stupid. Also, I drew up a bit on what I knew about the Dracula from Bram Stoker's books as well as the person Bram Stoker actually got his ideas on Dracula from, Elizabeth Bathory. I did all of that... and I think I really like what I came up with. I wrote it all down because I needed to keep it straight. Also, typing helps me think things through. When I think about trying to explain things to someone else, I usually do a better job of the explaining. So... here it goes!

Vampires

In my world, what defines a vampire?

A vampire is an immortal creature created either by a ritual in which the caster craves immortality, through a conversion ritual performed by someone already a vampire upon a human or similar creature, or born that way by two vampires usually using a ritual to ensure that the birth goes alright. They must feed on blood to survive. To feel truly “full” a vampire must drink the average blood volume for someone of their height and weight (average for adult humans being 5 liters or 1.3 gallons). However, they won’t truly start to degrade unless they drink less than that amount in 120 days. In short, a vampire will be very healthy and strong if they were to drain a person their approximate height and weight every night. If they were to completely drain a human being every four months, they would survive, but they wouldn’t be very happy about it.

The ritual…

There are several rituals that can be used to create a vampire, the cost is always the same. The person wanting immortality or hoping to gain immortality must take blood to create a sort of sacrifice. If it is a magic user hoping for immortality, the blood must be taken from an innocent who the magic user loves and the innocent must be killed. If a vampire is trying to “spread” the vampirism to others, the blood sacrifice must come from the vampire and be fed to the human the vampire is trying to turn. In this case, the innocent that is dying is the human. When it comes to two vampires trying to mate, the blood sacrifice must come from a child or infant with the blood drunk by the soon-to-be-expecting mother. The ritual must also be performed on the full or new moon of every month for the nine months leading up to the vampire child’s birth. Otherwise, the vampire child will wither and die in the womb. It should be noted with vampires who create more vampires that the farther the offspring, as it were, get away from the original and intial ritual, the more “breakdown” is likely to occur. In other words, the person who performed a ritual and turned themselves into a vampire can convert others in to vampires easily. Those vampires, however, would have a tougher time without… performing their own ritual for immortality and sacrificing a loved one. Any children of the second-generation vampire will never have the power to turn other humans into vampires. Meanwhile, an infant born a vampire is much more likely to be incredibly powerful and create more vampires due to owing their existence to the loss of nine to ten lives.

Alive or dead?

For thousands of years people have asked the question of whether vampires are alive, dead or undead. The truth is… complicated. While it’s true that vampires don’t share the same physiological signs of life that humans do, they do fit the characteristics of life.

1. Homeostasis: Vampires have a constant body temperature; it’s just a bit lower than a humans. Humans rate at about 98.6° Farenheit, vampires are closer to 88.6° Farenheit. They have fewer metabolic functions than the average human seeing as how their life force is mostly generated from… well, something more akin to magic.
2. Organization: Vampires were humans, so yes, their bodies are composed of cells. The cells obviously work a little differently due to excess magic content, but they are still essentially cells. 
3. Metabolism: As stated before, this is a bit different than most people. While vampires can and do eat and can get energy from eating regular human “organic matter” food, it’s not really how they get their energy or stay alive. In fact, eating tends to raise their body temperature. However, most foods with excessive plant-based products will make a vampire ill. They get their energy, power, immortality and continued existence from renewing the initial ritual that made them vampires—i.e., drinking blood.
4. Growth:  Vampires do continue to grow… in a sense. Vampire cells do die and new cells do divide. Vampires continue to grow hair and nails throughout their lifespan. This also means that any matter they take in that isn’t utilized must exit. Also, any child born a vampire will age to human majority and then, stop.
5. Adaption:  All vampires change over time due to their environments chosen or otherwise. A vampire who lurks in the dark will get better night vision over time, but eventually the sun will be quite damaging (read: blinding not killing). A vampire who lives in the city will live in ways different from a vampire who has spent centuries in the jungle. However, they don’t really evolve from vampire-to-vampire rather, a vampire adapts and evolves over its lifespan and any vampires created from said vampire will carry those same traits.
6. Response of stimuli: You try stimulating a vampire. You probably won’t like the response.
7. Reproduction:  Vampires can have offspring. However, for a female vampire to conceive a child, an infant must die and the female vampire must consume the blood in a ritual. For a female vampire to carry the infant to full term, she must perform the same ritual for every month the child is in the womb either on the full moon or the new moon (must be one or the other and remain the same moon for all ten rituals). Regardless of the rituals, the female vampire usually dies in childbirth. Luckily, vampire infants and toddlers exclusively drink blood (as much as any infant or toddler). They can start eating flesh around the time the reach the age of four. Until a vampire child reaches the age of majority, they must consume one fully grown human per day or die. Vampires don’t reproduce in this way often. Vampires can also make more vampires by simply converting humans (easier, but creates less powerful offspring).

How do vampires differ from humans in terms of abilities?

This is actually largely dependent on the ritual that created the vampire and the vampire himself. Obviously, a child born a vampire will have a lot of power due to the wishes of that child’s mother. However, this is only barely second to the vampire that creates and performs a ritual him- or herself to become an immortal and is thus rendered a vampire. The number of sacrificed loved ones, the abilities the vampire wishes for, and the pre-existing abilities of the person performing the ritual all can determine the strengths and powers of the vampire. Offspring in the sense of humans turned into vampires by a person already a vampire will have whatever pre-existing abilities they had (most vampires only turn those with special abilities) usually only have greater strength, speed, and agility with a slight healing factor. As immortality is the ultimate goal of becoming a vampire, all are nearly impossible to kill. That’s actually the only difference between a vampire and a human that is always definite: vampires are nearly impossible to kill and they will not die naturally unless they neglect to “renew the ritual” (drink the blood of one human their size and weight within four months of the last feeding) while humans are easy to kill. Some common accompanying abilities are:

• Aerokinesis (common)
• Allurement (common)
• Animal Empathy/Control (not uncommon)
• Astral Projection (not uncommon)
• Audiokinesis (uncommon)
• Broadcasting (not uncommon)
• Biofeedback (common)
• Biokinesis (not uncommon)
• Chronokinesis (rare)
• Clairaudience (not uncommon)
• Clairgustance (rare)
• Clairsentience (uncommon)
• Clairvoyance (common)
• Cryokinesis (rare)
• Diviner (common)
• Dream Premonitions (common)
• Echokinesis/Sonokinesis (not uncommon)
• Electrokinesis (rare)
• Empathy (not uncommon)
• Flight (common)
• Geokinesis (uncommon)
• Hydrokinesis (rare)
• Levitation (See Flight)
• Lumokinesis/Photokinesis (rare)
• Magnokinesis (rare)
• Optical Suggestion (uncommon)
• Oracle (rare)
• Poisoneous venom (uncommon)
• Postcognition (uncommon)
• Precognition (common)
• Psipathy (uncommon)
• Psychometry (uncommon)
• Pyrokinesis (common)
• Remote Viewing (rare)
• Retrocognition (rare)
• Shape-shifting (uncommon)
• Soul Travel (rare)
• Super strength (common)
• Super speed (common)
• Super agility (common)
• Super endurance (common)
• Super senses (common)
• Telekinesis (common)
• Telepathy (not uncommon)
• Telepathic Suggestion (common)
• Thermokinesis (not uncommon)
• Umbrakinesis (not uncommon)

A Note on Abilities: Unless a person was born a vampire or became a vampire through ritual, it is exceedingly rare for a vampire to have more than one or two of the common abilities (usually just super strength, speed or endurance), though it is rather common for them to have at least a weak form of a rare ability or a very strong form of an uncommon ability. Only those born as vampires or who change themselves into vampires via a ritual ever have more than two or three special abilities, but born vampires rarely have rare or uncommon abilities.

Weaknesses:

Vampires are supposed to be nearly impossible to kill; they performed a ritual to live forever. They actually tend to adapt to near-death experiences by developing an immunity to that method of death. Those turned into vampires by other vampires are the easiest to kill and adapt the slowest. The best way to go about killing a vampire is to subdue said vampire, dismember it, burn it, and then scatter the ashes. If you can find a vampire while it’s resting and nail it down somehow (i.e., stake to the heart), you’re more likely to succeed. Otherwise, the consensus is: don’t even bother. Now, if you can manage to subdue a vampire for over 120 days without feeding them, then they’ll die naturally. Also, because blood magic is essentially used to give a vampire immortality, they actually have a weakness against any human using blood magic against them. It affects vampires more than any other creature. Certain special abilities also carry weaknesses. Superhuman senses carry the unfortunate bonus of a weakness to sunlight, loud noises, strong pungent smells, etc. Any psychic talent carries a weakness in the presence of large crowds. Vampires also have a weakness to most magical items, especially those designed to hurt vampires. Note, the rituals to create such items often require similar actions to those rituals that create a vampire. Reminders of blood sacrifice can also be a weakness of some vampires, especially blood sacrifice meant for selfless reasons which is why crucifixes (not crosses) can weaken or at least put off a vampire. Vampires usually tend to react badly to being forcibly reminded of their human lives. “Badly” may be read as homicidal rage or rendered catatonic depending on the vampire, how, and why they were changed. As said before, the consensus when someone runs around talking about trying to kill vampires is, “Don’t even bother.”  They do police their own quite well.

How to know if your neighbor is a vampire:

1.  Does he or she drink blood? Have people in the area gone missing and turned up a few days later exsanguinated? (If not, you may still have a vampire. They’re just smart. Vampires don’t eat close to “home” if they have a modicum of self-preservation.)
2. Is he or she exceedingly pale? Does he or she avoid sunlight or stick to a more nocturnal life-style? (If not, you may still have a vampire. They just have an unusual lifestyle where they are out during the day probably because they don’t have the superhuman senses that make daytime unbearable for some vampires.)
3. Does he or she have noticeable fangs or sharp teeth? (If so, you probably don’t have a vampire, just someone who wishes they were one. Most vampires have extra-hard fingernails for opening blood vessels or they used knives. Very few vampires actually have fangs and even rarer vampires have fangs they can’t hide.)
4. Does he or she show up in a mirror? (If not, you should check the mirror and see if it has any magical properties. The lack of reflection probably indicates that they aren't human. Whether or not they’re a vampire is still up for debate.)
5. Does your neighbor seem to breathe less than others or lack a pulse? (Is your neighbor showing any signs of life at all? If not, your neighbor is dead. If your neighbor is moving without breathing or a heartbeat, you've probably got a zombie or a revenant… as in undead. There’s a slight chance your neighbor is a vampire, but I’d eliminate the other two possibilities first.)
6. Is he or she significantly colder than the average person, but warmer than room temperature? (He or she is probably a vampire, but her or she could be a zombie or revenant. If they are afraid of fire, they are definitely the latter. If they aren’t, be prepared to die slowly.)
7. Are his or her eyes particularly unusual? Are the eyes red? Are the eyes glossier than the average humans? Are the eyes more… animal with the “shine”? Are the eyes brighter than an average human’s eyes? Does he or she possess an unusual eye color such as violet or gold? (If the eyes are red, you’re probably dealing with a demon. They’re worse than vampires. Run. If the eyes are glossier, you’re probably dealing with a zombie or revenant. Burn it! If the eyes are more animal-like, this is a vampire or shape-shifter or both. If the eyes seem brighter or an unusual color, then the person in question probably isn’t human or entirely human. Whether or not they’re a vampire probably depends on the previous points.)
8. Did your neighbor require you to invite them into your house? (If so, you have a polite neighbor. Vampires only require invitations into protected houses. If your house has been blessed by a Catholic priest with the chalk and stuff, it’s protected.)

The Life Cycle of a Vampire

All vampire’s lives fit a certain pattern whether they were “turned” by a vampire, used a ritual to become a vampire or was born a vampire. Certain habits, abilities, and personality traits can speed up the life cycle or slow it down. However, all vampires do go through certain things.

1. Creation: The first stage takes place right after a vampire is first a vampire whether born that way, made that way, or self-made. This is marked by a high level of power and a high volume of blood ingestion. “Newborn” vampires in the first year or so (eighteen or so years for those born as vampires) tend to drink and kill more than just the average blood volume for their height or weight every night. Some even become a bit bloated, like ticks. Usually their vampire “parents” (if the vampire in question has them) will coach them through the time and encourage their children to control themselves. Bloating isn’t usually a problem for those who change themselves with a ritual because self control is part of learning ritual magic. Due to the fact that the ritual that created the vampire was recent and they are feeding so much, the vampire is also quite a bit more powerful than they’ll ever be unless they live a very long time. Most vampires get caught during this time and end up killed by vigilantes or their own kind.
2. Development: A year or so after the vampire is done getting fat off blood, several things happen. The vampire’s abilities and strengths settle while their bloodlust calms down. They usually develop a feeding routine and any abilities they were too busy in the first stage to work on. This stage usually is the most erratic. While some vampires can spend centuries working on themselves and settling into a routine and feeding territory, (most move in a migratory pattern around a certain region). This time period is usually short if they are part of a clan.
3. Decline: Immediately after development, whether it is a couple centuries long or a couple of decades, the vampire will enter a period of mental and physical decline. The vampire will drink less as the knowledge of what they are and their loss of humanity hits them. This can usually accompany the death of those they knew as a human. Sometimes this phase is skipped completely, but that is rare. This stage comes fastest with any vampire with mental abilities that causes them to see humans as people and not just prey. Most vampires die during this time if they didn’t die in the creation stage. Death is usually by suicide or assisted suicide via vigilante or another vampire.
4. Rebirth: If a vampire survives the decline phase, they enter a period of “rebirth” where they get some of their power from creation back and move forward with immortality. This phase is called “Rebirth” for two reasons. First, this phase’s beginning is often marked by a failed suicide attempt. Second, this phase is also usually marked by the vampires who were “turned” by another vampire exploring ritual magic, and renewing their vampirism by performing a ritual for immortality to strengthen their position as vampires. This stage can move onto “Settling” or move back to “Creation” and “Development” depending on what happens.
5. Settling: Following Rebirth, a vampire usually settles into immortality. This includes finding a mate, forming a “family” of other vampires usually known as a clan or relocating the clan the vampire was “born” into, and generally moving and killing a lot less. These vampires are the ones that usually take up a human diet again if they didn’t already do this during the previous stages. If a vampire makes it to this stage, they are probably as immortal as a vampire can get.
6. Death: In the course of a vampire’s life, the vampire will make a mistake. They will eat the wrong person. They will turn the wrong person into a vampire. They will trust the wrong vampire or creature. They will be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They will piss off the wrong member of their kind. Regardless, most vampires don’t survive past the second century for a number of reasons. Decline can lead to Death. However, Rebirth can also lead to death if the resurgence results in stupid, reckless behavior or if the ritual goes wrong. Every stage can lead to death. However, most vampires before they are about to die tend to lose whatever tenuous hold on sanity they have. Vampires don’t die. They die and take as many people with them as possible.

Mating

No human being was meant to be alone. This is also true of vampires. As humans like to find a mate or spouse to settle with, most vampires are the same. It’s not an all-consuming urge like most humans because vampires can easily make more vampires without a spouse. Female vampires usually have a higher urge to find a mate than male vampires because male vampires wouldn’t be able to carry a child even if they wanted to carry a child. Male vampires also aren’t averse to experimenting with attempting children with human women (it always ends badly).

This is not a “one true love” situation. While some vampires are more compatible than other vampires for mating, it’s like human relationships. The longest-lasting vampire relationships occur when a vampire “turns” a human for a expressed purpose of that human being their mate. The vampire usually trains the human into the ideal mate for them. While some mated pairs of vampires do often claim to be “soul mates”, it should be noted that unless a vampire child is involved, the couple will split for a time in one hundred years time. Also, most mated pairs consist of a partner with more mental abilities (psychic and oracular abilities) and a partner with more active abilities (psychokinetic and enhanced physical abilities). Strangely, vampires with a combination of mental and active abilities rarely have mates. It’s not unheard of, but it isn’t common.

Vampire Clans

Vampires, like humans, have a natural tendency to form into familial groups they call “clans” some of the more old-fashioned folks like the term “covens”, but witches made it distasteful. Before the term “covens” was used, a group of vampires referred to themselves as “pantheons,” interestingly enough. A clan usually consists of the vampire who used a ritual to become a vampire, his or her mate (if he or she has one), any children they have, any humans who have been turned into vampires, and any human servants who serve as a quick meal when things get tough. In times of plenty, those human hangers-on may earn a right to become vampires willingly or, if they aren’t liked or valued, they may be used in a ritual. If a member of a family or clan becomes too powerful, (usually children born of the clan) they usually end up leaving the family or clan to start their own. Some human hangers-on are taught ritual magic by the clan leader and learn to become vampires on their own, but this is a nearly unheard-of practice.

Like with humans, clans serve a number of purposes. The largest being: they are formed for protection. A group of vampires together is a lot harder to kill than a single vampire. In addition, all beings crave companionship; a clan keeps a vampire from trying to seek out companionship from humans and leading into Decline. Clans also provide comfort in other ways.

The clan system helps vampires find mates. Whenever two clans meet, after the initial meet-and-greet with snarling and testing each other for trustworthiness, the combined clans enter a party atmosphere where they get to know each other. If any members of the clans “pair off” there’s a general exchanging of clan members. Females usually go to their mate’s clan. If two females or two males choose to mate with each other, the clan with the most capacity for expansion gets the mated pair. If the pair split up in the future, they usually know how to find their previous clan. However, usually one half of a mated pair doesn’t survive splitting up. Vampires are quite violent.

“Turning” and Children

Due to the fact that creating a vampire in any way takes a lot of hard work and dedication, vampires don’t just turn any old vampire. There are no “Newborn Armies” because that’s just a lot of hard work for very little pay-off and here’s why. The rituals to convert a human to a vampire are wide and varied depending on the vampire and the ritual he or she used to become a vampire in the first place. However, all of them require the vampire doing the converter to give a lot of their own blood to the soon-to-be vampire. More involved rituals require the sacrifice of a human being the age and general size of the human being converted. The more people sacrificed with the closer ties to the human being converted, the more powerful this human is. However, the human in question isn’t always willing to be converted and this can lead to problems if the right ritual isn’t used. When it comes to a female vampire giving birth to a baby vampire, well, that’s ten sacrifices so that the child can be born and then that baby will have to be fed more than its share of blood until it’s able to provide for itself. With all the hard work, it’s understandable that vampires don’t often make more vampires until a certain stage in their life cycle.

There’s another issue. If the mother of a vampire child dies, the child is a lot less likely to survive to adulthood. With converted humans, those who are turned unwillingly often run away from the vampire that converted them before the first year is older and often return only to kill their vampire parent. “Turning” is risky business. “Birthing” is also risky business. So, it doesn’t happen all the time and the only reason it happens is to consolidate power (minor) and because all vampires need family units otherwise they go into a form of depression and die (major). Isolation kills and being a lone immortal in a veritable sea of mortal snacks really doesn’t help the immortal at all. Converted vampires always have special abilities that their creators won’t have. Vampires are drawn to such abilities because it helps the vampire gain power and while the converted vampire is in the “Creation” stage, they usually obey their creator without thinking (unless they didn’t want conversion in the first place).

More vampires do lead to another risk: more vampires leads to more people needing to die to maintain the clan. This leads to the clan getting caught if they don’t cover their tracks properly. This leads to whole clans getting wiped out because that pesky newborn vampire couldn’t control him- or herself.

How Did All of This Start?

Well, no one knows, but as the Olympians pretty much rule over all of vampires as a sort-of clan that currently reside on an island off the coast of Greece that humans cannot reach or see, many agree that Greek Mythology probably has something to do with it. The Twelve loosely rule over all vampires, but that just means that if someone does something a little too public, they send out agents to take care of it. There hasn’t been a definitive sighting of an Olympian in several centuries. However, most vampires do use pseudonyms so an Olympian could probably be any incredibly old and powerful vampire anywhere.

The Olympians’ power has been questioned and challenged a few times over the years. Elizabeth Bathory tried to gain enough power to take them on, but she ended up in house arrest and once her blood supply ran out… Well, we all know what happens to vampires who can’t “renew the sacrifice.” Vlad the Impaler attempted to avenge her, but the Olympians didn’t even have to step in for that bit. The Roman Catholic Church tried something, and that’s when The Olympians and their Island vanished. Some theorize that something may have happened to Laputa, Atlantis, and Avalon because those places no longer exist. However, Merlin is considered the beginner of the Council of Magic and half-vampire. Avalon could just be the base for the Council hidden from even the vampires.

Sadly, this is all conjecture.