vampires

WARNING: The information written here is not necessary to read, and can be skipped if it isn't applicable to your character.

What's a vampire?

Vampires are people suffering from vampirism, a magic disease that affects a person’s ability to digest foods and gain nutrients from it by destroying several genes relating to such.

Vampires are restricted to a diet of solely blood, but require significantly less nutrition and are able to live off just about three liters a day–which, to a non-vampire, may seem like a lot, but in comparison to the amount of nutrients blood contains, this is quite the steal in terms of what they get from their consumption.

How does it work?

Vampirism is a viral disease, meaning it is most commonly contracted from another vampire. The vampiric virus is spread through saliva in an open wound, which is how being bitten can cause the victim to be afflicted with the disease. Thankfully, however, due to its magical nature, the virus can only be spread on new moons. This means, if your vampire buddy bites you on a regular day, you won’t have to worry about being turned–but you should probably disinfect regardless.

Contracting vampirism alters a person’s very genetics–changing them into a blood-drinking, powerful being of the night. Their digestion and taste receptors are entirely altered to tailor to consuming blood, and eating or drinking regular food will cause indigestion, as a vampire’s new body can no longer handle anything but blood.

Powers

Different strains of vampirism have altered abilities, though generally speaking they have...

Heightened healing.
- A vampire can heal within minutes of receiving an injury, and in life or death situations their bodies might divert energy to make it seconds.
- This ability doesn’t come without a cost, though, and vampires are often left exhausted after sustaining–and healing–several injuries.
Inhuman Speed.
- Vampires can reach incredible speeds, generally 35 miles per hour.
- They can go even faster than that if they’ve trained for it–just like anyone can train themselves to be faster.
- An especially fast vampire could use their speed to make it impossible to tell where they are when they’re moving, but it’s a taxing ability
Strength.
- Not that much greater than a human’s strength–and it definitely doesn’t reach werewolf strength–but a determined vampire is stronger than an above-average human. Could probably bend metal with some struggle.
Blood tasting.
- The vampire virus alters a person’s taste buds, limiting them in some ways and expanding them in others. This makes it possible for a vampire to taste things in blood that a regular person wouldn’t such as: species, magical prowess, and anything relating to the levels in your blood.
- They’re immune to diseases transmitted through blood, but can still tell if you have any.
- Aside from the utility of their blood-tasting ability, there’s other aspects to it–animal blood tastes significantly worse (and, in turn, lycanthrope blood does as well) and many vampires have taste bias toward people they like, often finding their blood better than the average person.
Minor resurrection.
- This one is less an ability a vampire possesses and more the virus’ safety net for their host. Should a vampire be killed, if they were in good condition prior to their death and their heart or brain aren’t completely destroyed, the virus will utilize necromantic powers to resurrect its host.
- This is why, when killing a vampire, it’s said you should decapitate them to make sure they stay dead.

The deal with...

Blood

Vampires seem to have an endless thirst for blood–but with discipline, a vampire can learn to resist the temptation of drinking blood the moment it’s visible to them. To most vampires, the desire to drink blood is no more different than hunger in a regular person–but one that tries to suppress their hunger, is starving, or is newly turned will have more trouble resisting a sippy.

Sunlight

When someone contracts vampirism, one of the first symptoms is an aversion to heat and sunlight. This is because in its incubation stage, vampirism can be killed off by high temperatures (around 122F). To avoid this, the virus makes it not only difficult, by nigh impossible for a vampire to exist comfortably in sunlight. A vampire’s pupil’s will lose melanin, making them red (a sure sign of a vampire, if you can get a good look). In some rare cases, someone who’s caught vampirism will become completely albino–losing melanin in their entire body. This high sensitivity to light and heat can give vampires headaches, dizziness, disorientation, and weakness, making them extremely vulnerable in the daytime or when exposed to bright lights.

Water

Many believe the cause of a Vampire’s hydrophobia has something to do with a learnt response from the huntings that occurred alongside the witch trials. In truth, the hydrophobia is caused by a vampire’s inability to consume water or food, and is meant to discourage them from trying to consume any liquids. Unfortunately, though, the aversion extends to being submerged in water as well. While a vampire can be comfortably rained on, or even safely get in water, being submerged in it will cause panic.

Entering Houses

Vampires need to be invited in because, as the legends go, a creature of fae descent was tired of them breaking into their houses to have a little snack and cursed them all. This ritual warding took so many people to pull off and may not really have been worth it in the end.

Strains of Vampirism

Common Vampire

Common vampires display all of the previously mentioned traits, but gain no new ones. They appear as normal humans, with red pupils and elongated fangs.

DID YOU KNOW: Nosferatu looks like a little rat boy?

Historic Vampire

When you imagine vampires like Nosferatu or Dracula, this is what they are.

Historic vampires lose most of if not all of their hair, are completely albino, and have unnervingly long fangs and claws. These vampires possess the ability to turn into mist and have illusion magic, oftentimes using it to disguise their appearance.

In turn they’re easier to kill than most vampires, lacking the ability to quickly heal or resurrect. They also lack the speed and strength of the common vampire and are, honestly, very weak if they’re not good at manipulation. Because of this, most historic vampires are very isolated, possibly living in small, low-population towns.

Shifter Vampire

This strain of vampire can turn into a bat.

They display all the traits of a common vampire, but because their additional ability takes a lot of energy, they’re often more physically strained than the common vampire.

Because of their lack of energy and nutrition, they’re often weaker and slower, last for less time in the sun, and their resurrection is less likely to occur. They can, however, counteract this by drinking even more than 3 litres of blood a day.

DID YOU KNOW: vampire bats have unusually strong legs they can use to walk, run, and jump?

Lesser Known Types...

DID YOU KNOW: This is also from Twilight? Sorry.

Enchanters

Vampires of this strain are built for manipulation of the mind. While they lack the physical prowess of the common vampire (no enhanced speed or strength), they instead have minor hypnotic powers, making it possible to easily persuade people or make them believe things, even to the point of making them disregard any weird events occurring (“Who says I’m biting you? Not me.”).

Their hypnotic abilities require eye contact, if even just for a second, to enchant their target. These vampires can also feed on fear rather than blood, and oftentimes have unnatural eye colors to draw the gaze.

Agile Vampire

These vampires are extremely dextrous, with stretchy skin and bones that can move in and out of place to suit whatever they need. While they lack strength (it’s difficult to hit hard or carry much when it can move your bones out of place), they’re quick and slippery.

These vampires have specially crafted hands and feet, both of which have setae on them, or microscopic hairs, that allow their palms and soles to adhere to most materials on will. With this ability, they can even easily scale walls or stick to ceilings.

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