Bringing themselves into the open after the therianthropes had taken the lead, the vampires saw fit to announce themselves purely from a selfish point of view, for the Covens especially. There’s no such thing as bad publicity after all. It didn’t take long for wannabes to start fishing around, asking to be turned, offering their veins or even, in extreme cases, their lives. The vampires haven’t done too badly, actually; more interest from mortals means more food for them, and more bodies for their Covens, to increase their power.
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These vampires are not as close to Count Dracula as media would have you believe. And for the record, Dracula? Just a story. The vampires know he didn’t exist; they even find the books and movies amusing, for the most part. Simply put, they aren’t exactly bad, and they aren’t exactly good, either. There’s a lot of hit and miss when it comes to assumptions, and the vampires would no sooner admit their weaknesses than they would run about in the first light of dawn. It’s just good sense. Vampires have a strong survival instinct.
Ironic, really, considering they’re technically dead and all. The only way to create a vampire is to ‘sire’ them; the mortal is bitten by their sire, and then fed blood back from the vampire who bit them. The body shuts down, and a matter of hours later, it reanimates, becoming undead. The vampire is ‘born’. They don’t need to breathe or eat food/drink liquids, but many vampires do these things simply to appear ‘normal’, or to smoke, talk or otherwise fit in with society. Real food and drink doesn’t make them sick either. They must simply ingest human blood every couple of weeks, if not more often, to maintain their strength and keep their bodies functioning (in a manner of speaking). The longest any vampire can go, at a maximum, without blood, is a month; after that, the body simply shuts down, and they really die. It is possible for a vampire to feed from a human and not kill; they can stop whenever they like, usually it depends on how hungry they are. As a general rule, the blood of therianthropes is a little too rich for most vampires, but some actually end up taking a liking to it; personal preference.
Vampires cannot be born in the human sense simply because the organs necessary for reproducing no longer function. As it is, vampires can have intercourse, but the male has to have fresh blood in his system. Simple genetics, people. It’s simply a recreational thing for them (a lot of them actually rather enjoy it, and for some, it intensifies the feeding process if the human they are with is open to the idea), since they are completely infertile, with no exceptions. There are no half-vampires, either; if a pregnant woman is bitten (if they are simply bitten/fed from, they usually go into premature labour from shock) and turned, the baby inside dies like the rest of the body. Sad truth.
Covens, quite simply, are groups of vampires who dominate a territory, much like packs/prides/clans of therianthropes do. The Coven is headed by one or two dominant vampires, of either sex (the pair do not have to be ‘mates’, in a sense); it is more common to find Covens with a single leader, since vampires tend to get a little power-hungry once they’ve had a taste of it. That’s not to say vampires have fights inside their Covens a lot, but as vampires get older, they tend to get ideas; they like the power.
Vampires have a Charm, especially the old, powerful ones among them. This, actually, is rather like good ol’ Dracula himself, except it doesn’t just work on mortal women, nor does it just work on humans. Vampires can use their Charm on other vampires younger and/or weaker than they are, or on mortals, usually those of average or weak wills; it is possible to fight the pull of a vampire, but to overcome it? Let’s just say you’ve got to be pretty damn powerful, mentally. Vampires usually cannot Charm telepaths, and no one has ever quite been able to figure out why. As a result, vampires avoid the Gifted, if they can, and not only because some of them can burn them all to a cinder. This ability never works on therianthropes, either. A vampire’s Charm can be sensed by other vampires, hinting at their power and dominance, and leaders of Covens often abuse this gift on their followers, to keep them toeing the line, as it were. This ability to Charm increases with age and/or experience; the more they use it successfully, the better they get at it.
Perhaps because they are technically deceased, vampires tend to unsettle most animals; cats hiss and spit before running away, dogs become aggressive or simply cower in fear. Birds, on the other hand, don’t seem to have any problems. As a result of this, it’s not common for vampires to keep pets, unless they are birds of some sort.
In terms of appearance, vampires are usually pale, given that they can’t get much sunlight and all. Their fangs do not show all the time; these can elongate from the gum, oddly enough, and obviously they are fully formed whenever a vampire is intending to feed. Their eyes, as well, can change, from whatever colour they are normally to the cliché red; whenever a vampire has fed, their eyes remain red, or at least tinted, for a short time.
When a vampire dies, it does not burst into ash. Like humans and therianthropes, it just… stops, though vampires do tend to decay a lot quicker than anything else, if only because they have been technically dead for a long time already.
STRENGTHS: Vampires have what some might call the textbook advantages: their speed, strength, agility, grace, balance, endurance, pain threshold and healing factor are all heightened beyond the norm, with their speed, grace and balance being the most noticeable. A therianthrope might be stronger, but a vampire is faster. In terms of senses, these are all heightened for vampires, but their sight, not unlike a cat’s, is their most enhanced, and therefore, the one they rely on the most. They are also all immortal; they do not age conventionally thanks to their remarkable healing factors, and will potentially live forever if they are lucky.
WEAKNESSES: Again with the clichés: holy relics (crosses, the Bible), holy water and sunlight. Relics and holy water burn them, the latter even able to blind a vampire permanently or just destroy their flesh. Sunlight, however, is one of the best ways to kill a vampire if you don’t have a stake handy; vampires cannot tolerate bright, intense light after they are sired, and it will, quite simply, set them alight. Following on from this, fire is also something they avoid, if only because they seem quite… flammable. Finally, they can only heal up to a point; if something gets chopped off? It’s never growing back.
Killing a vampire can be achieved in a number of ways: chop off the head, destroy the brain with a gunshot/blade, destroy the heart (in the same manners; a lot of people prefer stakes just because it’s more old-fashioned), set them on fire or just trap them outside in daylight.
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breedmod) wrote,
