Lore: Vampirism

Vampirism

On Thindul, each lineage of vampires originates with a ritual of Ulturic blood magic. A great sacrifice is required, and the prospective vampire is then killed, and its body hidden by trusted servants. At this stage, the nascent vampire is terribly vulnerable, and utterly dependent for protection on those guarding its interred cadaver.

Over days or weeks, additional sacrifices of blood are made to the body, and slowly the new vampiric spirit gains strength. Soon, the vampire is able to project itself outside of its body, roaming the night as a large worm, becoming swollen with blood as it sates itself on small animals and fresh carrion.

After months have passed, the vampire's spirit becomes able to manifest as a fell hound or a great bat. Eventually, it can take mortal form again. At this stage, though the vampire may physically perambulate or transform, usually the vampiric corpse is kept deep in some citadel or hideaway, and the undead lord projects itself by night as man, mist, or beast.

Elder Vampires

Vampires born of such rituals are known as elder vampires and command powers envied by their lesser brethren, even beyond whatever wizardry they had mastered in life.

The strength of their physical bodies, and of their projections, far surpasses that of any mortal: Their manifestations may appear and disappear at any familiar location. If they face an enemy they cannot overcome by force, their speech alone is capable of entrancing lesser minds. When an elder vampire feeds, it gains some of the strength, memories, and skills of its victims.

And feed, it must. The blood required to sustain an elder vampire is prodigious. If the creature delays feeding too long, it will weaken, and soon its physical body will begin to decay. Once a vampire reaches this stage, no amount of feeding can help it to recover, and its true death becomes inevitable. Still, it is no easy thing to slay such a being.

First, an aspiring slayer must strike the vampire's projection through the heart with a magically inscribed stake. The undead is thereby temporarily weakened, and will be unable to manifest its spirit in the world for some time, until the body itself has received blood by either sacrifice or feeding. Unless the body is located by its prospective slayers, however, destroying a projection is of use only to provoke a powerful vampire against oneself.

Having found the monster's lair, to kill the body, the vampire must first be pinned in its coffin with ritual stakes – one through the heart, and another through each limb. This process prevents the body itself from changing form and fleeing. Once the vampire is secured, the coffin (in many cases a sarcophagus of significant size) must be placed open in the sun. With no means of escape, the vampire is then destroyed.

Thralls, or “True” Vampires

A lucky vampire, though, will hold onto its unlife long enough to sire many lesser servants, often mistakenly named “true vampires,” because run-ins with these thralls are far more common than encounters with their elder masters.

Though a thrall may have strength approaching that of its elder, it lacks the master's further powers of projection, entrancement, and blood-memory. It does not grow stronger with feeding, though a “true” vampire's strength is in some measure tied to its antiquity. The most informed scholars of vampirism, however, understand that this development does not arise from an increase in the power of its spirit, but rather through a gradual mastery of its inherent strength. This is in contrast to their elders, whose power of spirit does increase with feeding.

Nevertheless, true vampires gain immortal life and unaging strength. They cannot suffer from disease, nor do they require breath, or sustenance besides nightly blood. Like their elders, “true” vampires will weaken and die if they fail to feed.

Unlike its sire, a thrall who neglects its feeding is usually seized by an irresistible bloodlust before its true death ever approaches. Thus, it is rare for them to suffer this fate. They are also easier to kill in other ways. Direct sunlight brings a quick death, and a single runic stake through the heart is enough to destroy them.

Finally, sired vampires are bound as thralls to their creator. While some elder vampires are gentler masters than others, their flock are incapable of resisting any command, spoken or unspoken, from their sire. A thrall created by a thrall feels this compulsion of obedience from both their sire, and their sire's sire, all the way up the bloodline to the elder of the lineage.

Feral Vampires

Feral vampires are the result of a botched siring. These vicious, yet pitiable, creatures are marked heavily by undeath. Their flesh perpetually rots and regrows. Wracked by ceaseless hunger, they set upon any living thing that strays too close to them. Those that survive for long live like beasts at the edge of civilization, whether in the sewers of great cities or in remote forests, preying on the isolated.

Dhampirs

There are rumors, though rare, of half-vampires born from a union between the living and the undead. From what little can be verified, it seems that such offspring vary markedly in the traits they inherit from each parent. Some appear to be practically elder vampires in their own right, while others are more human, and some viciously feral.

Feeding

For reasons that are disputed among scholars and slayers, a vampire must consume blood directly from the body of its victim. The most prominent hypothesis on the subject is that the vampire does not feed directly on blood. Rather, blood serves as a conduit for the life force of the vampire's victim.

While vampires may subsist for a time on the blood of animals, if they do not eventually consume a sapient creature's blood, their minds will begin to degenerate as they themselves become more bestial. And, although it is not necessary for a vampire to kill by feeding, they often do.

For this there are several reasons. Most prominently, the quantity of blood required, unless spread among multiple sources, is in itself potentially lethal. Moreover, there is an inherent a risk involved in leaving witnesses, while those who seek eternal life as vampires rarely possess the kind of moral compunctions that would stay the hand of another person. Still, there have been a few examples of vampires who attempt to secure relatively willing donors, whether through close companionship or through payment.

Siring

Fortunately, it is practically impossible to accidentally sire a new vampire. The vampire-to-be must be entirely exsanguinated, and its blood replaced entirely with the blood of its master. While this can be accomplished all at once, the shock to the victim's system heightens the risk of the newborn vampire becoming feral. (This can also occur if the newly created vampire still possesses some of its own blood, or if the quantity of the master's blood offered is insufficient.) It is more common, when a vampire truly wishes the conversion of a mortal into their own kind, that they visit the individual successively over several nights, slowly exchanging blood.

Origins

The rituals that beget vampirism have been practiced nearly as long as any magic on Thindul. Only a few centuries after Promethea first gave mortals the knowledge of the gods, the fundamentals of magical gesture and incantation, Ultur descended among the early elves. Having gained their trust, he taught them crueler magics, thinking to test their cunning and ambition. Among these was vampiric creation.

Or rather, Ultur granted them fragments of the necessary knowledge. To patch the holes that Ultur left in their understanding, the elven blood wizards studied other creatures that drink the life of mortals. Most notable among these were the caethons of Nerophet, urnäkki spirits that wax in power as they consume the essence of their victims. With this model, the rituals were completed, and the first vampires were born into the ancient world.