Sanguine Pact (Civ6)/Civilopedia

It is difficult to imagine horror fiction without invoking Dracula. Bram Stoker, on writing his tale of the lonely bloodsucking Count trapped in his Transylvanian castle, drew upon Irish fairy legend, Romanian folktales, and a host of Northern European anxiety surrounding the Continent. In writing about vampires, he also drew upon a body of literature and folklore from closer to home, following Gothic authors such as Le Fanu, Lord Byron, and James Rymer, whose vampires were cautionary tales about unhealthy friendships and obsessions. In these, vampires are a kind of pinnacle of Gothic literature, bringing together moral decay, dark castles, and a decadent and corrupted elite. Here, the Sanguine Pact seeks to represent the kind of dark brother- and sister-hood inspired by Stoker.
Vampire myth in Greece, Turkey and Romania is in its origins about the return of a dead relative – especially the victim of a suicide or epidemic - to bother living family members. Unlike the Romantic (and romantic) Gothic vampire, the folkloristic vampire looks more like a fresh corpse of a loved one rather than a mysterious nocturnal nobleman. It is more a reflection on grief and mourning, and the ways that a dead loved one can still haunt us, especially when taken from us too quickly. However, like the Count, one got rid of such a being via the traditional method of stakes and crosses. While our modern-day vampire draws from southeastern Europe, other regions have their own bloodsucking revenants: the Chinese jiangshi, the Thai phi pop, the Norse draugur, or the myth of Lilith in Jewish folklore.