Vampires

Vampires are one of the oldest races in the Galaxy. Their earliest incarnation evolved during the war between the first Gods and the Devils of the Underplane. Vampires are the re-animated dead, or the living with their life force drained out of them, given Un-life by the power of a powerful form of Sorcery called Necromancy.
The original Vampires were a different race descended from the Fallen Goddess Lilith, created by her to serve as foot soldiers in the war against the Gods.  They became fearsome predators which the Gods became very wary of, but they made little impact at that point in the war.  They went into hiding when Adam erected the Planar Barrier and they were cut off from their Queen, but would later inspire a number of other monster races to go to war with the Holy Dragons.  They were utterly crushed during this rebellion, and were afterwards imprisoned on a dead world known as Claret.  There they began dying out, but not before passing their necromantic power onto a tribe of humans.
These new vampires devoted themselves to the worship of Lilith as their masters had done and worked on her behalf in the Midplane.  However, so long as they were under the thumb of the Dragon Clan of Gods and the vicious moods of Graves, they were unable to do very much.  When the Cataclysm occurred and the power of the Dragons vanished, they swarmed from Claret with unrivaled enthusiasm.  However, they were met in battle by Rao, the last surviving Dragon God, who single handedly wiped out a large number of them and again imprisoned them on Claret.  Despite this, a number of them managed to escape throughout the Universe, spreading the Dark Gift to a number of other races and planets.
Vampires feed off of living beings by drinking their blood, which if they drink all of it can grant the powers and memories of those they killed to them.
==Physiology ==
The original Vampires were humanoid bat-like creatures with a terrifying appearance. They had pale white skin, except for black carapaces which protected their weak hearts, and their hands and feet were tridactyl claws. They had black hair with spikey ridges over their eyes. A prominent feature among the original Vampires were their massive, bat-like wings. After being turned into Lilith’s slaves, their canines became pronounced and they developed an obsession with drinking blood, which afterwards would fuel their powers.  Their eyes emitted a blood red glow due to their nercomantically charged powers
When the first race of Vampires began dying out, they passed the Dark Gift onto a tribe of humans that they had enslaved. In its initial stages, the Gift appeared very diluted in the human born vampires. At first glance they appear much as they did in life, albeit with pale skin and noticably leaner.  Once they have lived for a few centuries, their skin loses any palor it had in life and becomes a pale gray color.  When under stress or needing to feed, their faces would twist into monstrous visages that nominally resembled their predecessors. In this shape they gain pronounced brow ridges, pointed ears, long fangs, and their irises turn red. The older or more powerful they became, the more permanently they would come to appear like the original Vampires. Owing to their supernatural state, they are many times stronger and faster than they were as humans, and over time can learn to use their Necromantic Auras to a variety of effects. Like the original Vampires, they're physiology was fueled by blood consumption.
Vampires are created by an exchange of blood. When a vampire intends to pass on the Gift, they will drain an individual of all or nearly all their blood. They will then open up a wound on themselves and have the delirious person they drank from drink from them in turn. Afterwards the replaced blood puts the person into a deathlike torpor. For 3 days they will be indistinguishable from a corpse while the blood begins to change them from the inside out. After 3 days, the new vampire emerges completely ravenous and under control of the instincts of their new body. Until "the Beast" as this manifestation of their new body is called, is satiated with blood, they will be completely senseless. Once they have regained their composure, the new Vampire is able to examine themselves and the creature they have become. They often also discover they bear a slight connection to their Sire, able to sense when they are nearby or when they are being called by them. For the Sire, the creation of a new vampire is often a draining experience, and not one they tend to engage in on a whim.
==Powers==
Even before accepting the Dark Gift from Lilith, Vampires were extremely powerful with potent Auras which they used in the same manners as most other Aura capable races. These Auras rivaled those of the Gods and the Devils, though the Vampire race itself was mortal and barbaric. They were superhumanly strong, and also possessed superhuman speed, stamina, reflexes, and transvection. After being turned into the Undead by Lilith, they gained a plethora of other abilities. They became immune to aging, conventional disease, sickness and most forms of injury. They couldn’t be killed or permanently injured by conventional means and were unaffected by most assaults and, due to their healing factor, could rapidly regenerate damaged tissue. Vampires could manipulate the minds of others, and command animals to their will, such as rodents, bats, and wolves. With limited exceptions, they could control other vampires. They had the ability to mentally control victims they had bitten, and could temporarily hypnotize anyone with their gaze. They were capable of shapeshifting into a bat (normal or human size) or a wolf while retaining their intelligence, and into a fog or mist (partially or fully) and had a degree of weather control. Owing to the stealthy characteristics of their status as predators, Vampires do not cast shadows or reflections.
Vampires have a dependence on the ingestion of fresh blood to sustain their powers, and an inability to endure direct sunlight (though a resistance can be built with age or power). A starved vampire will take on an emaciated appearance, eventually shriveling into a decrepit corpse barely able to move. If they ingest blood though, even after centuries of starving themselves, they will recover quickly, though it takes a lot of blood to replenish their powers. They fall into a comatose state during daylight hours and have vulnerabilities to garlic, silver (which can cause severe pain), the presence of religious symbols (wielded by one who believes in its spiritual meaning), and can be killed by beheading, a wooden stake through the heart, or blades made of silver. They are particularly vulnerable to fire. Fire elementals like the sarans are anethema to them, and their blood is poisonous to vampires. Any attempt to drink it will cause a vampire to burst into flame. Owing to their undead nature, they are weak against White Magic, which hurts them the same way black magic does normal beings.
==Personality ==
Vampire temperament varies widely depending on their age. Newly turned vampires typically revel in their newfound power and are seen to be wild and unruly. Vampires who have lived for a few centuries tend to be more collected, and those that have lived for millennia even more so. The original Vampires, who lived for eons before passing on the Gift, had become so powerful that they could not easily be killed, and they longed for death. A common trait amongst vampires of any age is arrogance. They tend to view mortals as insects, food, or slaves.
==Culture and Society ==
The Vampires of the South, from whom all Vampires spread throughout the Galaxy originate, have a tightly ordered society. The highest order of Vampires are the Nobles, those vampires who were of the tribe of humans first turned by the original Vampiric race. Individual nobles would sire more vampires from the humans they found, creating their own bloodlines. Of the dozens of Nobles, a handful of the most powerful banded together into a Noble Council that would rule over the other vampires. The Nobles and their Clans were gathered together into a cult dedicated to Lilith which became called the Horde.
In the aftermath of the Cataclysm, the vampires managed to use Graves’s absence as an opportunity to escape from their prison. They surged forth, conquering the surrounding systems and threatening the rest of the Galaxy. Furious at the audacity of these monsters, the surviving God King, Rao went to war with them. After a long and brutal war, he killed the vast majority of the Nobles single handedly. The remaining 3 fled back to their home planet, allowing Rao to re-seal their spatial prison. While he managed to contain the most powerful vampires, lesser ones fled out into the galaxy, coming to rest on other planets and creating small covens of their own (vampirism was brought to Earth by one of these).
Vampires typically have lesser monsters or other creatures such as humans as underlings, and will rule over these with an iron fist. These lesser monster underlings are used as fodder in the Vampire’s armies, or as powerful retainers. Vampires also commonly hold sway over large populations of humans, who they regard like how a rancher sees his cattle. Oftentimes these humans are allowed some semblance of a normal society, but their population is kept in check by their vampire masters and their blood serves to sate their thirst.
==Religion ==
Lilith is the figure of worship to most Vampires, and is called by them a series of titles. Despite being trapped in Hell by Adam’s Barrier, she maintained her blood bond with her children and was able to speak with them down the eons. They regard life as a mistake, and wish to remake the entire Universe in Lilith's undead image and suck the Midplane into the Underplane.
== Trivia ==
- While Vampires are widely regarded as having lost their souls, this is not true. The necromantic energies passed along in the Blood from their Sire trap the spirit within the body despite it no longer being "alive." Instead, the changes in personality a new Vampire has compared to when they were alive are attributed to the predatory instincts of their new body. When engaged in introspection, some new vampires are occasionally concerned with the palpable distance they feel between themselves and the people they knew in life. The pursuit of blood becomes their primary drive and even people who mattered to them in life look and smell to them like food.
- While the 3 day gestation period for an emergent vampire is fairly solid, it can be circumvented by people who can wield necromantic magic. When creating his brides, Kruger was able to force their full conversion into vampires fairly immediately.
- Due to the ability of Vampires to be able to absorb the knowledge and power level of those they eat, Young Vampires can shortcut their way to greater power by completely draining an Elder Vampire of their blood. This is often difficult to pull off considering elder vampires are generally much stronger and more cunning than younger ones, but it is not without notable instances. Roy Duke was already a human with greater power than most vampires before he was turned and thus he had little trouble defeating and devouring his sire. Empowered by Lilith herself, Kruger was able to complete his transformation into a Complete Vampire by devouring the three Horde Nobles. However, these instances aside few young vampires are willing to try gaining power in this way. Reprisal for the attempts by Elder Vampires are often terrible, and vampire society in general has come to regard vampire cannibalism as an unforgivable taboo.
- Following the Cataclysm, Vampires and other monsters made an attempt to escape from the Galaxy of Terror where they had been imprisoned. While Rao successfully managed to put this revolt down, some did manage to escape out into the Universe. One of these vampires crashed on Earth 10000 years ago and sired a group of followers. This Vampire taught their new coven the ways of the Horde and the worship of Lilith. This Vampire was eventually betrayed and murdered by their followers, but the ways they taught would remain with the Vampires of Earth to the present day. While most modern vampires did not take the Old Ways seriously, they were maintained by a small group of fanatics. When the Horde actually turned up, most of Earth's vampires submitted to Kruger.
- Occasional references are made to the Vampire Wars of West Philadelphia. It was an excessively violent conflict that occurred in the shadows of the City of Brotherly Love between a large and powerful vampire coven and several orders of Monster Hunters. The fighting raged for over 7 years until a member of the Brotherhood of the Sword called Alexandra Knight roped her ex-boyfriend Johnny Duke into the conflict. He single handedly killed the Vampire Lord, a fearsome creature known as Vasily "the Vulture" Volkov. When asked about it later he said that he guessed the Vulture was pretty strong, but he was really nothing special. He was rather surprised that the monster hunters had such a problem with him.
Category:Races
Category:Midplane Races
Category:Monster Races
Category:Immortal Races
Category:Alien Races