The Immortality Spell

> " Like a lovesick idiot, I created an entire garden for our wedding, and I made a spell that would keep us alive forever, an immortality spell so we would never have to part. "
>
> Qetsiyah to Stefan on her creation of the Immortality Spell in Original Sin

The **Immortality Spell** is an extremely powerful spell used to transform a mortal person into one of four immortal creatures; either a true immortal, like Silas and Amara, an Original vampire, like the Mikaelson Family, an Enhanced Original vampire, like Alaric Saltzman, or an Upgraded Original vampire, like Lucien Castle and Marcel Gerard.

The spell was originally conceived by "one of the most powerful witches of all time," Qetsiyah. However, after Silas manipulated Qetsiyah into creating a spell for immortality, he betrayed her by giving the elixir to his true love Amara, both becoming the world's first and only true immortals. Approximately one thousand years later, another powerful witch named Esther modified Qetsiyah's original spell as a solution to protect her family from werewolves and other harm. However, after she cast the spell, the Spirits retaliated against her, and she unknowingly transformed them into the first vampires. Esther performed the spell one thousand years later to make Alaric Saltzman the first Enhanced Original Vampire with powers stronger than the Originals for the purpose of hunting down the Originals and killing them with the indestructible White Oak Stake. A few years later Vincent Griffith was forced to cast an altered spell to create a serum that would turn the intended subjects into Upgraded Original vampires, prophesied as "the Beast"; Lucien, and then Marcel, eventually became 'Beasts', gaining superior strength and speed over that of the Originals, including Klaus, the Original Hybrid. However, the Beasts possess an additional power over an Enhanced Original, like that of Alaric, a venomous bite capable of killing an Originals without the need of a White Oak Stake. This was incorporated into the spell that made the Originals, a spell that Lucien had a coven of witches reverse engineer over a length of time. This additional power is superior to the Enhanced Original given its lethality to kill Originals without white Oak.

## History (The Vampire Diaries)

Over two thousand years ago during the time of 1st century BC, a young and very powerful warlock named Silas fell deeply in love with a young and beautiful girl named Amara. However, because of her status as a poor girl who was a handmaiden and his status as a wealthy boy who was a nobleman, their love was forbidden due to their different social statuses. As a result, they had kept their relationship a secret out of fear that society would shun them. While the details of their relationship remain unknown, it is known that the two loved each other very much and wanted to be together for all of eternity. Determined to spend the rest of forever with his true love Amara, Silas tricked his best friend Qetsiyah into helping him create a spell for immortality. Despite their friendship, Silas knew that Qetsiyah also strongly loved him, and prayed off of Qetsiyah's love for him by asking for her hand in marriage, leading her to believe that he loved her and that the immortality spell was for the two of them to share on their wedding night. After Qetsiyah and Silas successfully created an elixir that would grant immortality to whomever drank the potion, she was later appalled to discover that Silas ran off with the elixir, giving it to his forbidden lover Amara instead. Fueled with hatred and rage, Qetsiyah created the Cure for immortality along with a supernatural purgatory, known as The Other Side. Knowing that Silas could no longer die, she tricked him into believing that she killed his lover Amara, so that he would take the cure and pass away, thinking he would be reunited with Amara in death, but would actually be trapped in limbo with her.

## The Original Vampires (The Vampire Diaries/The Originals)

The Original family, also known as the Mikaelson Family, were a large family of witches who became the world's second generation of immortal creatures, and the first generation of their kind as vampires. Compared to Silas and Amara, the Original vampires have vastly different characteristics. The most noticeable difference between the two species of immortals, are their abilities. While both species have psychic abilities, the Originals also have super-human physical abilities, e.g. strength, speed, senses etc, whereas true immortals are only slightly superior to hunters of the Brotherhood of the Five, and slightly below werewolves in human form, although their psychic and mental powers are far more superior, capable of compelling masses at once without eye contact and capable of compelling anything but members of The Five. This is similar, as the Originals cannot compel The Five either, nor witches and werewolves.

The parents of the Original family are Esther and her husband Mikael. Mikael and Esther had their first child in Europe, but eventually "lost" her to a plague that struck their homeland. Fearing for the lives of their future children, the two relocated to the New World with Esther's mentor and close friend, Ayana, where they had more children. Their names are, from oldest to youngest; Finn, Elijah, Niklaus, Kol, Rebekah, and Henrik. Ayana was told by the spirits of nature that there was a land with people that had been blessed with speed and strength, so they embarked there to start their family. During this time the Mikaelson family made peace with it's neighbors and they all lived together happily. The native people in this new country were werewolves.

During a full moon, Niklaus and Henrik, who wanted to see the men turn into wolves, decided to go out at night to watch them transform, which was forbidden. One of the werewolves ultimately attacked and killed Henrik. Niklaus brought Henrik's body back to his mother, hoping she could use her magic to help heal him, but she was unable to do so. After losing Henrik, Esther and Mikael spoke with Ayana about a possible way of protecting their children from the werewolves. They wanted to protect what family they had left, but Ayana was not willing to perform the spell, as she believed it was a crime against nature. This left Esther to do the spell by herself, at her husband's urgings, not knowing she was creating what would become deadly bloodthirsty creatures, abominations of nature.

At Mikael's request, Esther created a ritual to make her children and husband immortal. Mikael wanted to be superior to werewolves in power, speed, and senses. Esther took blood from Amara's doppelganger descendant Tatia, and spelled the blood. Mikael offered his children wine laced with the spelled blood and killed his children by stabbing them in their hearts with his sword. Esther's spell called on the Sun for life, resurrecting her children, and drew from the White Oak Tree, one of nature's eternal objects, to give her children immortality. Upon awakening in transition to Original vampires, Mikael forced his children to consume fresh human blood to complete the ritual, birthing the Originals and the vampire species as a whole. Nature, in retaliation to these abominations, added weaknesses; The Sun that granted the Original's life could burn them, neighbors could keep vampires out of their home unless invited inside, vervain flowers that grew at the base of the White Oak Tree would burn the Originals and prevent their mind compulsion, wood from the White Oak Tree, the source of their immortality, could kill them, and as they were reborn through a blood consuming ritual, they craved blood above all else with their heightened emotions and senses.

## The Enchanted Original Vampire (The Vampire Diaries)

Over a millennium after Esther used the immortality spell to turn her family into vampires, she repeated the spell and performed it on Alaric. Esther again changed the spell so Alaric could kill her children. Alaric was immune to the white oak stake unlike the Original vampires.

## The Upgraded Original Vampire (The Originals)

Over the nine centuries after the compulsion was broken on Lucien Castle, Lucien would devise a plan to become like those he used to worship as gods and become their betters. Lucien was able to get a coven of witches to reverse engineer Esther's Immortality Spell that created the first set of Original vampires. Through his company Kingmaker Land Development Inc., he had Werewolves from each of the original Seven Families of Werewolves kidnapped, and created a cure to the werewolf bite that he used on himself. He then developed a new strain of the venom from the seven werewolf bloodlines by combining each of their own unique strains of werewolf toxin to create the most potent strain ever, something that could not be cured. After manipulating the Ancestors to force Vincent to abduct Freya, who is a Mikaelson Witch, and taking the White Oak Bullet that was in her possession, he had Vincent Griffith, empowered and manipulated by the Ancestors of New Orleans, use the reverse engineered spell on an altar in Mystic Falls, where Esther spelled the doppelganger Tatia's blood to make the Originals. Then, he had Freya's blood drained into the stone bowl, a vial of the super strain of werewolf venom poured in, and placed the White Oak bullet into the stone bowl, creating a potion that would create a Beast foretold by a prophecy that would destroy all of the Originals, with Lucien becoming an Enhanced Original Vampire, such as Alaric before him, but with an additional power. Lucien, and later Marcel, as these new type of "Upgraded" Original vampires, possessed superior strength and speed to the Original vampires, but are imbued with a bite of the potent werewolf toxin that can kill even the Originals, making them an upgraded form of Enhanced Originals. Also, their vampire face is reversed to the Originals, with veins reaching down to their jaws like Augustine Vampires, their irises becoming red instead of the white of their eyes, and more sets of fangs on the top and bottom of their mouths similar to the Original Hybrids fangs, but even more added to the top and bottom, as Lucien developed this spell to become Klaus's superior in every way.

## Loopholes

### Qetsiyah's Version

* **The Cure:** The Cure is the only known loophole to the spell, created by Qetsiyah herself. It is the only thing able to cure true immortality; it is also capable of curing other forms of immortality, such as vampirism.

### Esther's Version

* **White Oak Stake:** As Esther bound the spell to the white oak tree for immortality, its wood was the only thing capable of killing the Originals, once and for all. The last known white oak on earth, the White Oak Stake, was destroyed by Dahlia. However, more white oak existed as Klaus had unknowingly made his wooden knight out of the wood. The figure was obtained by Aurora de Martel who had it fashioned into seven bullets. Six of the bullets were destroyed by Klaus along with any splinters from their carving. The last bullet was obtained by Lucien Castle who used it to create his own version of the serum.
* **The Immortality Reversal Spell:** Esther was capable of reversing the vampirism she created with a spell. She, however, was unsuccessful in casting it as she needed a tremendous amount of power and her connection to that power was severed before she was able to cast the spell.
* **White Oak Ash Daggers:** Forged by witches for the Brotherhood of the Five, the silver daggers were able to neutralize an Original until the dagger was removed. A gold dagger was made by Kol and Davina to work on Klaus from a silver dagger. It was the only dagger capable of neutralizing the Original Hybrid until it was destroyed by Dahlia.
* **Advanced Werewolf Venom:** The werewolf venom produced by an Upgraded Original Vampire is composed of the venom from each of the original seven werewolf bloodlines and is bound to white oak wood used in the spell to create it. Due to the design of the venom (or possibly by being bound to the white oak), it is lethal to original vampires, though there is now an antivenom for it which was used on Kol and Elijah.

### Esther's Second Version

* **Elena Gilbert:** Esther used the blood of the doppelgänger, Elena Gilbert, to bind the spell and thus Elena became the only way to kill the Enhanced Original Vampire, Alaric Saltzman.

### Lucien's Version

* **The Immortality Reversal Spell:** With the collective power of the Ancestors, Freya Mikaelson was able to reverse the spell that created the Beast.

### Marcel's Version

* **Freya's Dagger:** The only weapon designed specifically to kill Marcel after the link to the Ancestors and their magic was gone. Since the magic of the witch that created the immortal being is necessary to use the Immortality Reversal Spell, other means had to be found to kill Marcel. Given the idea that all biological entities can be weakened or strengthened with medical science by Keelin, Freya was able to create a weapon able to kill Marcel with the aid of Keelin's medical expertise. There are several key components that were used to enchant the dagger with the power to kill Marcel, these things are either part of what helped create the serum or symbolized the destruction of a different Beast such as: Freya's blood, Marcel's Venom, Esther's Magic, and Lucien's ashes.

## Trivia

* The different versions of the Immortality Spell was administered differently to its subjects.
	+ Qetsiyah created an elixir that granted immortality, while Esther created a ritualistic spell that drew on objects found in nature with specific stages that would impact all transitioning vampires, such as having to consume magically spelled blood (and later vampire blood for other humans), then dying to awaken in transition, making the person undead and unable to physically age, and more blood to complete the process and get all the superhuman abilities that not even Silas has.
* There are three known ways to reverse the Immortality Spell and by extension, vampirism.
	+ The first and oldest was the Cure for immortality, an elixir created by Qetsiyah to be used against immortals by reversing their immortality.
	+ The second was a ritual, attempted by Esther to be used against Original vampires to reverse her spell that turned them as she was the witch to cast the Immortality Spell on her children. Freya used this method to reverse Lucien Castle's Upgraded Original status, allowing Klaus to kill him.
	+ The final and most recent was a spell invented by the Travelers using blood from the last pair of doppelgängers and a minor version of The Magic Purification Spell. This spell would cure an undead immortal to the last stage of their human life, which is death. Alaric was stripped of the magic that made him an Enhanced Original Vampire, and briefly died before being resuscitated, rendering him human once more. Kai had since absorbed the area around Mystic Falls affected by it, rendering the spell broken.
* Esther Mikaelson and Vincent Griffith are the only ones to have been seen performing this spell so far.
* While Qetsiyah's spell granted a person unconditional immortality, Esther's spell only granted conditional immortality. Contrary to Amara and Silas, the Original vampires were immune to most weapons. The White Oak Stake, from the source of the Original's immortality, is the only physical weapon that could permanently kill an Original Vampire.
	+ Both immortal species could be harmed by normal weapons and cursed objects, but could not be killed by them. Only cursed objects such as the White Oak Ash Daggers and Papa Tunde's Blade could neutralize or immobilize Original vampires when stabbed in the heart, as long as they remained in place. True Immortals could not be neutralized by any known weapons. Silas impaled himself in the heart to stab Jeremy Gilbert, who had him in a strangle hold, who healed instantly without being phased by the wound. Originals would be temporarily neutralized when impaled in the heart with normal wood.
* According to Bonnie, Qetsiyah's version of the spell made Silas truly immortal without any known weaknesses, other than the cure.
* It has been implied that the reason Qetsiyah was able to grant immortality with little to no weaknesses was mainly because she did not draw power from any object of Nature, but her own ability, as Nature would have created weaknesses from said objects drawn upon. Another implication is that the Spirits did not exist during her lifetime to create consequences for her spell. However, since the Spirits did exist during Esther's lifetime, the Spirits created side effects so that her children could not achieve true immortality, however since Nature was said to be responsible for the creation of doppelgängers and not the Spirits, it is most likely that Nature had the ability to create natural weaknesses for Qetsiyah's spell two-thousand years ago as well, but since it was unable to do so, it is believed that she did not draw power from it, but from herself as her blood alone had extremely potent qualities.
* The Kindred were placed in the Dowager Fauline Cottage for dabbling in immortality spells and necromancy.
* Esther's sister Dahlia performed a similar spell that would place her niece Freya and herself into a magical slumber for one-hundred years, then wake up to live one single year before the cycle repeats itself. The spell protects from all manner of harm, granting indestructibility similar to the Originals. This spell acts like an immortality spell; however, a witch retains their power, with their magic growing during each slumber.
	+ Dahlia's spell was used to allow her and her niece Freya, a source of her power, to keep their access to magic while being indestructible at the cost of sleeping for 100 years after being awake for one year. This prevented them from becoming immortals without access to magic such as Originals Vampires and true Immortals, as they were not free to roam the earth without limits as the other immortals.
	+ The Spell only prevented death from means other than aging, as both Dahlia and Freya continued to age throughout the one-thousand years that the spell was in place, albeit only for the year they were awake. This would still allow them to jump throughout countless centuries before dying of old age before the spell was broken upon Dahlia's death.