Vampire

**Vampires**, or ***Vamps*** for short, are a race of blood-drinking creatures that were once human. Vampires feed and survive on the blood of the living, typically on that of humans, and they can also transform other humans into more of their kind by sharing their own blood with them.

## Creation

A human who has consumed vampire blood in some way (whether by drinking it, having it poured into their open wound, or by being injected with it) and has subsequently died with the blood in their system will be magically revived as an undead vampire, just like the vampire who sired them. The exact nature of the human's death is irrelevant to this process; the only condition that must be met is that the body has to be more-or-less intact and able to function once they reawaken in transition, though the upper limits of physical damage upon a human body by which vampirism can recover has yet to be defined.

## Characteristics

They live forever, and several depicted vampires are hundreds of years of age or older. They also mate for life. Their diet is based strictly on blood. Although they prefer human blood, humans aren't the only animals that they can drink from.

Blood (especially human blood) does not only satisfy a vampire's thirst, but it also heightens their supernatural abilities, making them stronger, faster, and able to heal much more quickly than they would after not eating for a significant period of time. The longer a vampire abstains from blood, the more likely the vampire will become feral until they are eventually unable to resist feeding on whomever they come upon. In many cases, a vampire who has been starved for a long period and is risking desiccation will eventually become so overwhelmed with hunger that they lose all sense of their humanity and rationality altogether and finally give into their bloodlust. It has been demonstrated that vampire blood, just as with human and animal blood, can be used to revive a vampire who has been desiccated (even if they ordinarily do not partake in the consumption of vampire blood), and it can also help a badly injured vampire heal more quickly if human or animal blood is not available. However, human blood is most compatible with a vampire's dietary needs, and because of this, the majority of vampires rely on it as their sole food source. Despite their main food source being referred to as "human blood," this term also extends to the blood of both witches and werewolves who are in their human form, as their blood seems to be functionally identical to that of regular humans.

## Powers and Abilities

* **Emotional Control:** Vampires have the supernatural ability to remove or dull their emotions by "turning off" or "switching off" their humanity, which is directly connected to their emotions. Doing so allows them to block out their more negative emotions, such as fear and guilt, allowing them to feed and kill without remorse, go against any opponent without fear, and relieve themselves of painful feelings such as grief, loss, depression, and shame. A vampire without their emotions is far more calculating and direct than one who keeps them on. However, the vampire can become a remorseless killer, and are almost unrecognizable from the person they truly are, as blocking out negative emotions also causes their positive emotions to become dulled or nonexistent as well. Vampires are capable of turning their humanity back on and bringing back their emotions, but it is difficult as a result of the fact that they will be bombarded with all of their repressed emotions in addition to the guilt of anything they did without their humanity (such as killing or torturing innocent people or loved ones) with enhanced intensity. This ability fades with time and vampires who are over 500 years old have said that they have lost the ability to turn off their humanity altogether.

* **Enhanced Emotions:** Vampires experience emotions more powerfully than humans. Emotions like love, joy, and happiness are magnified for vampires, allowing them to live life more intensely. This ability allows vampires to feel emotions at their peak regardless of their age. Conversely, sadness, depression, guilt, fear and anger are also amplified, causing many vampires to become so overwhelmed that they "turn off" their humanity to block out the more painful emotions. After time and practice, the overwhelming sensations of heightened emotions fade as the vampire learns to overcome their emotions without turning off their humanity all together.
* **Fangs**: Vampires possess a set of retractable fangs. Their teeth are superhumanly strong and can rip open a human's neck and leave huge bite marks on the corpse of the victim it has fed on.
* **Immortality**: A vampire stops aging once turned and can potentially live forever. Upon their transformation, vampires become immune to all conventional illnesses, diseases, viruses and infections. While vampires who were cancer-free as humans will be immune to cancer after they are turned, those humans who were turned while they had cancer will not only still have it as a vampire, but their newly-enhanced healing factor will accelerate the progression of the cancer cells over two-fold, nearly always causing the cancer-stricken vampire to kill themselves to end their suffering.
* **Invulnerability**: Vampires can not be killed by conventional methods, such as stab wounds or gunshots. Vampires have an extreme resilience to pain.
* **Regeneration**: Vampires recover tissue from any form of physical damage to their bodies within seconds, though they still feel the pain of a wound before it heals. Vampires can snap their bones back into place after they have been broken and have been seen to fully recover from gunshots, stab wounds, and torso impalement very quickly, so long as they had consumed a regular diet of human blood prior to the injury. Those vampires who feed on animals will still heal much faster than a human, but their injuries, especially severe ones, will take much longer to heal than a vampire who feeds on human blood.
* **Stealth**: Vampires are often shown sneaking up on their victims without making a sound.
* **Super Agility**: Vampires possess amazing agility. They can climb up walls and jump off buildings without hurting themselves. Vampires also have greater reflexes than humans. They have shown that they can move quickly, jump very high, climb, and run incredibly fast without difficulty or exhaustion. Vampires can jump with their super speed too. Vampires that feed on human blood can jump much higher than vampires that feed on animal blood. This ability also increases with age.
* **Super Durability**: Vampires can take a great amount of physical damage without being slowed down. Even vampires who have been shot with wooden bullets, which have a weakening effect on vampires, have been seen to continue fighting so long as they were not shot in the heart or the head. Vampires still react to physical force in a human manner, particularly young vampires, who will occasionally be affected even by human-strength-level force. Vampires can also still be stunned and dazed by strikes and trauma, though their tolerance for it will increase as they get older.
* **Super Senses**: Vampires have extremely keen senses of hearing, sight, smell, and taste that far exceed those of humans and werewolves. They can hear whispered conversations, even ones in far off buildings and on phones, though most vampires typically learn how to tune out most ambient noises when it's not necessary to hear them. Vampires can also smell blood from several meters away, and see in total darkness. A vampire can track a human's blood over long distances. Rose once warned Elizabeth and Oliver that, "Once a vampire has your scent, it's for life." Their senses of taste are also enhanced as well, allowing them to detect the presence of drugs, alcohol, or vervain in someone's blood. Like their strength, their senses seem to increase with age.
* **Super Speed**: Vampires can move at greater speeds than humans. It is possible that a vampire's speed, like their strength, increases with age. Vampires can accelerate their movements to cover short distances in an instant, usually faster than the human eye can see. When running across long distances, they appear as vibrating blurs of motion allowing them to appear or vanish quickly and quietly. Their reflexes and dexterity are similarly heightened, allowing them to catch certain projectiles such as arrows and thrown stakes in the air with ease.
* **Super Stamina**: Despite their hunger, vampires don't tire easily.

* **Super Strength**: Vampires possess strength that is greater than humans. Young vampires experience a formidable increase in physical strength; able to lift heavy objects and overpower grown humans. Older vampires, however, can overpower their own makers and other creatures. They always have the advantage of superior strength in direct combat with a human. Even new vampires who are still in transition can toss an average-size, fully-grown human across a room with great speed and force. Their other feats include single-handedly lifting grown men high off the ground by the throat and snapping their necks, cutting off a person's head with their bare hands, and ripping out internal organs such as hearts with little to no effort. Their strength allows them to jump higher and further than any natural creature.
* **Telepathy**: Vampires have a limited form of telepathy that allows them to easily enter the minds of humans, and with more effort, the minds of other supernatural beings. Other ways to weaken a vampire is to use telepathy on them are to starve them or drain them of blood, inject them with vervain, or expose them to werewolf venom. It is one of the hardest abilities to master, and because of this, it is usually the last of the mind-control-related abilities a vampire learns after becoming proficient in mind compulsion. Normally, this ability works through tactile contact, usually by the vampire placing the palms of his or her hands on the temples of the vampire whose mind they want to enter. The vampire then closes their eyes and focuses on the information they wish to seek, allowing them to sort through their victims' memories until they see what they're looking for. Like their physical attributes, a vampire's mental strength increases with age, making it difficult for a vampire to invade the mind of an ancient vampire.
* **True Face**: A vampire's true face is the appearance they are hiding under their normal human face. When a vampire's true face is revealed, the sclera of their eyes turns blood-red, dark veins appear under their eyes as the blood pumps forcefully through them, and their canine teeth extend into razor-sharp fangs. On some occasions, a vampire's fang teeth can include both their canines and their lateral incisors. A vampire's true face can be revealed whenever they wish, but it will appear against their will whenever they are aroused by the scent of blood, or are feeling intense emotions such as fear, anger, lust, sadness, etc. A vampire's fangs are extremely sharp which gives them the ability to tear into almost any substance and tear off limbs. A vampire's true face will appear for the first time either while they drink human blood for the first time or shortly afterward. With the fangs come the darkened veins under the eyes as well.
* **Wealth of Power**: This largely forgotten and shunned ability enables a Vampire to be able to change their shape into almost any form that they wish, such as a wolf, mice, bats, mist, and/or other forms known to folklore. Despite its tremendous potential, the Vampires obsession with creating and sustaining an aesthetically-pleasing appearance has led to the abandonment of this innate skill.

## Weaknesses

* **Animal Blood**: Animal blood, while somewhat satisfying a vampire's hunger and sustaining their undead life, will make the vampire considerably weaker than they would be if they had drank human blood, causing their physical abilities to be inferior to a human-blood-consuming vampire, making them heal much more slowly, and making their compulsion less effective.
* **Cancer:** Although vampires cannot develop diseases and illnesses such as cancer, if a human has active cancer and is turned into a vampire, the effects of the cancer will increase. The regenerative properties of vampire blood will cause cancer cells to sporadically replicate, and exceed normal stages of the condition.
* **Decapitation**: Dismembering or manually removing the head of a vampire will result in an instant and permanent death.
* **Invitation:** Vampires cannot enter a home without an invitation by the owner.
* **Physical Trauma:** Minor physical injuries such as gunshots, stab wounds, and broken bones will cause pain and also slow them down. However, this is momentary as they will heal completely within seconds so long as they haven't been weakened by other means such as vervain or werewolf bites.
* **Vervain**: If a vampire makes physical contact with vervain in any form, it will burn them. If a vampire ingests vervain, the vampire's throat and digestive tract will be burned and they will become feverish and extremely weak.
* **Werewolf Bite:** The bite of a werewolf, which involves injecting toxic venom into the wound, is extremely lethal to vampires. It will cause them to hallucinate, grow severely weak, and go rabid until it kills them. Vampires suffering from the bite seem to always hallucinate either significant moments from their past, significant people in their lives, or specific actions of the vampire that they feel guilty or ashamed about. Typically, vampires will eventually die from werewolf bites.

## Known Vampires

* Asher Richards

* Alice Liddell