Vampires

A **vampire** is a creature that mostly eats and drinks blood, and kills other beings to drink their blood.

## Characteristics

Jerdiskar vampires are a sort of mutant human that evolved from excessive consumption of blood fuelled by rage and hatred. After living in caves for centuries, their skin has atrophied to the extent that sunlight and electrical shocks can easily burn them. Although they can be stronger and faster than humans, their physiology has also degenerated to the extent that they must be sustained by blood to retain their sanity: human blood is preferred over those of animals as it provides more energy and nutrients. Their hunger for blood can be so strong, that they are driven to also eat organs and muscles, making them true cannibals.

## History

Cases of vampirism emerged at certain points of Jerde's history.

### Fourth Age

The first reported cases of vampirism were found to the northeast of Zarijana and western Darros in the Fourth Age. According to the songs of Pokureni in northern Sevraeja, the first vampire in the world was a murderer known as Oktoponto, banished to a cave for his brutish force. Perhaps with some followers or his own remains in legends, more vampires were born until they littered the caves with their rotting corpses. These vampire chiefdoms became into cannibalistic savages. In Darroskei and Tchokorjan legends, the earliest vampires were known as the "mountain men" or "cave fiends".

To prevent the vampire hordes from slaughtering their people, the Slavic kingdom of Oruz built a great wall at the lawless northern wastelands. Golden, round shields are lined along the battlements to reflect the sun's rays and burn the vampires in their siege rams. After several expeditions by King Oruzla of Oruz, the builder of the walls, led to the defeat of many vampiric hordes, a Sevraejan peasant accidentally discovered the cure for vampirism from mixing salt, crystals, and some herbs, allowing her people and their Oruzii allies to end the vampiric threat for many ages to come.

The first person to be cured of vampirism was a man named Gorobjoro, a knight who stumbled into the farmer's house. When he tried the soup she made, she was surprised to find that he was a full human again. His tribe or kingdom was lucky that they had a weaker strain that allowed them to keep their sapience and walk unharmed even in daylight. After they were restored, the kingdom aided their fellow Sevraejan knights as they slaughtered the remaining vampires and freed the vampires' prisoners.

Vampire hordes also emerged during the Seventh and Twelfth Ages, becoming more organised enough to build their own civilisations and empires. Proud of their newfound strength, the vampires sought to conquer the planet as a "master race" by enslaving all other humans as livestock and food. The Twelfth Age was considered the "golden age of vampirism", when the colder temperatures and darker skies caused by global volcanic eruptions allowed the vampires to easily defeat other human nations.

All of these vampire empires were later defeated and exterminated by the surviving humans, although billions of humans were lost to these threats. The end of the Seventh Age was marked by the accidental discovery of gunpowder in various parts of the world, including Sevraeja, where the humans found that their cannons and muskets were able to easily burn the vampiric hordes to ash.

### Seventh and Eighth Age vampire nations

The Vampires of Sevraeja had no nation or proper organisation, only nameless, savage tribes bent on devouring and murdering anyone they met, including each other.

* Maaros (southern Darros and southeast Randros)
* Lemiars (southern Vilon, later the Vichelthos who worshipped a solar god of the underworld)
* Vethalcha (east of Prisapura and Mandala)
* the Hrangids (scattered from western Paltirion to south of Rabydos in the ice wastes) - these vampire city-states were at war with the natives and the Greyfolk.
* Tyrants of Aurilak (Bivos) - known for demanding tribute from their fellow tribes, threatening to send armies of vampire warriors to slaughter and eat anyone who resisted.
* Otmus (western Darros) - a barbaric, cannibalistic horde that lacked the unity and organisation of their predecessors. They were more chaotic and savage, unable to communicate except in grunts and barks. The Otmus hordes were exterminated after the Sevraejans invented gunpowder weaponry.

Thanks to their newly-discovered gunpower weaponry, the people of Sevraeja and other Slavic nations repelled the vampires, as their enemies' atrophied skin easily burned.

One man from eastern Rifandi sailed to Zarijana, having fought the vampires who tried to stop him from reaching its cities. There, he learned to build gunpowder weaponry, and returned to share his technology to his people. Because the muskets and cannons proved to be more effective against the vampires' savage tides, that sailor was celebrated like a king for saving his people.

A few vampiric bands continued to plague the more remote forests, until the last of their kind were hunted down, or enslaved as war beasts by the Aspuruks.

### Twelfth Age vampire nations

* Maarinda (southern Darros)
* Harmils (scattered across Palkyras) - these vampires lived as nomads, wandering the continent in search of humans to kill and eat.
* Vechaal-Pathals (beneath Mandala) - many of these vampires lived in underground cities, abducting random humans as their prey.
* Lemarrinth of Vilon: all of them not only sought to enslave humanity again, but also to exterminate each other.
* Various vampire tribes

### Later history

To ensure that the Vampire Wars will never happen again, the nations of Jerde and the Ecumene (several superpowers dedicated to protecting their homeworld) have forbidden vampirism and the very existence of vampires throughout the entire planet.

In the Gauvajut Empire, suspected vampires are electrocuted until their bodies burn, as Gauvajuts consider lightning and electricity to be a holy weapon against vampires. The electrocutions are to give the vampires "a taste of Heaven's wrath" before sending their souls, kicking and screaming, to eternal torment in Hell. Gauvajuts believe that all vampires are by controlled and owned by the evil god Illujankas, to destroy and devour humanity as they plunge the world to chaos.

As Heronoja was attacked by enemies that sought to kill its people and harvest their flammable blood, all Heronoi have developed a hatred of vampires and the drinking of blood. Many Heronoi movies have vampires as the antagonists, and people suspected of intentionally drinking blood are sentenced to death for "terrorism". All Heronoi are ordered at a young age to swear to kill every vampire in existence, giving each vampire a cruel and excruciating death to avenge all of its victims' souls. According to Heronoi beliefs, vampires also avoid moonlight as it being holy to the god Heros causes it to burn vampires' bodies.

The early rulers of Rabydos were corrupted into vampires, so many immortals fled south to found Umbirab to protect themselves and their machinery. Said vampires were later defeated. Millennia later, some of those vampires were cloned as an instant army to serve Burendil III, terrorising the locals to force them into obedience. The resistance of Rabydos grew as more Lausorijo marched south to slay the vampires and protect the people.

The Thralondian Empire was notorious for making the blood of its slaves as a commodity and a dessert, to represent their dominance over all other peoples. The Thralondians' oppression of the Heronoi and themir harvesting and eating Heronoi for more blood have angered the nations of the world, to the point that other countries (like Gimbarish, another country enslaved by the Thralondian Empire) referred the Thralondians as "vampires".

## Sevraejan vampires

The Sevraejan word for "vampire" was onpjari, "drinker" or "ravenous one".

This section covers the vampires that waged war on Sevraeja in the Fourth Age, their biology, and "society". To a lesser extent, this also applies to the more primitive vampires of the Seventh Age.

### Sevraejan Vampire Hordes and Warbands

What few records left behind by the smarter few tribes of vampires provided a look into the unstable society of the barbaric hordes. They still retained knowledge of the Sevraejan tongue, albeit a more debased form reduced to growling and snarling.

* Otmus - the largest tribe, led by Chief Ompara the Ravenous, or the Skullmuncher. Obsessed with eating, even to the point of biting and slicing even his own bodyguards and captains, and whatever skulls and bones he happened to touch.

### Vampiric tribal society

Unlike the kingdoms of the Slavs, the Tchukorjans, the Gotureans, and the Tirri; the vampires' society consisted of only primitive, simple tribes ruled by despots. After their emergence from the corpses left behind by Oktoponto, the vampires that multiplied had only the knowledge to kill, eat, forge crude metal and build cruder weaponry, and bark orders in whatever crude grunts they made as their "languages".

The various grunt-speeches of the vampires, considered too barbaric and disorganised to even be considered as languages, were known collectively as "Ompjarsii".

### Vampiric reproduction and female onpjari

Most of those vampires were created by an unusual viral strain that caused even their diseased body parts to sprout into new vampires when left to decay in moist soil. Nearly all vampires grown from sliced body parts were male, and very rarely do any newly-sprouted vampires emerge as females.

There were still vampires who reproduced like humans, resulting in three sorts of females among the vampiric tribes. Even then, males were much more common.

* breeders - In many vampiric tribes, larger females who reached adulthood were kept in large tents, where they existed as breeders and executioners. They especially enjoyed executions, when they were able to eat the victims' corpses afterwards. They gestated new vampires within three weeks or less, and said vampires grew to adulthood for up to five days.
* matrons - a few vampiric tribes were matriarchal, led by a "queen". The "queen" was the main breeder, producing most of the other warriors of her tribe. Other females under her mostly served as warriors, like their male counterparts and mates.
* minions - all other female vampires who were neither breeders nor matrons. Like all the other members of their tribes, all minions were warriors, so they were still killed like their male counterparts. They were allowed to take any male as a mate.

Vampires born from those other vampires, especially those grown from maimed parts and corpses, were unable to be cured with elixirs at all. These were known as "true vampires", as opposed to people who were infected with vampirism or born from infected vampires, who can be cured. They were either raised by whatever females in the tribe, and once they reached adulthood, they must join a warband. Males usually did not cohabit with females except for breeding, forming warbands, or eating together.

In many of those vampiric tribes, cannibalism was very common. From minions and warriors who displeased their masters, to whelps who were weak or too irritating, the vampires tore apart and devoured their own tribe members and raided other tribes for fresh meat and blood. Surviving accounts wrote about the brutal horrors practiced by the vampiric savages.

Nearly all true vampires were exterminated by the Sevraejans and their allies, including the cured infected who sought to slaughter all vampires as revenge. Some were still kept as beasts and animals even after the purge and first unification of Sevraeja.

The second vampiric plague of Sevraeja took place at the very end of the Seventh Age, when they rapidly spread and hunted down the denizens of the north. Bands of huntsmen and huntswomen were formed from the Slavics and tribal Tchukorjans to defend their homes. With the discovery of gunpowder, the Sevraejans were able to quickly end the threat, and provide other nations with firearms.

The last known specimens of this barbaric species were sighted among the Aspuruks, degraded to nothing more than "shrivelled dogs with the hollow faces of men".

## Trivia

* One particular scene in the movie Daybreakers, in which several soldiers eat each other after being cured of vampirism, made the author hate vampires.
* Unlike typical vampires, Rabydosverse vampires do not instantly disintegrate if they are exposed to sunlight. They can stand for a little longer at sunlight, but it can burn their skin, their muscles, and then their organs, as their cells have become atropied and weaker. The same can also affect them if they get burned, although fire does not damage them as easily and quickly as sunlight. To prevent this, they wear suits of armour to deflect sunlight from touching their skin.
	+ Also, as they not only drink blood but also eat the bodies of their victims to satiate their addictive hunger, many vampires in the Rabydosverse enjoy practicing cannibalism, even against each other. In their twisted minds, everything and everyone who stands before them is nothing but prey.
	+ Gunpowder and flamethrowers are very effective in killing vampires because they can rapidly tear down vampiric skin and body tissue, more so than the slow rays of sunlight. This was why Zarijanians and their Slavic allies wielded flamethrowers and grenades when fighting vampiric savages.
* One idea the author had was that mjolnirs work the same way as crosses do to vampires. It is not the mjolnir itself that harms the vampire, but what the mjolnir represents: the wrath of Thor, against unholy creatures like them.
	+ He thought of this because Thor was supposed to be the destroyer of monsters, and that mjolnirs were used during ancient Norse times as a symbol of resistance to Christian kings.
	+ It was due to an incident where Thor kills several vampires that tried to eat him. After killing a vampire king, he cursed all vampires and blood drinkers that every time they see him or his image, they will become afraid.
	+ He also guessed that the mjolnir's use against vampires might had been the predecessor of the cross used to fight vampires.
	+ Actual vampires on Jerde were not harmed by sacred symbols, but either by whatever divine powers they had or the substance of the icons. One vampire was poisoned from chewing at a gold symbol of Stribog, and another was poisoned and crystallised to death by eating a spinel gem dropped by a merchant.
* While vampires already existed in Russian folklore as "upyr", the author based the cannibalistic Sevraejan vampire warriors on fantasy barbarians, cavepeople, and Norscans from Warhammer, reflecting their vampires' opposition to Sevraeja and other civilisations.