Feral vampire

> *Not to be confused with Feralis vampire.*
>
>

**Feral vampires**, often colloquially referred to as **ferals**, are a subspecies of vampires who have lost their humanity, effectively turning "feral", and transformed into a mindless, monstrous husk that is solely driven by their insatiable hunger for the flesh and blood of humans and especially their fellow vampires.

## Description

Regular vampires can "turn feral" if they lose too much of their humanity, usually through excessive killing and feeding, or voluntarily giving into their innate bestial instincts. Turning feral is notably a gradual process: their thirst will eventually become increasingly insatiable, requiring them to feed more often, which can make it much more difficult for them to maintain control or keep themselves in check during feeding; they may also display a lack of empathy or compassion towards others, experience extremely fluctuating moods, which often skews towards quick aggression or even hostility over time, favoring it over logic or reason, as their mental state slowly begins to deteriorate. They may even slip into temporary dissociative fugues, which can result in some memory loss. However, vampires who have begun turning feral will also slowly gain more enhanced physical attributes, such as strength, speed and durability, essentially becoming more stronger as they begin consuming more blood and flesh. Because this process is linked to a vampire's humanity, it can be significantly accelerated by feeding exclusively on the flesh and blood of other vampires, essentially practicing cannibalism; hence, vampires who are turning feral are often considered as cannibals even by their own fellow vampires.

Their outward physical appearance also changes to reflect how much they have lost their humanity, which is usually expressed when they are angered or hungry. In addition to crimson red irises, shadowy veins begin to sprout to envelop the eyes' sclerae, and their fangs and nails will also grow much sharper than typical vampires. Though their skin becomes more durable against physical means of harm such as nonmagical weapons or other vampires' claws and bites, it also becomes significantly more vulnerable to sunlight, and exposure can range from being severely weakened, to eventually fatal further along the turning process.

At the final stage of the process, upon which the vampire have completely lost their humanity and turns completely feral, they will have lost much of their intelligence and cognitive abilities, thus losing most of their memories and identity of their original selves, and no longer able to function with empathy, logic or reason; instead, they become solely driven by the need to sate their ravenous, endless hunger for the flesh and blood of humans and other vampires, with absolutely no regard to their lives. Physically, their physique becomes more gaunt, their skin becomes a deathly pallor and leather-like that stretches taut across their flesh and bones, while their eyes' sclerae turn completely black with bright red irises; they also possess a mouthful of sharpened fangs and elongated claws that can tear through even vampires' skin and flesh with ease. Their appearance will further deteriorate over time while they remain existing, becoming more monstrous and eventually decaying into a skeletal-like creature.

Despite their physique, feral vampires also possess superior physical attributes that easily triumphs those of regular vampires, where even newborns who have turned feral can prove to be a difficult match even to older regular vampires. Their regenerative healing is also further enhanced, enabling them to heal severe wounds or even regenerate limbs when fully empowered. At this stage, feral vampires can only be harmed by specialized weapons, especially those made of pure silver and enchanted by witches or laced with werewolf venom, though most effective methods of killing them is by exposure to sunlight or fire. Upon death, they will immediately desiccate and disintegrate into ash.

## Known feral vampires

* Jesse Whitlock (formerly)
* Zeke Walker †

## Trivia

* In the early drafts of the first book, feral vampires were instead called "Cannibals", then later "Savages", before being finalized as "ferals".