Vampire

The original Vampire was a Dusk Elf named Cloven. The goddess of her kind, The Lilin, attempted to use a murder Cloven committed as a way to enter the mortal realm of Aradia. However, the attempt ended in failure and instead, The Lilin accidentally transferred some of her power to Cloven.

This power allowed Cloven to create other vampires. However, she didn't gain true power until her mortal form's death in the Grey Coast. She reanimated as what would be termed a Royal Vampire.

## Turning:

To turn a mortal to a vampire, the mortal must drink the blood of the vampire. This results in a vicious infection which takes hold immediately, wracking the mortal's body with terrible seizures as their brain rapidly rearranges pathways. This leads to death without full infection in most cases.

If full infection is achieved before undeath, the mortal will die and be reanimated as a Vampire Thrall within moments.

##### Thrall Bite

Vampire Thralls are capable of a rare type of turning. If they attack a mortal and are able to bite them, yet do not manage to drain or mortally wound them, their infection can be transmitted to the mortal. This infection is slower, acting much like any other infection that might afflict regular folk, and leads to death by seizure usually within a week, following a coma. But, like regular turning, if the infection is able to complete its progress before death, the person will turn upon undeath.

Due to the longer incubation period of the Thrall-bite's infection, more victims of this type of turning tend to actually make it to Thrall-ship themselves. However, it is rare for a Thrall to only bite unless its master is intentionally controlling it to do so or it is interrupted by an attack on its self. And, those who believe they are infected tend to be killed by themselves or others. Therefore, turning like this is much rarer. These Thralls also tend to be more unruly, slightly more capable of breaking the hold of their turner's own master.

## Vampire Castes:

### Vampire Thrall

A freshly-turned vampire immediately searches for living blood to drink, but are literally enthralled by their sire and thus follow their every whim and command. With no higher thought or function, and a brain so scrambled by the changes made to turn them, they have no understanding of language or memory of their pasts. They only understand the intent and magical hold of their master. They disregard other vampires and are not drawn to them.

Thralls are not much better in physical prowess than the creature they were before being turned. There is a small increase in strength and speed as the thrall is incapable of feeling pain - it will push itself beyond what mortal creatures would, often to its own detriment. However, the same infection that turned them also heals them faster than mortals can several times over.

If left unattended, Thralls will blindly seek living blood. Entire villages and towns have been destroyed in this manner, so most higher vampires keep their thralls caged.

##### Evolution

Thralls can be evolved into High Vampires over many years by higher-caste vampires if forced to drink their blood. This process is long and tedious, taking as long as several centuries for the Thrall to gain intelligence and emotional maturity to be considered of adult-level behavior. Once the vampire is able to hold back their lust for blood and control their behavior, they are considered a High Vampire.

### High Vampire

High Vampires are far superior to Thralls in every way. With the years or centuries of being a thrall, their bodies and brains have rewired to allow them incredible feats of strength and speed. They are capable of higher thought, but still retain no memory of what it was to be mortal.

##### Evolution

To become a Royal Vampire, it takes centuries or even millennia of drinking Royal Vampire blood. Unlike the transition from Thrall to High Vampire, there is little to no evidence that anything is happening. The evolution at the end of this process is sudden with no warning, incredibly violent, and can sometimes result in true death as the High Vampire's brain just disintegrates in the process. This has led to a few awkward situations where High Vampires began acting primal like thralls, then suddenly stopped dead in their tracks like they had experienced a stroke... then actually died.

### Royal Vampire

The highest form of Vampire, Royals are the pinnacle of their type. They are able to seize memories from their mortal self, and view through the eyes of any thrall they have sired or grand-sired. Their strength and speed is far beyond that of High Vampires and their magical abilities are greatly enhanced. They are able to enchant mortals easily, and snatch free will from any High Vampire sired by them. They are master illusionists, brutal hemomancers, and unequivocally drawn to the idea of the Void and the pursuit of more power.

However - these vampires have the wisdom to know that too much power will be the end of them as the rest of the world comes to bear against them. They are aware there are far worse forces than themselves out there, and power is not worth dying for until those forces can be neutralized - or consumed.

## The Infectible:

All sentient races are capable of becoming vampires, but few survive the initial infection long enough to turn.

Among the only animals that are capable of turning to vampirism are bats. Their robust immune systems allow a rare few of them to survive long enough for full infection to take hold, rather than outright killing them. They're also much more likely to turn in the first place as it is in their nature to drink blood to survive.

Almost no animals reach a status above Thrall, unable of higher brain function in the first place. However, some High Vampires and Royal Vampires take the years or even centuries to cultivate them into companions capable of higher thought and independence but fiercely loyal to their master.