Vampires
Vampire fangs via Stuff Point/Creative Commons.
Basic biology: A vampire’s skin is extremely sensitive to the sun, and can burn with minimal exposure (although less quickly than a human albino, because vampires do retain their original production of melanin.) Outdoors, they generally wear dark sunglasses, and have a hood, hat, or other sun protection for their faces available at all times. Sunscreens work, especially those with a physical UVA/UVB blocking ingredient, but there is always a risk of getting a nasty, blistering burn during the Georgia spring and summer.
When a vampire is aroused by the scent of blood, or is attempting intimidation, the eyes turn black, due to chromatophores in the iris and sclera. As the pupil always appears black, the entire visible eyeball will appear to turn black. The canine teeth retract, allowing a fang to simultaneously drop into its space. The fangs are are needle-pointed, with serrated sides rather like sharks' teeth. The fangs are in the upper jaw only. "Bite" is somewhat of a misnomer, as the action is more like a snake strike, though many do then embed their upper and lower incisors into the victim's flesh, tearing at it in the case of a violent attack. Feeding by mutual consent is much more delicate, often leaving nothing but a pair of deep puncture wounds and bruising.
In normal discreet or consensual feeding, a major vein is punctured, rather than an artery. This is because blood in an artery will spray out under considerable pressure, which is uncomfortable to consume without choking, and prevents any chance of leaving a clean death scene behind for the authorities-- because an arterial bite is always an attack to commit murder, or to kill in self-defence.
A vampire’s bite conveys some benefits to the one bitten: It promotes rapid replacement of blood cells, analgesia during the time of the feed, promotes optimum healing of the wound (vampire bites only temporarily scar, and disappear within six months to a year,) contains an coagulating agent that is activated on exposure of the wound to air, and a weak antibiotic. These effects are not novel or powerful enough to be of real interest to medical science, but more nature’s way to ensure that there’s always a balance between prey and predator.
Vampires don’t fall into a ‘death sleep’ during the day. However, they are largely nocturnal. This is because it’s more comfortable, and hunting is easier at night. Like anyone who’s up most of the night, they then sleep most of the day. Those who haven’t been prudent enough to build up a reserve of cash to live on, or haven’t been alive long enough to glory in the full rewards of long-term compound interest, generally work in jobs and professions that allow third-shift work.
Myths vs Facts: Despite Hollywood and old legends, vampires do cast a reflection, they can cross running water, religious symbols are just that, symbols, and they absolutely positively do not sparkle. Unless it’s for a joke, and vampires are notoriously humorless on the whole.
One legend that does have a kernel of truth is that vampires cannot enter a private dwelling unless expressly invited in. They can waltz in anywhere they please, as easily as a human, but tradition keeps them on the other side of the threshold without an invitation, if they don’t have more malevolent intent than merely feeding. After all, one generally hunts in the open street, not going door to door in an apartment building somewhere like a proselytizing religious convert.
Another legend that is entirely true is the ability of a vampire to enthrall a human. This 'enthrallment' is apparently the inducement of an non-consensual, powerful hypnotic state, rather like the entirely fictional 'Jedi mind trick.' A hunting vampire will use enthrallment to lure a victim into striking distance. A vampire feeding by mutual consent will use enthrallment to enhance the donor's sexual and positive emotional responses to the psychoactive effect of vampire saliva. A blissful donor is almost always a repeat donor.
Enthrallment isn't a lasting state (although addiction to vampire saliva is far too persistent) and can be immediately disrupted by sudden, strong outside stimuli or an intense pain sensation.
Fang Addiction: Those who are repeated donors for vampire feeding frequently develop a strong psychological and physiological addiction due to the mood-altering effect of vampire saliva. There is growing evidence that the enthrallment induced during consensual feeding first heightens, then severely depletes, the neurotransmitters responsible for pleasurable and euphoric mental states. Similar to addictions to opiates or methamphetamine, the addicted donor will soon discover that they are so depressed and physically uncomfortable when the feeding high fades, that they can't resist going back for another fix.
Initially, the feeding high lasts long enough for the donor's blood volume to return to normal, safe levels. However, as the addiction grows, the peaceful, elevated euphoria fades more quickly. In time, most addicts are in more or less severe states of aplastic anemia. Drugs that stimulate the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells are effective in mitigating the physiological damages of fang addiction, until psychological counseling and a supervised step-down program can free the addict from the compulsion. However, it remains an extremely difficult habit to kick, and long-term survival rates are poorer among fang-addicts than among those addicted to pharmaceuticals.
Nutrition: Feeding, with all its ramifications and complications, takes an enormous percentage of most vampire’s waking hours. Under the law, hunting in 'the wild' (taking blood without the consent of the donor,) is a federal offense. This has given rise to blood-bordellos, and blood prostitutes, as well as establishments set up to facilitate informal meetings between those humans with a kink for bloodletting and possible side of sex or pain, and those vampires willing to fulfill their fantasies.
Despite this, there are a handful of vampire kills every year, in larger cities. Most of these cases are closed almost instantly, by the local vampiric government handing over the miscreant for execution, but some few cases go cold and stay cold.
All the following figures are generalities, but may be considered the normal range: A full feed is considered roughly 900 ml, about double the amount donated during a charitable blood drive. An experienced donor becomes keenly aware of the sensation of losing this much volume in a feed, and if the feeding is consensual, the vampire honors the command to stop.
Professional bloodwhores only allow their clients to take quarter to half-feeds, to allow for a faster recovery time. Among those who are also fang-addicts, however, there is usually not that much restraint. Many addicts will offer a full feed as soon as they regenerate enough red blood cells to be considered palatable again. Those wealthy, stealthy and more traditional vampires who maintain a harem are well aware of this, and keep enough individuals on hand to allow a more healthy feeding rotation and to slow the development of addiction.
A violent, non consensual feeding is an entirely different event. The volume of blood in a human body is approximately equal to 7% of the individual's body weight. During an attack, the amount taken is measured in liters. Usually, only a residual amount is left behind in a fatal feed, due to the circulatory system shutting down before the person is totally bled dry.
Live Blood Alternatives: There aren’t many viable choices for a vampire who wishes to avoid live feeding. Consuming animal blood is like a human trying to live on soda their whole life. Bagged human blood, either fresh or expired blood bank donations, will sustain life for a while, but it’s a meal that’s the blandest of the bland, and long-term subsistence upon it creates a severe malnutrition that could lead to eventual death. (For a real life similar disorder, see Rabbit Starvation.) Even worse than the eventual wasting that stored blood provokes, is the fact that it doesn’t do anything to assuage the overwhelming drive to feed. It’s as if you’re being fed intravenously, but remain ravenously hungry, all the time, for days and weeks on end.
At the time of the Preternatural Reveal, the government released information about the development of an artificial blood alternative for vampires. However, the general mood is skeptical, to say the least, for it’s rumored that NuBlood was an unexpected discovery during anti-vampire weapon development.
At the best of times, vampires are a conservative and cautious lot regarding innovations that might impact their existence and way of life. Some see this artificial nutrient as an edible Trojan Horse, and even those slightly less paranoid are tending to wait to see how many early adopters die from it when it all goes horribly wrong somehow.
Shifter blood is a two-edged blade of destruction: it is a slow-acting, cumulative toxin, and it’s a powerful, addictive, euphoric intoxicant. Imagine trying to live on liquid cocaine. You’d still be hungry all the time, and too high out of your mind to care.
There are some advantages to both species that prevent them trying for mutual extinction. A vampire’s blood, when transfused into a shifter poisoned by silver, acts as a chelating agent to remove the metal through the processes of elimination. This has to be a live, donor to donor transfusion, however, so killing a vampire or stealing blood won’t affect a cure.
There is a little known, perhaps deliberately concealed, effect of shifter blood upon vampires beyond intoxication. If a Child feeds on a shifter within his or her first three feeds, the high can disrupt or completely destroy the bond between the Child and the Maker. This is part of the reason newly turned Children are all but kept under lock and key by their Makers, until the critical period is past.
This is all beside the intimidating fact that the species tend to loathe one another on general principle. As a shifter can take out a vampire in a bare-hand fight, hunting them is akin to going after tigers armed only with a sharp stick.
Speaking of sharp sticks....
Vampire Vulnerabilities: There is nothing that magically kills or repels vampires. Garlic would repel them only as large quantities of the stinking rose repels any creature with a functioning nose. Iron and silver are simply useful metals. Immolation in an inferno will kill anyone, regardless of their species, as would decapitation.
The only weapon from legend that has a basis in fact is a sharp hardwood stake to the heart. While, again, puncturing the heart with a large sharp object will do in any creature, vampires can take a horrifying amount of damage otherwise, and live to tell the tale before seeking gory revenge. There have even been cases of vampires completely flayed alive as a punishment, and surviving intact, unscarred and as pretty as ever, so long as they were well fed during the healing process.
Vampire Society: In the Old World, vampires are ruled by ancient Families, which put Rulers on metaphoric (and sometimes literal) thrones across a map of territorial divisions that bear little resemblance to human nation-states. However, like human immigrants, the Vampires who crossed the seas to settle in America were in search of freedom from such stifling bureaucracy. And not a few were exiled, having displeased their superior in some unforgivable way. Such offenses may have been dire or trivial, depending on the offended sovereign's caprice.
Sadly, if there were native vampire populations in the Americas, European and Asian territorial conquests, beginning in the 15th century, have exterminated them-- or driven them so far into seclusion they appear to never have existed. Native vampires do not appear in human records of the era of exploration.
Vampires in the US operate in a state of semi-organized anarchy. The strongest and most ruthless hold fiefdoms of various sizes, until deposed by someone just that crucial bit more vicious and determined. For obvious reasons, these power bases center on urban areas, with vassals dispatched to watch over the more outlying areas. Stone Mountain is one of those outposts.
Because there is no formal, cooperative system of power emerging in the US, the rest of the vampiric world has ceased to see this country as a stripling power to ignore or allow to mature. Now, it is seen as a goldmine of squandered resources, ripe for the taking. Europe and the Middle Eastern vampiric Families have too many ties of honor and debt to the United States government and certain US vampiric powers to make a grab for power over their young ally, but the Asian Families feel no such compunctions.
Vampire Reproduction: The only way vampires can reproduce is through inducing vampirism in another human, called 'Turning.' This isn’t exactly an infectious process, because while lycanthropy can be transmitted through contact with shifter body fluids like more mundane diseases, vampirism can only be passed along by a precise process that does not work when divorced from intentional application by a vampire.
The Maker has to drain his prospective Child almost to the point of death from hypovolemic shock, then introduce his or her own blood into the victim’s body. They drip their own blood into their victim’s mouth, and because the mucous membranes have always been damaged by at least one preliminary sharp-fanged kiss, the vampire’s blood enters his victim’s system immediately.
The victim appears to die, although extreme bradycardia, extreme delta brain waves, and very shallow, slow respirations can be detected in a medical setting. Twenty-four hours later, the victim regains full consciousness, usually with a paroxysmal gasp, and finds themselves now a Child bound to their Maker by ties both metaphysical and practical.
The Maker/Child relationship can be along a spectrum that includes true familial love and loyalty on one end, to outright enslavement at the other. Most however, treat it as a melding of indentured servitude and apprenticeship, and release their Child on their own recognizance after three to five years, depending on the trustworthiness and stability of the child, and the temperament and agenda of the Maker.
Most Maker/Child relationships wind up in some degree of mutual respect, if not outright affection. Betrayal of one’s Maker is accepted as sometimes unavoidable, or regrettable but overwhelmingly advantageous. Destroying your Maker, however, is always considered shocking, though surprisingly, not as disavowed by vampiric society as one might otherwise expect.
When a vampire is aroused by the scent of blood, or is attempting intimidation, the eyes turn black, due to chromatophores in the iris and sclera. As the pupil always appears black, the entire visible eyeball will appear to turn black. The canine teeth retract, allowing a fang to simultaneously drop into its space. The fangs are are needle-pointed, with serrated sides rather like sharks' teeth. The fangs are in the upper jaw only. "Bite" is somewhat of a misnomer, as the action is more like a snake strike, though many do then embed their upper and lower incisors into the victim's flesh, tearing at it in the case of a violent attack. Feeding by mutual consent is much more delicate, often leaving nothing but a pair of deep puncture wounds and bruising.
In normal discreet or consensual feeding, a major vein is punctured, rather than an artery. This is because blood in an artery will spray out under considerable pressure, which is uncomfortable to consume without choking, and prevents any chance of leaving a clean death scene behind for the authorities-- because an arterial bite is always an attack to commit murder, or to kill in self-defence.
A vampire’s bite conveys some benefits to the one bitten: It promotes rapid replacement of blood cells, analgesia during the time of the feed, promotes optimum healing of the wound (vampire bites only temporarily scar, and disappear within six months to a year,) contains an coagulating agent that is activated on exposure of the wound to air, and a weak antibiotic. These effects are not novel or powerful enough to be of real interest to medical science, but more nature’s way to ensure that there’s always a balance between prey and predator.
Vampires don’t fall into a ‘death sleep’ during the day. However, they are largely nocturnal. This is because it’s more comfortable, and hunting is easier at night. Like anyone who’s up most of the night, they then sleep most of the day. Those who haven’t been prudent enough to build up a reserve of cash to live on, or haven’t been alive long enough to glory in the full rewards of long-term compound interest, generally work in jobs and professions that allow third-shift work.
Myths vs Facts: Despite Hollywood and old legends, vampires do cast a reflection, they can cross running water, religious symbols are just that, symbols, and they absolutely positively do not sparkle. Unless it’s for a joke, and vampires are notoriously humorless on the whole.
One legend that does have a kernel of truth is that vampires cannot enter a private dwelling unless expressly invited in. They can waltz in anywhere they please, as easily as a human, but tradition keeps them on the other side of the threshold without an invitation, if they don’t have more malevolent intent than merely feeding. After all, one generally hunts in the open street, not going door to door in an apartment building somewhere like a proselytizing religious convert.
Another legend that is entirely true is the ability of a vampire to enthrall a human. This 'enthrallment' is apparently the inducement of an non-consensual, powerful hypnotic state, rather like the entirely fictional 'Jedi mind trick.' A hunting vampire will use enthrallment to lure a victim into striking distance. A vampire feeding by mutual consent will use enthrallment to enhance the donor's sexual and positive emotional responses to the psychoactive effect of vampire saliva. A blissful donor is almost always a repeat donor.
Enthrallment isn't a lasting state (although addiction to vampire saliva is far too persistent) and can be immediately disrupted by sudden, strong outside stimuli or an intense pain sensation.
Fang Addiction: Those who are repeated donors for vampire feeding frequently develop a strong psychological and physiological addiction due to the mood-altering effect of vampire saliva. There is growing evidence that the enthrallment induced during consensual feeding first heightens, then severely depletes, the neurotransmitters responsible for pleasurable and euphoric mental states. Similar to addictions to opiates or methamphetamine, the addicted donor will soon discover that they are so depressed and physically uncomfortable when the feeding high fades, that they can't resist going back for another fix.
Initially, the feeding high lasts long enough for the donor's blood volume to return to normal, safe levels. However, as the addiction grows, the peaceful, elevated euphoria fades more quickly. In time, most addicts are in more or less severe states of aplastic anemia. Drugs that stimulate the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells are effective in mitigating the physiological damages of fang addiction, until psychological counseling and a supervised step-down program can free the addict from the compulsion. However, it remains an extremely difficult habit to kick, and long-term survival rates are poorer among fang-addicts than among those addicted to pharmaceuticals.
Nutrition: Feeding, with all its ramifications and complications, takes an enormous percentage of most vampire’s waking hours. Under the law, hunting in 'the wild' (taking blood without the consent of the donor,) is a federal offense. This has given rise to blood-bordellos, and blood prostitutes, as well as establishments set up to facilitate informal meetings between those humans with a kink for bloodletting and possible side of sex or pain, and those vampires willing to fulfill their fantasies.
Despite this, there are a handful of vampire kills every year, in larger cities. Most of these cases are closed almost instantly, by the local vampiric government handing over the miscreant for execution, but some few cases go cold and stay cold.
All the following figures are generalities, but may be considered the normal range: A full feed is considered roughly 900 ml, about double the amount donated during a charitable blood drive. An experienced donor becomes keenly aware of the sensation of losing this much volume in a feed, and if the feeding is consensual, the vampire honors the command to stop.
Professional bloodwhores only allow their clients to take quarter to half-feeds, to allow for a faster recovery time. Among those who are also fang-addicts, however, there is usually not that much restraint. Many addicts will offer a full feed as soon as they regenerate enough red blood cells to be considered palatable again. Those wealthy, stealthy and more traditional vampires who maintain a harem are well aware of this, and keep enough individuals on hand to allow a more healthy feeding rotation and to slow the development of addiction.
A violent, non consensual feeding is an entirely different event. The volume of blood in a human body is approximately equal to 7% of the individual's body weight. During an attack, the amount taken is measured in liters. Usually, only a residual amount is left behind in a fatal feed, due to the circulatory system shutting down before the person is totally bled dry.
Live Blood Alternatives: There aren’t many viable choices for a vampire who wishes to avoid live feeding. Consuming animal blood is like a human trying to live on soda their whole life. Bagged human blood, either fresh or expired blood bank donations, will sustain life for a while, but it’s a meal that’s the blandest of the bland, and long-term subsistence upon it creates a severe malnutrition that could lead to eventual death. (For a real life similar disorder, see Rabbit Starvation.) Even worse than the eventual wasting that stored blood provokes, is the fact that it doesn’t do anything to assuage the overwhelming drive to feed. It’s as if you’re being fed intravenously, but remain ravenously hungry, all the time, for days and weeks on end.
At the time of the Preternatural Reveal, the government released information about the development of an artificial blood alternative for vampires. However, the general mood is skeptical, to say the least, for it’s rumored that NuBlood was an unexpected discovery during anti-vampire weapon development.
At the best of times, vampires are a conservative and cautious lot regarding innovations that might impact their existence and way of life. Some see this artificial nutrient as an edible Trojan Horse, and even those slightly less paranoid are tending to wait to see how many early adopters die from it when it all goes horribly wrong somehow.
Shifter blood is a two-edged blade of destruction: it is a slow-acting, cumulative toxin, and it’s a powerful, addictive, euphoric intoxicant. Imagine trying to live on liquid cocaine. You’d still be hungry all the time, and too high out of your mind to care.
There are some advantages to both species that prevent them trying for mutual extinction. A vampire’s blood, when transfused into a shifter poisoned by silver, acts as a chelating agent to remove the metal through the processes of elimination. This has to be a live, donor to donor transfusion, however, so killing a vampire or stealing blood won’t affect a cure.
There is a little known, perhaps deliberately concealed, effect of shifter blood upon vampires beyond intoxication. If a Child feeds on a shifter within his or her first three feeds, the high can disrupt or completely destroy the bond between the Child and the Maker. This is part of the reason newly turned Children are all but kept under lock and key by their Makers, until the critical period is past.
This is all beside the intimidating fact that the species tend to loathe one another on general principle. As a shifter can take out a vampire in a bare-hand fight, hunting them is akin to going after tigers armed only with a sharp stick.
Speaking of sharp sticks....
Vampire Vulnerabilities: There is nothing that magically kills or repels vampires. Garlic would repel them only as large quantities of the stinking rose repels any creature with a functioning nose. Iron and silver are simply useful metals. Immolation in an inferno will kill anyone, regardless of their species, as would decapitation.
The only weapon from legend that has a basis in fact is a sharp hardwood stake to the heart. While, again, puncturing the heart with a large sharp object will do in any creature, vampires can take a horrifying amount of damage otherwise, and live to tell the tale before seeking gory revenge. There have even been cases of vampires completely flayed alive as a punishment, and surviving intact, unscarred and as pretty as ever, so long as they were well fed during the healing process.
Vampire Society: In the Old World, vampires are ruled by ancient Families, which put Rulers on metaphoric (and sometimes literal) thrones across a map of territorial divisions that bear little resemblance to human nation-states. However, like human immigrants, the Vampires who crossed the seas to settle in America were in search of freedom from such stifling bureaucracy. And not a few were exiled, having displeased their superior in some unforgivable way. Such offenses may have been dire or trivial, depending on the offended sovereign's caprice.
Sadly, if there were native vampire populations in the Americas, European and Asian territorial conquests, beginning in the 15th century, have exterminated them-- or driven them so far into seclusion they appear to never have existed. Native vampires do not appear in human records of the era of exploration.
Vampires in the US operate in a state of semi-organized anarchy. The strongest and most ruthless hold fiefdoms of various sizes, until deposed by someone just that crucial bit more vicious and determined. For obvious reasons, these power bases center on urban areas, with vassals dispatched to watch over the more outlying areas. Stone Mountain is one of those outposts.
Because there is no formal, cooperative system of power emerging in the US, the rest of the vampiric world has ceased to see this country as a stripling power to ignore or allow to mature. Now, it is seen as a goldmine of squandered resources, ripe for the taking. Europe and the Middle Eastern vampiric Families have too many ties of honor and debt to the United States government and certain US vampiric powers to make a grab for power over their young ally, but the Asian Families feel no such compunctions.
Vampire Reproduction: The only way vampires can reproduce is through inducing vampirism in another human, called 'Turning.' This isn’t exactly an infectious process, because while lycanthropy can be transmitted through contact with shifter body fluids like more mundane diseases, vampirism can only be passed along by a precise process that does not work when divorced from intentional application by a vampire.
The Maker has to drain his prospective Child almost to the point of death from hypovolemic shock, then introduce his or her own blood into the victim’s body. They drip their own blood into their victim’s mouth, and because the mucous membranes have always been damaged by at least one preliminary sharp-fanged kiss, the vampire’s blood enters his victim’s system immediately.
The victim appears to die, although extreme bradycardia, extreme delta brain waves, and very shallow, slow respirations can be detected in a medical setting. Twenty-four hours later, the victim regains full consciousness, usually with a paroxysmal gasp, and finds themselves now a Child bound to their Maker by ties both metaphysical and practical.
The Maker/Child relationship can be along a spectrum that includes true familial love and loyalty on one end, to outright enslavement at the other. Most however, treat it as a melding of indentured servitude and apprenticeship, and release their Child on their own recognizance after three to five years, depending on the trustworthiness and stability of the child, and the temperament and agenda of the Maker.
Most Maker/Child relationships wind up in some degree of mutual respect, if not outright affection. Betrayal of one’s Maker is accepted as sometimes unavoidable, or regrettable but overwhelmingly advantageous. Destroying your Maker, however, is always considered shocking, though surprisingly, not as disavowed by vampiric society as one might otherwise expect.