Vampires

Of all the ancient magical races, only the vampires chose to forgo Genesis in favor of the Old World.
The reasons for the decision aren't hard to understand; the world of humans was growing, expanding, and it provided an infinite hunting ground for those who live off the lifeforce of others. And so the vampires stayed. They blended in, establishing rules and traditions to protect their secret and thriving among the plentiful world left in their hands. Of all the races, the vampires are best suited to this hidden-in-plain-sight existence. They live only where they can blend easily with the mass of humanity, and even then only in small communities. They can disguise themselves with magic to appear fully human; without the competition of other magical predators, the world lies open before them and means they feel little need for Genesis's refuge.

Typical Physical Characteristics

Vampires have two forms: their typically worn humanlike appearance, which combines with minor illusion in order to help them blend in among the Old World's human population, and their monstrous true forms.
While in their 'passing' form, vampires look mostly human. They appear as their original ethnicity, but with black hair and faintly luminous eyes in some shade of red; most vampires appear tall and lanky, often giving the impression that they're slightly disproportionate and emaciated. They have sharp canine fangs on the upper jaw, slightly pointed ears, and hands that are too large for their bodies with thin, elongated fingers that end in sharp claws. While blending with humans, vampires will use illusion to mask these obviously nonhuman features; among their own, they'll relax the illusion but typically still stay in 'passing' form due to the effort involved in shifting back to their true form.
In their true form, vampires are decidedly inhuman and resemble the forms of the Blood Gods; this is the form of the original vampire race of the distant past, with the 'passing' form existing as a result of current vampires being magically transformed humans. True vampires are significantly taller than a human and stand at seven or eight feet tall in a crouched posture caused by restructured joints in the legs; their body is thinly muscled with an emaciated appearance that shows bones and joints prominently. They have faces that are proportioned with a more prominent jaw structure and a sloped forehead, long pointed ears similar to elves, and a full mouth of pointed teeth. Vampire eyes in their true form have a black sclera and a luminous, blank off-white iris. Their hands are even more disproportionately large and spindly than their passing form and have long 'claw' bone spurs, appearing fragile but viciously strong. Vampires in their true form have no external genitalia and have a largely androgynous appearance with dimished sexual characteristics.
Though vampires have an inherent lifeforce, it's far outweighed by the lifeforce stolen from their prey. They use natural magic heavily and are almost forced to use it to help burn the excess unstable energy their bodies contain as a result of feeding. They also have a number of other innate abilities.

Natural Abilities

Full vampires gain a number of innate abilites as a result of their pact with the Blood Gods. They become supernaturally fast and powerful, with heightened senses and the ability to see in pitch darkness. Their blood clots and wounds heal quickly, while their body processes oxygen at a high efficiency to heighten their resistance to hypovolemic shock as a result of major injury. Cellular degeneration halts, keeping their bodies from suffering from the process of aging. Unlike other races, they're able to store lifeforce stolen from others despite its high volatility and instability; their pact with their patron god shields them internally from the blood they consume, making them able to expend large amounts of power with little need for efficiency or finesse.
A unique and little-understood ability that all vampires possess is something called the Bloodfear, an aura of paralytic fear that they subconsciously project while hunting or in an otherwise heightened emotional state. The Bloodfear is normally more than enough to hold prey immobile, but can vary in strength from individual to individual and can sometimes be resisted by particularly strong-willed humans. It has an approximate range of 20-30 feet, which can prove devastating when combined with a vampire's natural speed. It's thought that the Bloodfear is intended to assist in feeding, helping keep prey still without the need for physical restraint.

Life Cycle

Created rather than born, vampires start as human and are transformed via an elaborate process known as the Blooding. While they're physically alive as opposed to being undead, they extend their lifespans artificially by stealing life from others while feeding. A vampire can theoretically live indefinitely, though the vicious intrigue and power struggles of their society means that they don't live beyond a few hundred years at the very most.
Vampires aren't created with every feeding; it takes a recipient drained of most of their blood before an existing vampire's blood is introduced into their system. Following this, the new fledging vampire can still subsist on food but will constantly crave blood and becomes dangerous due to hunger combined with increasingly poor impulse control. Their body undergoes little transformation other than slowly developing some of the traits of a vampire in 'passing' form, most crucially sharpened fangs. Upon undergoing their Blooding, their first lethal feeding as a devotion to the Blood Gods, they form a pact with the god who chooses them and begin their full transformation.
Post-Blooding, a vampire will go into a catatonic state for a period of two-three days; during this period, their body changes drastically as it is reshaped into their 'true' form, their senses are dramatically enhanced, and the way the body metabolizes nutrients is greatly altered. Post-blooding vampires can eat food, but their advanced metabolic process means that the body will begin to collapse without blood to sustain it. It’s not the specific content of blood that is required, but rather the lifeforce contained in fresh blood from a living member of the reasoning races. Vampires cannot go longer than approximately two months without feeding, as the act itself serves as part of their pact with their patron god in exchange for shielding their body from the volatile energy within.

Reputation

Vampires have a grim reputation among the other races of Genesis, who consider them to be thoroughly inhuman, predatory, and maliciously evil; in all fairness, this reputation isn't far from the truth. Vampires are feared for their cruelty and lack of empathy even towards their own kind. Their society is largely defined by treachery, ambition, and vicious power struggles; it's reigned-in chaos kept in check only by the overarching mandate of secrecy.
While their overall evil leanings as a race can't be denied, the consequences of feeding play a large part of a vampire’s psychological makeup due to the fact that there's no 'benign' way to feed; they're literally stealing years off the life of their prey, and have no alternative that allows them to fulfill their pact with the Blood Gods and stay alive. Many vampires prefer to think of humans as a lesser and separate race, as it makes the idea of literally stealing life more bearable, while others simply numb themselves to the idea and grow increasingly callous to the idea of killing. Some simply have no issue with the idea of taking life from others. Those who cannot bring themselves to feed frequently in the knowledge of what it entails typically die or grow weak to the point where they're destroyed by other vampires. This, in large part, has led to the idea that all vampires are evil, cruel monsters; while it’s not inherently true, the majority of those who survive were either previously inclined in such a way or have forced themselves to become so.

Social Structure

Power is the ruling factor of vampire structure, and serves as the glue that binds together an otherwise contradictory mix of ambition and obedience. It's understood that all vampires spend their lives looking upwards, aspiring to rule with little regard to who they have to overthrow or eliminate to do so; it's equally understood that to rebel and fail means certain death. Master vampires expect complete, unquestioning loyalty from their underlings, and those same underlings have little choice but to follow obediently until the day they make their move and either succeed or die.
Vampire society is divided into clans, with no overarching structure or system of rulership beyond a rough hierarchy of relative strength. While there are plenty of rivalries and conflicts that often lead to the complete destruction of individual clans, the race as a whole is held together by a single guiding principle: secrecy is paramount, and any individual or group who threaten that secrecy face sanctioned destruction by the other clans.
Clans tend to number between ten and thirty individuals are structured much like a family tree, founded by a single powerful master vampire and composed of several 'generations' of underlings. A master's direct created-offspring tend to serve as lieutenants, enforcing their master's commands and managing their own offspring; while these lieutenants are the greatest threat to a master's rule they're also crucial to helping keep a clan's numbers in line, and the key to a strong clan is a careful balance of power between leader and offspring. Officially, a clan is supposed to be unified and obedient with no infighting, but the unspoken reality is that power struggles between underlings are expected and accepted so long as they're conducted neatly. Trimming weak members of a clan is necessary pruning, but messy eliminations that damage the group's strength as a whole are unacceptable.

Societal Norms and Values

For more specific racial customs, see Vampire Customs.
TRADITION AND CEREMONY
For a chaotic race, vampires are intensely attached to tradition and follow the ancient customs laid down with their gods. It becomes more understandable when taking into consideration that they're a population whose age varies enormously; young and old vampires live side by side, often having been born centuries apart in vastly different cultural environments. Ritual gives commonality and structure to their lives, and helps build a sense of vampiric identity that goes beyond their physical transformation from human into something other.
LOVE, SEX, AND MARRIAGE
Like many things in vampiric society, views on sex are conservative and rigid. Sexual relationships are almost always longterm and there are strict rules about what's considered acceptable; master vampires are permitted to engage with other masters or vampires within their own clan, while lower-ranked vampires are only permitted to engage with others of their own clan. While same-sex relationships do occur, they're rare and views on homosexuality vary from clan to clan. Sexual relationships with humans aren't outright forbidden, but are viewed as extremely distasteful and socially taboo.
Marriage between vampires is exceedingly rare, and exclusively the domain of master vampires since it's considered an unacceptable conflict of loyalty in an underling. Complete sexual fidelity is expected, and annulment simply doesn't happen; vampires who've reached the point of wanting a marriage dissolved will tear whole clans apart in the process and one partner will generally kill the other rather than let that happen.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
For the most part vampires have no real concept of crime in the same way that the other races do; there's only obedience or disobedience, and the only punishment for disobedience is death. Offenses within a clan are punished by the clan's master, and offenses between clans are settled violently by the parties involved with little outside oversight.
There are only a few ironclad taboos of vampire society: a vampire takes responsibility for the training of their offspring, a vampire does nothing to risk the secrecy of the race, and a vampire does not feed on their own kind. Breaking any of these supreme commandments is punishable by death, whether at the hands of other vampires or an Executioner in service to Zakath.
DEATH
Since vampires go to extremes to preserve their life, death is treated as an event of grave seriousness; moreso, it's something to be avenged since vampires almost exclusively violently. While the death of a master vampire is often a matter of betrayal from one of their subordinates, their successor is still expected to ceremonially mourn the death of the individual they just eliminated. Underlings, on the other hand, are considered under the protection of the master vampire of their clan and their death is considered a personal affront to authority that demands appropriate retaliation.
Physical remains are considered relatively unimportant, and are typically left out to be destroyed by the corrosion of the sun so as to leave no evidence of something so obviously inhuman. However, a vampire's death is a matter of ceremony, and both their creator and their offspring are expected to travel to the Court of Night at their earliest opportunity to oversee their death's ritual notation in the Book of Lineages.

Relevant Articles

INDIVIDUALS
Jonathan Suntouched

LOCATIONS
The Worldshadow
The Court of Night
The Old World

OTHER
The Bound One
Bloodbane
Ishali
Rathae
Zakath
Followers of the Bound One