Vampire

Sucking blood? Elders old, I wish it were that simple. There'd be much less of a mess to find.

— Erik Woodson, a Farlithi Vicar.

Vampires are a type of undead formed and spread through the hemophilic strains of the supernatural nesuferit virus. Among those who hunt or study vampires, it is theorized that they, along with ghouls and other victims of the virus, are distant descendants of the Kudlaka.
Vampires are widely regarded among common folk as myths stemming either from paranoia surrounding ghouls or from gullible sorts who never ceased believing the stories their mothers would read to them before bed. Even those who do accept the existence of such creatures usually only admit the existence of lower forms and commonly simply associate them with ghouls. Most who study or hunt the beasts are thankful that they remain rare enough for these rumors to persist.

Biology

by Diego Peres (CD Projekt RED)

One of the more noticeable aspects of a vampire is its skin, which appears more washed out and pale than it would have been during the being's mortal life, and may also hold a slightly blue tint. The characteristic malformed, elongated ears come next, often coupled alongside a disfigured or upturned nose often compared with that of a bat or rodent. Finally, the eyes, left anywhere between a shining crimson to a bright yellow or dull black, but utterly unnatural to peer into.
All of these changes caused by the complete subsistence on the nesuferit virus; their bodies left dead as the unnatural curse sustains them. The blood within their veins all but entirely ceases to flow, and any semblance of their kithlike visage may eventually vanish with age, mutating away as the virus eats away any remnant of their mortality. As with all forms of undead, most of the internal functions of a vampire have ceased to continue, though the nesuferit virus does keep its victims "alive" in some facets. Unlike risen or spectral undead, vampires and ghouls retain biological functions across their heads (likely due to some utility dealing with their fangs or the necessity to control the body through non-magical means) and thus still have wetness and sensation in their eyes, and may even continue to grow facial and cranial hair. All other body hair, however, ceases to live and will naturally fall from the vampire's body soon after its conversion.
This mostly-dead state is the likely reason for a vampire's bloodlust, as the blood within their bodies is still used though it no longer flows. Though primarily drawn to human blood, any mammal's blood will sate the creature's hunger, which can overcome a vampire nearly the moment it is turned. Despite their consumption and usage of blood, the aforementioned lack of any true blood flow throughout their forms results in vampires tending to expunge partially coagulated blood when cut.
The resemblance to bat-like rodents that many subspecies undergo isn't merely physical, as vampires receive highly sensitive smelling and hearing to couple with their more immediately noticeable changes. Many of these mutations are not outwardly visible, however, as vampires exhibit increased strength, speed, and equilibrioception (one's sense of balance) proportional to their size - effects consistent with and exceeding those noted in their ghoulish cousins. Some vampires may view this as a curse as well as a blessing, as what little writing exists from their own kind describes how bright oil lamps or campfires may singe their eyes, or the rapid increase in strength making it difficult to weigh their actions. Sensory overloads are common for the newly-turned as their brains struggle to comprehend the sudden influx of new data cluttering their every experience.
Vampires have an extreme lack of sensibility to temperature unless in extreme temperatures, and the sensation is even then extremely dulled up to the point where the temperature can cause physical harm. Vampires are neither immune nor dulled to burning or frostbite, though are understandably immune to the latter's progression into gangrene. Damage by either method, however, alongside any forms of severe chemical burning, will reduce or outright prevent a vampire's tremendous healing factor which allows them to recover from more grievous wounds and walk off smaller injuries entirely; eventually, a vampire may recover fully from any injury which does not require it to fully recreate bones. Due to their supernatural self-repairing, a vampire is unlikely to physically age past the point they were infected. They possess nearly infinite stamina, and are easily capable of exhausting a foe's endurance if they find themselves unable to defeat it in a direct fight.
Vampires may be "killed" in many of the same manners as mortal kith (contrary to popular belief, vampires still require breath to keep themselves conscious, though are incapable of death due to 'bleeding out' or intense damage to the heart for obvious reasons), but will most often regenerate quickly and rise only moments later. Even a beheading may be reversed quickly enough, should the head be returned to its stump. Severe and irreversible damage to the body, such as severe burning or thorough, minute dismemberment, are the only methods to prevent a vampire's eventual regeneration and kill it for good.
Plenty of rumors exist around other weaknesses vampires may have. Some believe, for instance, that the creatures are unholy in nature and that symbols of deities may repel them. The most common manners of combating a vampire involve affronts to any of its powerful senses; overpowering spells may cloud their cognitive abilities, and bright lights such as direct exposure to the sun will temporarily blind them. The Farlithi Vicars have commonly employed firearms in the dispatching of lesser vampires, as the intense crack of gunpowder may stun the beasts and leave them reeling in pain.
Widely, vampires are divided into "higher" and "lower" breeds, with nosferati, lamia, and dhampirs falling into the former category while strigoi, moroi, and dirges fall into the latter. This is primarily judged based on the retainment of cognitive function, though higher vampires also exhibit a natural talent in umbramancy, hemomancy, and carnomancy.

Species

Nosferati

by Disse86

Maintaining sharp minds and an inherent penchant for sorceries, it is hardly a surprise that this breed of vampire carries a name modified from the supernatural virus that progenerates their entire kind. Nosferati are an excruciatingly deadly vampiric subspecies and exceed the strengths of most of their brethren many times over. Inherently gifted with an affinity for the supernatural, nosferatian vampires manipulate umbramancic and hemomancic sorceries as though the spells were extensions of their very beings, and possess physical strength great enough to rival towering ogres and trolls.
This power, of course, comes alongside the caveat of immutable physical mutations; their leathery skin, overgrown fangs, elongated ears, and almost rodent-like facial deformations leaving them wholly unable to disguise their forms for longer than the occasional illusory enchantment. Nosferati must also contend with a much more powerful blood craving than their lamian cousins, finding it easy to succumb to their bestial urges of they have gone for too long without feeding.
Nosferati are generally perceived as imagined creatures of myth by common folk, and even many learned scholars regard them as a footnote of history – a species hunted to extinction long ago which only persist now as an ideal for their less evolved siblings to aspire towards.

Lamia

by Mikhail Palamarchuk

Often viewed as more "civilized" than their nosferati cousins, lamian vampires are the likely influence for many of the Eletherean fables telling of tall and handsome pale noblemen who erotically draw blood from the necks of beautiful young maidens and entrance their quarries with a seductive gaze. Regardless of the plays this breed has gone on to inspire, however, lamians are every bit as dangerous as any of their kin.
The visage of a "sophisticate" vampire is not a vision pulled entirely from romanticized scripts, however – a lamia experiences very little physical mutations as a result of its infection, the characteristic pallid skin, elongated ears, and discolored eyes shared across all vampiric and ghoulish species the only physical clues as to their undead nature. A lamia's fangs are hidden within its gums, able to be extended at will as a second set of razor-sharp teeth. Such features have historically been simple enough for the vampires to hide with physical disguises or magical glamors, and it is a common theory among scholars that the romantic cultural vision of lamian vampires stems from their surprisingly numerous recorded cases of political involvement across Eletherosean and Ivskanic governance.
Lamian vampires are less prone to the almost animalistic desire for blood consumption even after long periods of time without feeding. Instead, their hunger seems to find itself solidified in more nebulous vices such as intense vanity, though it is ultimately unknown whether these vices are truly caused by the shift into undeath or were simply common staples of recorded individuals belonging to this subspecies.
Much like the nosferati, lamia hold an almost intrinsic link to various forms of dark magic. Of particular note is their connection to carnomancy, which allows them to temporarily shift their forms and deliberately alter themselves in manners typically associated with bloodlusting while still in possession of their mental faculties. The slaughters of a lamian vampire by the name and title Marchese Domenico Capobianco is the most well-recorded instance of higher vampiric violence across Eletheros, and lead to the formation of the Pratani Executioners.

Dhampir

by Rina Sæthra

Occasionally referred to as simply "half-vampires" or similar nicknames, dhampirs are once-living kith who were exposed, through one manner or another, to various strains of the hemophilic nesuferit virus but were not transformed into a fully-fledged vampire by the process. Such creatures are rarer than strigoi and moroi, as partial exposure to the virus usually results in little more than an early death, but are far more common sights than nosferati or lamia – their existence not always considered such a horrendous threat and their bloodlines not as closely guarded.
The appearance of a dhampir will vary in accordance with the strain they were exposed to, but any transformations will rarely move below the face in any regard save for the pallid, bloodless skin typical of any undead species. Fangs, malformed ear shapes, and altered eyes are common across recorded dhampirs, but there are otherwise few shifts away from their living form.
Theoretically, dhampirs may also be the result of vampiric parentage, though this is extremely uncommon due to the unlikelihood of any vampiric entity maintaining its virility. Fatherhood of a vampire is slightly more frequent than motherhood, but such low rates of occurrence are difficult to track.
Despite its similarity, "dhampir" is most likely a false cognate with "vampire." Instead, the term is likely to have been borrowed from the Drubaltan title dhëmbpirë, meaning "toothdrinker."

Strigoi

by Victor Lozada

Comparable to the alghoul of their cousin species, strigoi are the most commonly seen of all vampire breeds. Though still incredibly rare in comparison to other forms of undead, there exists vastly more historical research and documentation involving strigoi than most other vampiric subspecies.
Upon seeing a strigoi, it is not difficult to understand its common conflation with the alghoul or volak. A strigoi's body shape becomes hunched and wiry over time as its hair begins shedding and its limbs lengthen, snap, and warp in position; its face distorted and elongated into a wrinkled mess of leathery flesh that can hang open wide to bare its elongated fangs. By the time its degeneration has completed, a strigoi is little more than a rabid animal, chasing after prey on all fours and lashing out at attackers with bestial ferocity. They are far more lethan their their ghoulish relatives, though thankfully prefer living in solitude rather than in packs. Most strigoi prefer making their homes in damp, forgotten places such as dried well pits, underground caverns, to dense forests beneath canopies of shade.

Moroi

by Unknown

Perhaps the creatures most intensely deformed by the effects of any strain of the nesuferit virus, moroi lack any resemblance to their former selves. Not dissimilar to giant, upright bats, a moroi's lenghtened claws extend into leathery, hooked wings while its mouth and jaws lengthen and split at the edges to form a wicked snout and protruding mandibles that allow the creature to more easily sever limbs and rend away large chunks of meat from its quarry.
While seemingly lacking the intellectual capacities of the kith they were transformed from, moroi still apparently possess some level of sapience, and have occasionally been observed to engage in rudimentary 'conversations' with kith and other undead beings to the extent one might have with a dog or horse. They also retain a significantly greater regard for self-preservation than the strigoi or any ghoul, much more likely to retreat back to their homes when faced with a stronger opponent than to wildly lash out until death.
Moroi prefer solitary locales that provide them with decent lines of sight, making their homes in high, abandoned buildings or rocky spires. Not particularly graceful flyers, they have shown a preference for abodes which they can easily enter by climbing.

Dirge

by Marta Dettlaff

The dirge is easily the rarest form of vampiric creature and indeed may be the least-documented undead being known to exist. Terrifying in appearance and power both, a dirge is created from the transformed body and degraded mind of a higher vampire – a nosferati or lamia who succumbed to bloodlust one to many times or entirely lost themselves in a bestial frenzy, their grip upon their own dark powers loosening to such an extent where they were no longer capable of reigning them in again.
Resembling scourge-spawned wretches more than their vampiric progenitors, dirges are coated in masses of rippling muscles and tightly-pulled, leathery skin that disguises any distinguishing features of their past lives as carnomancic powers run wild across their bodies. Lacking the rational mind to keep their dark magics at bay, let alone employ them in any tactful sense, they are incomprehensibly quick and strong, and almost entirely immune to the blows of common arms due to the rate at which they regenerate. More ferocious than even the most flesh-starved ghoul, a dirge's mind is consumed only by a bloodlusted rage, the intense desire to slaughter and feed all that remains.
Unsurprisingly, though it is no easy task, the killing of a dirge becomes the utmost priority of any local power so soon as knowledge of it has spread. Carrying out such an execution may require the sacrifices of entire regiments, but allowing one to carry on leaving could mean condemning whole countrysides as its feeding grounds.

Basic Information

Genetics and Reproduction

Most vampires, as with other sorts of undead, are completely infertile and cannot biologically reproduce through the traditional method. Rare exceptions to this rule have been recorded in the form of nosferati and lamia capable of siring direct children, though these cases are few and far between and heavily weighted in favor of male entities. In the extremely rare cases of direct vampiric parentage, however, a dhampir child is the result.
More often than not, vampires simply create offspring of a sort via the infection and conversion of other kithfolk. Over history, certain higher vampires had made a habit of cultivating particular so-called "bloodlines" by ensuring that their lineage was passed from one deserving member to another and killing off any unwanted spawns, though these fell out of fashion near the beginning of the third era as the purging of their kind became a priority for the mortal races so they often viewed as livestock.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Vampire's require no sustenance in order to keep them alive, but their curse's dependence on mammal's blood leaves their mind increasingly unraveled the longer they neglect to feed. Though folklore persists regarding a vampire's process of sucking the blood through the neck of their victims with the use of hollow fangs, the reality is must more grizzly; a vampire of any sort is much more likely to simply rend off the flesh of a freshly-slain target and ingest the blood alongside it than to painstakingly extract any liquid. Certain lamia, however, have been recorded to instead demand underlings procure their meals through bloodletting, viewing the consumption of flesh and blood at once to be far too debased.

by Nagy Norbert

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Kudlaka

Genetic Descendants

• Dhaeva