About Vampirism
Vampirism is both a state of being and a life path. A true vamp acquires the "vampiric soul" when born and so must awaken to it in the life ahead. All true vamps have their own time line in their awakening and the development of any abilities. Some vamps know of their energy needs early in life and some later.
I knew as a child about my bloodlust when I would hide in a closet to be alone and away from parents and feed upon myself. I noticed my pranic and psychic energy needs later as a teen when in crowds. Vampires are energy feeders and feed off the blood and psychic and pranic energy of others. This need varies among all as does the level of ability. Blood energy feeds us, it does not make us. Many awaken at different times of their lives to the "bloodlust and pranic energy needs that vamps have, but they all have one thing in common, they are vampire and were when they came into this world.
One of the typical myths of the film industry is to become a vamp by a "bite" or this "blood transfer". Blood is energy for the energy feeder. Blood contains many compounds and easily will make anyone to vomit when ingested too much. All vamps who are energy feeders of blood have their own levels of need and tolerance. There are vamps who are blood energy feeders and those who are psychic feeders, but many combine elements of both. The psy energy feeders seek the pranic or "life force" energy of others. This could include the aura or empathic energy. Some psychic vamps feed successfully on the emotional energy of many around them. Many therefore like to be among crowds where there is much energy flowing. Also there is sexual pranic energy that makes for a great feed for the psy vamp. Some feed from natures furies, like thunderstorms and snowstorms...high energy.
Most vamps combine many ways for successful energy feeding.Also the availability of donors is vital. Religion plays no role in the life of a vampire. It's role is independent of being a vamp. In all, the body dies, but many believe the vampire's soul lives on, I am not sure of this, but know it came with me when I came into this life.
Understanding Vampirism
Vampirism is both a state of being and a life path not a choice, and is then based on both need and ability. True vampires have energy needs unlike most humans and the ability to utilize that energy for health. A vampire's energy needs range from the pranic or dense form such as that found in blood and sex, to psychic/empathic energy found in the emotions and mental energies, to the environment such as the energy of storms. While these are all sources of energy for the true vampire, one or more may be used. Vampirism is with a person when born and so one must awaken to it or recognize it in the life ahead. All true vamps have their own time line in their awakening and the development of any abilities. Some vamps know of their energy needs early in life and some later.
One of the typical myths of the film industry is to become a vamp by a "bite" or this "blood transfer". That is, one cannot be made a vampire by way of being "embraced", or "turned" or "made". Blood is energy for the energy feeder. Blood contains many compounds and easily will make anyone to vomit when ingested too much. All vampiress who are energy feeders of blood have their own levels of need and tolerance. The film industry and the media cause enough problems for us by what is published and seen. True vampires find they fight the mentality that so many have of them because of the movies and books made. Most vampires have a sensitivity to sunlight, but that does not exclude them from being in it. Sunglasses and covering up usually are sufficient.
It is important to understand that a vampire's health is directly related to the availability of these energy sources. One can easily feel weak, lethargic, and suffer from headaches and depression if not able to access the energy sources needed. There is no giving up who you are in this life of vampirism. Understanding vampirism is knowing about the true needs of vampires and how these needs relate to health. Many vampires struggle to attain the energy sources sought. It is a life of pursuit and one of health and one not easily understood by most. There is much misconception and harassment by those who would push their own morality and dogma upon us. Understanding who we are is our path to enlightenment..
Carpe intemptestata nox..
Damien Delano Daville
Defining a true Vampire
What is a real vampire?
A vampire is an energy feeder with varying levels of psychic and empathic abilities which allow for manipulation of and the taking and giving of the life force energy. A vampire comes into being showing varying signs of energy deficiency with usually a slow awareness of psychic ability. There is a significant interest in energy feeding such as at musical shows, with a lover, and/or an interest in the energy of blood, although the latter is far less common. This self awareness usually begins in adolescence and generally increases over time gradually to adulthood, but there are some signs in some at younger ages. A vampire begins to see the energy fields and auras of people and easily learns to manipulate emotional and other psychic energies for personal gain. Through a more heightened sensual ability they feel the emotions and energy of other people and can thus tap this resource for personal gain in energy needs. Being more sensitive to all types of energy allows the vampire to easily sense emotions and thoughts of those near. Those who are empathic carry this further with ease.
Vampires normally have no difficulty with the sunlight of day, except for the need of sunglasses to shield sensitive eyes and the need to protect from sunburn on exposed skin. This is generally true as vampires are usually more sensitive to all forms of energy, with the ability to sense energy comes the need to shield oneself from excess energy. This is a reality most deal with and learn to do easily when around excess energy sources such as the sun and that of other people.
We have a natural tendency to reach out to others like us and learn about the diversity of others. There are many groups, clans or households and families that exist to lend support and share of the knowledge and experience of this life. We also desire as a group to correct the misconceptions that society and the media have about us. We are not the blood sucking killers that the film industry would have us all believe. We want to dispel these myths and communicate the truth about our vampirism. For too long have we had to hide ourselves from those psychotic nuts who would seek us harm because of too many vampire films made with vampire hunters and "stakes". We will live among all humans and coexist in the society around us, while teaching those with open minds about the truth of vampirism and taking the risk of ridicule and harm.
History has taught us and others about the mass murder and violence that has been made against so many by the human kind. Humans have proven themselves to be the best at killing and torturing their fellow kind. No other living thing does it like the human species. So we walk in a world being blown up around us seeing this energy unlike any other. The film industry and media portray us as monsters and yet who really are the monsters of the world? The mass murdering and the hate crimes that are all around us answer this. We have a high regard of life, although we feed off of the energy of others, we do not harm others or cause pain and suffering. Those that do cannot call themselves true vampires. As those with empathic abilities, we feel the emotions of others including pain and suffering.
We have gone through this world hated and feared, and misunderstood. We desire to change this and dispel these attitudes while being able to be ourselves and not persecuted. While we are quite different in our abilities and needs, we also believe that are souls are true and carry forth what we are. Where so many believe that one can just be "embraced" or "turned" or "made" into a vampire, we know that we have inherent needs and abilities that come from within, that is who we are, not what we chose to be. We all learn many things from our environments, but we as vampires know that what we have is within ourselves and in our souls. It is carried on thru the generations. We as vampires know that the human species has left very little untouched on this world. There are no places for us to be left alone, so we will be in that community in that city and in that state. We are becoming more organized and united for this moment is our time to become known and dispel the Misconceptions about us. We have become more open in such forums as computer web sites and in our neighborhoods. This is our risk, but we will see it through for we want others to know about the true vampire.
In the faith..
Damien Daville
A Vampires Awakening
I remember one day when I was about five years old, I had cut my finger and noticed I was drawn to my own blood. Many people have tasted blood before from a simple cut and thought nothing of it, but I knew the taste gave me a kind of energy which uplifted me. I found in succeeding days and weeks that I would hide in the closet from my parents and feed on my own blood energy. I only needed small amounts so simple cuts were always enough. I knew then that I was different.
Later, I met another kid at grade school and I convinced him to meet me behind the athletic playing field (I know what this must sound like) to try "feeding" from the blood of each other with simple cuts. He complied at first but grew disinterested, but would allow me to "feed" from him provided I gave him lunch money or small change. Well.. this did not last long.
As I grew older in my teenage years, I found I had empathic abilities and was constantly probing the minds of other students in my classes, including the teacher. One of my games was to try to guess what others and the teacher were going to say in school. I found that using this mental energy was a great "high" for me. My focus also started to include the emotions of others which I found was a great energy feed, especially while around groups of people where it was an enjoyment to watch the emotional interaction and body language of others. I learned in time to substitute the psychic/empathic and emotional energy for the blood energy which was too often unavailable. I started to now believe I was a natural predator for this energy of others and thought what did that make me..
I began to look into my reading while in high school and search out the meaning behind what made me different. Sure I watched your B rated vampire movies but did not really think myself a vampire, since all I had to go on was the film industry's own attitude of making up whatever for the most money. I looked at history and what different authors had to say about vamps like Vlad and Nosferatu and so many others. But I started to come to the fact that "true" vamps are energy feeders but just of another sort and other abilities. I knew I needed and wanted the empathic/psychic and blood energy to "feel" well and knew it would dominate my life. I also enjoyed watching the body language of others and probing the mental energy and predicting their actions to my benefit. I knew now I was vampire.
Becoming an adult in the 1970s found me eagerly searching the nightclub scene for worthy female souls to accommodate my energy needs. Now, I always knew I was heterosexual so my focus has been for the most part of the female souls around me. The next step was to be easy and my most satisfying. I quickly discovered the pranic energy with the energy of sex and once combined with the blood and emotional energy was the greatest energy feed I have ever had. To note, vampires are energy feeders, and in my 44 years, this energy level is a part of my health. The vamp that can adapt to differing kinds of energy from their donors is the one who will keep that health. There is a balance with all and too much is avoided as is too little.
~author unknown
"Vampires: The Varieties"
1995 Virgil Greene
Ever wonder just where vampires came from? In a lot of the movies and books on the subject they are just sort of...there. While an individual vampire might well have a story of his or her origin we don't really have much of an indication where the whole "race" of vampires came from. I figure that it depends on just what vampires really are. I've come up with several types with varying origins though it should be kept in mind that a vampire may well fit into more than one category and there may even be more than one type of vampire in a given setting.
1. THE INSANE
There have been real people who were quite convinced that they were vampires. They'd drink blood and only go out at night and all that. One of the suggested explanations for the occasional accounts of vampires in history involves the fact that in the past (and occasionally even now) people would be buried when they "were not quite dead yet", to borrow from Monty Python. They would be seemingly dead, perhaps in a catalytic state or other condition, and would revive in the grave. When they've dug themselves out they would be in some degree of shock and if their culture had stories of vampires they'd jump to the conclusion that they had joined the ranks of the undead. And some folk didn't even need to go through all that to believe that they were vampires; Jung suggested that the vampire is a universal archetype that some people would identify with.
For game purposes the insane "vampire" could be the source of apparent vampire murders or assaults. In a fantasy game where it is "known" that vampires exist it could really confuse adventurers who see signs of a vampire but don't detect the presence of undead creatures by magical investigation.
Weird variant idea. How about an insane vampire who doesn't realize his true nature? A vampire with a split personality perhaps who appears to be just a human who dislikes sunlight but otherwise seems normal, but who occasionally switches to another personality that manifests when they need to feed on blood? Could be a nasty trick to play on somebody in a GURPS campaign that takes the split personality disadvantage.
2. THE CULTISTS
Blood. Mystic stuff. "The blood is the life" it says in the Bible. People who seek mystic powers or who wish to contact certain supernatural entities may feel that the sacrifice of blood or the consumption of blood will give them powers. There are people in America who do this, some say.
It would be possible in some game settings for blood cultists to actually become vampires; in RuneQuest's Glorantha setting there is a cult of Vivamort, a chaos deity whose Rune Lords are vampires. Or some cults could worship vampires. Most blood cults would likely just use blood in mystic rituals of some kind, however.
In most campaigns, a blood cult would be some evil group seeking to perform unholy magics for foul purposes; no better than real vampires and possibly regarded as vampires. But they may well not be evil; they may never kill, but just use small amounts of blood in certain spells. Would player characters be able to understand the difference between a vampire cult and a cult using blood in fertility rituals?
3. THE CURSED
One of the little known ways for a person to become a vampire is to live an evil life or commit a particularly evil act. Witches, suicides, and others supposedly might become vampires upon their death. In White Wolf's Vampire: the Masquerade the first vampire, Caine, becomes a vampire as a punishment for some sin.
I have some problems with this. Let's see, you've committed a horrible wrong and are an evil person. For your punishment, you will be immortal and very hard to kill...huh? Even if they have to kill people to survive, that may very well not bother a truly evil person. But it could be that an eternity of not being able to live a full and normal life might be a punishment to some.
But there's another sort of curse. Not on an evil person for his sins, but on a more or less righteous person cast by a malevolent person or entity. Such a person, forced to give up their old life and potentially kill to survive, will be in some degree of torment. An example would be Barnabas Collins on the old horror soap opera Dark Shadows. When he rejected the advances of the evil Angeleque, she turned him into a vampire, forcing on him a "life" of misery. This could be an interesting option for a player character in a game that isn't primarily about vampires; but it would be a challenge for both player and GM as they deal with dark urges and hiding the truth from others. Improperly done you've just got a PC with super powers, however.
4. THE SEDUCED
There's a certain amount of appeal to vampirism. "Sleep all day. Stay up all night. Live forever. It's fun being a vampire." as they said in the movie "Lost Boys". Vampires are often perceived as sexy, and their feeding often has a sort of sexual connection. Plus vampires often have certain extra abilities; they're stronger and tougher than mortals usually and often they have psychic or magical powers. They are the perfect seducers.
This being the case, many people would willingly become vampires. Even in our more or less real world there are many people who would jump at the opportunity to become a vampire, some even if it did involve killing others. But they may not be fully aware of what they are getting into; after all, any recruiter is going to present it in the most positive way possible.
Of course often a person becomes a vampire in order to be with a lover or in order to be better able to seek revenge. In the syndicated vampire cop show Forever Knight, Nick appears to have "come across" as a result of his relationship with Jeanette but didn't really quite know just what he was getting into. He just wanted to be with her, not to become a murdering blood drinker. There's a decided downside to embracing vampirism to achieve certain ends if one doesn't recognize the full truth of vampirism.
5. THE VICTIMS
In some views, those killed by a vampire are doomed to become vampires themselves. They have made no decision to do so, and they have committed no great evils; they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and became victims of someone's blood lust.
In other views, you do not create vampires simply by killing someone. You must give them some of your own blood (or it's equivalent) or do some sort of action to make a mortal into a vampire. The "creator" or "sire" has some sort of purpose in creating a new vampire. This may just be a desire for a new companion, or a need for a servant, or an act of spite. Dracula in Stoker's original book appears to have wanted Nina Harker partly as a new companion and partly as revenge against her husband and Dr. Van Helsing.
Often the new vampire is under some degree of control by the "sire". This is nice for the master, but often a great negative for the servant. While some masters may be concerned for their "child's" well being and help them to adjust, some might well use them for cannon fodder or the lowest form of slave. One interesting game idea would be the conversion of a PC into a vampire (in a non-vampire centered game); difficult to do as the player fights to retain their control while the GM asserts the power of the master. It could be a significant quest as the PC strives to free themselves and regain their full independence or perhaps seeks to reverse their transformation.
6. THE DISEASED
Vampirism resembles a disease in some ways. It is usually perceived as being transmitted by a bite or consumption of infected blood (or its equivalent). Now just suppose it was in fact actually a disease, not a supernatural state at all. That's the case in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, in which the world is overrun with a plague of vampires after a major war kicks up huge amounts of dust containing the disease organisms. These are far from romantic vamps; they have very little in the way of intelligence and very little in the way of special abilities other than being hard to kill. It would be possible to have a less extreme version of a vampire disease that left some degree of intellect so that PCs would have an interesting challenge without having a whole world of mindless vampires to deal with.
Of course a disease model of vampirism doesn't necessarily eliminate a magical or supernatural element in vampirism. Note that in the case of Barnabas Collins there was a disease organism that was possibly treatable despite the magical curse that caused his condition. In FASA's Shadowrun, vampirism is caused by a magically mutated virus.
The major thing to keep in mind with a disease model for vampirism is that it may well be curable by scientific or medical means even if it has a magical origin. If vampirism is curable, we get the interesting situation where the idea that "the only good vampire is a dead vampire" is unacceptable even if it was previously the accepted view. After all, we don't kill people just because they're sick. Also, a vampire may well not want to be cured; why give up power and immortality just so you can go out in the day and have a more acceptable diet?
7. THE MUTANTS AND THE ALIENS
Generally, it is assumed that vampires were once normal humans. But this is not necessarily the case. It is certainly possible for vampires to in fact be a subspecies of humans, another species in the genus homo, another mammalian species that only looks human, or even a totally alien species. There have been a few stories in that line. George R.R. Martin postulated a subspecies of long lived regenerating vampires in his novel Fevre Dream. And in the famed British SFTV series Dr. Who there were two stories featuring vampires. In the story "State of Decay", the Doctor has to deal with a planet ruled by vampires created from humans by the Great Vampire whose race was mostly destroyed by the Time Lords. And in "The Curse of Fenric" the evil Fenric brings them over, blood drinking creatures evolved from humans in the far future to a secret British base during the latter part of WWII. In both stories normal humans can be converted into vampires by the alien or mutant; in most settings mutant or alien vampirism will be non-transmittable.
The important thing to keep in mind if vampires are an altogether different species rather than altered humans is that a person killed by a vampire is (generally) going to remain dead. They aren't going to be able to make you into one, but they may lie and say that they can in order to seduce victims. A vampire species may also think in an entirely different way than humans do.
8. THE CREATED
One more unusual notion is vampires who were created by either science or sorcery. In a magically active world some vampires may be the product of evil sorcerers attempts at immortality or reanimating the dead. In future technologically advanced societies it may be possible to create a vampire through genetic manipulation or maybe some sort of surgical alterations. These created vampires might not conform to the traditions of vampirism and their vampirism may not be contagious, particularly if they are non-magical in nature. Of course it could be possible to manufacture a "vampire germ", possibly as an unusual bio-weapon.
VARYING VAMPS FOR FUN AND PROFIT
The variety of vampire in a given game will vary according to tech and magic levels and the overall significance of vampires in society. Player character vampires are not likely to be insane or just cultists. Disease vampires may well be like a plague that has to actively be fought lest they leave no living humans. Cultists or crazies might well appear to be vampires to player characters in a non-magical world, and real vampires might appear to be insane to characters in a modern setting. At the very least, vampires should be more than just "claw, claw, bite" monsters but beings with reason and motivations and a logic behind their existence.
