Eternal

Eternal: vampiric-sorta creatures in Candy's Cruxworld.

It is important not to mix the eternals with the vampires of Crüxworld. The eternals came first: they are the original blood-sucking immortals. Vampires (as explained in their own entry) are cheap copies, created much after the eternals came to be, in an attempt to imitate their powers.

Note that eternals are not like traditional vampires, either. A list of their important traits follows:

• Eternals do not age or die. Their bodies do not change nor crumble over time, but seek to stay in the form they were originally in (after becoming eternal). They are not exactly immortal: a small but important thing. (To be explained later.)
• Unlike traditional vampires, eternals are not confined to night-time. They are free to move in any time of the day they wish to.
• Eternals sustain their existence and bodies with mortal blood. They have sharp fangs for this that cannot be in any way retracted or hidden.
• As per previous point, their bodies regenerate wounds very quickly. Eternals are also very resistant to toxins and their bodies will purge almost anything alien and harmful. (I don't have this properly worked out yet, 'cause they sure as hell can get drunk...!)
• An eternal's senses are much sharper than an ordinary human being's. It has its limits, however: wine and food will taste much richer and their sight will reach farther, but an eternal is still absolutely no match for a dog in smell or an eagle in sight.
• If I ever say even half a word about an eternal mothering or fathering a child, hit me over the head with something. They can't. Period.
• Though they get other physical perks, eternals do not have superhuman strength or stamina. Calas has a mean punch because he's a big man, and that's about it.
• Eternals draw their sustenance solely from blood. They can eat and drink, yes, but their bodies treat such substances as alien and will simply get rid of them. It is not, in fact, physically possible for anything else to happen to the food. Eternals do not have any sort of proper internal organs to do much else. Anything apart from blood that they ingest is treated as a toxin.
• Eternals don't have the proper organs for digestion - nor do they for breathing. They have a working blood circulation, but not for transporting nutrients and oxygen around their bodies - only for the blood of others, which fuels their entire system. While they appear to breathe, they actually don't, as they don't even have lungs.

The Bright Courts have over the centuries fervently sought to discover the secrets and origins of eternals, with little success. There appear to be two primary reasons for their failure: one, they have not been able to study them carefully or in fact even get hold of many; and two, there seems to be a definite lack of knowledge among the eternals themselves about their nature and origin. Of course, especially the Amber Court has vehemently blamed the failure on deliberate secrecy on the creatures' part - ironic, coming from the Amber mages, indeed.

Some almost certain, if grudgingly accepted facts have been gleaned. Though the Courts hide what files they possibly (probably) have of individual eternals, their kind had been placed as predating the Courts themselves. The Courts state with absolute certainty that eternals were around at the early 15th century, and possibly even as much as a century or two earlier.

Another, more disputed and hushed-up fact is that after centuries of study and a few close, fruitful encounters, there is no evidence to point at anything even remotely magical concerning the eternals. Whereas vampires can be clearly identified as beings created and restrained by magic, no such thing can be sensed from eternals. To all appearances, to every mage's and magical being's senses and sensor's, there is not a bit of magic in them. Technically dead and clearly capable of and requiring supernatural acts as they may be, they do not seem to be sustained by any sort of magic. This fact - which it must now be taken for, if unwillingly - baffles and annoys the Courts to no end.

(From an all-knowing point of view, I can tell you they have been around exactly since 1376 and they originated from Europe.)

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Did the early eternals figure out/know how to drink and, err, stuff (...you know...), or were they even more stagnant than the more recent ones? --Snog

...there's truly a problem with this entry, because... umm. It would be horribly spoil-y to put anything here before publishing the second chapter of Eternity - which, you'll see, was titled "Eternity of Lies" for a very good reason. But for the first part of the question - the first eternals knew exactly what they were doing, why and how. --C