Vampire (Generic)

The many sources of vampire myth, folklore and cliché on earth include natural blood-drinking animals (particularly vampire bats) and Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (which adapted and expanded on existing folklore). More recent books, films and other sources have added to the list of stereotypical features associated with vampires.

A generic vampire has most or all of these characteristics:

• Is a transformed member of a humanoid species
  • 'undead', i.e. died and reanimated as a vampire
  • transformed as a result of being bitten by another vampire
• Drinks blood (usually of members of its original species)
  • non-consensually
  • violently
  • often enough to kill its victim
• Will not age or die unless killed
• Stronger, faster than its original species
• May have some or all of these abilities
  • flight
  • transforming into a bat (rarely wolf or other animals) and/or mist
  • controlling some animals, eg bats or wolves
  • controlling people, eg by mesmerism or trickery
• Objectively evil
  • has no soul (because reanimated after bodily death)
  • repelled or harmed by religious artifacts or faith
  • cannot cross running water (moving water associated with purity)
  • does not cause reflections in mirrors or other surfaces (reflections associated with soul)
  • repelled by garlic (garlic associated with purity)
  • general debauched bahaviour
• Nocturnal
  • injured or killed by sunlight (evil associated with literal darkness)
  • hunts and feeds at night
  • must sleep during the day
• Must be killed by one of these methods
  • impalement through the heart with wood
  • beheading
  • burning (purity associations again)
  • using religiously blessed water or objects
  • may eventually regenerate if killed by methods other than these
• When permanently killed, turns to dust
  • or turns into a corpse apparently dating back to the original death - i.e. as if never reanimated
• Can create other vampires in the same way it became one
  • tends to involve either feeding on the victim or making the victim drink the vampire's blood
  • there is sometimes a vampire hierarchy or society
    • vampires may be impelled to obey the vampire who turned them
    • vampires may die if the vampire who turned them is killed
    • vampires further down the family tree are usually less powerful
    • younger vampires are usually less powerful
  • there is sometimes a (legendary) 'original vampire', source of all the rest