Original Vampires

Anna is one of the original vampires

☀Vampires, also known as the Children of the Night, are a species of Downworlders. Along with werewolves, vampires are humans infected with a demon disease. However, unlike the former, vampires are considered "undead"; that is, their bodies are no longer alive in the sense that living humans' are. Their undeparted human souls reside within their own animated corpses, kept intact and animated by the demon disease and energy.

Description

Vampires generally tend to look pale, sallow, and thin, as though weakened by malnourishment or disease. Contrary to this semblance of death, their blood shimmers a bright red, brighter than the blood of humans; they even shed blood instead of tears when they cry. Being reanimated corpses, vampires do not have a heartbeat, nor do they need to breathe, although they are able to inhale oxygen in order to utilize their heightened sense of smell, to pass as human, or to blow on something. Their lack of breath makes them impervious to such things as asphyxiation, drowning, or gases.

A vampire and a sire also have some sort of connection. Particularly, upon the death of one's sire, a vampire will experience a momentary jolt of pain, presumably feeling the same pain their sire felt at death.^[1]

Additionally, the dirt of the grave in which a vampire was buried holds special properties for that vampire. He or she can tell, for instance, if that grave has been disturbed or is being trod upon or if dirt from that grave isremoved from its site. Vampires have made use of this power to communicate simple messages over long distances—for instance, breaking a container of a vampire's grave dirt could be used to alert and summon that particular vampire.^[2] Clans sometimes even have a spot where a jar of every member's grave dirt is hidden, used for emergency purposes for when a leader needs to call on all their vampires.^[3]

Vampires also cannot be tracked by normal tracking magic, either demonic or Nephilimic; however, powerful vampires tend to travel with mundane subjugates who can be tracked.

Like warlocks, vampires are immortal and sterile; though unable to bear children, they are able to continue their vampiric bloodline by turning humans into vampires.

Abilities

Like werewolves, they possess superhuman strength, grace, speed, and the unnaturally accelerated healing abilities inherent in most other Downworlders and are able to heal quickly from most mundane injuries. Their most prominent ability is their raw physical strength, which allows them to subdue any mundane prey with little effort. Allegedly, their abilities increase and grow stronger as they grow older.

Despite the significant experience and strength older vampires have over new, younger ones, it is possible for the latter to overpower the previous, especially if the killing is meditated or unexpected.^[4][5] Power from a sire, the one who gave them the vampire blood that enabled them to turn, is also seemingly shared or transferred, to some extent, to those to they turn, mainly because this is how vampires pass their powers to each other—through blood.^[6]

Their most mysterious power is the encanto, or "fascination", the power to mesmerize and essentially control their prey–mundanes. Vampires can, with simple prolonged eye contact, convince mundanes and even Shadowhunters of almost anything, and can persuade them into almost any act. This is a skill that must be developed and practiced by vampires, and so it is typically the older and more powerful vampires that can make use of it.

Vampires are comfortable in darkness; their eyes adjust to seeing in darkness and seeing in light almost instantly, much faster than the eyes of humans. Vampires also have sharper hearing and eyesight than humans, and any fledgling who wore glasses in life will no longer need them as a vampire.

Vampires can also shapeshift into bats, rats, and dust, maintaining their intelligence in either forms.

Creation

“	It is how we are made. We are drained, blooded, and buried. When he digs his own way out of a grave, that is when a vampire is born.	”

A human who has consumed enough vampire blood, known as a fledgling, will not abruptly Turn into a vampire. To be reborn, the human must first die a mortal death, during which the undead body will enter into a state of transition. They must then be buried, reanimate while in the ground, and then must make their way out of their own grave to be 'truly born'. They must then feed on an exceptional amount of fresh human blood within the next 24 hours to complete the transition, or else they will fade and die.

Sometimes a vampire clan will turn a human into a vampire purposefully, and in those cases the transition usually goes smoothly. The clan and the fledgling's sire can be present for the vampire's rising, mostly to make sure that he or she is able to successfully rise, and can supply him or her with blood and take him or her to a safe place to recover.

Diet

Blood is the main component of a vampire's diet; all vampires need to drink some kind of blood for their survival. Whether it is the blood of humans or animals is up to the vampire.

Mundane food can make a vampire sick since they cannot digest it, although some have learned to eat food with practice, most of which they have to spew out sometime after.

Along with other Downworlders, vampires are generally unaffected by mundane drugs or alcohol they ingest. However, if they drink the blood of a drugged or intoxicated human, they become drugged or drunk themselves and may become susceptible to addiction.^[3][1]

Victims of a demonic infection which turns them into drinkers of blood, they possess retractable razor-like fangs that are deployed from their upper canines when their bloodlust is roused. They sink these fangs into a surface vein of their victim and then consume that victim's blood until satisfied. The act of drinking blood brings a rush of energy and vitality to the vampire. Experienced vampires can resist this rush and cease their drinking in order to leave their victims alive and able to recover, though new vampires may have trouble controlling their urge to drink their victims to the point of death. Controlling hunger and the sheathing and unsheathing of one's fangs on command is also a feat harder to master with younger vampires.

After the initial sting or a vampire bite, the poison contained within vampire saliva dulls the victim's pain and may make the experience pleasurable for the victim. The poison acts as a muscle relaxant and a euphoric, and even a strong Shadowhunter will respond to its effects. Vampire saliva, once in the victim's bloodstream, is also said to increase hisred blood cell count, making the bitten human stronger, healthier, and able to live longer; the effect is small, but it mitigates the weakening effect of losing blood, and so a bitten human usually remains unharmed.^[7] A well-Marked Shadowhunter can retain his or her consciousness much longer than a mundane, though there is still a heavy risk associated with being bitten.

When a vampire decides it wants more than a snack and wants a human subjugate, also referred to as darklings, the vampire will start feeding its bitten human small amounts of vampire blood to keep it docile and connected to its master. Subjugates worship their masters, and love serving them. All they want is to be near them. They follow their every command and finds offense when others speak badly of their masters. Most darklings continue serving their master in hopes of becoming vampires themselves once they die.

History

Beginning

The first vampires were created in 1444 A.D. in a public ceremony for which the Nephilim have multiple written accounts from those who claim to have been present. The Greater Demon Hecate was summoned in a massive blood-based sacrifice held at the Court of Wallachia (modern day Romania). The ruler of Wallachia at that time, Vlad III, had a great circle of prisoners of war impaled on tall wooden spikes. In exchange for this impressive sacrifice and act of savagery, Hecate transformed Vlad and a large majority of his court into the first vampires.^[7]

Spread of Vampirism

Vampirism did not spread seriously until a few years later when Vlad led a series of raids into neighboring Transylvania. There, he and his men appeared to have gorged themselves on the blood of their enemies and spread vampirism through the entireregion. The city of Cluj became the site of the first vampire clan officially recognized by the Clave, and Transylvania took over as the epicenter of the vampire epidemic. For whatever reason, Vlad and his men did not sire any significant number of vampires in their own home area, and vampire activity in Wallachia diminished to near silence after Vlad's death.

War with the Nephilim

The Cluj Institute in the late fifteenth century was home to a Shadowhunter named Simon who provided a detailed record of the original spread of the vampire plague. He described an all-out war between the Nephilim and the earliest vampire clans, with mundanes being taken from their beds and left drained in the streets, and vampires chained to the ground in village squares and left to burn in the rising sun, and other such acts. Shadowhunters, especially those already experienced in hunting Downworlders, traveled to Transylvania for the sole purpose of vampire slaying; new vampires began to appear just as fast as old ones could be killed. Within months, the Cluj Institute, formerly one of the smallest and least important Institutes in Europe, had become the epicenter for the largest demonic epidemic the mundane world had ever seen. Chaos arose, as neither Nephilim nor vampires yet understood how new vampires were made or how they could be reliably killed.

The war ended with no clear victor. Knowledge of the vampiric disease grew, vampirism spread to other parts of Europe, and Shadowhunters returned home to sign treaties with local vampire clans and keep the peace in their own territories. Transylvania remained a devastated battleground for hundreds of years, where mortality rates for both vampires and Shadowhunters remained the highest in the world, and where the authority of the Clave was tenuous at best. Only with the unofficial end of the Schism in the first half of the eighteenth century did the battle die down, and today the Cluj Institute is, while more vampire-focused than most other Institutes, no busier or more dangerous than any other, and Shadowhunters visit not to wage war but to see the Muzeul de Vampiri, where magically animated wax figures re-create the carnage of five hundred years ago.

Exposure, the practice of binding vampires outside to be burned by the sun, was banned in the Third Accords of 1902 after the popularity of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, the titular character being based on Vlad III, which led to an enthusiasm for hunting and brutally killing innocent, Law-abiding vampires.^[7]