#askvampirism

I don't have a picture of a vampiric sirene yet, but I do have some old art of a vampiric elf and cecaelia:

As you can see...they look gross!

I imagine sirenes are affected the same way elves are. They lose color to their skin and their veins turn black, their eyes appear sunken and bruised, and their eyes glow red. They tend to lose weight so their features appear gaunt. Cecaelia suffer the same effects. Of course, all vampiric species grow long fangs as well.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Limniad: Weak in darkness, strong in sunlight. Can grow "bloodfruit" as a way of preserving extra blood for later.

Dryad: Weak in darkness, strong in sunlight. Feed via roots rather than fangs. Can store blood in roots to feed later.

Hydriad: Cannot drown so they're a real threat to other Aquarian species and any Terrian who enters the water. They can be active 24/7 if they stay in murky waters during daylight hours. Can cast water spells on victims to draw out blood without biting them.

Aurae: Can create a dark cloud around themselves to protect them from the sun at all hours. Most vampires can only fly in bat form but aurae can fly in their native form too, making it harder to escape them.

Isanae: Can freeze victims for preserve them for later. Immune to cold temperatures and frost spells. Weak in the presence of heat and fire.

Pyriad: Immune to fire, unlike most vampires which are highly flammable. Can tolerate sunlight.

Oread: Can quickly bury themselves to escape the sun. Physically strongest of all vampire species. Immune to silver.

Faunae: Super strength, agility, and speed. Can enchant animals to capture victims for them. Can eat meat but only from peoples, making them more efficient feeders.

Maenad: Super seduction/mind control powers. Dream manipulation. Feeds off psychic energy rather than blood, draining their victim's sanity until there is none left.

Pleiadae: *teleports behind you* nothin personnel, kid

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

That's a really good question! I think there are multiple explanations for this.

(Green) elves have a natural connection with beasts. They can sense when an animal is nearby even if they can't see it, and they can understand what an animal is thinking and feeling.

Werewolves are beasts, but lycanthropes are something else--something between man and beast. They are often described as "a beast wearing a man-suit". In a sense, lycanthropes are like intelligent beasts who can operate as people.

Theoretically, the elven Dusks should have been able to sense the beast in Evan. Why didn't they?

Let's talk about vampirism for a second. It changes elves by dulling their natural abilities and replacing them with new ones. This effect becomes stronger the longer they live with vampirism. For example, their naturally sharp vision dulls in daylight but becomes stronger at night. Their natural connection to animals becomes dulled, but their connection to the moon becomes stronger.

Knowing all this, here's some explanations for your question...

Explanation 1: All of the Dusks (except Lilian) have been vampires for a very long time. I think they all lost their connection to nature ages ago. Lilian still may have had this connection, but she was so sheltered and uneducated, I doubt she even knew what lycanthropy was, so she wasn't able to identify it in Evan.

Explanation 2: It's mentioned in "Ghoul Beneath the Guise" that the Dusks didn't prey on big, strong people. They specifically hunted smaller, weaker individuals for their own safety. Lycanthropy turns people into huge, muscle-bound tanks...in other words, not the type of people the Dusks would have close contact with, so they had very little--if any--experience with lycanthropes and kind of forgot they existed.

The Dusks didn't go out looking for Evan. They only imprisoned him because he came to them and practically threw himself onto their plates. The possibility of lycanthropy didn't cross their minds because as mentioned above, that disease had become out of sight, out of mind for them; probably for centuries.

Explanation 3: The Dusks already had their hands full when Evan showed up. They were trying to recruit Zeffer and prepare for his wedding with Lilian. Weddings are a huge deal to vampires because it's one of the few ways they can expand their clan size, and adding a new member to the clan is not something they take lightly.

This event was an especially big deal to Dario, considering how he felt about Lilian. Evan was the last thing on his mind; just another bloodbag to be thrown in the dungeon and forgotten about.

Explanation 4: Dimitri was a bad dungeon-tender. Dimitri was Dario's "nephew" and put in charge of keeping the Dusk's prisoners alive. As we saw in "Ghoul Beneath the Guise", the guy was a total sadist who enjoyed hurting and killing the prisoners, even though this got him in trouble with the clan. The more the prisoners suffered, the more Dimitri thrived.

Dimitri had a lot of responsibilities, and one of them was reporting sick, dead, or unsuitable prisoners to Dario. Dimitri should have noticed something was up with Evan's blood, and maybe he actually did...but in "Ghoul Beneath the Guise", we learn that Dimitri is terrified of Dario and tries to cover up problems whenever he can. Because whenever he reports a problem, even if it's not his fault, Dario gets angry and beats him.

It's possible that Dimitri did notice the tainted lycanthrope blood and either didn't report it, or just denied it to himself because psychologically he couldn't deal with it.

In conclusion, there was a perfect storm of factors that led to Evan's disease going undetected. And what's funny is that all of them were actually Dario's fault if you think about it...

Dario was the clan master, his job was to oversee the whole clan and its culture. He refused to educate Lilian, he chose who his clan preyed upon, he was too preoccupied with Lilian's wedding because of his own bad deeds against her, and he kept punishing Dimitri just for doing his job.

Evan's lycanthropy wasn't to blame for the Dusk's downfall. Ultimately Dario was to blame. The incompetent way he managed his clan finally came to a head and bit them all in the ass. Evan's disease was just a random spark that lit the fuse Dario left trailing behind them.

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Questions/Comments?

There are all kinds of theories about the origin of vampirism. These theories spread easily because frankly, no one actually knows where vampirism came from. World Athenaeum researchers have been trying to solve this mystery for a long time. So, people make up their own stories for how it came to be.

Many believe there was a grand master vampire who infected the world.

Some believe the disease originated in bats and jumped to fae.

There are even some who believe the disease was created by a divine, and the reasons why differ. To punish faekind? To take over the world? Or just to watch the world burn? Who knows?

Many believe the disease was created in a laboratory as a bioweapon. Some think it was released on purpose and others think it was an accident.

And then there are really uneducated people who don't believe vampirism exists at all. Most of them think it's just a mental illness or an "excuse" for serial killers to do sick stuff to their victims.

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Questions/Comments?

All I can say is...The Athenaeum's Disease Control agents are going to be working overtime.

Something like this would be devastating and would probably launch the world closer to a cure for these diseases. Governments would become desperate to get things under control and start throwing money at research.

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Questions/Comments?

Good question! Vampires are hated globally, so they've never managed to get a foothold in any Great Kingdom--at least not as Great Rulers. They may hold minor positions in government here and there, but if they do, it's because they are keeping their disease a secret, otherwise they would quickly be overthrown, banished, or executed.

For example, Dario got banished from his kingdom immediately when his royal family found out he had vampirism (I mean, he was already on thin ice for behaving like a cockhead constantly, but the vampirism didn’t help...)

While vampires may not rule any Great Kingdoms, they do have some pretty extensive and powerful cults all over the world. These cults have swayed politics in the Great Kingdoms before.

Dario and the Dusk clan had a pretty tight hold on Taybiya. Using sheer intimidation, they had enough influence to bully business owners into doing their bidding. The Dusks had entire neighborhoods where everyone was in on their dark schemes and would help them catch victims.

Taybiya is a disorganized, slummy shithole that isn't part of any Great Kingdom, so whatever the Dusks did there was pretty inconsequential on the world stage. But there are other vampire clans far more powerful than them who actually do pull some strings in Great Kingdom cities. Everything vampires do is from the shadows.

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Questions/Comments?

There's actually a story arc all about this in the LG series! If you like vampires, check out the following stories (in this order)

Monster by Moonlight

Ghoul Beneath the Guise

The Aldfog Mystery

Eat Your Heart Out

The short of it is: vampires are just people. People may be inherently good or evil. But vampires need to drink blood in order to survive, and they need a lot of it. In order to get this blood, they often have to do evil things to innocent, unconsenting victims, even if they don't want to.

With werewolves, rating them on a scale is easy because all they really have is strength. No special abilities beyond that, no different levels of intelligence, you just kinda measure how dangerous they are based on how hard they can hit.

With vampires, things get more complicated. This is because vampirism affects different fae species in more complex ways. For example, vampiric elves burn in daylight, but vampiric limniads are strengthened by it. There's really no way to rate how dangerous they are because it's like asking "are elves more dangerous than goblins?"