#count birch

Other Vampires

Other Supernatural Characters

Notes

The Counts handwiting is Edwardian Script ITC, the closest I could find that resembles his signature as given on this collectible Sesame Street mug:

Puppet Dracula, is the original vampire of his dimension. Although he closes resembles many legends of Dracula, including the IRL Vlad the Impaler (Vlad III / Vlad Țepeș may or may not be his actual name), he is thousands of years old so he does not follow the IRL historical timeline.

The Von Counts and Von Dahling's are different branches of the same family, and they are Dracula's direct descendants. The Count, Dahling, and Ervin are all Dracula's 4x great-grandchildren, with Delavay being his 5x great-grandchild, and his first (confirmed) dhampir descendant.

Dahling and Natasha's fonts directly relate to their element - Dahling having control over rain, and Natasha having control over winds.

Countess Von Backward's font has two versions - usually, it's Kingthings Frontwards, but when she's actually counting, it's Kingthings Backwards.

In the Vampswap where Birch is the Vampire and The Count is the mortal, Birch and his brother Leopold are both vampires. As twins, they are still a matching set, so they speak in the same font (which is a further reference to how the canon Stan Twins can mimic each others voices).

Bob Cryptogram is Multiverse Time with Dr Pine's version of Bill Cipher, which is why he uses the same font.

Puppet Vampires

Known Vampires (Some, but not all)

Codruț Drăculești Von Count

Ervin Dănești Von Count

Natasha Von Numeral

Dahling Von Dahling

Camelia Von Backwards

Don the Prop Guy

(Puppet) Dracula

On a basic level, there are two types of vampire puppets; born vampires, and turned vampires. The names are self-explanatory; a vampire puppet is either a vampire because they were born one, or they were once a living puppet and they were turned at some point in their life.

Vampires regardless of origin have similar powers to most other vampires in fiction, with some exceptions. They also share some weaknesses, but they are devoid of several of them, and the ones they do have tend to have puppet-y twists.

Vampires in puppet dimensions are still puppets first, they are people of child-like wonder, magic, and whimsey. They follow silly toon logic the same as any other puppet. And that should always be taken into consideration first when it comes to their powers and weaknesses.

Things to consider before further looking into puppet vampires:

Magic

In place of food, water, and oxygen, all puppets require magic to survive. Mortal puppets only need to be around any type of magic to passively absorb it like calories, which they process into puppet magic and radiate it like body heat. This is not a problem in puppet based dimensions, as magic is weaved into the very fabric of reality like how dark matter and dark energy holds together reality in non-magic dimensions.

Baby puppets are particularly vulnerable outside of puppet dimensions, as they can't convert other magic types, they can only absorb puppet magic which they would have to leech off of an adult puppet.

Vampire puppets, because they are undead, can no longer passively absorb magic of any kind, but still require puppet magic to survive. While they do radiate their own unique type of vampire magic that other puppets can passively absorb, they still need to be fueled directly. This is why they eat other puppets; draining them of their puppet magic for sustenance.

While vampires are often called slurs and insults along the lines of “Stuffing Sucker” or “Batting Drinker”, consuming stuffing is actually a misconception. They only consume puppet magic from mortals.

The stuffing of a puppet is seeded and ‘fluffed up’ with pure puppet magic, comparable to the plasma in blood. When that magic is sucked up by a vampire, it can make them appear ‘deflated’ because their stuffing shrinks, which is where the misconception comes from.

Family Fabric Bolt

A puppet family's family bolt becomes vampiric when at least 80% of a main family branch are vampires. Because vampires can indefinitely regenerate their own fabric, they do not need to use their family fabric bolt to heal damage. It is used exclusively for the purpose of having children.

However, because vampires can live for hundreds to thousands of years (in theory, forever), new vamplings are only stitched up every few centuries or so.

Additionally, old vampire clans do not keep their fabric bolt at a fabric bank like most puppet families. They keep it in their secret family vault, which is usually guarded by the puppet equivalent of a Balrog, which would-be parents have to fight without killing to access the family fabric bolt.

These legally distinct but Balrog-like monsters are immortal family pets that are very loyal to their clans, and have to be ordered to fight, because otherwise they just want headpats.

Common vampire weaknesses:

Daylight

Puppet vampires are not weak or vulnerable to sunlight in the conventional sense, they are still able to walk around during the day without issue.

Many of their senses and abilities however, are derived from the animals they have dominion over (i.e bats and wolves) which are more often than not, nocturnal.

Permittance

Vampires cannot enter a home, building, or abode they do not personally own (or are not publicly owned) without permission or an invitation. This permission does not have to come from the owner, just someone who is already within the limits of the residence.

Beings under the supernatural domination of a vampire, thralls as they were often called because they are enthralled, could not give permittance. Extending an invitation implies power or ownership over something, and a vampire accepting that invitation acknowledges that; a vampire cannot take or dominate the autonomy of another being and acknowledge it at the same time, only one of those can be true at a time.

Permittance is only needed the first time a vampire enters, it will only reset if ownership is changed, such as if a house is sold, or if a business is under new management. Permittance can also be withdrawn, and the vampire is automatically and supernaturally ejected.

Stakes

Vampires are puppets, they do not have organs, including a heart. A wooden stake has no effect on a vampire, the same as any other puppet. However, a giant ballpoint pin to the chest will cause them to be paralyzed until it is removed.

Coffin

Putting a rose onto a closed coffin or casket while a vampire is inside of it traps the vampire. It will be unable to push the lid open until the rose is removed, or wilts into dust. The vampire will remain trapped if the rose, even wilted, retains the same general shape of a rose.

This only works with white roses because of their close associations with purity, remembrance, and even death.

Running Water

Puppet vampires can in fact cross running water, however, just like any other puppet they are vulnerable to getting waterlogged and sinking.

If a puppet vampire is completely submerged in water, and/or waterlogged, they cannot use their vampire powers.

Holy Symbols

Vampire puppets can only be repelled by holy symbols belonging to the religion they had in life for turned vampires, or the religion that the majority of their family belonged to at the time that the family fabric bolt was changed to vampiric.

Ex. The Von Count and the closely related Von Dahling clans are considered Roman Catholic, because that’s what the majority of their family was when their family fabric bolt changed from mortal to vampire.

Fire

Just like all puppets, Vampires are fabric-based life forms made of felt; extremely flammable. The only difference between them and mortal puppets in this regard is that they can regenerate parts of themselves that they lost to burning, but that comes with the caveat that they had to survive the burning in the first place.

Magic Dependance and Rituals

In the modern day in most puppet dimensions, Vampire puppets feed off of a synthetic raw magic which they can either consume directly, or inject into food to make it more palpable.

All vampires have an inherent thirst for puppet magic, and they are addicted as soon as they try it for the first time. Addiction is a disease, and it’s an even worse disease when it’s tied to survival. And it’s an addiction that cannot be cured, it can only have its symptoms managed.

Synthetic magic keeps a vampire fed, but it will never ‘fully satisfy’ their hunger for living puppet magic. In order to stop their hunger and cravings from taking them over, vampire puppets often have ‘rituals’ to manage their symptoms.

The Von Count family in particular is known for having counting as their most common ritual. But any repetitive and stimulating method will do.

While this is comparable to rituals in individuals with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), that is a separate condition, and a vampire could very well have it separate from their vampirism.

Examples of common rituals include counting, spelling, hand crafts, wood whittling, colour coding, ect. The vampires with the more hand-on or crafty rituals tend to be masters in their craft because of their long un-lives.

Toon Logic and Cartoon Violence

As stated before, puppet vampires are puppets first and foremost. They can use cartoon logic… but it can also be used against them.

Garlic

Puppet vampires, regardless of how they might have felt about garlic as mortals (for turned vampires), are repelled by it. The very smell of it makes them wretch, and the taste of it makes them sick.

It is not lethal for them, but it is a particularly strong deterrent.

Reflection

Vampire puppets don’t have a reflection and can’t be captured in photographs or videos. While in classic mythology this only applied to silver-backed mirrors, for puppet vampires this holds true for any reflective surface.

Now the exciting part, puppet vampire powers!

Turning

A full vampire, turned or born, can turn a mortal into another vampire. They can only do this to puppet mortals, or other toy adjacent or fabric based lifeforms. The way this is done is that they completely drain a puppet of magic until they are down to a fabric husk until The Hand Reaper is summoned, and then flooding their stuffing with vampire magic before The Hand Reaper can take them away.

While there are misconceptions that a vampire controls mortals they have turned, but this is not true. ‘Vampiric essence’ can be collected and distilled into an injectable solution that can turn a mortal, but this requires the vampire to be killed via burning and having their ashes collected and made into said solution. In most puppet dimensions, vampires are legal and a protected class as long as they don’t consume living puppets, and this is considered not only a hate crime, but also body part trafficking.

The original vampires, including puppet Dracula, were created from unholy magical rituals, but these rituals have long since been lost to time.

Other supernatural puppet creatures such as werewolves, fairies, genies, mummies, and ghosts are immune to being turned, and vice versa.

Eating and Sleeping

Puppets in general don’t need to eat food, but they do need to sleep. Vampire puppets don’t need to do either, but can if they choose to.

Food brings vampires no sustenance, but many of them eat food just because they enjoy it, and those who feed on artificial puppet magic often inject it into food because the synthetic stuff doesn’t have the most agreeable taste.

Although vampires don’t need sleep, many of them do to conserve energy; before the invention of artificial puppet magic, many vampires would sleep in a hibernation-like state between feedings to decrease frequency, particularly when ‘hunting’ was scarce for some reason or another.

Immortality

Puppets are technically immortal. They live much longer than their flesh based counterparts, because they don’t have real biology, they are living objects who are able to freely replace their fabric as long as they are able to access their family fabric bolt. However, they still mentally age - albeit, a lot slower than their aforementioned fleshy counterparts. And they still age like objects do, getting more wear and tear even with replacement fabric.

Puppets who die of old age die do so because they feel like they are ‘done with it all’. And they can still suffer from old age related maladies like dementia, Alzheimer's, or increased risk of Puppet Cancer.

Puppet vampires take that concept of technical immortality and push it even further. Vampires who are turned stop aging physically once they are turned. Born vampires never age past their physical prime, but all vampires can still age mentally - just much slower compared to a mortal. Vampires of both types do not suffer the drawbacks of old age unless they are a turned vampire and already suffered from it as a mortal. Diseases and other sicknesses may disappear upon turning, but mental deterioration conditions do not get worse, but they do not improve either.

Vampires, especially the born ones, see time much differently than mortals do because they have a grander scale of it. Vampires born into the curse easily take several decades to reach full physical maturity, compared to the two decades of normal puppets.

Vampires can still feel ‘done with it all’ as they get older, same with mortal puppets, but it takes a lot longer to reach that point. Many times, a vampire only comes to this point when they find something or someone worth dying for.

Ex. Vampires who share a very strong bond with a mortal often ‘age’ alongside them visibly and spiritually, though they never lose or diminish in their physical abilities.

Enthralling

By making eye contact and/or hand gestures at another puppet, a vampire can issue a one or more word command, and place that mortal under their control. This is called enthralling or hypnotizing, and if successful it creates a ‘thrall’.

One-word commands are preferred over longer commands, because the more words a command has, the more likely it is that the thrall could break the enthrallment. Puppets with strong will - or who are particularly stubborn - are also able to break out of enthrallment.

A vampire cannot order a thrall to do anything harmful to themselves. A thrall also cannot grant a vampire permittance, including to their bodies. A vampire who pushes the boundaries of enthrallment can break the spell.

Vampires are immune to being enthralled/hypnotized against their will, but can choose to be enthralled by another vampire. Rarely, there are vampires who have exceptional hypnotism abilities, and are able to bypass other vampires immunity to hypnotism.

Ex. Puppet Dracula can do this. So can The Count’s brother, Ervin.

The deaf are also immune to this, unless the vampire doing it can use sign language that the target can understand.

Flight

Vampires are capable of levitation and floating. True flight is also possible, however; vampires do not have wings, and for this reason they usually wear long capes or cloaks that they can hold and flap around like wings, granting them flight.

The difference between flying and floating is that a floating vampire can only make themselves move up or down, moving in any other direction requires pushing off of a solid object and using the inertia to move, but how far they are able to go from there is dependent on how hard that push was.

Animal Mastery

A vampire has dominion over two types of animals; one flying, and one land animal. The most common flying animal is the bat, and the most common land animal is the wolf. Other popular flying animals include ravens and crows, and other popular land animals include rats and cats. Vampires cannot control water based animals because of their aforementioned weakness to water.

With these animals, vampires are able to directly communicate, see/hear through their senses, and give orders.

Their senses are also closely tied to these animals - vampires with dominion over bats are fully capable of using their vocalizations, echolocation, and having higher frequencies of hearing (at the cost of terrible eye sight), and hang upside down from ceilings, while a vampire with dominion over, say, moose, would have an extraordinary sense of smell.

A vampire may be able to control these two animals, and (sub)-species of them, but they cannot control animals who are closely related.

Ex. A vampire with mastery over wolves can only control any species of wolf, but not other canines like the domestic dog, coyotes, or foxes.

Turned vampires choose these two animals shortly after they are turned, born vampires inherit them from their parents at random.

Vampires who are born to old, multigenerational vampire clans also tend to be born with physical traits similar to their animals.

Ex. Von Counts and Von Numerals, because of their close associations with bats, have bat-like ears, including a prominent tragus.

At no point can a vampire's animal mastery be changed.

Shapeshifting

Vampires can shapeshift into the animals they have mastery over, and while they do this they have all of the abilities of that animal while retaining their minds and personality.

Adult vampires are also able to shift some of their features like their fangs, nails, ears, nose, eye color, and eye shape to appear less ‘vampiric’.

Many modern vampires use this to keep their eyes from glowing as they naturally do.

Elemental Control

Puppet vampires have a unique command over a specific element or sub-element. They can generate and manipulate this element while also being immune to its effects if they so choose. While they can control it freely, many of them tie it to their rituals.

Von Counts are known to have storm-adjacent elements, and ‘store’ their elements within a personal stormcloud that follows them around.

Fire is an exceedingly rare element, and vampires with this element are considered extremely dangerous because it’s not just one of the biggest vampiric weaknesses, it’s the biggest weakness of puppets period.

While elements are often inherited, they don’t have to be. It’s believed that a vampire's personality is where their elemental connection comes from.

Ex. Countess Von Numeral having control over wind to match her easy-going and gentle personality.

Rarely, a vampire can have control over two elements, but this almost exclusively only shows up in born vampires.

Ex. Count Von Count having control over thunder and lightning.

Superhuman Abilities

Vampires have superhuman (super puppet?) strength, speed, and durability. In relation to their small size, they are on par with most other fictional depictions of non-puppet vampires.

Vampire puppets also completely regenerate from any injuries and damage they sustain so long as they survive them, and don’t need to use their family fabric bolt for repairs.

Their constitutions are also strong; they cannot be directly poisoned like mortal puppets, and that includes getting high off of drugs or drunk off of alcohol. However, they can be affected by these substances if they drink the magic from a mortal puppet who is already ‘under the influence’.

Enhanced Senses

While a lot of their sensory abilities are derived from their animal mastery, as a baseline vampires have enhanced vision, hearing, and smell.

Vision is a little bit tricker, a turned vampire who needed glasses as a mortal might no longer need glasses, but they would still get overstimulated by bright light if both of their animal components are nocturnal. Born vampires who were born with features more in line with their associated animal can have their senses increased or decreased further. Bat-based vampires in particular are practically blind in the traditional sense.

Vampires make up for the common problem of legal blindness and/or daytime blindness with magic vision. They are able to perceive objects made of magic the same way some animals are able to use thermal vision. The type of magic does not matter the way it does when feeding. This is how vampires are able to effortlessly move about without bumping into things within their own lairs, which are saturated in vampire magic. And also how they can easily traverse puppet dimensions, which are made of magic.

The trouble comes when they are in non-magical dimensions or lands.

Magic Drinking

As stated in the magic and magic dependance sections, vampires feed off of puppet magic by biting with their fangs. This does not have to be a death sentence, as vampires don’t have to kill puppets, they can choose how much magic they suck up.

However, self-control is a learned skill, and vamplings or young vampires often struggle to control themselves when feeding.

Very experienced vampires are able to insta-drain a mortal puppet of their magic in the blink of an eye, rendering them to a fabric husk to be taken away by The Hand Reaper.

Strigoi Transformation

Vampires may be considered monstrous, but they do have a stronger, more monstrous form. What it is called varies by region and/or culture that the vampire in question belongs to, but in this case we’ll use the Romanian version, the Strigoi.

Vampires who are starving and in a deep ‘blood lust’ state / relapsed into magic addiction have lost their minds, and are having the undead equivalent of a mental break.

Strigoi are indiscriminate predators solely focused on consuming puppet magic. They appear less humanoid (or less monster/animal-oid depending on the base puppet type), having longer, more prominent fangs, and their sharpened nails turning to full on claws. They also appear ‘deflated’ or gaunt, the way that magic-depleted puppets do.

They also take stronger features from their animal mastery. They will take on the face and wings of their flying animal counterpart (often the bat), and have a more hunched over gait like their land animal.

Even starving vampires are able to hold off on a Strigoi Transformation as long as they can do their rituals, a vampire going full Strigoi outside of their own accord can only be because of a mix of starvation, and being unable to practice their ritual.

Puppet Dhampirs

Known Dhampirs

Delavayi Draga Mea Birch-Pine

Dhampirs are only possible when a puppet has at least one vampiric parent and one mortal parent. Whether the fabric they were made of was vampiric or not does not matter. Vampirism is considered a dominant trait, so a dhampir could create another dhampir with a mortal partner.

As is the case with most hybrids, Dhampirs are not all created equal; while there are some that are nearly identical to a full vampire in abilities, there are also those that are almost indistinguishable from a mortal puppet.

In most cases, Dhampir’s have weakened versions of a full vampire's power, and they will not have all of the abilities that a full vampire has either.

In most cases a Dhampir will at the very least have:

Immortality

Animal Mastery

Shapeshifting

Abilities that are exclusive to full vampires:

Enthralling

Strigoi transformation

Levitation and True Flight (outside of Animal Mastery)

The ability to turn mortal puppets

All other abilities are considered a lottery or grab bag when it comes to inheritance, and they are more often than not weakened compared to a full vampire. The same can be said for vampiric weaknesses.

Dhampir’s cannot passively feed off magic as well as mortal puppets, and they often have to supplement with synthetic (or real) puppet magic, as they are able to drink magic with their fangs, just not as fast or efficiently as a full vampire. They are also vulnerable to magic addiction, but they will not fall into ‘blood lust’ as quickly or as strongly as full vamps.

The thing about vampirism is that it is a supernatural affliction; vampuppets do not suffer as much as most vampires in fiction, but vampirism is still a curse.

It's also a long winded metaphor for the rich preying on the poor, and how the term 'Dracula' is derived from Dracul which can mean devil but it's root word Draco refers to dragons, as a further hint to vampires being innately greedy; but these are questions for @aroace-get-out-of-my-face.

Vampire Puppets are inherently addicted to puppet magic, and they all have the potential to go into withdrawal and then a state of feral thirst, similar to bloodlust; the final, and most desperate stage of said bloodlust is taking their monstrous form.

Strigoi are the physical manifestion of the vampire's curse. All of their personality, thoughts, and morals are gone, all they are now is a never ending hunger for puppet magic that can never truly be satiated no matter how much it consumes and how many puppets they have to drain and kill.

Withdrawal symptoms first began when a vampire has gone a long period without consuming puppet magic, organic or artificial. Hunger itself does not automatically send a vampire into a spiral of turning into a Strigoi, but it is how it starts.

Most vampires when they start starving stave off further withdrawal symptoms using their vampiric rituals, or hibernating to conserve energy.

The problem with hibernation is that a vampire cannot just hibernate anywhere, they can only do so within a coffin or casket. Rituals are the most consistent and successful method of not transforming into a Strigoi.

However, should a vampire either not perform their ritual(s), or are somehow unable to, and they succumb to the curse?

Because the transformation is involuntary, changing back to normal is also something a vampire cannot do on their own. As even consuming magic and no longer being starving will bring them back - it is a curse of unending hunger.

It takes the efforts of their loved ones, often other vampires who can stand against a Stigoi's enhanced physical abilities, but is requires more than one vampire and/or a group of experienced vampire hunters.

To bring a Strigoi back to sanity and normal form, they would have to be reminded of how to perform their ritual; whether it is counting, spelling, whittling, or what have you.

Typically, those with simple rituals are easy to turn back, but-

He'd done it. Dr. Murray Birch had actually done it.

He'd burnt a man vampire alive and collected the ashes that remained, and made it into a potion that may or may not work.

'It didn't count', he told himself, that man was a vampire; vampires aren't people, they're monsters. Deep down he knew he didn't believe that, because if he did he would never subject his brother to his current plan.

Speaking of his brother - Leopold was asleep again. He'd spent most of his days in hospice asleep. Usually it was Murray or their parents with him, sometimes their brother Sherman. The palliative care nurses told them that even if he wasn't awake, it would still 'ease the transition' if he was surrounded by his loved ones in his final days.

Final days.

Not if Murray had anything to say about it, he thought to himself as he clutched Leo's hand in on of his own, while his other shaking hand clutched two syringes.

The disease had taken over his brothers body - his fur was limp and dull, his seams barely holding together; Leo was usually the larger of the two, but it was like all of the air was sucked out of his stuffing with how hollow yet compressed his entire body felt and looked.

"It's okay," Murray said in a voice that shook just like his ash covered hands, and he leaned over a pressed a gentle kiss to his twins crown. "I won't let anyone take you away from me. Everywhere we go-" He was cut off by a sound that made his soul fall out of his body.

He didn't need to turn around, instinctually he knew. It was the Hand Reaper, here to collect Leopold.

"It's not curtain call!" He said in a voice that was equal parts indignant, and afraid, as he took one syringe and stabbed it into Leo's chest, dumping the entire profane solution into him.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then, Murray felt as if it was just them in the room again, but he didn't know if he had circumvented the inevitable, or merely delayed it. He tightened the fingers he had laced with Leo's, his extra finger allowing his hand to completely cage his brothers.

"Everywhere we go, we go together. Including death, or undeath." He said, his conviction was real even if it was choked up, and he stabbed himself in the chest with the other syringe.

If Leopold couldn't live, then they would both become vampires, or they would both die.

There was no alternative that Murray could possibly accept.

Tagging @aroace-get-out-of-my-face, @maridrawss. And also, @stoicjewel for this lovely piece of art of this timeline.