The Truth Here is the truth about vampires, and I'm sure that you'll find that much of what you have heard or learned is quite far from it. In this document you should find information to answer most of your questions, and if you have one that was not answered, or you just care to comment, please write back and do so. Pass this along to anyone you wish, provided that this piece be included. Thank you and enjoy.


Sincerely,
Devilrhyms



The Untruth

"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds." Edmund Burke


I believe a little weeding out is neccessary before we come to the actual truths. You must understand that the typical stereotypes of vampires are wrong. Holy water and crucifixes and anything to do with the Christian religion have no effect upon a vampire. The mythical fear of roses, wooden stakes, and garlic is also false. Vampires are not required to ask permission before entering a building, and are quite alive although they do have a few physical differences. And unless they are a Born vampire, the sun will not harm them except for the occasional sun burn. Vampires are not all evil and mindless (although there are a few I could name). In fact, most are rather kind, intelligent, wise, and sensitive.


In The Beginnings...

I am certain that most of you are aware of what a disease is, and I can say that some rather peculiar ones have popped up through the ages. In fact, the strangest include ones with characteristics such as extreme burning in the sun, with a believed need to ingest blood. This is called porphyria. Then there are the retro viruses; HIV is a well known one and falls into this category. These viruses attack the body at its DNA, often through attempts to change the organism and failing miserably. Ebola is a good example of this,considering in its attempts, the poor unfortunate victim starts to bleed out of every orifice in the body. Anyway, somewhere along the line a few thousand years ago these diseases and viruses began to mutate and combine, as they all usually do, and produced something new. Vampires. These vampires, I could guess, had trouble surviving due to the small population, possibly dwelling in the few large cities to be found and feeding from the typical lowlife that one might have easily found then. As the human population spread and grew, so did the vampires, and their lifestyles improved. In those times the older more seasoned vampires were far more territorial, and would fiercely defend their area against any others who sought to gain control. The younger ones who would normally not stand a chance on their own, would usually stay with their parent vampire, or join with others of their kind in the large cities to form a group strong enough for protection. Such groups though would take on few outsiders, and would mainly consist of the original members and their "children". Social orders and customs were established and maintained for the groups' safety; often vampires would kill each other if they crossed into oneanothers territory, but of late, their territorial instincts and angry feelings towards eachother has lessened a great deal.

The Usual Kind


"Life is the childhood of our immortality." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


The following information might require a slight understanding of physics and human physiology and will not apply to every vampire in existence, but will help to develop a basic understanding of them.

The myth that tells of how vampires would spontaneously combust in the light of the sun is not completely true, although a vampires' habits and actions might, rare individuals often use sharpened fingernails, knives, or any other tool to make wounds to draw blood from. The vampires who have no fanged teeth whatsoever are usually quite old or the child of someone quite old. My guess is that the development of fang teeth was a recent, meaning past millennium, development.
Now, a vampires' circulatory, excretory, and digestive system are interconnected like a humans, only with some changes. To start, a vampire has no bone marrow. This is due to the fact that the transformation from being human kills it, possibly breaking it down for use of energy. The dead marrow is then either absorbed into the body, or excreted as waste, which reduces the total body weight (Vampires are usually lighter than their appearance in weight than humans). Since the marrow is responsible for producing red blood cells, and a vampire has no bone marrow, another source of blood cells is needed. Humans are one of many different sources, although pigs and a few other animals would on occasion suffice. Vampires have evolved to where they can ingest the blood without digesting it. Those who do digest it due to some error in their DNA, I pity, because dying from severe anaemia is not the best way to die. Just think of him/her as not having enough oxygen and starving to death at the same time. When the blood is ingested, the fluids responsible for breaking down the food in the human digestive system (such as bile) are not used, and the blood is entered directly into the circulatory system from the stomach. This process of digestion is why most vampires do not eat food, because the only digestive process it would undergo would be the chewing of the food before it enters the blood stream. Having pieces of undigested food floating around ones bloodstream and clogging up every artery would be painful. Anyway, required nutrients are taken from the blood, and the red blood cells are used to carry oxygen until they die. Afterwards the blood is either absorbed into the body, or excreted by a process I'll explain later. A vampires metabolism is slowed and altered to accommodate for the small amount of nutrients in the system. Where areas up to 80% of energy created in a human is lost as body heat, a vampire only loses about 30 to 50%. So when you take a vampires temperature, the results are in most cases less than 96.8 deg. F. Waste in the blood of a vampire, like that of a human, needs to be excreted from the body and in a vampire, that process is now performed by the sweat glands. When transformed, a humans perspiration and excretory system combines, so that wastes, such as dead blood or other toxins can be excreted through the sweat glands, giving a pinkish appearance to the sweat, which helps make a vampire look more human and no, it doesn't come pouring out in gallons, it is more gradual like function of the oil glands on a persons face.


Transformation

Now here it is for anyone who ever wanted to know how a human is changed into a vampire. The white blood cells in a humans blood undergo a change, or a mutation of some sort that could be compared to HIV. Little smaller cells, that have yet to be classified, enter the white blood cells, switching their DNA into the existing. The white blood cells, now changed, go around throughout the body's circulatory system producing more of these smaller cells. These white vampire cells, or WVC's as I shall call them, are what I believe to be responsible for the transformation of a human into a vampire. Enough of these have to be introduced into a humans body, a total blood transfusion with a vampire is the best way (actually the only way I know of). Partial transfusion would only partly change a person into a vampire. Anyway, for the total transfusion there are two ways for this to happen. One way is for a vampire to take all of a humans blood and then give it back mixed with his own orally, meaning that the human has to drink the blood. For some of you who doubt the possibility of oral blood transfusion, it happens. The Australian aborigines have had such a practice for thousands of years. When done this way, a persons digestive system is changed first by the concentrated amount of WVCs. What happens is that a large amount of WVCs collect in the stomach and quickly change it so that they can move to the rest of the body. After the attack, the digestive fluids are no longer used and this makes it so that only blood and maybe a few neutral liquids can pass through from then on. During this whole process the person will feel pain. For those of you who have had intense digestive problems, or have been shot in the stomach, from what I hear this is about the same level of pain. When the stomach has undergone transformation, the WVCs can then enter into the body. The second way the WVCs can be introduced into a humans body is by holding a vampires open wound to a humans open wound for a long period of time, so that the blood mixes. When done this way, the stomach doesn't get the full attack of the WVCs in their most potent form and it isn't damaged to such a high extent. This way the WVCs in a less concentrated form, work more slowly and change the stomach so that it learns to shut off the digestive fluids for the blood. Those few individuals who are changed this way, can still ingest regular food if they wish. When the WVCs are introduced to the blood stream they locate and attach onto nerve pathways and neurons and strengthen connections, resulting in greater speeds, heightened senses, and quicker reflexes in the new vampire. They combine the excretory and perspiration system so that wastes are excreted through the sweat glands, they also change the chemical balance in the brain, allowing for quicker memory recall, and higher memory storage. As for the persons white blood cells, they have been found and changed by the WVCs, who have attacked them and like HIV, introduced their own DNA into the cells, so that they recognize the WVCs as theirself. Throughout a vampires whole life, the WVCs are constantly increasing in numbers and introducing their DNA to other body cells and new white blood cells from other humans. When a vampire is injured, the WVCs organize together, and gather at the wound to help speed up the healing process by encouraging cell regeneration and replacement, and if any harmful disease or virus is found in the body, they kill it immediately. They are in fact, the ultimate immune system. The reason a vampire doesn't heal as fast in the day light is because the WVCs are severely photosensitive and are often killed in UV light, and this would prevent them from going to the wound, this is also why a vampire burns quicker inthe sun. The older a vampire becomes, there are more WVCs to be found in the body, and more likely he or she would burn quicker. Unfortunately these WVCs also make the body dependent on them and form a symbiosis with it, so if one tried to remove them from the body, the body would go into shock and die. Also, if a few WVCs were put into the wound of a human, they would heal the wound and then before they would have a chance to turn offensive and begin to change the body, they would be outnumbered by the existing white cells and killed. No, they are not invincible! It's all a game of numbers. Whichever of the WVCs or white blood cells are the most numerous, wins (The moral of this is listen to your folks and stick with the buddy system). As for those who would escape the other white blood cells before being killed, they would not be enough to change the body completely into a vampire; maybe slightly improved vision or speed would occur, but that would be all.


The Four Main Races

Like humans, vampires have many different races, and each race has its own characteristics. I simply call them, the Born, the Created, the Cross-breeds, and the Bodiless. The ones I call the Created, and Cross-breeds also have their own sub-races as well. There are a few different psychic or telepathic abilities that you will see in vampires. They are telepathy (mindreading), empathy (suggestion, hypnosis, and emotion detection), clairvoyance (sensing objects), psychokinesis or telekinesis (mind over matter), pyrokinesis (mind over fire), and rheiki (aura or lifeforce manipulation). Few cross-breeds will develop anything more than limited telepathy, clairvoyance, or rheiki. The Born seem to have exceptional talent with psychokinesis and pyrokinesis. The Created though, have more agility with telepathy and empathy than the rest, and the Bodiless have mastered rheiki to the point that they could kill with a thought.


The Born...

A vampire that was born a vampire is a rare and intriguing being. If the chances were 1 to 10 that you would see a vampire in your lifetime, then the chances are 1 to 1,000,000 that the vampire would be a Born. You see, for someone to be born a full vampire, both his or her parents would have to be vampires, and that's why chances of it happening are so rare. When a human becomes a vampire, the WVCs I explained about earlier try to introduce its DNA into the reproductive eggs or sperm, and this, in most cases, kills all of the eggs or sperm. For a female, this means no more children because they cannot create any more eggs. For the male, this is not a problem because most retain the ability to produce sperm. There are very few female vampires that can have children, and very few male vampires that can't father children. Anyway, if two vampires, that are able to have children, have sex (and I am talking about one female, and one male), then the chances are that the female will become pregnant. The resulting offspring, is then born within four to five months. After birth, a Born begins to grow, develop and learn with amazing speed, maturing at a rate almost three times that of a human. The WVCs found in other kinds of vampires are completely symbiotic for a Born; they are the immune system and can be found in almost every cell in the body. Their physical abilities are greater than other vampires as well, being naturally faster, stronger, and even more agile. The way they might respond emotionally might seem strange and at time their sensitivity will no doubt appear "out there". Sometimes they make a psychopath seem emotional, and other times they make manic depressants seem stoic. Their instincts are stronger and most have an intense fascination for the objects around them. Their personalities are often effected by their constant mood swings that I believe are caused by their quickened emotional growth. Unfortunately a Born vampire's body tends to collect extra energy (such as heat, light, electricity, which explains their shocking behavior) and has no resistance to the sun that humans and other vampires have, therefore most are badly burned by the sun. The disease called porphyria, which a few humans have ,is very serious. Even in its' mildest form, the person has to avoid the sunlight. Actually, anybody who has porphyria or a family member that has it can be assured of the fact that some ancestor of theirs was a vampire. Anyway, Borns contain a more severe form than humans could ever contract. The genetic bonding in DNA between the vampire genes and normal genes literally breaks down in ultra-violet radiation and in effect, a Born starts looking like a Barbie doll on a BBQ. Few carry over the human trait that allows them to positively deal with the extra energy. These individuals just severely burn and blister in the sun. Anyway, a Born will of course develop the physical traits of a parent, most looking like the mother and will have completely operational reproductive organs and special digestive and excretory systems. During a Born's first years of life, he or she will mostly remain with one of the parents, usually the mother. After they have fully developed, most will leave and roam around to experience the world. A Born vampire is also able to make other Born vampires, along with Created vampires, and Cross-breeds.


The Created...


If you have read The Usual Kind, then you have the general idea of what a Created vampire is like. This kind of vampire is one who once was a human and is the most common type of vampire. There are hundreds different types of Created vampires and the reason there are so many kinds, is that each is in it's own effort to survive; the vampire who burns easily in the sun is not as likely to live as long or pass genes as much as one who has the resistance. A Created vampire usually takes on the majority of the parent vampires characteristics, although it is rare to see a Created lose it's resistance to the sun if the parent was a Born. Another important cause for difference is that each is determined by the ethnic race that he or she was before becoming a vampire. A black vampire has more sun resistance than a white vampire due to the fact that the black skin was evolved for such reasons. Some Created vampires, depending on the way they were made, have held onto some human characteristics such as the ability to reproduce and eat food. The ability to eat food would be useful if there was no source of blood around at all, and nutrients are required. In severe cases such as this, the WVCs would serve as oxygen carriers after the red blood cells die off. Such


The Cross-Breed...

These are people who are in some way or another decended from a vampire. Usually the mother is a human in the case of halfbreeds, but not always. The cross-breeds are noted for growing either slightly faster or slower than a normal child. It depends on which vampire genes are inherited. The genes that encourage faster healing and adaptation, may make a child grow faster, but the others that discourage bodily aging and growth might slow or even stunt it. Growing faster though, does not mean taller just in case you misunderstood my meaning. Of course, their height would depend on their parents genes, and if one child was to have a father who originated, for example, from the medieval period, it is likely that he would not be very tall. Like a vampire, their eyes can be more light sensitive and their skin might develop a natural pallor to it as well. In most cases, they also mature faster emotionally as well as physically and in all, they learn quicker. Even a small child can be faster and stronger than a normal human twice his or her size. Their awareness of themselves, others, and their surrounding is remarkable, sometimes losing their innocence too early, or holding onto it until the last possible moment. They are more humane than most people, and yet at the same time, can be as insensitive as a Born, even becoming somewhat sadistic due to the vampire instinct in them. If one parent was a born, then they have a slight chance of turning into the equivalent of a created when older. There are many people out there with vampire characteristics. Whether this is good or not, I don't know, but so far, this planet is holding out nicely. I think.

The Bodiless...

A bodiless vampire can feed off a humans or vampires lifeforce, often making someone either slightly tired or seriously draining them to the point of death. They have a strong presence which can be felt easily, even by a human. There are a few different theories on how the bodiless came to be. From a vampire that refused to stay dead, to a human who discovered how to lengthen their life through the absorption of other's. New information shows, that the bodiless species have the capability to posses a humans body; forit's whole life, or just for a period of time. When it is for the whole life, they will eject the soul or lifeforce of the infant from the body and take the body as its own, or even absorb the lifeforce into itself. When in infancy the lifeforce is not bound to the corporeal body as tightly as in later life and the body does not have the capability to recognize any lifeforce as self yet. When they take the body of an infant, they sometimes suffer corporeal amnesia. This occurs when for some reason or another, the bodiless are unableto remember who they are due to a psychic and psychological memory block that results when the body builds up in defense to its takeover. If temporarily, the bodiless would choose the body of an adult, but would not be able eject or draw out the lifeforce without the body recognizing that it is gone and immediately dying. Instead, the bodiless surrounds it, and wrestles to gain control. This is also known as being possessed. In most cases the bodiless would lose this fight, and be driven off. When a bodiless does gain control of the human body, the body will remain human, but the bodiless inside will continue to feed off of the lifeforces of others, sometimes even feeding off of the blood of a person at the same time. A bodiless is able to create others by having children during possession, or by giving another the knowledge of the art of Rheiki.

Who Gives A Damn

They are not under the devil's command, nor are they the angelic servants of a god. They have a soul just as a human does, and in no way was it affected by their change, if they underwent one. As humans push onto the 21st century, they are leaving their innocence behind as each vampire had done when they underwent transformation. Do not fear the unknown, or hate it. We are all a part of each other and are human, to a certain extent.


.....I hope this breaks down the barrier of silence and fear.....