Vampire
"A monster I am, lest a monster I wankity wank wank..."
These guys suck. Blood, mostly, but in recent portrayals they've learned there's more to sucking than just sustenance. Vampires were originally people that died and came back as undead, blood-craving monsters (Actually, vampires were originally bloated walking corpses that would attempt to eat the hearts of the living) or perhaps were infected by another vampire to become one, but now they're an overrated, over-glorified "race" that emo fags love, and at times the entertainment industry circle jerks to. Possibly the most notorious example of the ruination of vampires in contemporary media are the Twilight vampires from the book/movie series written by Stephanie Meyer, which are less like undead fiends and more like mysterious pretty-boys, who sparkle in the sunlight rather than burning to death, as in older portrayals.
Vampires used to be badass motherfuckers that struck at night and hypnotized you into obedience so they could feed on you and turn you into a zombie, but then emo teens started to pretend that they were vampires until it stopped meaning "Dark Creature of the Night, Here to Devour your Soul", and started meaning "Faggot". Now, vampires are created through the use of make-up, bad poetry, and incense lit to conceal the smell of pot so the vampire kid's parents don't come in and scold them in front of his friends from high school.
If you want vampires in their original, non-emo bad ass form, check out the Warhammer Fantasy Battle game created by GW, or go to Youtube, and search for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure's Dio Brando (ZA WARUDO!) or look up Hellsing Ultimate. I mean, FUCK! Also, Team Four Star abridged episode one of Hellsing Ultimate, and had Alucard kill Edward Cullen. You know you want to watch it. Why aren't you? Have we offended you in some way?
History of Vampires
Ancient Vampires
In ancient cultures, there weren't any creatures called "vampires" or any word that roughly translates to "vampire"; however, stories were told of demons and spirits that drank blood or ate flesh. Even the devil was directly associated with the eating of flesh and drinking of blood, and the gods and goddesses of some cultures were credited with these activities. The Persians were one of the first civilizations to have tales of blood-drinking demons: creatures attempting to drink blood from men were depicted on excavated pottery shards. Ancient Babylonia had tales of the mythical Lilitu, synonymous with and giving rise to Lilith (Hebrew לילית) and her daughters the Lilu from Hebrew demonology. Lilitu was considered a demon and was often depicted as subsisting on the blood of babies. However, the Jewish counterparts were said to feast on both men and women, as well as newborns. The closest this got to the idea of vampires in recent history was that some demons would possess corpses and then use them to drink the blood of people.
Medieval and European Vampires
Many of the myths surrounding vampires originated during the medieval period. The 12th century English historians and chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded accounts of revenants, though records in English legends of vampiric beings after this date are scant. These tales are similar to the later folklore widely reported from Eastern Europe in the 18th century and were the basis of the vampire legend that later entered Germany and England, where they were subsequently embellished and popularized.
During the 18th century, there was a frenzy of vampire sightings in Eastern Europe, with frequent stakings and grave diggings to identify and kill the potential revenants; even government officials engaged in the hunting and staking of vampires. Despite being called the Age of Enlightenment, during which most folkloric legends were quelled, the belief in vampires increased dramatically, resulting in a mass hysteria throughout most of Europe. The panic began with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1725 to 1734, which spread to other localities. Two famous vampire cases, the first to be officially recorded, involved the corpses of Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole from Serbia. Plogojowitz was reported to have died at the age of 62, but allegedly returned after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the following day. Plogojowitz supposedly returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood. In the second case, Paole, an ex-soldier turned farmer who allegedly was attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying. After his death, people began to die in the surrounding area and it was widely believed that Paole had returned to prey on the neighbours. Another famous Serbian legend involving vampires concentrates around certain Sava Savanović living in a watermill and killing and drinking blood from millers. The folklore character was later used in a story written by Serbian writer Milovan Glišić and in the Serbian 1973 horror film Leptirica inspired by the story.
The two incidents were well-documented: government officials examined the bodies, wrote case reports, and published books throughout Europe. The hysteria, commonly referred to as the "18th-Century Vampire Controversy", raged for a generation. The problem was exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-claimed vampire attacks, undoubtedly caused by the higher amount of superstition that was present in village communities, with locals digging up bodies and in some cases, staking them. Although many scholars reported during this period that vampires did not exist, and attributed reports to premature burial or rabies, superstitious belief increased. Dom Augustine Calmet, a well-respected French theologian and scholar, put together a comprehensive treatise in 1746, which was ambiguous concerning the existence of vampires. Calmet amassed reports of vampire incidents; numerous readers, including both a critical Voltaire and supportive demonologists, interpreted the treatise as claiming that vampires existed. In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote:
"These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer."
The controversy only ceased when Empress Maria Theresa of Austria sent her personal physician, Gerard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampiric entities. He concluded that vampires did not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and desecration of bodies, sounding the end of the vampire epidemics. Despite this condemnation, the vampire lived on in artistic works and in local superstition.
Celtic mythology features the Baobhan Sidhe, which resemble the archetypal modern horror vampire, as they are beautiful women who take the blood of men while "dancing" with them (usually in a murderous fashion), but have to return to their burial mounds before the rise of the sun. There is also the Lennan Sidhe, or Barrow Lover, who is the tamer, more good natured, monogamous style of vampire girlfriend, who inspires her pet artist but also drains him, sometimes driving him into an early grave.
Romanian mythology also contributes heavily to the modern, sociable, attractive notion of vampires, who seem to usually be gingers, and could sometimes pass unnoticed in human society or even procreate or marry; even female vampires could bear offspring. The children are usually fated to become vampires after death. Romanian vampires come in countless varieties, from evil spirits to owls to vampire babes to actual living witches. Romanian vampires potentially have a shot at becoming alive again -- it involves marrying a foreigner, changing their name and leaving the country, however, which sounds a lot less like "becomes human again" and more "sneaks off to bite people elsewhere." YMMV.
Modern Vampires
In the late 1800s, Vampires were still widely regarded to be nasty little weirdos like Nosferatu, creeping around in the night looking freakish and completely the opposite of sexy. But then- along came the Hollywood portrayal of Bram Stoker's Dracula from the typical unattractive vampire (he was at least written as ugly and had hairy palms) to Tod Browning's Dracula film, starring Bela Lugosi's Dracula as a suave lady's man, and the Vampire's descent into sparkly Marty Stu-dom began. (Incidentally, vampires only began to burn to death by sunlight with 1922's Nosferatu film. Before this even Dracula himself could walk in broad daylight, though his powers were weakened). Lady-types developed a metaphorical hard-on for vampires, and vampires supposedly got literal hard-ons for ladies until 1976, when Anne Rice published the first book in her series, the Vampire Chronicles, which established a more... Primal interpretation, wherein Vampires had free will, but all of their needs paled before the all-consuming need for fresh blood to feed upon. This is where we started to see more classical interpretations, where they were sociopaths, gluttons, and sophisticates, all at once.
Discussion of the Vampire mythos and how Vampires began to suck (figuratively) cannot be had without careful analysis of the culture at the time. Vampires, up through the 1980s, had always been associated with gothic horror - it's one of many reasons that there was such a resurgence of Victorian-style fashion amongst the Goth crowd, which admittedly a lot of /tg/ finds impossibly hot. Goth culture celebrated Vampire mythos for this very reason; they were a worthy bit of admirable folklore, the source of many an interesting BBEG, and an inspiration for a lot of things in Goth culture. This "classical" archetype is what we would see with most Vampire portrayals throughout movies, comic books, television series, and so on during this time.
Sadly, in the early 1990s, cross-contamination by the "Emo" subculture caused this to bottom out in a parasitic fashion - Emo glutted itself on anything it could encounter and claimed that it belonged rightly to it, and Goth subculture, with its established fashion sense and habits, was a natural target. The prevalence of Emo bullshit caused the bulk of the Goth subculture to retreat back to its Victorian roots, but not before Emos had secured Vampires as "their own." Similar would happen to other genres Emo wormed its tendrils into so as to feed: Grunge, Punk, and even the Beat movement would all likewise be absorbed by Emo attempts to claim it, which is why many stereotypes, including Emo fashion, music stylings, and predilection towards poetry persist to this day. None of this, however, would really amount to the damage that Emo subculture did to Vampires, romanticizing them into individuals for whom the taste for blood was little more than a dietetic quirk. Emos continue to drink tomato juice from plastic Halloween goblets, dress up like gay vampires, and whine endlessly about how they supposedly hate life to this very day, whilst everyone else who remembers the good old days just shakes their head in disgust, goes "son, I am disappoint," and walks off, depressed.
Vampires in Modern Fiction
Hellsing
A nice breath of fresh air from this came in the form of a manga called Hellsing, which focused on a gunslinging "domesticated" vampire named Alucard who works for an organization of vampire hunters. The Hellsing manga follows the story of the Hellsing Organization, a British family-run organization incharge of killing supernatural threats to the British empire. In the manga's case, they fight a 50-year old batallion of artificial vampire nazis originally meant to turn the tide of the war (called "The Last Batallion"), under the command of an SS major, who wants to kill Alucard for ruining the original Last Battalion project, and just for the lulz.
Alucard himself is a blood-crazed, warmongering maniac that makes the archetype 90s anti-hero look tame by comparison, even if the villains in the series were even worse than him. He somewhat follows the story of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with him being Vlad the Impaler in life before getting killed and becoming Dracula in death ("Alucard" is Dracula backwards), but is instead compelled to serve humans rather than being axed off outright.
Just an example of his insanity and his level of dickishness is that he is completely immortal, even by vampire standards, capable of even surviving methods designed to kill vampires (from stakes to the heart and beheadings with blessed equipment. Although this is because he can use the millions of souls he has consumed over 5 centuries as a scapegoat.), and is the most powerful vampire in existence. Despite being able to kill any foe he desires in the blink of an eye; he will instead allow them a hollow chance at killing him, only to get back up, show them a fraction of his power, and proceed to slowly dismember and humiliate them before finally killing them, just for the lulz. Ohh, and he also transforms into a little girl when it fancies him (Although keeping his masculine voice while in this form). Truly the vampire all of /tg/ asked for.
There's also Seras Victoria, a vampire sired by Alucard himself after "saving" (which is in quotes because he fatally shot her in the first place on purpose) her from being molested and murdered by another vampire. She originally started off as a hapless slave of her master, but becomes murder on legs after she unlocked her true power as a vampire, most notably by literally grinding someone's face off by dragging their face through a wall at high speed.
The series had anime adaption made, but like many animes based on mangas, it started to run out of material and started making its own, which divided fans of the manga, and ended after only 13 episodes. Four years later we got a more faithful adaptation called in the form of series of direct to video movies they're called Original Video Animations and they're nowhere near as shitty as direct to video movies are implied to be called Hellsing Ultimate. Even though most these haven't been released stateside MSince watching dubbed anime is for scrubs even if Hellsing's dub is markedly better than most others, any decent anime fan site will still have them subtitled, so if you want to watch them, you don't have to look to far (Although Crispin Freeman's voice acting for Alucard is the shit, compared to his equally good Japanese counterpart). So go watch them. That's an order.
And here's to get you started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNLuGfIb5Do
Pinelight
And then Stephanie Meyer showed up and ruined Vampires forever. At this point, vampires still had the whole "promiscuity" thing going for them; that is, they did until Meyer up and decided to write Twilight so she and other Christian moral faggots would have a Vampire Abstinence porno they could fap to without angering Jesus. With this, vampires reached their current state of immense glittery faggotry and became the fucked-up, universally-mocked, emotionally-abusive teen heartthrobs they are today, while every Vampire Counts player in WHFB, every old-school Goth, and everyone who gives a damn about literary or cultural verisimilitude cried manly tears of pain and rage.
Fortunately, as a backlash against this complete castigation of the scary and badass monsters-of-the-night that they originally were, some modern fiction has taken the opposite direction by making their vampires actually frightening and dangerous. One rather bad (but very clever) game turned them into truly horrific undead adversaries, the likes of which are nightmare fuel.
Warhammer
Warhammer Fantasy Battle plays up the horror aspects of the Vampires to 11, knowing that it's what makes them a compelling force to play - after all, the one nice thing about being an undead lord of the night is that you get to be a right and propa evil overlord about it. Vampires in WFB are both hard as nails and are wizards to boot, meaning they cover most bases that other armies have to pick and choose, however being masters of necromancy and all, if the general dies then the rest of the undead army under his command usually starts crumbling to dust (not so much after the return of Nagash though) unless another Vampire/Necromancer can step in and take over.
Warhammer 40,000
There were once actually rules for Vampires (spelled Vampyre) in the 40k universe, taken as supplementary rules for Necromunda they represented an abhuman subtype who drank blood, had superhuman statlines and raised gangs of thralls to do their bidding. Even a young, pony-tailed Gav Thorpe got involved with the rules and wrote up a counter character: B'Ufi the Vampyre Slayer which was somehow part of the 40k canon.
Though 40k has generally left Necromunda behind, mention of blood sucking mutants can still be found in Dark Heresy and one of the Freeblade Knights (the Crimson Reaper) is rumoured to be a Vampyre.
Also, several tabletop factions drink blood as part of their fluff..
- Blood Angels A first-founding chapter who includes blood in many of their chapter themes and rituals (and their successors usually follow this), basically what would happen when you throw Catholicism and Bram Stoker's Dracula in a blender and pressing puree. The Blood Angels have a lot of modern vampire-ish themes, mixed with angelic elements, from looking eternally youthful, being long-lived (even by Astartes standards), and have an 1-3 chances of developing a need to quench their partially dormant bloodthirst.
- Blood Drinkers A Blood Angels successor chapter. They have a literal need to drink blood, although unlike their more angelic cousins; they do not do this out of ritual: instead they do it as a way to sate their chapter's innate bloodlust.
- Blood Ravens (Not really vampires, but Fantasy counterpart is Strigany, who serve the Vampire Counts.)
- Flesh Eaters (Crappy Space Marines who like to eat flesh. Especially if it's raw.)
- Dark Eldar (While not bloodsuckers, although they might drink their victim's blood if it fancies them; the Dark Eldar partake in a sort of "emotional vamprism" on their hosts to sustain themselves. Said vamprism is carried out usually by slowly torturing the host until he's dead. They also follow the "classic" Vampire aesthetics; being a bunch of crazy arrogant pale and nimble wannabe-aristocrats. They even come back from dead in a process, which involves crystal coffins.)
Vampires in 4E
Vampires are now a class in 4e. They were introduced in the Heroes of Shadow book, and yes, they are in fact a CLASS now, no longer a template or curse. There is also detailed in the book a new race, "Vryloka," which are basically vampires in their own right so WHY MAKE VAMPIRE A CLASS, I MEAN SERIOUSLY. Only in the fluff, Vryloka have the power of vampires, just without the bloodlust. Really? That just sounds stupid on paper. And also stupid in general. We got a fucking cornucopia of stupid going on here.
The Vampire class has the Shadow power source, and is also a striker, which is apparently all Shadow is good for in 4e, being that all it consists of is Assassins, Executioners (new Assassins from the same book) and Vampires, all of which are strikers. Shadow and Martial are two power sources in 4e that are alike in that nobody ever picks anything that's not a striker, only with shadow they just figured they'd cut out the middle-man and ONLY offer strikers.
WOTC explained that they named the class Vampire because they really wanted the players to feel like they were playing one, as most of the powers are based on vampiric lore (turning into bats, mist, wolves, drinking blood to gain healing surges). If so, they still could have come up with an original fucking name either way and kept the fluff relatively the same.
This raises a question: Since vampirism was already present in 4e by way of heritage feats (and one could already gain vampiric powers this way), why not simply expand on that idea instead of introducing both a race AND class that are both vampires? Or better yet, why not make vampire a race in the same way that Revenant is (that is, you choose which race you are a revenant of and can select that race's feats)? As the system is now, it is possible to make a Vryloka with Vampire class and the Vampiric Heritage feat, meaning you can gain utility and attack powers that all relate to being a vampire from three different sources with one character.
This also means that Vampires (without multiclassing or making a hybrid HAHA NO HYBRID VAMPIRES THERE ARE NOW, DIPSHIT) cannot be mages or knights (at least the ones with the vampire class). Players who take the vampiric heritage feat can do so with any class, and can take a paragon path (Blood Knight, which would have been a better name for the class itself but instead OOPS I guess it's already taken).
Another, better idea than they did: 4e Dark Sun had character templates: optional setting-specific choices to give players a bit more unique character fluff, that came with one additional power and others to choose from as you leveled up. Why couldn't they have done this with Vampire? A Vampire Template would have made sense, and could fit anywhere, in any setting. Whereas Dark Sun's templates had no negatives, they could have made the template force the weaknesses (sunlight, garlic, stakes in the heart, whatever) onto the player. This literally would simply WORK.
Tl;dr There's a Vampire class, it is stupid, blame 4e.
Vampire: the Masquerade
VtM from White Wolf had a pretty good take on Vampires, consisting of an entire campaign setting surrounding Vampires, covering a range of playable clans from the uber-seductive Toreador (presumably what inspired the Twilight books though) to the feral Gangrel, the fucking ugly as shit Nosferatu to the batshit mental as fuck Malkavian. So pretty much the setting allowed players to play the vampire of their dreams.
The setting was real-world too, fitting into real-word mythologies using elements from biblical canon to explain itself away, using the origin story of Cain(e) & Abel and making Vampires to be Caine's cursed descendants, after learning how to master his blood magic from the equally outcast Lilith (Adams first ex-wife according to Hebrew canon)