Due to the wish, Ranma was the only vampire of her sort of Japanese decent. The origin of her particular breed was from the alchemical equivalent to a super-soldier project in a region that would be called Transylvania one day.
In the early eighth century, desperate alchemists from the Byzantine empire worked to create invincible warriors with terrible powers. This was several hundred years before the rise of a vicious warlord of the Draculesti family who, despite an Irishman linking him to vampire myths in the 19th century, was himself very human.
The creation of the "lamia" was problematic at best. Of the thirty or so that were successfully created, half decided that they should rule the empire, five stayed loyal and the rest went on their own, either to become monsters or fade into the population.
They stayed relatively scattered amongst Europe, growing in numbers slowly. They reproduced slowly, mainly with normal humans and thralls. With each passing generation they became more adept at blending with human society.
The mongols took several lamia, mostly women, prisoner as creatures of interest before pulling back to China. Which scattered the lamia vampires throughout the bulk of Asia.
The age of exploration took them further abroad.
They were also only one of five known sorts of vampire, with the curious position of being the only type of vampire that was a biological species by modern scientific standards. With abilities explainable by psionic and genetic theories.
Aside from the lamia vampires, there were Nosferatu, Guang Shi, Revenants and Ghouls.
Ghouls could best be equated to the infectious zombies of living dead movies. They usually arose out of those that died by disease, but only rare individuals died with the intense will to go on. Unfortunately, only one was needed to start an outbreak.
Guang shi were spirits rather than undead. They were demons that fed on the life energies of mortals in a vampiric manner. Some were good, some were evil, most fell into neither category for sure. Mostly they were known China, but they existed by different names throughout the world. Pale, bluish skinned humanoid creatures that habitually took the form of individuals from the minds of the humans around them, usually the dead to avoid meeting the real thing.
Revenants were the angry dead. They fed on specific people, those that resembled those they had a grudge against. Their unreasoning hatred made them dangerous. The smallest similarity between a person and the ones they hated; a name, a habit, similar faces, anything; and it would attack.
They were classified as vampires because their grudge seemed contaigious. On average, a quarter of the men and women they killed would rise with the same fervent urge to seek revenge for some slight or tragedy, real or imagined, from their lives.
Nosferatu were another type of true undead. A master was created by forming a pact with some unknown force, sacrificing their soul and much of their memories in return for power. A master vampire was an extension of the dark force it made a deal with, and not its own being.
The master could create a secondary vampire by drinking a person's blood over three nights, secondary vampires carried more of their life-time memories than masters, but were less powerful. Like the Master, they were extensions of the original dark...intelligence that made the deal with the master. However, the fragments of personality that remained in some secondary vampires allowed the rare individual to work against the vampire intelligence.
Secondary vampires could also pass the contagion along, but, seven times out of ten, the result of such actions resulted in wild, berserker vampires with hardly any trace of humanity or intellect.
The purpose of the Nosferatu seemed to be to reproduce and wash over an area in a wave of blood, death and unholy rebirth. Dark rumors say that if enough vampires are spawn then the force that spawned them could bring itself into the world. As a result, whenever they were discovered by individuals of power, they were elminated completely and without mercy.
Even those secondaries that managed to fight against their masters had to be treated such, for they were still just extensions of the dark intelligence and not truly the people they had convinced themselves they were.
Nosferatu were truly the vampires of European legend. Running water, sunlight and ritual destruction were the only ways to completely destroy them. Simply staking a vampire would leave it in stasis until someone dislodged the stake. Staking a vampire and beheading it would result in the head growing a new body. The vampire had to be staked, beheaded and both body and head burned on seperate pyres and the ashes scattered to the four winds.
Sunlight and running water were both simpler and more limited means of killing a vampire.
However, there was a fourth type of Nosferatu, a Dhamphyl. Dhamphyls seemed to be normal humans, but, somehow, the three day death did not make them vampires. Dhamphyls had instinctive knowledge of all vampire weaknesses and powers and also an instinctive hate for all vampires. They did not seem to be has powerful as the full Nosferatu, but they had few of their weaknesses.
Lamia, as natural creatures of the world, however artificially created, were the most numerous vampires. And they seperated themselves by philosophy as stalkers, lords and ladies, and brides and grooms.
Predominately the difference was that the stalkers treated humans as prey and nothing else.
Lords and Ladies predominately treated humans as playthings and servants, they could be benevolent but they were always confident of their own superiority.
Brides and grooms tended to treat humans as people, they could be a bit condescending, but they still tended to consider themselves just another race.
Throughout the world, there were fifteen established families and perhaps five thousand lamia. The largest groups were in Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean coast, American East Coast and China, respectively.
Ghouls, Revenants and Nosferatu were eliminated whenever they were found, so often times there might not even be one in the world, but since their creation was sparked by repeatable events, they might come back at any time.
There were rarely more than a hundred guang shi in the world at any given time, not including any half-breed children that they only rarely spawned.
And vampires weren't the only thing in the world.
There were sorcerers, shaman, psychics, witch hunters, demon hunters, shapechangers, oni, demons, ogres, giants, trolls, fae, yokai and even a few dragons here and there. Hundreds of thousands of individuals aware of and even part of the supernatural world.
And this was the world Ranma had just joined and her attitudes made her closest to a lamia vampire bride.
An exotic one at that.
Lamia mostly married, or at least bedded, but that didn't stop them from seeking their own kind.
And there weren't any other lamia that looked quite like Ranma. Even discounting the fact that she wasn't from a known family and who knew what sort of psionic potential her unknown line had.
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(Posted Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:11)
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