On Vampires

Common misconceptions, short history and the life of modern vampires.

NOTE: The Q&A is meant to be read after Vampire facts and history for the best experience, as this establishes the most important bits of information. After that, you can jump between questions as you like.

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Changelog

  • September 13th, 2025
    • Answered "Who are some vampire celebrities?"
    • Answered "Do vampires live in crypts or caves?"
  • August 25th, 2025
    • Answered "Can vampires turn humans into vampires?"
    • Answered "Can vampires become human?"
    • Answered "Are all vampires alcoholics?"
    • Fixed typos.
  • August 13th, 2025
    • Can vampires extend their fangs at will?
  • August 12th, 2025
    • How come vampires have never been exposed?

Introduction

Like many things in life, I never thought that I would ever write a paper on Vampires - until I got sucked into (heh, heh) the topic entirely by chance. I was happily building a stone wall in my garden, when... (no, I was not bitten by a vampire) ...in fact, let's skip this part entirely. One thing leading to another, I spent a year living among them. I travelled between the many clans scattered all over the world on a big fact finding mission.

This is what I learned and which they agreed to share with the world. When I mentioned that this will expose them, most said that it doesn't matter. When I asked why it does not matter, they elaborated that my paper will be a small drop in a gigantic collection of crackpot vampire theories and fanfiction, and that no one will believe it. Apparently they are used to this, saying that the truth is out there but no one believing it is so very deliciously ironic.

Heh.

Oh well, if you don't believe these facts, just tell yourself that they are "fanfiction" instead.

Vampire facts and history

Misconceptions

Contrary to popular belief, vampires do not have any trouble going into churches. Crucifixes, garlic and all the other paraphernalia that is supposed to harm or repel them does not, in fact, work. It is largely based on rumours that the vampires themselves created, and the rest has been invented by humanity's wild imagination. Why would they do this? Well, if you believe that a crucifix should repel vampires, then anyone who is not affected by one is not a vampire.

Recent literature and movies have started to change the rules a little, crucifixes and churches having no effect, for example. However, this has been done more for the novelty of it than any basis in fact. Especially since new silly and exotic ways to kill or harm vampires are often invented to compensate.

Sunlight

You would be hard-pressed to drive a stake through a vampire's heart, for example. Not that it's especially easy with a baseline human, but a vampire's rib cage is actually reinforced with a flexible bone mesh. Even jumping up and down on the stake (provided the vampire helps you hold it upright) would not pierce through that. Why evolution decided that vampires needed this is unknown - maybe they used to get staked in the heart a lot, millennia ago.

In reality, the only one of those things that does harm them is sunlight. Not like you see in movies where they spontaneously combust, though. It takes longer than four agonizing hours for a vampire to die that way. What mostly keeps them inside in daytime is not the actual danger of dying, but the skin rash it gives them within minutes, which is not becoming in public (they are quite vain), and which can leave a lasting mark (more on that later).

Also, if you're thinking of killing a vampire with a UV lamp, no matter how strong, think again. No one knows why (yet), but only actual sunlight harms them. Your overpowered flashlight will only annoy them like it would anyone, really. Unless you somehow find a way to store sunlight or create a chain of mirrors around the planet that you can shine on a vampire (who will likely just move out of the way - four hours in the sun, remember?), no amount of light will help.

Only stone (or stone-based materials like concrete), dirt and wood can protect them from sunlight. Indirect sunlight (think reverberation) is a major issue even when hiding in the shade. The idea of putting on enough sunblock to protect themselves does not work. Traditional wood-based paper does work to some extent, but it is too thin to be effective. Some vampire scientists (yes, those are a thing) have been working on wood fibre based apparel with promising results, but walking outside with an uncovered face this is not. The thing with eyesight is that you need light to hit your retinas, so even if your whole body is protected, those poor, fragile light receptors will still be exposed.

Blood sucking

If you're worried about being drained dry by a vampire, don't be. Vampires eat the same stuff that we do, and modern vampire women only extremely rarely still feed that way. Another fact that literature got wrong (without any help from anyone): Only the women bite. Men only have vestigial fangs that have no function beyond physical appeal (that's a whole other chapter). The women only bite when they are pregnant to complement their diet (like mosquitoes). Or at least they did back in the stone age. Vampire babies have some increased and specific needs, but nowadays, there are many other and better food sources to provide them with the required proteins and vitamins.

Vampirekind as a whole was quite happy to get past the whole drinking blood shenanigans. If you have ever used a straw to drink something, imagine the straw being a lot smaller in diameter (think a couple of millimeters) and the liquid being a lot thicker than water. Even if you have two straws, you will be there for a while if you want to empty that whole cup. Vampire men notoriously complained about being forced to stand watch for the women while they struggled for more than half an hour to get their fill. The women would roll their eyes and continue working their suction muscles, not to mention having to pause to switch from sucking blood to injecting another dose of anesthesia when the victim inevitably starts to wake up in the middle of the process. Sometimes nature does blunder a bit when it works its evolution thing.

Trivia: Vampire women's fang suction muscles were reputed to be the strongest muscles of any mammal on earth (when compared in relative size to the next contender, the Elephant's trunk). After millennia of disuse, the suction muscles of modern vampire women are effectively unable to sustain their pregnancies this way.

I suppose that vampire movies would be pretty boring if we had to wait half an hour for the victims to be drained. Also, vampires are, as mentioned earlier, quite vain. They will not let blood spray everywhere, and they will most definitely not wipe their mouth on their impeccable jacket sleeves. Even back in the stone age, vampire women were neat. Not a single drop of blood was left on the victim (but plenty left in the victim). The stuff was just way too hard to get at to waste any of it. That's why with the increasing food variety and culinary advancements as the world's borders expanded, to everyone's relief (vampire women, men and standard humans included), the door was closed on the blood sucking with a satisfying thunk.

Vampire biologists (yes, those are a thing too) say that even though the fangs have no practical use anymore (and even bring their own share of health troubles), they have retained them because of the societal appeal. Fangs are a huge deal (actually a massive deal). They guarantee not only sexual appeal but also status. Natural selection doing its thing, only vampires with fangs were able to reproduce, thus preserving them.

Longevity

If you're still feeling romantic about vampires after all this, let's have a look at longevity. Yes, vampires are long-lived and regenerate wounds astoundingly fast. Everybody got that right. In theory, they can live several thousand years. Yet the oldest vampire today is no more than five hundred years old. The reason is that even if they can live that long, they don't want to - and with good reason. Nature, in its infinite wisdom / sarcasm / sense of humor (choose whatever you feel appropriate) has made it so that some body functions do not age the same way.

The brain, skin, hair, teeth and skeleton are the only things that stop aging at around forty. All the rest continues to age. Organs collectively (and miraculously) continue working, but their issues pile up over time. Even if your mind is still fresh, imagine living in a husk that will not die, but that is pure agony to move around in (vampires are not immune to arthritis, for example).

Of course, surgery can help - that famous vampire regeneration capability never diminishes. However, regeneration does not mean "back to the original template" as it does in literature and movies, where cuts just disappear to leave pristine skin. The cut heals superfast, yes, but it leaves a scar like any wound big enough does for everyone. The vampire's platelets are not magically more intelligent than those of baseline humans, so even if they never tire out and work a lot faster, they do the same work. Every cut leaves an everlasting mark, so imagine ending up like walking scar tissue (if you're lucky enough to still be mobile). Skin that never ages is awesome, but all those tiny scars that us baseline humans collect in a lifetime just pile up over the centuries for vampires. We don't care quite as much because we know we won't have to live with them forever. Also, as your skin wrinkles with age, scars tend to get less annoying than the wrinkles.

So in fact, vampires do not live thousands of years because they prefer dying way before they get that far.

Incidentally, this is why vampires do not fight. They especially do not use or even like blades. The way their bodies age is at the core of why they are so vain: they are obsessed with staying healthy and pretty as long as they possibly can. They are terrified of blades and the little everyday mishaps that can leave a lasting mark. Thus, the modern vampire leads a pretty boring, sheltered life, does not smoke and eats disgustingly healthy. Not having a single scar on your face at the age of one hundred is an achievement that is a reason to party.

Partying

And that is possibly where vampires excel: They know how to party (safely!), and to drink. The vampire metabolism is extremely efficient in breaking down alcohol, and the rest of the body also (suspiciously?) handles even extreme doses of alcohol without lasting damage. The alcohol hits their system within minutes, and triggers an intense euphoria that does not diminish over repeated use, but which only lasts a couple of seconds before the alcohol is inexorably broken down. Vampire biologists (yes, we already established that they exist) suspect that it may even be beneficial, as the vampire body seems so weirdly attuned to alcohol. Alcohol and tea. Don't even get me started on the tea thing, it's bonkers.

Anyway, back to partying. Yes, vampires love parties, and have invented more reasons to party and drink than baseline humans have (which must be some kind of record in the universe). Granted, vampire parties are not wild in the way that you would expect. For all the reasons mentioned before, partying is done in a way that minimizes bodily harm to the extreme. The duration of the euphoria being so short, some very creative drinking techniques are used to extend this as far as possible (techniques that I will not share for obvious baseline human health reasons). However, they drink in turns so that the rest can watch over the drinkers and prevent them from harming themselves during the short bout of euphoria. The biggest discussion topic is the duration of the inebriation, vampires keeping track of their personal bests, and a lot of betting is done around how long the next contender will possibly experience it.

Vampire novelists (ah, those are easy to believe exist, huh?) and poets (a little less, maybe) write a lot about euphoria and what vampires experienced in their short bouts of inebriation. The literature on euphoria comes as a close second after fang literature, and both are naturally often combined.

Vampire Questions and Answers

Can I send you my questions?

Sure! Send your questions to eve@aeonoftime.com, I will add the answers here.

Do vampires drive cars?

Sure, why wouldn't they? They drive very carefully and are not known to be speedsters, but they like to travel in comfort as much as everyone. They know the risks, but even they will tell you that at some point, you just have to live, you know? (they don't really say it like that. They say it much more philosophically, and at great length.)

Do vampires have super strength?

Sorry, not really. They have a heavier skeleton so they are generally a bit stronger because they have more mass to move around for the same body size, but nothing like being able to lift people up by their throats with one arm (I'm assuming that's what you were picturing). If they trained to have strong enough muscles though, they could possibly do something like that thanks to their strong bones. In a baseline human, trying to lift something as heavy as another person at the end of your arm (imagine the leverage!) usually causes something to either snap (sinews, muscles) or break (bones).

In reality, vampires tend to be even slightly weaker than the average baseline human because they exercise so little. Exercise carries quite a bit of risk of harming yourself, so they tend to avoid anything too physically exerting. There are exceptions, of course, but peaceful sports like Yoga or Tai Chi are very popular among even the younger vampire generations.

I realize that this may burst your vampire fantasies bubble. Maybe it helps to imagine that if a vampire did some professional body building (there are none in existence), they could deadlift about half the weight again of what the world record holder can deadlift (at the time of writing, this is Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson with 505Kg, so approximately 750 Kg)?

So how do you kill a vampire?

Knowing them the way I do (and I was hoping you would realize this too after reading their history), I don't see why you would want to. Maybe back in the stone age, you would wake up with a headache and be missing about a cup of blood, but that was the most damage a vampire would to do you (see How much blood do vampire women drink?). Nowadays, with their phobia of damaging their precious skin, they do not pose a threat to anyone.

If you did have a good reason to kill one, however, the best way is to (nah, seriously, you'll have an easier time finding a murderous baseline human to do the world the service of getting rid of instead)...

How much blood do vampire women drink?

Today? None. When they did drink blood, millennia ago, they drank about a cup of their victim's blood. That's about three hundred milliliters, which was enough for about a week of pregnancy before more was needed. As a comparison, when donating blood to a blood bank, up to five hundred milliliters can be drawn. The women also knew not to bite the same person again before two full moons had passed (roughly two months, more than enough for the person to recover).

Assuming that a modern vampire woman did want to drink the blood of someone, she would be facing several problems right away: The unused anesthesia glands having atrophied, she would not be able to put her victim to sleep. This alone would be a very effective deterrent, since putting people to sleep any other way would carry a lot of risk to damage one's skin. Assuming that she found a solution to this conundrum, the next hurdle is actually drinking the blood. The same way the anesthesia glands have atrophied, the suction muscles have diminished. It is very likely that she would not be able to suck a single drop of blood through her fangs - and even if she did, it would certainly involve a constant flow of cursing (which is not easy to do with your fangs in someone's veins).

The much easier solution would be to get some blood from a blood bank (okay, it might be hard to explain) or to go to a vampire biologist (they always have blood to do science-y stuff with and might be amenable to part with a little bit).

Are all vampires filthy rich?

Yes and no. I'm not sure just how much money is needed to reach the "filthy rich" barrier you mention, but vampires in general are rich through the sheer quantity of assets they have amassed over millennia. Not so much in terms of actual cash, but more in the form of real estate and valuable items like paintings and collectible objects. These things, if handled correctly, can generate a steady stream of income without having to work. Vampire bankers (yup, many of those around) are consummate experts in these fields. It's hard to get some meaningful numbers or details from them (they are a very secretive and paranoid bunch), but I don't think I'm too wide off the mark saying that more than half of the world's wealth is in the hands of vampires (heh, that sounds oddly anti-capitalistic).

That's the "Yes" part. As for the "no" part, here is where it gets interesting. Individually, vampires have the same challenges to earn money as everybody else. All vampire assets are handled collectively by the bankers, and distributed fairly to everyone (I would avoid comparing this to communism where they can hear you). Each vampire gets a monthly allowance that they can use as they see fit. This is a substantial allowance, but by no means extravagant. Their real estate is free to use anywhere in the world, so they never pay rent. If they want to earn more though, they are on their own. There are some billionaire vampires (no, I won't tell, stop pestering me), but being the good-natured partying kind, they do not usually have any great aspirations beyond the next party.

How do vampire bites work, are they painful?

Millennia in the past when vampires were still skulking around at night biting people, their bites were not painful at all. This was thanks to several factors. First off, the anesthesia hits before the fangs even pierce the skin. Vampires have glands inside their mouth that are used to expel a fine mist of anesthesia with their breath (which has often been mistakenly depicted as a kind of hypnosis in vampire literature). The anesthesia acts faster than greased lightning, so you're asleep before you even get bitten. Vampire scientists explained that it works like a neurotoxin and can bypass the skin's barriers.

Once you get bitten, a numbing agent is injected, of course, so you do not even feel where you have been bitten when you wake up. Combined with an injection of a dose of the vampire's own platelets which substantially speed up the healing process, most victims are none the wiser except for a mild headache, which is more the result of the anesthesia than the blood loss (see How much blood do vampire women drink?).

What literature and movies also get wrong is that vampires do not punch the whole length of their fangs into you. It might look very dramatic on screen, but would create big holes that are not only unnecessary, but also take longer to heal. Instead, they gently place their teeth on your skin, and the fangs then instinctively pierce only as far as needed to hit the target vein. They even instinctively detect if there is a vein below them, and will not extend if there is none within reach (pretty neat system if it wasn't so creepy. Evolution is wild).

Trivia: A young vampire's first attempts to bite someone are fabled to have been a great source of ridicule back when biting was still a thing. Finding a vein and placing your teeth so that both fangs can reach the target vein is apparently a lot harder to do than you'd think, especially since you can't see what you are doing (some elders said that you can "feel" the veins, but younger ones said that's total bollocks. I tend to agree to the former).

Trivia: The vampire biologists invariably end up laughing when they explain the fang mechanics and start to mime how it must have looked: The youngster trying to bite down, the fangs refusing to extend, and then changing position frequently to try to get the position right, occasionally releasing their victim to make sure that the vein is still where it was a few seconds ago (I admit picturing it is actually quite funny).

Can vampires extend their fangs at will?

Answered: August 13th, 2025

Most of them can't, and it's a huge deal. The fangs are an instinctive mechanism (see How do vampire bites work), which is usually not under the vampire's conscious control. They stay in their retracted position unless they detect a vein (and not one of the vampire's own veins, either). Vampire biologists have demonstrated that the fangs can detect the faint vibrations that are transmitted from the victim's skin to the vampire's teeth. Basically, vampire teeth are extremely sensitive seismic detectors.

Just like some people can access muscles that the majority of the population can't (like being able to wiggle your ears) (oh, you can wiggle your ears? Congratulations! You'd make a great vampire), some vampires can choose to extend and retract their fangs at will. Now this is the absolute excellence that every vampire strives for, and which grants substantial physical appeal and social standing.

Trivia: Dolphus von Schmatterberg, a famous vampire who lived in the 1700s, is renowned for getting his fangs stuck in the extended position. During a grand gala in Berlin for the prussian clan (Germany did not exist yet - Berlin was the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia back then), after doing his famous fang-extending wink (extending his fangs and winking at the apogee just before retracting them again), they did not want to retract anymore. Vampire biologists today theorize that he ruptured the tiny tendons attached to the fangs after seeing more use than they are designed for. He tragically decided to end his life not long after this, not being able to live through the humiliation of having his fangs filed down so he could eat normally. Nowadays, surgery is available to reattach the tendons.

So yes, some vampires can extend them at will, but as with many of the things they do, they do so very carefully. Dolphus' ghost haunts a great many of the vampires that can control their fangs (one could say that this has the benefit of keeping them grounded, staving off any fang-induced delusions of grandeur). As a result, all assembled vampires will nod politely and murmur their understanding if a vampire refuses to extend their fangs - ostensibly to avoid undue stress to them after having performed multiple times already.

Trivia: Some vampires have a genetic health condition that causes their teeth to falsely register chewing during meals as a vein being nearby, causing the fangs to extend randomly while they eat. Not only does this quickly become annoying, the repeated extending and retracting of the fangs tires the related muscles, making eating painful. Add the embarrassment at not being able to control your fangs to the mix, and you end up with a very unhappy vampire (which is terribly unfair, considering that most vampires don't have any control over them). Older vampires can be similarly afflicted, but which is then not due to genetics, but plain old age. This condition naturally carries heavy social stigma in such a fang-centered society.

Do vampires always bite in the neck?

No. Any place where a vein is readily accessible will do. Since the human body pretty much needs blood everywhere to make things work, you can virtually bite people anywhere you fancy. In practice, of course, there are some places that are just more convenient, accessible, and sanitary. Remember that vampires are vain? Your private parts are quite safe from vampires, even if they were actually still biting people.

There is a persistent vampire "fact" that the neck is the favorite place for vampire bites because the veins there are large. In reality, the size only plays a small. Since the amount of blood that can be sucked through the fangs is so small, it would only start to be a problem with tiny veins. The extra pressure in the big ones actually complicates things when the fangs are retracted. Subdermal bleeding is not inconspicuous.

In fact, the favorite veins are in the arms. Arms are very accessible and still flexible even when your victim is asleep and suddenly weighs as much as a dead body. Try biting the neck of a sleeping person, and you will quickly realize that it's a bigger hassle than you imagined (remember the bit about positioning the fangs just right?). Just lift the arm though, and you have some good vein choices right there.

Arteries, veins, does it matter?

An astute question! Arteries carry blood away from the heart to wherever it needs to go. Veins carry blood back to the heart. Vampires don't care in which direction the blood flows (wow, that sounds really poetic). What they do care about is the oxygen content of the blood. They prefer the CO2-laden blood, which seems illogical and plain weird to me (I might be weird too though).

The vampire biologists confirmed this with some science mumbo-jumbo that sounded like they don't really know why. At least they had no good answer ready, and one of them might even have muttered that it's weird. Apparently, they ran some tests by letting vampires taste small samples of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood (sourced through non-biting means, of course) to see which one they preferred, and they consistently preferred the deoxygenated one. However, they were unable to explain the difference between the two, and what made them prefer one over the other. No accounting for taste, I suppose.

Do vampires really sleep in coffins?

Some do, but it's more because it's cool than any actual need or scientific reasons. They don't have to lie in the dirt of their homeland or any such fantasy imaginings either, however mysterious they may sound. The only factual thing about coffins is that they are made of wood, which is a great protection against sunlight. A vampire or other may at some point have chosen to hide out in a coffin in a pinch, or built a wooden box as a shelter of fortune, but that's really all there is to it.

Trivia: As I mentioned, some modern vampires sleep in coffins. However, it is important to redefine the term. It's more "bed in the form of a coffin" than an actual coffin. As some younger vampires told me when I asked their opinion, they said that it's a sure way to stay a bachelor if you sleep in a coffin. There is only space for one person in there, and there is a very short window of time in which this is considered cool. Also, it seems that it gets really stuffy in there if you close the lid. Not cool either. A big bed with coffin character, however? Yes, that's definitely way superior.

Can vampires fly? Can they transform into bats?

Well, that part of vampire literature and movies had all vampiredom puzzled for a bit. At no point in their history have they even had any affinity to bats that could explain it. No, they do not fly (though they may dream of being able to like everyone else), and they most definitely do not have the capability to transform into bats or anything else ("apart from walking scar tissue", as one grumpy elder muttered).

Today we know that the idea germinated when European explorers found blood-feeding bats in America and dubbed them "Vampire bats" (Wikipedia). Back then, however, the vampire community was baffled by these wild new fantasies.

Do vampires sparkle?

Don't ask vampires this question. They do not "sparkle". The also do not shine, glow or are iridescent or even opalescent or bioluminescent, are not shrouded in a veil of shadows, and do not have voices from the crypt (ehhhh, some elders do sound crypt-ey, or at least close to the crypt) or anything un-vampiric like that. Considering how affronted they seemed at the idea, I was at first not quite sure what triggered this virulent rejection of the idea. I mean, sparkling is not a bad thing, is it? It can be pretty, at least.

Then I understood. It's about the fangs. As I mentioned (see Are fang bites painful?), the fangs are porous to facilitate the injection of the numbing agent and healing platelets. A side effect of this is that compared to regular teeth, they do not reflect light as well. They are not shiny. This has been a great source of frustration through the ages. For something that is central to vampire aesthetics and even their social status, fangs not being shiny is a big deal. So big, in fact, that vampire dentists (yes, really. They are no myth and are even scarier than our dentists) have developed special coatings to close the pores and add a layer of nice, shiny enamel. This is considered the absolute peak of beauty, pearlescent enamel being the latest fad (hah! pearlescent vampires!).

Especially the younger generation is known to ruin themselves, for their fangs glow up. As a result, the vampire dentists are now some of the wealthier vampires. When I see stuff like this, I realize how similar our cultures are even though we are so different.

Do vampires pee?

Yes. All biological functions are present, so everything works as you would expect, with the same amount and placement of orifices. Being omnivores like us, the digestion works exactly the same way, with all that entails.

Do we share a common ancestor? If yes, how did evolution split?

The vampire historians and biologists gave me a little scare when I posed that question to them. I swear their eyes lit up as if they were bioluminescent (they're not, see Do vampires sparkle?). This is apparently a topic of much research, discussion, controversy, hyperbole and overall much passion. It's sadly also one of those topics without a clear answer, hence the research, discussion,... you get it.

Trying to extract what we do know, and which could be confirmed scientifically, I can say with confidence that we do share a common ancestor (no, they are not, in fact, the aliens that built the pyramids). Without being able to corroborate this with much evidence, the split would most likely have occurred about three hundred to five hundred thousand years ago. It was the time of the neanderthals, when multiple hominid species were co-existing (albeit badly, since it was also the time when some went extinct). A small group possibly got isolated, perhaps in a cold, high-altitude or cave-dwelling environment (hah, bats!), and developed the vampiric traits to increase the survival rate of their offspring.

This is largely conjecture, but it does sound plausible. It is enough of a timeframe to explain the evolutionary aspects. It also makes vampires the more ancient branch of the human family tree, which, for once, fits the vampire literature.

What's the latest vampire fashion?

Not as glamorous as you expect it to be judging from the question. Vampires do live among us, they are not hidden away in some lost castle high up in the foggy mountains, uninfluenced by general fashion. Well, a decent number of them actually live in remote locations, but even there they are not entirely disconnected from the world. They are avid consumers of modern media.

Most of them follow the mainstream fashion, but I imagine that the more conservative ones will be a closer match to your expectations. Not as extravagant as vampire literature makes them out to be with ornate capes, tailcoats and shirts or similar. But still, elegant gentleman and gentlewoman garb without the menacing component that usually permeates vampire outfits (quite effectively, I might add). They would definitely stand out in a crowd, where you seldom encounter them. Personally, I feel that these conservative vampires lack nothing of the style of their romanced counterparts.

Do vampires like vampire literature and TV shows?

Boy, do they. I never caught them saying so outright, but the streaming platform history and poorly hidden library shelves alone paint a very clear picture. They love it, all of it. I think it is in part because it's supposed to be about them, but the fact that we baseline-humans get so much wrong reassures them and makes it so entertaining. I imagine that it would be less fun if the depictions were closer to the truth.

Trivia: No vampire will openly admit to liking the Twilight Saga movies (see do vampires sparkle?). I have seen subtle signs, but if they watch those, it's a well-kept secret. Mentioning the movies is a major faux-pas during social gatherings (I tested this for you, I think I am persona non grata in the swedish coven now. You're welcome).

Do vampires have insiders in governments?

Most kinds of public authority figures do not lend themselves well to the sunlight avoidance thing, so that's not viable. Influencing things through proxies and applying power through money and connections works as well as for the rest of humanity though. So yes, they have insiders and influence in the government apparatus, but from a distance. No vampire is hiding behind that politician you are convinced of being a vampire (they are possibly still a vampire, but not the same kind of vampire).

Where the lines get blurry is the show and music businesses. These are more tolerant of unorthodox behavior in general: No one will bat an eye if a musician only appears in nightly events. On the contrary, it becomes part of their identity. Not that I know of any vampire that actually did this (that was your follow-up question, right?).

Do you know any traditional vampire dishes?

Actually, yes, that's easy. Braised Wild Boar with Blackberries and Red Wine Reduction. It's an ancestral dish, passed down through the ages. Obviously not the red wine part, that was a later addition, but the wild boar was a staple food from very early on because it was the perfect complement to the iron-rich blood supplements that the pregnant vampire women needed. Blackberries and other kinds of berries were added when they were readily available through foraging.

As it was often cooked for pregnant vampire women, it quickly gained tradition status and became a symbol of vampire fertility. This tradition and symbolism persists today, the dish being served whenever a couple announces the pregnancy.

Beyond this, there is no vampire cuisine per se. It really is world cuisine with some regional highlights that match what everyone in the region eats.

Trivia: Vampire clans are often divided on the red wine part, and part of the tradition is to argue about the right way to cook it. Purists will say that red wine has nothing to do in there. Progressists will typically reply to this by saying that the purists should eat the boar raw instead then, to get the pure, pre-fire invention experience. This argument then usually devolves into cross-clan competitive drinking contests (red wine might also be involved, which goes to say that this is all just an elaborate spiel to get to the drinking part).

Do vampires keep familiars?

No (they can have friends, though!). The bit about familiars in vampire literature is based on them possessing some form of mind control (which is not possession, fyi. You lot sure are quick to jump to assumptions, sheesh). Since there is no such thing (not for lack of want thereof in some cases), keeping familiars is a much more risky proposition. Someone would have to freely agree to become a familiar, and while you might find such a person, I would question their sanity, and hence their reliability.

So no, even if a vampire did find someone willing, they would probably not want one. I mean, what do you do with a familiar really, and what fundamentally good person would want a groveling self-indoctrinated slave? Whoever fancied going shopping with Renfield in tow sometime might want to, but for the sake of this argument, let's assume nobody does (heh, I sure hope nobody ever did).

How do vampires die? Do they have funerals?

The first question I have no answer to. Vampires may very well be immortal, none ever got far enough to die of old age (that the histories recorded). Vampires decide freely when to end their lives, typically when the suffering from their aging parts has become unbearable. Exactly how this is done or what happens is a complete mystery by design. The death is a very private event and closely guarded secret. The only certainty I have is that it is a conscious decision.

The funeral that follows is a much more open event, if you are lucky to have their confidence. Contrary to what you might expect, it is a joyous event - a celebration, even. They party all night (it is a very good reason to party, you will hear them say), and in lieu of cremation or burial, what could be more natural than letting the sun take the body away? At dawn, they all gather on a dedicated castle tower (very traditional) or any place exposed to sunlight but protected from casual glances from passersby. The sun then does the rest.

What happens at a cellular level in the sun?

Nobody knows. Or rather, we know in excruciating detail what happens to the cells when exposed to sunlight: they break down entirely and the liquid evaporates rapidly, leaving only dust. This includes everything from living tissue to bone cells.

But I assume you meant the reason why this happens.

Vampire scientists, understandably, have been working on this question for a very long time. The fabled "cure" or miraculous solution to their vulnerability to sunlight is a popular topic of conversation as you might imagine, and is a major driving factor for vampire research in general. However, up until now, no major advances have been made. Even with modern science and recent AI analysis tools, the origin of the of cellular decay keeps its secrets. No manner of creative thinking or twisting biology will reconcile this combustion process with any rational theory of evolution. The fangs, the blood drinking, even the longevity have found if not entirely satisfactory answers, at least acceptable ones.

In the end, no matter how hard you might try, even cave dwellers that have never even seen the sun will not turn into a fine pile of ash when exposed to sunlight. Biology and radiation just do not work like that. You might end up with a puddle of goo at most, but not ash, and no skeleton breaks down this way.

So what is going on? With the lack of scientific answers, many vampires seek them in the divine with mixed results. Is it divine punishment for the blood they have taken? Has some ancient vampire made a pact with some unknown entity? Was it aliens? The lack of answers is maddening, even if you are not a vampire. And if you are, well. I think this might just make a believer in the divine of me too.

Trivia: With such an open-ended question, there are bound to be many different opinions and beliefs on the subject. Whenever you mix belief, religion and science, you will get arguments, debates and brawls - at least in our world. With vampires, you get... drinking contests (you've gotten the gist by now? Vampires really do have very many reasons to drink).

How come vampires have never been exposed?

Answered: August 12th, 2025

Oh, they have been exposed. Many times. Some vampires were killed over the millennia, but in those times the world was a very small place, so the vampire hunt never gained enough momentum to do any real damage. Even if they cannot shroud themselves in cloaks of darkness, they do have a knack for disappearing. Entire clans split up, scattering and moving to other clans until it blows over. They are nomadic at heart, always moving between places if only to hide the fact that they do not age. It has become a lifestyle that they embrace with few exceptions.

Additionally, ever since they stopped drinking people's blood, there is nothing inherently "bad" left to expose. This more than anything has drastically reduced their public exposure. Many vampires were wary of what the advent of our new communication age would bring, fearing that it could finally trigger a mass extinction event when people found them out worldwide. Funnily enough, though, the Internet and social networking in general had the exact opposite effect. Vampires have never been safer because vampire lore is now so ubiquitous. Anyone who exposes them is instantly debunked by whole swathes of vampire specialists and enthusiasts, even if they speak the truth (A fact that I am still coming to grips with myself, knowing that many will dismiss what I wrote here as fantasy).

There has, I believe, never been a better time to hide in plain sight.

Do stakes work?

See So how do you kill a vampire?.

Are all vampires alcoholics?

Answered: August 25th, 2025

As we have established, vampires like to party (see Partying). They consume large quantities of alcohol to reach euphoria, but this lasts a few minutes at most. Consuming alcohol regularly in large quantities alone should be enough to label them alcoholics, but as it turns out, it's not quite so clear-cut. These are the main criteria for alcoholism:

  • Craving: Vampires crave the euphoria alcohol gives them, but this is mostly a social thing. They do not experience the body imperative that leads alcoholics to consume alcohol despite themselves. However, vampires are not immune to psychological issues that can make them dependent on euphoria, and thus genuinely crave it.
  • Withdrawal: Vampires suffer no adverse effects (it's okay to feel that this is unfair).
  • Tolerance: Vampires do not build up a tolerance to alcohol over time as the human body does (yup, unfair too).
  • Regularity: Vampires do drink with frightening regularity, and in large quantities.

I would say that yes, vampires can indeed be seen as alcoholics of a sort, even if they do not suffer from their alcoholism.

Can vampires turn humans into vampires?

Answered: August 25th, 2025

Sadly, no. Sorry to bust your vampire fantasy bubble (yet again :|), but have you ever thought of what such a change would entail? This is not just growing fangs - think rewriting your cell's DNA instead. You are basically taking the blueprint that your body was built from, and replacing it with another entirely. Imagine rewriting the construction plans integrated in all thirty trillion of the cells that you are made of (the average cell count in a human body is thirty to thirty-seven trillion, excluding bacteria and other microorganisms). That sounds like a terrifyingly bad idea.

Current technology offers no way to do such a thing, as there is simply no delivery method that can affect enough cells in any timely manner. Scientists have been successful in using viruses to rewrite DNA in cells, but speed is the main hurdle. Even if you could rewrite one million cells per second (weeeee!) (this is far beyond current capabilities), it would take a year (~347 days) to reach thirty trillion cells. If you think that's doable, keep in mind that we are discounting the complications that are bound to arise from such a gradual change. Bodily processes will conflict between the vampire and human ways of doing things (vampire kidney vs human gall bladder, GO!), making the whole process extremely unpleasant if not fatal.

But let's not stop there!

Assuming that you survive the process, here is the real kicker: You are rewriting your DNA to use vampire DNA instead. Well, imagine a house built from a construction plan. If you use a different construction plan, you get a different house. Same thing here - you are replacing your body's original construction plan with that of the vampire that bit you. NOTE: Not generalized "vampire" DNA, but the exact construction plan of that specific vampire. You will actually turn into a clone of that vampire by being rebuilt from scratch according to their DNA.

For argument's sake, let's assume that there is a magical component in a vampire's bite, and they can, in fact, turn you into a vampire. in a short amount of time without all the hassle while keeping your current looks. The premise is still the same: To make a vampire out of you, your cells are converted to use vampire DNA. All your bodily functions will work according to the archetype of the vampire construction plan, so you don't end up as a clone of one. Sounds good so far, but the change will affect your thought processes and memory because vampires have a different neuronal structure. Even if they had the same structure, neurons are not exempt from the DNA change and will be affected in unpredictable ways.

In short, you would not be "you" anymore (for the sake of this study, we will not delve into why you might actually want that). I, for one, am not ready to die to become immortal (that sounds deeper than it is in this context).

Can vampires become human?

No. To understand why not, see Can vampires turn humans into vampires? - it's the same thing, but in reverse.

Who are some vampire celebrities, assuming they have some?

Answered: September 13th, 2025

Oh boy, do they. The whole fang-centered society and party culture naturally grooms and elevates vampires to become famous - but mostly within vampire society. Vampire celebrities outside of vampire society are very few, and do not last long (see How come vampires have never been exposed?). Due to their nomadic nature, celebrities travel around the world and thus have the luxury of an ever-changing, fresh audience.

Trivia: There are even voting boards where clans can request celebrities to come to them, which, as you can surely imagine, is a very competitive activity, and another very good reason to party. Many celebrities like to regularly ignore the voting boards, going to the clans with the least votes instead, or to a small one that seldom gets celebrity visits. As a result, speculation on the voting boards goes wild. Clans will take the collective decision to cast only a few votes in case a celebrity should do such a switcheroo. This includes analysing the behavior of celebrities to see which way they are liable to go.

It is frankly way beyond me, but to them, it's a lot of fun.

Do vampires live in crypts or caves?

Answered: September 13th, 2025

Caves, no (too few comforts!). However, quite a few vampires do indeed live in crypts. No, not the stuffy, cobweb and skeleton-infested kind that you are surely picturing right now. Modern vampires are creatures of comfort above all else. Even if the crypt entrances are very exactly what you were picturing a second ago, the interiors are akin to royal palaces.

Trivia: Most of the world-renowned cemeteries like the "Père Lachaise" in Paris (France) or "La Recoleta" in Buenos Aires (Argentina) have one or even several vampire crypts. They are extremely well hidden, their residents going to great lengths to keep it that way. It is a great opportunity to make fun of baseline humans who visit these cemeteries en masse without ever suspecting how close they come to actual living vampires.

Very few crypts are built nowadays, however. All the existing crypts have been built (dug?) before the advent of photography (not to mention portable phones and the Internet). Such massive undertakings are very hard to hide or explain away today. Also, the consensus is that modern cemeteries are entirely lacking in the charm department (I tend to agree there), and do not make good candidates for building a nice and cosy crypt home.

I heard of a vampire bible, is this real?

(to be answered)

You mentioned tea. What gives? And what about coffee??

(to be answered)

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