What I like about sci-fi/fantasy is the different worlds that are created: Kim Harrison's cool world which has "the Turn" in it; LKH's and Charlainne Harris' "outted vampire" alternate histories. Llona Andrew's world that reminds me Garth Nix's where sometimes magic works and sometimes it doesn't... All very cool worlds, so what will mine be like?
Vampires:
My vampires I'm going to try to re-invent, or at least reinterpret. They are not "outted" because, in my humble opinion, if they were outted I don't think they'd fair well. Humans are excitable, unstable things that don't have a great track record with first encounters with different peoples. I also would think something that is immortal, or at least long lived and hard to kill, would not reproduce easily or often, so it would leave them a minority compared to regular humans that screw like bunnies and have filled the world with people. If they "came out" I think it'd be a numbers game, and eventually, after the apocalypse, the vampires would lose. So, in my world, vampires maintain a code of secrecy, and with their mental powers they have been able to cover their tracks well without it greatly limiting their lifestyle (no vamps hiding in crypts). If one person discovers the truth it's manageable... if the world found out simultaneously, that would be a more serious threat. So, for now they're in the closet.
My vampires are not "de-clawed." While I like having an "anti-hero" be a vampire, I'm against the recent success of "Vegan Vampires." I mean, c'mon! My vampires are not tame, or safe, or even entirely ethical, and with good reason. They've lived so long, their plans are far reaching and certain moral things that matter to those of us with a shelf life, vampires just don't bother with anymore. My vampires will kill or have killed women and children, bought and sold people, started and ended wars... but that's just one side of them. Just because they're dangerous, that doesn't make them "evil," either. Like C.S. Lewis describes Aslan, "He's not a tame lion."
Physiology, Evolution, and Social Structure:
This is complicated, but bear with me... My vampires are made up of 12 Houses: these houses represent 12 individual vampire entities. Picture our world surrounded by a coating of magic or essense, as I'm calling it now (that could have to change). That coating is another world on top of ours, and in that otherworld are 13 colors of light (only 12 now inhabit our world). This light, in this other realm (one of several, by the way, that connect with our world), is sentient and found a way into our world by bonding itself to a human host through its blood. So vampires, if you could see them with a third eye, are beings of light (could be they were mistaken for angels with those that had the Sight, as it were). The Houses are made up of a limited number of vampires which all have a "hive mind" meaning it's one entity with multiple physical bodies. However, when a vampire picks a new host, or "vessel" we're calling it, the human soul that inhabited it bonds with the vampire, so in one House of vampires the vampire part is all one entity, but with different talents and personalities depending on the human souls they bonded with. This would make selection of a new vessel very challenging, and so their reproduction would have to be specialized, too.
One of the fail safes I'm putting in this world to have kept vampires and humans coexisting so well is that vampires need human women to procreate. And it's an asexual type of reproduction, too. A woman is chosen, and there can only be one woman per house at any given time. That woman becomes the "Chalice" and alone has the ability to pass on the vampire's "light" to a new body. The Chalice, then, is the only female that can host the light, thereby meaning, in my world there are virtually no female vampires. It will have something to do with the life creating potential women have that makes them unsuitable vessels, though they can be mentally controlled from a distance. The Chalice is bitten and injected with the pure essence (concentrated venom like substance) and then allows the human that is to be the new vessel to drink her laced blood. If the transfer is a success (and it's not always the case), then the Chalice must nurse the new vampire who starting out can only have her blood. Over time the new vampire can be weaned off the Chalice, but if something were to happen to the Chalice (who has stopped aging, but isn't truly immortal), then the vampires of her line could be weakened or killed. Because of this, the one rule all houses uphold, no matter how fierce the in fighting becomes, is that no one can kill or arrange to have a Chalice killed. Period.
The Houses are based (loosely) on the 12 Chinese zodiac signs (though I may not come right out and say that in the series). Each sign has a color attributed to it, so the houses are all colors of light and some are complimentary and some are in opposition, so some houses get along great and other are at each other's throats.
Their powers... what's the perk of being a vampire in my world?
- Dreams: When a vampire drinks your blood, they gain access to your mind and once you sleep they can take control and create a world within your dream that to the vampire is every bit as real as the waking world. This means that a good portion of a vampire's existence is spent in their victims head. So a blood donor's head is like a portal to a new world for the vampire. This dream perk loses power if the blood is old, though blood can be stored and drank for nutritional purposes, but the best dreams occur during an actual bite, or shortly after a feeding.
- Mind Control: Depending on the year the human was born a vampire can assume control temporarily. This is not the same as a vessel (see above)
- Hive Mind: Can do several things and be several places all at the same time through their multiple bodies. They can communicate telepathically with other of their House, and to some extent other houses depending on where they fall in their "spectrum"
- Stasis: Vampire's don't age, they maintain the condition of the vessel at the time of its acquisition. Some things can be altered (hair, for example), but if a leg is broken, it'll heal preternaturally fast.
- All knowing: If one vessel doesn't know something it can access whichever brain has the information stored. That is the main reason vampires fear "true death" because of the potential loss of information. If a vampire is cornered and knows death is close at hand, it can "upload" it's knowledge to the rest of the House so that's it's death is only the death of it's body and shared soul.
- Dedicated Human families: To keep their secret safe, vampires long ago began "keeping families" with the idea that in exchange for blood and guaranteed nourishment these families would profit from the vampire's accumulated wealth and be protected. It started as a very feudal type system. It has modernized, but arranged marriages are still practiced, because it is risky to bring in normal modern humans, so the families try to keep it in house, so to speak. Monogamy has suffered because of this practice, with consorts being socially accepted and many marriages being more business related. Surrogate mothers have also risen with science's ability to transplant fetus's. Inbreeding is not a big threat, there are many, many families a House can live on, with the option of trading with another House's family stock. The challenge for a vampire would be to keep the families happy while maintaining order. A social hierarchy would be in affect to keep those with wild ambitions in their place. The recent century with it's civil rights and women's right's movements will have caused some upheaval in the family business, too...
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