Vampires have been around since the System Apocalypse. It is unclear where they came from or how the first vampire was made. What is known is that they are so steeped in death magic that for all intents and purposes they are classed as undead. They are immortal, when killed they revert to their lair to regenerate and can only be permanently killed if their lair is found while they are regenerating and is destroyed.

The only weakness a vampire has is that they get burned by the sun. Unlike legend this is not instant they just take regular burning damage. Can be mitigated by wearing heavy cloaks and hoods.

They feed by draining victims of their blood. Leaving dried-out husks.

New vampires can only be made by draining a victim's blood and then pouring a bit of the vampire “parents” blood into its mouth. This fledgling vampire is also known as a childe. A vampire has to wait until its childe has reached a certain level of power at which point they set out on their own. This time frame can vary a lot, mostly depending on if the parent vampire helps the childe to gain strength. The usual time frame is between 10-100 years. Although exceptions exist.

They are evil, manipulative, and power-hungry. Often fighting amongst themselves for territory. Vampires sometimes band together in loose societies known as coteries. Single vampires or coteries claim a territory and operate in the shadows. Often trying to manipulate leaders into waging wars amongst each other so the feeding that they do stays unnoticed amongst the chaos such wars bring.

In a few very rare cases vampires have been known to fight off the curse. Vampires themselves try and suppress this knowledge even amongst themselves. With a few of the longest-lived vampires trying to kill anyone who has knowledge of this. Mostly born out of the results of the vampire wars which left them decimated.

The process is:

1. A vampire needs to fall in love

2. The person the vampire falls in love with has to reciprocate that love.

3. The vampire needs to stop feeding. This is a very painful process, with a chance the vampire just goes into a murderous rampage.

After a certain amount of time the blood-drinking addiction fades (but never goes away entirely) and by eating regular food gets infused by life magic. The vampire has now changed into a Dhampir.

If a Dhampir succumbs back to drinking blood they will turn back into a vampire again.

If the person they are in love with is a human or elf. There is now a chance of pregnancy. For humans, this results in other Dhampir’s.

In the case of an elf, this results in a revenant. The rarity of turning a vampire combined with the very low elf birthrate this is extremely rare. The only known case in history so far has been the twin revenants that started the vampire wars.

Revenants do not have the same blood addiction Dhampir’s do. However, they straddle the border between life and death and can become way more powerful than vampires, and gain the power to command vast legions of undead.

In the vampire wars, the twins became jealous of each other, and using the vampire coteries they waged open warfare. This conflict pulled in more and more nations and kingdoms. Ending up in a three-way world war that lasted centuries. After the dust settled both revenants were killed and so was most of the world's vampire population.