Vampiric Evolution

[MidKnight]

For as long as humans have wandered the Earth, the Hungry Dead have shadowed their steps, haunting, hunting, and devouring them in the dark of the night. In almost every human culture, legends of unnatural monsters who take the form of man and feed upon the living can be found. At the same time, each legend portrays a creature slightly different than the next, in some form or another, ascribing powers, motives, and weaknesses to each form of unliving predator. While mortal scholars would claim that this is a simple case of mythical parallels, the truth behind the legends is much bleaker than they think. For you see, there is no one set singular species of the undead creature known as 'Vampire', but rather a towering family tree of dark convergent evolution, its roots dug deep in human blood.

Over the centuries, dozens of vampire breeds have risen and fallen, horrid tribes of the fell undead competing fiercely for power, prey, and territory. Together, they form a vast dreadful tapestry of nocturnal predators, bound together by a common thirst for what lies inside of the bodies of the living, whether that be blood, flesh, or unseen energy. Thus, in some form or another, almost every myth or legend of predatory undead holds within it some sliver of truth, no matter how insubstantial.

An individual species of Vampire is known as a Brood, and while several dozen Broods exist spread out across the world today, they differ greatly in terms of size and influence, the strongest of the Broods, boast numbers well in the hundreds or even thousands, and their members can be found in every part of the planet, these are known as Dynasties, and the majority of vampires around the world belong to one Dynasty or another. These vast families of the Undead contain many smaller Lineages, cadet branches as it were, formed when a particular bloodsucker grows so powerful that they can forge their own new bloodline. Smaller vampire Broods are typically known as Clades and exist somewhat on the margins of undead society, seen as aberrant outcasts or anachronistic relics, collections of weirdos and freaks to be gawked at, dissected, or chased off with pitchforks and fire.

However, sometimes a vampire is, by some strange trick of the Blood, brought into the night with no Brood to call their own, deprived of any kind of collective vampire identity. Such undead tend to be principally shaped by their previous notions of what a vampire ought to be, displaying the trademark strengths and weaknesses of whatever form of vampire they know best, these lone wolves of the undead world are known more formally as the Dispossessed but are colloquially known as Orphans.