Vampire (Blade)
Vampires are a species that feature in Blade.
Contents |
History
Homines Nocturnae (Latin: Night Human) were a race of Vampires that lived secretly in the world. The first vampire was an ancient Sumerian warrior who become the source of the myths around Dracula and was known as Drake. This warrior cut a swath of destruction around the world and sired the vampire race. His children would be the Purebloods, vampires born from vampires, while those that were turned were another separate group within vampire society. Drake would disappear into hibernation and his children would gradually develop numerous weaknesses that their progenitor did not possess such as weakness to sunlight.
Overview
Biology
In appearance, Vampires resembled on the surface to be a race of human beings.
A vampire cannot produce sufficient amounts of hemoglobin, for this reason it is essential for vampires to consume human blood as a dietary source of hemoglobin. Ordinary food is edible to vampires, but it is unclear if it has nutritional value to them or if it’s only done for pleasure, as they can live entirely on blood alone. This biological need for blood is known as "the Thirst" and is considered to be a vampiric weakness, as well as the primal urge that drives all vampires. This permeates every aspect of their existence within our society and.
The source of the difference between the vampires and Human's was a virus present within the saliva of a vampire. This virus grants the vampire numerous abilities namely enhanced regeneration, enhanced strength and better reflexes along with senses. Physically, there appears to be little difference between a vampire and a Human until the vampire demonstrates their fanged teeth. The vampires use these fangs to penetrate the skin of a Human in order to drain them of blood, typically done so through the neck. Those Humans that are not drained of their blood possess the virus in their body which transforms them, eventually, into a vampire. This process typically takes 72 hours for the Human body to transform into the new form of life. After which, the vampire is forever consumed by the Thirst.
The vampirism virus radically alters the host's physiology and metabolism, somewhat like cancer - but cancer with purpose, structure instead of chaos, creating entirely new parasitic organs inside of the body. Outwardly, vampires looks like regular humans and can visibly blend into society without being noticed by people. Vampires do grow fangs to aid in feeding, but they are retractable. Vampires have a much lower average body temperature than humans, around 50 degrees Fahrenheit compared to the average human 98.6 degrees - thus making it possible to spot vampires in a crowd using an infrared camera.
One of the noted trademarks of the vampire race is their source of sustenance, the blood present within Humans. This is because vampire biology lacks the capacity to produce hemoglobin and they require to replenish this supply by draining it from Humans. A vampire cannot produce sufficient amounts of hemoglobin as the virus itself burns away at whatever energy may be produced. For this reason it is quintessential for vampires to feed on human blood. Ordinary food is edible to vampires though they can live entirely on blood alone.This permeates every aspect of their existence within our society and often causes discourse within the vampire community itself due to a unbalanced ratio of vampires to humans.
Despite these benefits, there are numerous weaknesses the vampire race suffers form namely allergic reactions to garlic, silver and sunlight though the last one can, temporarily, be stopped through the use of a special form of sunblock cream.
Because vampires have an inability to sustain enough hemoglobin (the virus causes hemolysis), they develop a form of anemia. This causes them to have a craving for blood, similar to food craving and substance dependence. If a vampire does not feed on blood for a long period of time, it will develop withdrawal symptoms and become gradually weaker and eventually die. The need for blood is referred to as "the Thirst" and is considered the defining and driving factor of all vampires.
Being exposed to sunlight will severely burn and ultimately kill a vampire. This is not a supernatural relationship with the sun, as any UV light source will harm a vampire due to their inability to produce defenses in the skin. Blade uses a portable UV flashlight unit in the first film, and by the second film is using smaller gun-mounted UV lights. Some vampires have discovered that by applying heavy amounts of sunblock, mascara, or other materials to their exposed skin, they can functionally move around in daylight for a limited length of time without significant harm. Others have worn full-body covering suits (i.e. motorcycle helmets) to move around during the day. Those that produce a natural defense in the body from UV-light, allowing them to move around in daylight are called "Daywalkers" - but they are one-in-a-million rarities.
Vampires are fatally allergic to silver and garlic which causes them to go into anaphylactic shock and possibly death. For this reason vampire-hunters like Blade rely on weapons made of silver, such as hollow-point silver bullets filled with garlic. Non-lethal wounds from silver weapons are more difficult for vampires to heal. Whistler also developed an aerosol mace composed of silver nitrate mixed with garlic, which was quite effective.
Vampires are divided into two socio-biological categories; Pure-Blood and Turn-Blood. Pure-Bloods are born as vampires, the offspring of two people who are already vampires; this happens very rarely. Turn-Bloods vampires have had a human existence before becoming a vampire and are looked at with disdain by most of the Pure-Bloods due to their lack of vampiric purity, seeing them as a lesser breed or false vampires. Very few pure-blooded vampires have scars, because they have the ability to biologically regenerate from birth - meaning that unless injured with silver, they will heal all injuries flawlessly and age at an incredibly slow pace. In contrast, a turned-vampire will retain any scars they had from when they were a human, only healing new injuries once they became a vampire. While all vampires are capable of having offspring both through reproduction and turning, the birth-rate between mating vampires is so low that it is practically non-existent.
Culture
The early vampires believed in a blood god known as La Magra and constructed the Temple of Eternal Night in his honor with a prophecy stating that his avatar would transform the Earth into a new paradise for his followers.
Vampires live a shadowy existence in relation to Humanity who do not know their existence except for small groups of resistance fighters. They work hard to ensure that no one attempt to reveal their existence to the world. Over the generations, the vampires have developed an international power cabal; they control about half of the global financial institutions and own the police, bribing off human officials throughout the world to ignore and/or aid their activities. The Vampire Nation's leadership has decided that a full-scale war with humans is undesirable, so they maintain a secret truce with human governments; human politicians will ignore the vampires, and in return, the vampires will keep their numbers relatively low.
Though vampires believe themselves the next evolution of mankind and see Humanity as nothing more then cattle, they do recognise the fact that Humanity possess some advantages over them such as the capacity to walk in daylight. As such, some Humans are taken in as the vampires trusted servants and called Familiars some of whom work simply because they wish to be turned into a vampire. These familiars are branded with the mark of the vampire's House in order to distinguish the followers from one another. Familiars are humans who willingly serve vampires. Familiars serve vampires in exchange for wealth, protection, and the possibility of one day being rewarded for their service by being turned into a vampire themselves. Familiars usually have tattoos of vampire glyphs located somewhere on their body (e.g. the back, neck, or base of the wrist), which is much like a cattle-brand. This glyph warns other vampires that if they attempt to feed from or otherwise harm this human, they will have to answer to the vampire the human serves. Familiars can function in daylight and may occupy crucial positions in human society which aid the vampires' infiltration, i.e. police officers, prison psychologists, powerful lawyers, teachers, etc.
Most of the Vampire Nation believes maintaining the truce is in their best interests. Occasionally renegade vampires pop up who disregard the Vampire Nation's rule. One such renegade was Deacon Frost, who felt that vampires should rule humans directly. Frost's actions were considered dangerous by the House of Erebus, with one leader warning him that the human governments would make things very difficult for them if their numbers increased too much.
Vampire society was divided into numerous Houses each of which was led by a Pureblood though some were led by a powerful vampire that was turned. These included:
- House of Erebus :
- House of Chthon :
Members
- Drake :
- Deacon Frost :
- Pearl : an obese immobile male vampire that was a member of the House of Erebus who operated as their archivist that was secretly working for Deacon Frost where he helped translate the Lost Pages of Erebus regarding the prophecy surrounding vampire blood god La Magra but was interrogated by Blade.
- Eli Damaskinos : a pureblood vampire elder of Greek descent, and leader of the Shadow Cabinet in Prague. He is millennia old and claims to have fathered thousands of children.
- Nyssa Damaskinos :
- Danica Talos : a female vampire and the mistress of the House of Talos, a vampire sect that controls a major pharmaceutical enterprise.
- Marcus van Sciver :
Notes
- The Vampires of the Blade universe were uniquely created for the movies and markedly different from those in Marvel Comics.
In other media
Video games
- In Blade II, Vampires served as the antagonists in the game that was based six months after the story of the movie of the same name. A Vampire run company known as the Nth Phase was operating a computer mainframe that was analyzing the DNA of Eli Damaskinos who was the now slain former head of the Vampire Nation. Another Vampire clan was the Byron who had kidnapped Dr. Grant and began their Project: Vorpal initiative to harvest dark energy to breed a race of super-warrior vampires though this was actually being run by the Arcan. The Arcan clan were among the most extreme of the Vampire groups that used cybernetics and suicide bombs in their operations as they sought to make use of dark energy until they were defeated by Blade.
Appearances
- Blade:
- Blade 2:
- Blade: Trinity:
- Blade: The Series:
Links
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