“Ah, no! A cross! I’m melting, I’m melting…no I’m just kidding. I’m a practicing Catholic. An allergy to crosses would make communion rather hard to take, wouldn’t it?”

 

–Auggie to Martina 

 

“Did they ever have a Dracula in Willow-Wells?…No, not the book, the person…no not like the Eastern European warlord, the vampire. Yeah we had him! He was real! You want to fight him in a sim together?”

 

–Auggie to Atalanta

 

“I think the reason I got into biology is the same reason Ms. Cryptic did. I wanted to learn about my condition, and in learning about it gain a degree of power over it. But as I started to really learn biology, to learn beyond my own condition, I became fascinated by the subject especially as it pertained to metapathogens. So many of us live with thoughtform possession, involuntary telepathy, or odic disorders. So many of us have special accommodations. I have my body, my corpse, stored in a very special place on campus. I can’t be far from it, which makes field trips very interesting!. After I graduate, I want to be a person that devises new accommodations and improves upon existing ones.”

 

–Answer to the Science Fair application form questions “Why I am interested in science.”

 

Name:

 

August “Auggie” Mars

 

Supername:

 

Ampire

 

Because “amps” and “vampire.” 

 

Get it?

 

“It was too tempting, I couldn’t resist.” Auggie explains, “Just drop the V and there you go!”

 

Average Grade:

 

A+

 

Auggie is one of our most promising biology students with a promising future in medicine. He won the science fair last year with a presentation on the homeostasis of kordoni–you know, stretchy superhumans, like Plastic Man.

 

ERC:

 

2

 

As a doctor-to-be, Auggie doesn’t have the time to devote to ERC 3, but he does like ERC, and he does like learning how to apply life-saving measures to victims even while a supervillain tries to attack him.

 

It’s good that he’s taking ERC 2, especially in light of hospitals being a common target of supervillains. There’s a lot of technology in hospitals that can be weaponized from nanites to superhuman tissues. Plus, no shortage of bedridden hostages.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

 

Identity Management, Advanced Biology, Superpowers and Medicine, Advanced Manesology

 

Auggie has been in Identity Management under fellow vampire Mercy Brown since middle school. He enrolled in middle school as a shy young man afraid of anyone finding out about his vampirism. Though vampires aren’t staked-on-sight as they were in the 18th century, a persistent stigma still surrounds them, especially when it comes to their capacity to spread disease.

 

If students feel uncomfortable around Auggie, remind them that everyone’s blood is a biohazard. It’s why swimming pools are evacuated and cleaned if anyone bleeds in them.

 

Auggie was in Identity Management’s secret identity program during middle school under the name “Sheridan,” though he got out of it a little after he was promoted to Advanced Biology and Advanced Manesology. Though out of the secret identity program, he’s still in Identity Management because being a ghost alone is already greatly disruptive for a person’s identity, now add having to feed your own corpse and watch it jitter as you pump blood through it and you have a vampire. All our vampire kids are in Identity Management even if they’re doing well like Auggie.

 

Auggie has recently taken on a little vampire protégé by the name of Greg Cayden as part of Identity Management’s tutoring program. They’re very cute together. Auggie is as extroverted as Greg is introverted. Auggie likes tutoring younger students. He can often be found assisting Danny Garrett’s biology students. “What’s an alpha-vampire like me going to do without minions?” he jokes. “Got to draft them into my army of darkness while they’re young, am I right?”

 

Advanced Biology and Advanced Manesology turned Auggie’s life around. It’s in those classes that Auggie discovered his true passion and calling in life as a medical scientist. He continues with them as one of Ms. Cryptic and Old Adam’s most promising students and has added Superpowers and Medicine to his classes. Currently, he’s working with Ms. Cryptic to find a way to use his electricity powers in medical science. They think that he can use his powers as a living biogram.

 

Or unliving, in his case.

 

Just imagine a doctor who can not only know everything about you in a split-second with just a little zap but have his findings recorded deep within his memory? Such a doctor would be handy, wouldn’t he? You might even overlook him making blood test jokes.

 

And you want to know the best part? They think that once he gets good at it, he’ll be able to scan the biometrics of anything that uses electrical principles. Once they get the kinks worked out, Auggie will be able to scan, understand, and diagnose biologicals, artificials, ghosts, you name it!

 

And he’ll be able to do it all literally as fast as lightning.

 

What’s that Stoker quote Auggie likes to use? From a German poem?

 

“Die Todten reiten schnell.” 

 

The dead travel fast? More like the dead diagnose fast.

 

Contact Education:

 

Hall and Greer Hospital, ARGO, Exploration Society, Monster League

 

Before anything else, Auggie wants to become a doctor. He wants to help people with disabilities as he has been helped with his. He’s working at Joyous Harbor’s Hall and Greer Hospital under no less than Dr. Greer himself.

 

They find his bedside manner exceptional. Pediatrics especially appreciates his help, he’s a hit with kids.

 

He likes to joke that he’s also into medicine for the cash. He wants to use the money to build a giant castle in Eastern Europe with giant gargoyles and a bell that chimes at the stroke of midnight.

 

Auggie is also involved with ARGO and our recently established Exploration Society, a semi-formal “class” created as an alternative for ARGO for students interested in exploring the multiverse without involving themselves in that organization. He’s involved with ARGO and the ES as a way to test his recently developed “superbio scanner” power. He and Ms. Cryptic want to see how the scanner does on the inhabitants of worlds newly discovered and worlds barely known.

 

Sometimes, Auggie hangs out with the Monster League, or more specifically, the famous vampire hero Dr. Emir Hayyen, an expert in biology who is very interested in the medical possibilities Auggie’s superbio scanner offers.

 

Metapathogen:

 

Brown Syndrome, Electricity Generation and Control

 

Concerning Auggie’s Request For Reclassification

 

Auggie has requested that we reclassify his hyperstasis from a metapathogen to the default hyperstasis label. He also wants us to change the description from Brown syndrome to the far more informal vampirism. 

 

We try to be as accommodating as we can at Martin’s, but Dr. Jefferson and I are ruling against him.

 

Auggie’s letter (What a guy! Kids don’t normally take the time to write a letter. I’m not sure most of them even know how…) made the good argument that metapathogen classification always uses a degree of subjectivity. In the case of someone whose hyperstasis is that they can set themselves on fire–without being immune to fire–it’s very easy to make a metapathogen classification. But say you have a person who can stretch their body, a kordoni, who suffers mild muscle pain because of their powers. Do we call that hyperstasis a metapathogen or a superpower? Our classification would depend on several factors. How “mild” is the mild muscle pain? Does it prevent the superhuman from functioning? Does it impact their daily routine? If all it means is an occasional trip to a bottle of over-the-counter painkillers, then the classification will probably be superpower. But if it means routine trips to a physical therapist and worker’s comp claims, then the classification will probably be metapathogen.

 

Auggie pointed out that quasimorph kids with the same general powerset have  different classifications. Amy Beck is classified as having a hyperstasis while Alys Baker is classified as having a metapathogen. That is because, a recent lunchroom brawl with Kalani Sakata aside, Amy is able to control the emotional instability that comes with being a quasimorph while Alys struggles. Alys has a profile officer, Amy does not. The negative impact Alys’ hyperstasis has on her life is much greater than the negative impact Alice’s hyperstasis has on her life.

 

Auggie’s argument is that if two different quasimorphs can have two different hyperstasis classifications, why can’t two vampires? Why can’t he have a hyperstasis while another vampire like Greg Cayden has a metapathogen?

 

The reason is because, unlike being a quasimorph, there’s not really a scenario where being a vampire doesn’t negatively impact a student’s life. Put aside social stigma for a moment. His hyperstasis is something we have to make accommodations for. His hyperstasis also something we need to make accommodations for. We have to store Auggie’s body on-site within the Blueprint. If we’re making accommodations for a student because of their hyperstasis, we should probably fill out the metapathogen paperwork which has a specific section for accommodations.

 

Auggie has to return to his body every evening and feed it blood. He has to do this, or he risks his body decaying and taking his manesological stability with it. Auggie has to wear a vein coat. He has to do this, or he risks an uneven distribution of blood throughout his ectoplasmic body which can make him irritable and confused. Whenever Auggie has to go on a field trip, his body has to be taken out of the Blueprint and transported with him. It has to be transported, otherwise as soon as he gets within 2.5 miles of it he’s yanked back towards it.

 

As a general rule, a superpower is a hyperstasis that allows you to do something while a metapathogen is a hyperstasis that compels you to do something. A superpower is liberating. It allows you to do more than a basic. It opens up possibilities. A metapathogen is restrictive. It forces you to do something. It dictates a part of your life, if not the entirety.

 

Basics don’t have to feed a corpse every evening. They can also travel more than 2.5 miles from a certain point and wear whatever clothes they want. Until Auggie overcomes these disadvantages, we will classify his hyperstasis as a metapathogen.

 

It’s also an issue of simple and concise cataloging. Say someone needs to use our database to look up all the Brown syndrome kids at the school. They’re going to keyword Westernra Syndrome, or at the very least narrow their search to the metapathogen list, but they won’t see Auggie. And full disclosure, it factors into our grants. While we’ve never been at a lack of funds (the Statesmen naturally shower the first school for superhumans not only in America but in the world with lots and lots of money) we still try to keep the arrow from pointing down. It makes people nervous when we have to put an arrow pointing down in our treasury reports. It makes them do foolish things like suggest we need to have a karate tournament with Ishinomori HS to “drum up support for funds.” A lot of grants are earmarked for metapathogenic kids. We don’t want to put kids on the metapathogen list for money, but the fact remains one less name on the list means one less parcel of dollars–and these are dollars meant for Auggie’s benefit.

 

Vampirism

 

Vampirism, or Brown syndrome, is one of many odic disorders that plague mankind. The odic layer is the natural border between human thoughts and the Astral, and as with any natural structure, things can go wrong. Odic disorders can be likened to genetic mutations in that they are naturally occurring errors in copying. Mutations arise when an allele is imperfectly copied and Odic disorders arise when a ghost is imperfectly copied from the mind.

 

Assuming one develops a soul throughout their life (10 percent of people do not), the soul will sleep in dormancy within the Astral as long as they are alive. It will sleep and dream of the person’s actions and memories. They will, in a sense, live the life of the person. Then upon brain death, the soul is unshackled from the body. The result is an entity independent of the corpse, though whether a ghost can be thought of as the same individual has always been a thorny matter (lawyers heavily suggest including what you want to leave–and not leave–to your soul in your will).

 

Under Brown syndrome, a person’s soul fails to free itself from the body. It becomes attached to the cold, dead flesh.

 

The soul relies on the corpse for coherency. If the corpse decays, the soul’s components decay as well. A decaying body can mean a decaying ba and forgetfulness or a decaying khet and a lack of corporeality.

 

The soul has to keep the body alive, in a sense. Biosigns have to function. Blood has to pump.

 

There is a power to blood. Humans sensed this instinctively long, long ago. We sacrificed blood, we venerated blood, because we could tell there was some sort of potency to it, something to it that made it more than a red liquid. Though the brain’s bioelectricity is the most information-rich part of the body, blood comes in at a close second, and is much easier for a hungry vampire to harvest than bioelectricity. Consider everything carried by the blood–hormones, bacteria, oxygen, immunity. Blood flows through the body, maps the body, regulates the body. It is a very potent source of information and when combined with the ectoplasm inside a vampire’s corpse, a dead heart can beat again. Muscles twitch. Skin sweats. Fingernails grow. There’s no brain activity and no soul, but all that matters is that the corpse keeps up a semblance of life. That is all that is required for decay to be halted and the vampire to maintain coherency.

 

Vampires can enter their bodies and puppet them around, but they rarely do this. Their corpse is their vulnerability and vampire corpses are notoriously fragile. Many a vampire has met their doom not by hunters raiding their crypt but by potential victims moving away. Even against mundane diseases, moving away from the place everyone gets sick around is generally a good strategy. A vampire deprived of food will enter his body in desperation, attempt to walk around in it, fall, shatter his skull, and discorporate..

 

Though as impervious to physical harm as any ghost, if their body is destroyed they will lose the ability to interact with the physical world and what’s more they will forget. They will forget potentially everything, even who they are. Vampires keep their bodies under heavy guard (Dracula protected his with a small army) and typically only return to them to reminisce about a life they lived through memories or to deliver blood. Auggie keeps his body in the secure Blueprint annex next to Neiros’ sleeping body, Joule’s back-up storage, and the confidential records server.

 

There are canisters of blood (Sourced from a special blood drive students and teachers can volunteer for. Ask Florence for details if you want to donate to Auggie’s blood stores.) near Auggie’s corpse. Auggie has to apply the blood himself. It’s not enough to just store his body in a vat of blood like a pickle in a jar or to inject blood into the corpse. The body has traces of ectoplasm within its veins, the same type of ectoplasm that makes up Auggie’s physical form. This ectoplasm allows the blood to animate the body. Otherwise the blood just sits as any blood injected into a corpse.

 

Vampires cannot move far from their corpses. Moving too far causes them to be first lock up as if a chain had been suddenly pulled and then slowly dragged back towards the corpse. Auggie can function within 2.5 miles (the length of Central Park) but no further. To travel further, Auggie’s body must be transported and guarded by Martin’s personnel.

 

Man has known about vampires far longer than he’s had the means to properly study them. This has led to vampires being attributed with many characteristics, some accurate, some not. Many of these attributes can be explained by basic ghost physiology. It is said that vampires can fly through the air, walk through walls, have swords pass through them,turn invisible, and turn into mist. Ghosts can accomplish all this simply by varying the strength of their khet to become less substantial. Vampires are also said to be able to shapeshift into animals, but ghosts are only able to mimic the shape of animals, not the makeup. Even ghosts with enough skill to shape their ectoplasm into tissue and organs are still only ectoplasm without a true cell structure.

 

Vampires are also said to be able to manipulate the weather and summon storms. Auggie can’t do this, but he does know an advanced ghost trick that lets him turn into a lightning cloud and this is where the “amp” part of his supername comes from. By dispersing himself until he’s an ectoplasmic mist (or a blood mist if he’s full enough) and then polarizing different portions he is able to fill his mist with lightning. It also helps that ectoplasm is a great conductor, especially compared to the insulator that is air.

 

He is currently working with Ms. Cryptic in Advanced Biology to use his electricity as a “super bioscanner” that’ll be able to take biograms of anything that uses electrical principles–even ghosts.

 

Hypnotic abilities are another pop culture staple of vampires. Everyone knows about Bela Lugosi and his big creepy eyes. Ghosts are capable of dominating the minds of men in several ways. Flicker, for instance, can control the minds of those who hear her full name pronounced through the rn component of the soul. Old Adam, head manesologist at Martin’s School, can control minds through the traditional technique of  odic possession. The thoughts of men can influence ghosts across the odic layer, it’s how ghosts end up copying the memories and personality of a person, but this connection can run the other way. When Old Adam drapes his shroud-like body over a person, he controls that person.

 

Vampires like Auggie can control the minds of men through blood. This is a form of somatic telepathy like what Dr. Bell is capable of. It is not, strictly speaking, telepathy because it does not use the Astral. It causes changes in a target’s mental state by altering the flow and content of blood in the body, especially in the brain. 

 

Vampires are sometimes thought of as afflicted ghosts, as ghosts shackle to hungry corpses. But their unique relation to blood gives them an edge in certain situations other ghosts lack. Auggie can sense blood. Even an old, dried stain stands out to him. He can read information from a drop of blood like a book–rhesus factor, cholesterol level, oxygen level, hormones, etc. He can make blood flow. He can make blood drip. He can control blood like Sand Queen controls sand. If he wanted to (though he never would, obviously) he could make a person’s blood violently rject their body. In other words, he can make people explode.

 

While vampires’ ghost bodies don’t require blood, they instinctively crave it, and suffer severe anxiety if denied fresh blood for long. To keep mentally stable, Auggie and other vampires use a modern device called a vein coat. The vein coat serves as an exo-circulatory system hidden discreetly beneath a long duster coat. Under the first layer of fabric are bags of blood died blue to avoid any embarrassment should the coat leak. “I spilled my raspberry drink” is a lot more face-saving than “Do not be alarmed, I am in fact not wounded,” though Auggie has said that his favorite excuse for a blood accident has always been “Wow! That was a huge mosquito!”

 

The second layer of fabric contains a series of micropumps that distribute blood throughout the ectoplasmic body. This distribution pattern helps Auggie mentally shape his ectoplasm (he can feel where the blood is, thus he can feel where his hands are) and fulfills his instinctual need to be filled with blood without overindulging. A vampire with too much blood in their ectoplasmic body can suffer from moodiness on par with that of a quasimorph. Vein coats provide vampires with a steady, even, and controlled supply of blood so that their moods can be steady, even, and controlled.

 

Vampires may sound complex when you write out all the things they can and can’t do, but remember what the ancient Dyeus civilization called them-servant ghosts, in that out of all ghosts, they have a master that they must serve–their own body. Their lives are centered around ministering and puppeteering a corpse that will never age, an eternal reminder of what they once were. This is quite the burden, as you might imagine, and Auggie is quite the kid for enduring it.

 

Auggie In Review

 

Auggie…

 

IS a ghost.

 

IS NOT a walking corpse (though he can possess his corpse).

 

DOES need to bring blood to his corpse (located in the Blueprint) in order to maintain coherency.

 

DOES NOT need to consume blood to survive.

 

CAN NOT be harmed in any way by religious iconography, garlic, sunlight, wolfsbane, or hawthorn bushes..

 

CAN cross running water.

 

CAN NOT compelled to count mustard seeds.

 

CAN walk through walls, turn invisible, and move without a sound (as any ghost can.)

 

CAN NOT summon storms or control the weather.

 

CAN turn himself into an electric storm.

CAN turn himself into mist (in either the form of ectoplasm or blood.)

 

CAN NOT transform into animals.

 

CAN alter his shape to look like an animal (as can all ghosts.)

 

CAN NOT telepathically hypnotize people.

 

CAN control bodies by controlling blood.

 

CAN NOT be destroyed by staking his corpse.

 

CAN lose his memories and ability to interact with the physical world by having his body completely destroyed.

 

Please do not tease Auggie with garlic/mustard seeds/crosses/etc. He’s always a good sport about it, but it’s not professional, and please report any students you see teasing him.

 

A History of Vampires

 

It is theorized that vampires have been around for a long, long time. Nearly every culture has stories about creatures spawned from death or heavily associated with death that hunger for blood. Real vampires likely influenced these stories, but as always with dealing with pre-climacteric superhuman history, remember Stone’s Objection. It is very possible that vampires, in the sense of folklore, were formed from early, vague understandings of disease and the need to dispose of bodies and that these understandings were later applied to real-life vampires. 

 

What came first? The story or the superhuman? It’s a classic problem in superhuman history.

 

The typical vampire attack is like a waking nightmare. Survivors can misremember anything from it. There is mist, and cold, and darkness as the vampire moves in as a cloud of ectoplasm. Maybe there is a shape, and maybe it is human. Maybe it is something smaller than a human, something small and quick like a bat or wolf. The vampire will call out to the victim’s blood, and as their circulatory system gets shaken like a soda their disturbed homeostasis can conjure up any image.

 

Death rarely results directly from a vampire attack. Vampires are after blood, not life, and even the most incoherent, blood-crazed vampire understands on some level that he shouldn’t kill his prey. His prey can make fresh blood. They are needed. Victims vomit blood or sweat blood through their pores. Sometimes there are marks, rarely in the shape of two fang wounds on the neck, though that has been recorded, most often in the form of very tender, very wet bruises where capillaries close to the skin ruptured.

 

Though historically vampire attacks are rarely immediately fatal, in the long run they do tend to kill their victims. Vampires are essentially clouds full of old, mingling blood. Mosquitos don’t begin to describe how full of pathogens they are. Humankind has been without antibiotics for most of history and thus for most of history vampire attacks have ended up being very, very deadly. Vampires were understood by ancient cultures as living miasma, as spirits disease-carrying winds. 

 

The ancient Mesopotamians, builders of the earliest human civilizations, knew of vampires as the Lilu, predatory spirits who flew through the air, drank blood, and brought disease.

 

The Lilû who wanders in the plain.

They have come nigh unto a suffering man on the outside.

They have brought about a painful malady in his body.

The curse of evil has come into his body.

An evil goblin they have placed in his body.

An evil bane has come into his body.

Evil poison they have placed in his body.

An evil malediction has come into his parts.

Evil and trouble they have placed in his body.

Poison and taint have come into his body.

They have produced evil.

 

The Lilu would later be conflated with Lamashtu, a demoness that preyed on newborns. The association was probably made on the relatively greater vulnerability newborns had to vampire attacks with their developing immunity. Lamashtu would become known as Lilith to the Hebrews, who made Lilith the mother to an entire race of demons known as the Lillim. This perhaps represents an early understanding that vampires were a “race” of beings and that their actions were not caused by a singular entity.

 

Interestingly, the Babylonians would pray to a demon known as Pazuzu for protection against Lamashtu. Pazuzu was very similar to Lamashtu in that he was a spirit of the air who spread disease, but if he was called upon, he would defend supplicants from Lamashtu. Perhaps Pazuzu’s rivalry with Lamashtu represents an early vampire feud. Two vampires will compete with each other if in close proximity. Vampires are rarely able to travel very far from their bodies. Auggie’s travel distance of 2.5 miles represents the extreme end of natural vampire variance. Vampires either have to risk shambling around as a vulnerable corpse in search of food or make due with those who live close to their burial site. Worse for the vampire is that the simplest way to destroy a vampire is not to hunt him, but to move away, which people do naturally whenever there’s a localized epidemic. Once a vampire starts making victims sick, he will quickly find his food supply leaving for the next town over.

 

As other civilizations rose on Earth, other cultures learned of vampires. The Classical world knew of vampires as the Strix, bird-like creatures that poisoned newborns (by secreting a “foul milk” from their beaks) and eviscerated (by the use of sharp talons) so that they might drink their blood. Once again, the cultural figure demonstrates mankind’s burgeoning awareness of a predatory being related to the air who brings disease and drinks blood.

 

A blood-drinking creature from ancient India known as the Vetala is stunningly accurate for its time. Unlike the Strix and Lamashtu, the Vetala is a ghost, particularly the ghost of a person who dies in madness or sin. The Vetala possess either its own corpse or the corpses of others, which perhaps demonstrates the imperfect understanding of the fact that vampires must supply their corpses with blood. The Vetala is known for hanging upside down, much like a bat, and flying through the air. They are attributed with a number of maladies. They can cause miscarriages, insanity, and make children drop dead. All these things, of course, can be caused by infection.

 

From the Ewe people of Africa comes the adze, an evil spirit that spreads sickness and takes the form of a firefly. Again we see the association between sickness and a supernatural being that travels on the air. The adze are known to possess victims as well as make them sick, and this attribution may stem from vampires using their control over blood to puppeteer humans.

 

From the Middle-East comes the ghoul, a creature heavily associated with graves and abandoned places. This makes sense given that vampires typically do not risk moving their bodies unless absolutely necessary owing to their fragility. Vampires prefer to stay where they die. Ghouls drank blood, spread disease, and shapeshifted into animals which lured unwary travelers to their doom, an aspect which is likely a combination of somatic telepathy and ectoplasmic shapeshifting. Interestingly, ghouls were not said to be able to fly, nor were they associated with the air.

 

From China comes the “hopping vampire,” the jiang-shi, who fed on a generalized “life-force” known as chi instead of blood but to the same effect–a wasting away followed by death. 

 

Japan, interestingly, has no vampiric creatures in their folklore. Perhaps this is due to cremation being preferred over burial as a way to preserve what little land the island nation has. There is no better way to prevent the formation of vampires than cremation, and no better way to “destroy” vampires once they become virulent.

 

Europe has been, for whatever reason, the ultimate home of vampiric creatures. Perhaps a confluence of cultural practices and climate is to blame. The cold climate and cultural practice of burial contributes to the preservation of corpses, and where corpses are preserved, vampires have an easier time existing. From Albania comes the shtriga, a vampiric breed of witch, much in the vein of Lamashtu and Lilith, who sucked the blood of infants. It was recorded that after drinking blood, the shtriga would retreat into the woods and vomit. This perhaps indicates an understanding that vampires have to bring the blood they gather back to their corpse. 

 

From Iceland comes the draugr. Draugr is a word often applied to ghosts, which indicates that ancient Icelanders understood, if hazily, that vampires were ghosts. Draugr were said to be the guardians of gravesites and any creatures interred within, no doubt a misinterpretation of a vampire guarding its ultimate treasure–its sleeping corpse.

 

From Romania comes the strigoii, a very accurate description of the real-life vampire. The strigoi (note the similarity to the Albanian shtriga) was a wicked person, often a witch, who became more powerful in death. They were known to send their soul, called a moroi, to suck blood or sometimes life-force from the living and bring it back to their body…which is almost an exact description of a real-life vampire just with the body dominating the spirit instead of the other way around.

 

From Slavic Europe comes the upir. the upir, another remarkably accurate description. The upir, like the strigoi, is an evil person, often a witch in league with the Devil. While alive, the upir has a double-soul which it can send out to menace people, much like the strigoi’s moroi, and when the upir perishes, this double-soul is strengthened. In parts of Easter Europe, the term upir is used to describe people with “two souls.” In Eastern Europe, people bonded to thoughtforms like Donald Swift and people in hyperstatic unions like Will Blake are all called upir.

 

In case you’re wondering, vampire is an English word derived from the French vampyre, which in turn comes from the Slavic Upir. There is no such thing as a French vampyre or  English vampire. Vampire is a word used to describe supernatural monsters observed in other countries.

 

It is a mystery why, relative to the rest of Europe, France and England had such a paucity of vampires that they didn’t have their own name for vampires. It is known that faeries were particularly active in England and France owing to the presence of Camelot in England and Lancelot in France. Perhaps Fairy did something to make England and France relatively unconducive to vampires? Both courts of Fairy are, true to form, not forthcoming with answers. Perhaps someone placed a blessing on England and France that wards against vampires as a way to protect the bloodlines of Lancelot and Arthur? They held in their veins sacred blood which combined the matter of Earth with the magic of Fairy. Neither court would have been happy with some random vampire getting his or her hands on blood that magically potent.

 

Modern vampires living in England and France don’t report feeling any different in those countries than they do anywhere else, but then again, the proliferation of modern technology would have weakened any blessing…

 

Just as ghosts predate humanity, so do vampires. The various Dyeus civilizations that ruled the planet before mankind called vampires cnila phra, a name from the Enochian language brought to Earth by Lorian Angels. The name means roughly “blood-bound ghosts.” Cnila means “elements of the body” and phra is a term meaning “a being of the Astral (in this case a ghost) bound to physical matter.” You may notice that the term has nothing to do with disease despite vampiric folklore figures being associated with disease even more often than they’re associated with blood. This is because the Dyeus did not know disease. Until the Cambrian Dyeus, they did not even have cell structures, and what is more, Enochian is the language of the homo kiris, and they have never known and will never know of disease as anything more than an imperfection that happens to other beings.

 

When 19th century Theosophists explored the Dyeus memories stored within recently unearthed gaeite ruins and within the dreams of dead Abramelin, they saw images of cnila phra, of beings trapped by body and blood being liberated from their shackles by the gaeite technology of the Dyeus. They saw gaeite-generated light burn away bodies which gave up smiling spirits and assumed that this was a philosophical message handed down from the Dyeus to the present. This fed into the Theosophists’ philosophy that physical matter was an evil that had to be transcended by the spirit, eventually leading them to try and “liberate” mankind from their bodies and their shadow war with the Thelemite/Hermetic alliance.

 

Vampires are no more foreign to the distant past than they are to outer space. Extraterrestrials know of vampires, and the Starcrypt Empire is composed entirely of vampires of the United Blood Clans.

 

The UBC is a planetary empire made entirely of secondary hyperstatic super-onphe, though the term is rather misleading as there are no basic Onphe.. There haven’t been for aeons, and will never be again.

 

While genetic-based superpowers are a rarity for humans, they are the rule for Onphe. Superpowers are a matter of breeding, and Onphe society is based around clans who champion a certain powerset maintained by their lineage.  Breeding is tightly controlled to ensure the potency and fidelity of powers. In theory, an Onphe could arise through selective breeding with all the powers of their star-spanning race, but such an Onphe would be shunned. The Blood Clans maintain their cohesion through similarity and predictability. All members of such-and-such a clan can generate beams from their hands within a range of plus or minus such-and-such a number. Clan leaders know who to assign where. Clan leaders know what to charge other clans for the use of their signature powers. UBC starships are the typical example used to explain how their gene caste operates. UBC starships are little more than flying caves. It’s the Onphe inside them that makes them work. Space-manipulators make the ship move across the stars. Energy manipulators provide power and weaponry. Telepaths provide navigation and comms. And fliers serve as living scouts and probes.

 

The Starcrypt Empire is composed of Onphe vampires. The Onphe hate their vampires. Cultures typically warm up to their vampires after figuring out how to sterilize blood and treat infections. Not the Onphe. Their hatred for their vampires goes beyond any primitive fear of disease. It has to do with how vampires break the rules. By mixing the blood of several Onphe within their bodies, vampires can turn their bodies from fragile treasures into powerhouses that breach blood laws.

 

The Starcrypt Empire returns the Onphe’s hatred in spades. To the vampires, Orpheus are unfinished versions of themselves. They are food. They are walking power-ups. They exist to be food, nothing more.

 

Owing to only being a fraction the size of the UBC, the Starcrypt Empire is much more aggressive, and when they tried to forcibly annex the Loncho galaxy, an ally to the Earth, they were opposed by the guardian giant composed superteam Dynamics, and in particular, the guardian giant Grailizer.

 

Across space, across time, the vampire casts a shadow. But it is not by force that the vampire is brought into the light, but by understanding.

 

Vampires In Enlightened Times

 

Vampires were first scientifically studied in the 18th century, roughly a hundred years before the Climacteric, In 1725, Serbian peasant Peter Blagojevic became the first vampire of the modern age. Immediately after he was laid to rest, citizens of Kisiljevo began to suddenly perish. They would come down with a fever and would die within hours. Each victim claimed to have seen the figure of Peter Blagojevic looming over them the previous night and that he had throttled them, perhaps their way of understanding him willing the veins in their necks to swell and burst. Blagojevic must have had something particularly virulent brewing in his blood.

 

After slaying nine over the span of eight days, Blagojevic, for whatever reason, targeted his family. Perhaps there were unresolved issues between him and his loved ones? Perhaps, in a fugue state not uncommon to nascent ghosts, he confused the love his heart had for them for hunger. Whatever reason, he attacked his wife, who fled to a nearby village out of his reach, and his son who he exploded.

 

That got the village to not only disinter the body as had been done to vampires in earlier times but to call the priest and mayor to document the staking and burning of Blagojevic.

 

A year later, another Serbian, Arnold Paole of Meduegna, would rise from his grave.

 

Paole was a soldier, and while fighting the Turks in Kosovo would find himself stalked by a Turkish vampire. After having his blood drained, Paole would track the vampire to his grave and destroy his body. In the hopes of stopping the development of any disease within his body, Paole consumed the blood of the vampire and the dirt from his tomb. Such practices were common. It was thought that consuming the dirt or remains of a vampire, often in the form of coffin blood baked into bread, would protect one from that vampire. Such actions may have had a small prophylactic effect in that consuming the blood of a vampire meant exposing one to the bacteria and viruses it contained and potentially building immunity, but of course our modern world has much better ways to develop immunity than eating dried blood and once a vampire has started to absorb the blood of a community he swells with new virulence.

 

Arnold may have protected himself from vampiric infection, but he couldn’t protect himself from falling off a hay wagon and breaking his neck. Within days, his ghost was roaming around Meduegna drinking the blood of humans, sheep, and oxen. Vampires can consume the blood of animals other than man, though they don’t find it near as calming or fulfilling. Remember that it is the information blood carries that they are after, not the blood in and of itself. The blood of other mammals can keep their body from wasting, but it can’t make them feel satiated.

 

Auggie has commented that animal blood (he’s tried it for the experience) feels “off.” He has described it as expecting to drink water and finding strange flavors in it.

 

After Paole had claimed his fourth victim, the villagers of Meduegna called upon oberstleutnant Schnezzer to investigate. Shnezzer put together a commission who, together with the villagers, unearthed Paole, beahead him, and burnt his body putting an end to his menace. The same was done to his four victims out of fear that contact with Paole would turn them into vampires just as it was assumed Paole’s contact with the Turkish vampire had turned him into a vampire.

 

Modern science now knows that vampirism is not transmissible. It is disease that one has to worry about catching from a vampire, not vampirism. Paole may have encountered a real vampire in Kosovo, but he didn’t turn him into a vampire. Coincidences do happen.

 

The infamous vampire Count Dracula, through alchemical study of Turkish takwins, an early kind of artificial life, devised a way to transform others into two kinds of vampires distinct from the natural type. While the natural type of vampirism is called Brown syndrome, these artificial types are known as Westenra syndrome and Harker syndrome after two of Dracula’s London victims. Westenra syndrome and Harker syndrome are the closest anyone has gotten to producing vampires that create other vampires. 

 

In 1731, Meduegna again reported vampire attacks, this time far more wide-spread than the ones from five years ago. A new commission was formed to investigate which included military surgeon Johan Flückinger whose report is still studied by students of vampiric history…provided they’re very committed to vampiric history.

 

17 people had perished over the course of 3 months, an unprecedented tragedy for a small village like Meduegna. All had experienced the symptoms of a vampire attack–a shadowy assailant, illness, languishing, and then death. Flückinger concluded that all the victims were vampires, and traced patient zero back to an elderly woman named Milliza who was said to have eaten from a sheep fed on by Paole. Flückinger concluded, erroneously, that vampirism had spread from Paole to the sheep to Milliza and then to her victims. He ordered the bodies exhumed, beheaded, and burnt, though modern review puts his claims in doubt.

 

Flückinger’s report has never sat well with historians. Vampirism is not contagious, and two vampires arising in the same village more than one hundred years before the Climacteric stretches credulity. Modern historians believe that the second wave of Meduegna vampire attacks was actually an outbreak of disease and hysteria. When Flückinger and the villagers exhumed the bodies and found them as flushed with life as Paole and Blagojevic and with long nails, they were actually observing the effects of natural decomposition.

 

The Flückinger report, bolstered by earlier reports on Blagojevic, sent Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, into a frenzy. Vampires were not only a documented phenomena signed off on by doctors and officials, but they were said to be able to create more vampires out of their victims. Across Europe, graves were exhumed, bodies were staked and burnt, and people jumped at shadows. Nightmares were no longer nightmares, they were vampiric visitations. Illnesses were no longer illnesses, they were fatal vampiric diseases. Fear was everywhere. 

 

The frenzy didn’t stop until Empress Maria Theresa sent her personal physician Gerhard van Sweiten to investigate. Gerhard was a well-respected man not only of science, but of god. His word would be the final say on vampires for years to come.

 

Gerhard concluded that Flückinger had been wrong. Vampires did exist, but they could only spread death, not vampirism. He advised that vampires be treated like any disease through scientific identification, treatment of the symptoms, and the eradication of the disease vector–meaning the vampire himself. His background as a theologian also gave spiritual comfort to the families of vampires. He assured them that vampires were not the souls of the dead individuals (souls in the spiritual, religious sense, not in the manesological sense). Their loved ones were not damned from heaven and forced to walk the Earth craving blood. Vampires were walking clouds of miasma, “no more human than a cloud of smoke,” as he wrote.

 

Gerhard van Sweiten’s report on the 18th century European vampire outbreak became the first “truly modern” documentation on vampires–sorry, Flückinger.

 

The next vampire outbreak would occur not in Europe, but in America.

 

Vampires And The Climacteric

 

Straddling the 1860 Climacteric was the New England vampire outbreak beginning with the vampire Rachel Harris in 1793 and ending with the vampire Mercy Brown in 1893, who gives her name to Brown syndrome, the polite way to refer to a vampire of the traditional type. 

 

Rachel Harris, who many suspect is the real-life inspiration for Poe’s Tomb of Ligeia, was a native of Manchester, Vermont. In 1792, she married Captain Isaac Burton, but perished a few months later in 1793 after a short bout with tuberculosis. Their marriage, tragically, did not last even a year. On her deathbed, Rachel promised Isaac that they would be together, forever.

 

Isaac remarried in 1794 to Hulda Powell, step sister to Rachel Harris. But, much to Isaac’s despair, Hulda took to consumption within months of their marriage.

 

One night, while keeping watch over his wife, Isaac saw Rachel, seemingly healthier than she had ever been, standing over the wasting Hulda.

 

She had vowed they would be together forever–and only they.

 

Under advice from his friends and family, Isaac unearthed Rachel and incinerated her organs. Isaac was advised to take the “coffin blood” strategy and feed Hulda the ashes of Rachel’s organs to protect her from Rachel’s attacks.

 

It did Rachel no good. 

 

Always remember, if you’re going to dispose of a vampire, burn the entire body. Destroying part of a body can cause a vampire great pain and weaken their Astral body, but it takes a complete incineration to disperse them into the Astral.

 

The ashes also did no good for Isaac’s third wife, or his fourth wife, or Isaac himself when Rachel finally came to him, believing with more hope than certainty that she could make him a vampire as she was.

 

Alone, confused, and angry, Rachel took to preying on young couples wherever she could find them in Manchester. She would prove a persistent pest for deacades…and then suddenly the attacks stopped around the time of the Civil War. It wouldn’t be until Carnacki Foundation telepaths pulled her discorporated spirit down from the Astral that what had happened to her was revealed–she and the later vampire Samuel Salladay drank from each other’s ectoplasmic bodies in an attempt to kill themselves.

 

In 1810, it was recorded that a body in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, was unearthed and its heart incinerated so that its ashes could be fed to a relative suffering from consumption. That nothing else is known of this presumptive vampire, not even a name, points to the possibility that it was a case of hysteria and hearsay instead of fact, likely inspired by the Rachel Harris affair decades earlier.

 

In 1816, Samuel Salladay arose like a male version of Rachel Harris in Scioto County, Ohio. Like Rachel Harris, Samuel Salladay attacked his living relatives and spread consumption. Like Isaac Burton, Samuel’s relatives believed that by removing and burning Samuel’s organs and feeding the ashes to the afflicted, they would be cured. Like with Rachel Harris, this gambit failed, and Samuel wiped out the entire Salladay line.

 

Ohio is some distance for Vermont, but as Isaac and Rachel moved their bodies, rested, then moved their bodies again up and down New England they eventually encountered each other.

Theirs was a love born of desperation and true empathy. They both knew the horror of harvesting blood each night to feed a body with open wounds showing missing organs.

 

It was love that made them propose the plan. Their wretchedness alone was just bearable. But they couldn’t stand seeing the same wretchedness in the one they loved.

 

Samuel and Rachel set fire to their bodies, and then drank from each other, freeing their spirits from the disease ridden blood that bound them to the Earth.

 

Their black blood fell to the ground, killing the plants it landed on, and their souls rose to a place without sickness or death. 

 

In 1817, just one year after Samuel Salladay arose, another male vampire arose in South Woodstock, Vermont. This vampire was named Frederick Ransom, and he would prove to be America’s most troubling vampire. His story follows the usual New England narrative–the Ransom family, one by one, took to consumption. Desperate to find a cure, the surviving Ransoms dug up Ransom, who they recognized as their attacker, burnt his heart, and…this time didn’t consume the ashes. Apparently, news of the “coffin blood” strategy’s failure has finally embedded itself in the popular consciousness. Instead, they placed the ashes of Frederick Ransom’s heart in a jar and buried it 15 feet underground beneath a 7 ton slab.

 

Apparently, Frederick Ransom left a very strong impression on his living relatives that he was very, very evil.

 

Of course, burning his heart only wounded Frederick. The entire body must be burnt.

 

They would wound Frederick, but Frederick would kill them…and he would go on killing. He quite liked being a vampire.

 

Ransom continues to be a menace across the globe as one of the oldest and deadliest vampires on record. “Heartless” describes Ransom physically and spiritually. While most vampires, even Count Dracula, experience some degree of shame or revulsion over what they are and what they do, Ransom believes himself to be a perfect being, a superior form of life over that of humans and ghosts. He is man and spirit and that not only makes him superior, it makes everyone else inferior. Humans exist to be his juice boxes and playthings, nothing more. While several superteams such as the Monster Legion have thwarted his plans over the years and have even imprisoned his ectoplasmic body for a time, but his body has never been destroyed.

 

Superteams continue to scour the globe for the location of his body to no avail. It is commonly believed that he has it stashed in an extradimensional location similar to the Blueprint. Ransom considers himself a personal rival to Count Dracula due to being jealous of Dracula’s greater age and alchemical knowledge and is prone to remarking that, while Dracula suffered through a brief period of discorporation due to the destruction of his body at the hands of Jonathan Harker and Quincy Morris, his body has never been destroyed.

 

In 1860, the Climacteric arrived. The planet’s noosphere took a huge leap forward as occultist Manly P. Hall made contact with a sleeping mind of the dead Abramelin. The Archon Walls weakened, and Astral activity increased dramatically across the planet.

 

In 1890, female vampire Mercy Brown rose from her grave in Exeter, Rhode Island (not too far from Joyous Harbor, but then again, anywhere in Rhode Island isn’t far from Joyous Harbor, we’re the smallest state in the union). Her family was in the grips of tuberculosis. Mercy was the third member of her family to perish after her mother Mary Brown and her sister Mary Olive. Mercy was only 19 when she perished.

 

As consumption spread through her family, they sought a reason as to why. Not satisfied with how the local doctors ascribed their sickness to invisible things called germs, they turned to the advice of their friends and went vampire hunting.

 

Logic would suggest that if their disease was caused by vampires, then the vampire would be the first to perish, Mary Brown, but they exhumed Mercy and Mary Olive to make sure.

 

They found Mercy’s heart the only one beating. 

 

Mercy was more powerful and more coherent than previous vampires owing to rising after the Climacteric. She attempted to reason with her family. She was a vampire, certainly, but she wasn’t the one that made them sick. She couldn’t have been. She was the third to die.

 

It didn’t matter. She was the vampire–that was the only thing that mattered.

 

Her family asked her, very nicely, to let them burn her heart and lungs so that they could consume the ashes and cure themselves. Apparently, the old “coffin blood” strategy had made a resurgence within the minds of New Englanders.

 

Mercy allowed them, even though she feared it would mean her total destruction. She couldn’t deny them. They had all asked with no dissenters. But of course, the entire body has to be burnt to disperse a vampire, and Mary survived. At first, she tried to live off of livestock, but when the craving became too much, she began attacking farmers.

 

The American branch of the Carnacki Foundation, which was well-established by 1890, was called in to investigate. Using gaeite candles, a primitive (and relatively dangerous) version of modern odic scanners, the Foundation tracked down Mercy’s body, but instead of destroying her, they tried to talk with her.

 

The Carnacki Foundation’s interactions with Mercy Brown became the textbook example for modern vampire treatment. It was a new age. There was no need to destroy a vampire. Pharmaceutical drugs could treat their victims and cure their “vampiric death curse.” Blood could be extracted through a sterile needle and preserved in freezers. They talked to Mercy, gave her blood, and offered her sanctuary for herself and her body. Mercy accepted gladly,

 

Mercy Brown would be responsible for changing the public perception of vampires from monsters to victims. The Carnacki Foundation had her tour the world and make public speeches talking about what had happened to her and how she was carrying on. She became the modern face for vampires and vampirism gradually became known as “Brown syndrome.”

 

Mercy never reconnected with her family, but she found another family in the Carnacki Foundation and its members. She remains close to them to this day. 

 

Nowadays, Mercy is one of Martin’s history teachers, and though she isn’t particularly close to Auggie, she has talked with him and the two have shared their experiences enduring Brown syndrome. Her body is kept in the Blueprint annex, the same place we keep all the bodies. Mercy is also a founding member of the Monster League and once had a romantic relationship with fellow member Dr. Emir Hayyen.

 

It’s a good thing that Mercy became the face of modern vampires, because shortly after she started giving speeches, the most infamous vampire of them all would introduce himself to the world…

 

Dracula 

 

In 1897, the most infamous vampire carried out the most infamous vampire attack of all time in England, though for all the fuss made over Dracula, his body count was much lower than one might expect. He killed eight aboard the Russian ship Demeter and then two in London–Lucy Westenra, her mother and R.M, Renfield, a poor man Dracula infected with Harker syndrome. That brings his total to 11, but if his indirect responsibility for the death of Quincy Morris is taken into account, the total rises to 12, which is still less than that of Paole.

 

Dracula was not, as several historians have assumed, Vlad Tepes Dracul III, better known as Vlad the Impaler, cruel tyrant of Wallachia. Dracula actually hated Vlad. Vlad led several purges of Wallachia’s Boyers, and Dracula was a proud Boyer.

 

Dracula is unique among vampires in that he was a self-made vampire. Dracula has a highly intelligent man with a background in alchemy. When he stumbled across Turkish notes on takwins while leading the Transylvanians against the Ottomans, he understood exactly what they described–artificially life born not of woman but of science, the philosopher’s stone itself, according to some interpretations.

 

Takwins were first created by Islamic alchemists inspired by the golems of Jewish alchemists which were created in an attempt to recreate Adam Kadmon, the primordial, perfect man said to have been fragmented into humanity by sin. Takwins were meant to be immortals, the living bridge between man and the angels, and they maintained their immortality by replacing their blood. No problem, the alchemists thought, a little voluntary bloodletting was nothing compared to the potential benefits immortals offered society. Never again would the world have to worry about losing the Library of Alexandria with living libraries roaming the world.

 

But this exchange of blood spread disease, just like it did for vampires, and takwins and their alchemical creators were quickly hunted down and exterminated.

 

Knowledge of takwins circulated in secret around the Muslim Ummah. The notes were forbidden knowledge to be passed down but never read, transcribed but never understood, and this was how they came into possession of an Ottoman soldier who was slain by a Transylvanian. The Transylvanians saw the notes with their weird writing and weirder drawings and brought them to his lord knowing that Dracula was interested in such things.

 

Dracula combined what he read in the takwin manuscripts with discoveries of his own and found a potion that he believed would grant him immortality like that of the takwins.

 

It ended up killing him, proving that arrogance was always a weakness for Dracula, but he rose again, either through luck or by the effects of the potion, as a vampire.

 

The alchemical potion had given Dracula’s ectoplasm a peculiar quality–it would leak a substance into his blood which allowed Dracula to do what no other vampire in history had been able to do–turn humans into vampires, though a different nature than natural vampires. Dracula’s blood allowed him to infect humans with Harker syndrome, and repeated exposure to his blood would progress Harker syndrome to Westenra syndrome.

 

Dracula infected a victim with Harker syndrome by forcing them to drink his blood laced with alchemical potions. A victim would be forced into a telepathic connection with Dracula. While vampires can naturally affect the minds of people nearby by manipulating their blood, Harker syndrome allowed Dracula to manipulate the minds of his victims over great distances. A victim would also develop a craving for blood, and as this craving develops, they would seek out progressively larger and larger prey. They typically started with spiders then progressed to small mammals and then large mammals–including humans. Through Harker syndrome, Dracula built up a small army of Gypsy servants to aid in protecting his body.

 

Another dose of Dracula’s blood progressed Harker syndrome to Westenra syndrome. The victim would perish and rise as a vampire, but a vampire under Dracula’s control. Curiously, he only progressed Harker syndrome to Westenra syndrome for four people out of all those under his control–three concubines he acquired over the centuries, their names lost to time, and Lucy Westenra. Perhaps because he felt another male vampire had the potential to challenge his power?  Though he controlled the minds of those under Harker and Westenra syndrome, there were moments of failure. Renfield was able to resist him, in the end, and Johnathan Harker recorded that Dracula’s concubines disobeyed him, though quickly cowered before him in his presence.

 

Dracula’s ghost kept the man’s intelligence, and it made him perhaps the deadliest vampire to walk the face of the globe. He was very careful about his feeding. Though it was no secret from the surrounding communities that Dracula haunted the ruined castle near the Borgo Pass, the prevailing attitude was that the great evil was best left alone to molder in the ruins. Dracula only fed from those who had Harker syndrome, only the derelict and friendless and vagabond, which was why Gypsies became his preferred prey. His victims told no one, and those they did tell were quickly disposed with. Dracula planned like no vampire before him. Dracula protected himself like no vampire before him. He sent out Harker syndrome slaves to acquire books, which he valued almost as much as blood, and from books learned how the world outside was progressing. He kept abreast of the latest political and scientific advancements because his ambitions went far beyond his ruined home.

 

When the 1860 Climacteric was resolved, Dracula felt a surge of power. The Archon Walls suddenly thinned substantially, and all Astral phenomena on Earth strengthened, including vampires. Dracula never felt so alive. His newfound strength came with a bolstering of his old arrogance, and he could no longer put off his plans.

 

In 1897, he put into action a scam to make himself master of the modern world. He would infiltrate London, the capital of the most powerful nation on Earth, and infect influential members of society with Harker syndrome. He would rule, first from the shadows, and then, when there was no one left to oppose him, openly, and at last his age-worn name would shine with modern glory.

 

The events of Dracula’s invasion are chronicled by investigative journalist Bram Stoker who would later record Queen Tera’s resurrection. Stoker created his report by piecing together journal entries, news reports, and letters, and the report is still held up as the gold standard of paranormal investigative journalism.

Dracula began by purchasing land around the London area from real estate agent Jonathan Harker, who is fed upon by Dracula’s harem. Jonathan barely escaped Dracula’s castle and wandered in a feverous delirium until he arrived at a Budapest hospital where doctors successfully treated the infection in his blood. While Harker recovered, Dracula arrived in London on a Russian ship called The Demeter, which docked with all hands found dead and mangled. He proceeded to target a woman named Lucy Westenra, who by chance was the best friend of Mina Harker, then fiancé’ of Jonathan Harker. Mina traveled to Budapest to be with Jonathan as he recovered and was absent for nightmare to come.

 

When Lucy began to suffer from the traditional vampiric blood sickness and the telepathic complications of Harker syndrome, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, a member of the Carnacki Foundation, was called in to investigate. He was able to successfully protect Lucy from Dracula by installing Thomas Carnacki’s electric pentacles, which he created that very year as an improvement on gaeite candles, but Dracula infected an inmate at the nearby Seward asylum named Renfield with Harker syndrome and used him to cut the power to the pentacles. In the form of a giant wolf, he attacked the Westenra residence, slaying Lucy’s mother and completing her transformation into a victim of the syndrome which now bears her name–Westenra syndrome.

 

Lucy would be identified weeks later prowling around the city and preying on children. Van Helsing, together with Lucy’s suitors Quincy Morris, Dr. John Seward, and Arthur Holmwood, tracked Lucy to her body and destroyed her.

 

Jonathan and Mina returned to London to hear the bad news. Seeking revenge for Lucy’s destruction, Dracula targeted Mina, and when Mina began to show Lucy’s symptoms, Van Helsing moved her to Seward’s asylum and kept her under guard. Unfortunately, Renfield knew his asylum home well and was able to assist his master Dracula in getting around Van Helsing’s electric pentacle. Events threatened to resolve for Mina as they did for Lucy, but Van Helsing made a breakthrough with hypnotism–he found that the telepathic link created by Harker syndrome worked both ways. Mina could, while under hypnotism, telepathically spy on Dracula. Van Helsing used this telepathic connection to track Dracula’s movements and discover that he had set up safehouses throughout London.

 

London police, agents of the Carnacki Foundation, and Van Helsing’s group hunted down and destroyed Dracula’s sanctuaries one by one. Eventually, Dracula is forced to flee back to Transylvania with his body, but using Mina he is able to be hunted down. His body was finally destroyed when the Van Helsing group caught up to him at Galatz. In a final battle, his heart was pierced by Jonathan and his neck slit by Quincy. This stunned Dracula’s ectoplasmic body long enough for Van Helsing to set fire to the body. The war against Dracula was finally won, though Morris would perish from his wounds. Jonathan and Mina would have a son named Quincy who would become a Hercules armor operator during the Great War in the Air before becoming a psionicist studying telepathic phenomena. He currently resides in America and works as a doctor for TIMS.

 

There would end Stoker’s account, but unfortunately it would not be the end of Dracula.

 

Vampires are beings of the Astral, and beings of the Astral cannot be destroyed. They can be subdued, imprisoned, overpowered, exiled, but never destroyed.

 

In 1931, the Carnaki Foundation attempted to reconstitute the ectoplasmic bodies of dispersed vampires in the hopes of binding them to artificial bodies and rehabilitating them. Reconstituted vampires included Lucy Westenra, Arnold Paole, and Dracula. Reviving Dracula would prove to be an enormous mistake. 

 

It was hoped that the memory loss that occurs when a vampire discorporates would have been enough to create an innocent Dracula, a Dracula that could be molded into a peaceful person, but Dracula remembered enough about who he was to remember who his enemies were.

 

Dracula had no interest in being rehabilitated and killed those that revived him, taking their blood into his reconstituted ectoplasmic body.

 

Dracula would prove to be a persistent threat . He has clashed with virtually every major superteam at least once. The Monster League has fought him several times. But no one has managed to get to his bodies–yes, bodies. Dracula kept up with modern science and applied what he learned to his old alchemical secrets. He figured out how to possess the bodies of those afflicted with Harker syndrome. He could even control several bodies at once. Worse still, he learned how to increase the virulence of his blood so that it instantly passes on Harker syndrome on contact with the blood stream. He has, for instance, taken over an entire superteam by turning into a cloud of blood and diffusing through their clothes and skin.

 

Dracula’s 20th and 21st century exploits have been as colorful as one might expect from an immortal freak of alchem. He has tried to add women, particularly superheroines, to his harem, and has tried to reconnect with his previous three “brides.” One fears him and spends her life in a quiet, undisclosed place where it’s always warm and bright. Another is his loyal and faithful servant, more so than even Renfield was. And the third seeks to destroy him and hounds him relentlessly, his greatest foe on Earth. He has retaken his castle and transported it…somewhere. No one knows where Dracula’s castle is. The superhero community would raid it the moment it’s location was learned. The Monster League were able to infiltrate it during the 50’s, but entered it and left it through portals, leaving its location unknown. One of Dracula’s favorite activities is hunting himself. Dracula carries a grudge like no one (Quincy Harker became an expert in telepathic combat just to fend off Dracula’s relentless attacks against his person. He’s attacked by Dracula at least once a year) and will never forgive Vlad Tepes for persecuting the Wallachian boyers. This extends to all Vlad Tepes around the multiverse, and through a cosmic quirk of fate, quite a few Draculas have turned out to be some variation of Vlad Tepes. Some ARGO researchers go so far as to believe that the most common form of Dracula is Vlad Tepes.

 

You can imagine how much this angers our Dracula. Imagine finding out that your other self from another world is the man you hate. Imagine finding out that most versions of you from other worlds take the form and history of the man you hate.

 

Dracula often prowls the multiverse looking for Vlad Tepes. Those that can be destroyed, he destroys, and those he can’t he foils, humiliates, and imprisons. His hatred is so great that he’s even assisted alternate versions of the Van Helsing group in tracking down and killing alternate versions of himself. Dracula plunders from the Draculas he kills, and it’s rumored that his castle is now a labyrinthian collection of castles melded together. Dracula rules over a new Transylvania, one composed entirely of castles.

 

Auggie encountered Dracula once while he was assisting Dr. Emir Hayyen in studying the vampires of Nazarth (their souls do not detach from their bodies, which makes them interesting to contrast with the vampires of our world). Their skirmish was brief, as Dracula didn’t suspect Dr. Hayyen’s assistant had a super bioscanner that could identify him while he was disguised as a fairy and was taken quite by surprise when Auggie started drawing the blood from out of his body.

 

Auggie remarks that Dracula isn’t as tough as he seems. “He’s mostly fear and image. Of course, the little part that’s left over is still something considerable, something you have to take serious, but he’s not invincible. He’s just crafty. And I’m craftier.”

 

Will the world ever be rid of the menace of Count Dracula? Some questions have no answers…

 

Modern Vampires

 

Modern vampires are typically identified by the Carnacki Foundation and given over to the proper authorities for treatment, which in America would be TIMS (telepathic institutionalization and medical services) because all odic disorders are classified as telepathic disorders in America. Auggie was in TIMS during his childhood until he proved he could handle his body and vein coat without assistance.

 

Emir Hayyen, a founding member of the Monster League, is perhaps the most famous vampire of the modern age. In 1931, Emir was one of the Carnacki Foundation manesologists involved in resurrecting Dracula, but Dracula spared Emir and made a slave out of him, infecting him with Harker syndrome. Dracula used Emir to fill in the gaps of his eroded memory and catch up on what had transpired since his dispersal.

 

 Dracula took refuge in a hidden library in Transylvania (it would have been too risky to return to his castle) he set up centuries ago as a secret sanctuary and took Emir along as a slave. Things looked dire for Emir, but he had a secret–he had the very same alchemical secrets memorized in his head that Dracula knew. He was from a long and storied family of alchemists who knew of takwins and passed down their coded secrets from father to son. Dracula allowed Emir to look at his books so that he might better understand what Dracula understood and thus be a better teacher. This was Dracula’s mistake. Emir knew how to read the alchemical manuscripts Dracula assumed were decodable only by himself. Emir read the manuscripts, understood the manuscripts, and by applying a little modern chemistry, was able to synthesize a solution while Dracula was out which cured Harker syndrome by converting the alchemical potions within Dracula’s blood to the blood of a takwin. It transformed the Harker syndrome victim into a tawkin, and Emir became the first takwin to walk the Earth in centuries. 

 

Emir’s cure has become the standard in treating Harker syndrome, though it has no effect if symptoms progress to Westenra syndrome. Until 1958, curing Harker syndrome in this way was permanent, those exposed to the cure would be takwins forevermore. This might not sound so bad–being a takwin means you’re immortal so long as you keep replacing your bodily fluids–but consider that by 1950 rejuvenation treatments were widely available and the inability to naturally create blood results in many drawbacks–decreased immunity, decreased platelet count, decreased energy, and having to constantly monitor and maintain one’s own blood levels.

 

Amusingly, people celebrated a cure for what ancient alchemists considered the ultimate state of being. Time has a sense of humor.

 

Emir escaped from Castle Dracula and became one of the founders of the Monster League. He would always retain his telepathic connection with Dracula, and he used it to vex the count again and again throughout the decades. Emir never stopped being a takwin, not even when 1958 rolled around. He discover that through intense training and the gradual introduction of new chemical compounds into his bloodstream, he could evolve past being a takwin and become an “alchemical man, which some alchemical manuscripts identify as’azoth or rebis. “Alchemical Man” even became his supername, once such things came into fashion, though he always preferred to simply go by Dr. Emir Hayyen. 

 

Emir was able to secrete a substance known as alkahest which dissolved substances while keeping their chemical properties intact. Alkahest is composed of “corpuscles” which surround and separate atoms, forming a “membrane” through which atoms float without interacting with each other.

 

Alkahest made him a boon to science as he was able to take apart and examine elements like never before. He was able to rapidly advance mankind’s understanding of quantum mechanics and many credit him for paving the way for the development of atomic dissolvers and teleporters in the late 1930’s.

 

Emir is considered the greatest vampire of the modern age for his discoveries–but is he a vampire? Some say he should be considered a takwin or rebis before a vampire, though traces of Dracula’s blood still flow through his veins. Emir considers himself a vampire. “I have the most infamous vampire taking up space in my head. If I don’t count, I think a chunk of my gray matter does.”

 

Auggie sees Emir as a role model and works with him off-and-on, usually in testing out his super bioscanner. “Dr. Hayyen is pretty cool.” Auggie once said, “He knows how to pick the coolest coats, and let’s be honest, that’s the truest part of being a vampire, even before the blood and ghost stuff.”

 

Without The V, But With Plenty Of Volts

 

Auggie, like fellow student Donald Swift, was a victim of the Praetorian Interway bombing. Unlike Donald, Auggie wasn’t orphaned (he snuck out of the house to visit a multiversal movie theater). Unlike Donald, Auggie didn’t survive. A piece of shrapnel crushed his head and his soul uncoupled from his odic bond.

 

The outcomes of nascent ghosts vary widely. Some see themselves as an imposter, a shadow. Some see themselves as an improvement, a second chance, a rarefied version of the person who died with a clean slate and limitless potential. Manesologists agree that the outcomes of child ghosts depend primarily on parental support. Auggie was very fortunate to have had understanding, accepting parents who gave him the unconditional love he needed.

 

Not all ghost children are so fortunate.

 

Auggie’s parents were adamant that their son wasn’t the gently sleeping corpse. Their son was a nervous, fretful child with a fear of coins because their smell reminded him of the blood he was forced to drink and administer to his corpse.

 

Though he’s no longer afraid of coins and metal, he still feels uneasy around them, and the smell makes him noxious.

 

Auggie was a morose young man when he enrolled in our middle school. He was obsessed with keeping his vampiric nature secret to the point of disrupting class. He wouldn’t let anyone touch him. He wouldn’t let anyone even move close to him. If someone brushed up against him or if he thought someone brushed up against him he would recoil dramatically, which, of course, made the kids laugh. Kid often laughed at Auggie. He walked slowly from class to class, frightened that going faster than a shuffle would cause the blood stored between the layers of his vein coat to slosh around. Most of the kids thought he was acting out for attention. Only a handful of the smarter ones realized what was wrong with Auggie.

 

Teachers weren’t even allowed to use Auggie’s real name at first. They had to call him “Sheridan.” Auggie enrolled himself in the secret identity program, though we advised against it. He thought that if he used another name that it would provide him with a “safe” way of interacting with students. If he didn’t have to worry about them knowing who he really was, he could socialize with them freely and openly. But “Sheridan” was just as socially awkward as Auggie. A fake name did nothing for his very real social anxiety and disruptive behavior.

 

Two things turned Auggie around–biology and manesology. As a boy trapped between life and death, the study of life and death held a special attraction for Auggie. He excelled in his standard classes and was soon promoted to advanced classes as part of his personalized curriculum. In Advanced Biology he met Ms. Cryptic and in Advanced Manesology he met Old Adam, and it’s hard to be negative around characters as bubbly as those two. They helped Auggie come out of his shell, and what they taught Auggie allowed him to feel a degree of control over his metapathogen. He learned how his ectoplasmic body could sense blood and absorb it. He learned how his corpse fed off blood and how the latent ectoplasm in its dead veins.

 

Learning about his condition helped Auggie. It helped him a lot. Not only did it give him a sense of control over himself, but it provided a springboard for him to explore beyond himself. It made him curious about other odic disorders and metapathogens. It opened his eyes to a world that captured his imagination. When Ms. Cryptic called his report on quasimorph homeostasis grad level, he knew he had found his future.

 

Today, Auggie is a hardworking, bright, and sociable young man. He’s embraced being a vampire and no longer uses “Sheridan.” He even thinned his vein coat so that the blue-dyed blood it pumps through his ectoplasmic body shows bright and clear. He finds it very liberating to lean into his “vampire-ness,” especially when compared to how he was when he tried to hide it. Some think he tries too hard to the point he becomes tacky like a Halloween decoration. Darkheart, who used to be close friends with Auggie in middle school, gradually grew apart from him because he “Wouldn’t stop acting like he was Count Chocula.” Bue we can’t fault Auggie. After all, going all-in with being a vampire. Going all-in with studying science, after all, did wonders for him.

 

Perhaps Auggie just functions better as an all-in kind of guy?

 

Recently, he’s taken a middle schooler named Greg Cayden under his wing as part of Identity Management’s mentorship program. Greg is another vampire and acts much like Auggie did at his age down to using an alias (Brayden). Auggie is helping him be more social by taking him along to Advance Biology and Manesology functions as his helper and cue card holder. It seems to be working. Whether or not Greg will drop “Brayden” remains to be seen, but he’s been making friends, most notably Halcyon, Vapor Riser’s son.

 

Auggie likes the humor in their relationship–a vampire and a guy made out of sunlight. It almost makes Auggie wish he was a jock so he could have befriended Burning Bright.

 

Behavior:

 

Exemplary

 

When Auggie first came through our doors, he was a morose young man. It’s not easy learning that you’ve died and now have to tend to your own corpse for the rest of existence. Imagine staring at yourself day after day and putting your ethereal hand to your chest. Imagine seeing yourself breathe as if you were sleeping as you forced blood to flow from the thing that was your hand into a heart that was once in your chest. Vampires are often self-hating. Even Dracula, infamous for his outward ego, was fueled by an inner disgust at his fallen state.

 

But the current Auggie is calm, collected, and not averse to a laugh. He is a true intellectual with the hunger to tirelessly pursue knowledge, the sensitivity to stand in awe before his discoveries, and the humility to understand that he cannot know everything. 

Auggie is one of our most promising students with a bright future ahead of himself. 

 

Get it? Bright? As in sunlight? Because people think vampires are harmed by the sun?

 

Hey, it’s hard not to feel playful and effervescent when you study up on Auggie. He rubs off on you. He’s infectious. 

 

You know, like a vampire bite.

 

Appearance:

 

While shy about his vampiric nature when he first came to Martin’s, Auggie has recently embraced it. His vein coat is thinner than most. It’s veins shine through the fabric like argon lights and shine brighter when feeding him. He’s very fond of his large, blue John Lennon glasses. He says it pulls his look together.

 

As with all vampires, Auggie’s complexion is very fair, and the dyed blood flowing through him sometimes gives him a bluish tint. Keep in mind he’s not unwell, that’s just how he looks.

 

Auggie has recently taken to sharpening his teeth. Historically, vampires rarely had fangs. They preferred to draw blood out of their victims by bursting capillaries near the surface of the skin, sort of like how one would squeeze juice out of a berry. Fangs were really only ever used when vampires shaped themselves into animals. Auggie has fangs because he recently read up on human teeth sharpening in cultural anthropology and thought it was a neat idea.

 

People have asked watt’s up (he he) with the roosters on his vein coat. Those are weather vanes. Get it? Vanes? Veins? 

 

Hey if I got it, there’s no reason you shouldn’t have…