“We do not say Bleh!, Dunstana. Blegh.”
“Uh, Aunt Alessia —”
“That was a blegh of disgust, Kat, not a ‘Bleh! I’m a vampire!‘”
Margravine Alessia di Racula, in a conversation
about Heroes’ Eve with the Sisters Darkstone.
While the existence of Vampires is not disputed — except perhaps by a few particularly stubborn, eccentric contrarians — few people in Realmgard have ever knowingly crossed paths with a Vampire.
In general, Vampires are viewed by most of the other inhabitants of Realmgard with some combination of suspicion, fear, or outright hostility and are often blamed for whatever misfortunes may befall the local community, occasionally boiling over to violence.
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com
As such, most Vampires choose to live in isolation and seclusion, or else do their utmost to conceal their status as Vampires. Unfortunately, this mostly serves to further fuel the suspicion and vicious rumours which plague them.
Naturally, much of this arises from the infamous issue of Vampire blood-sucking. While it is true that Vampires are able to sustain themselves with the blood of their victims, most of Realmgard’s Vampires are sufficiently committed to peaceful co-existence with their non-Vampires neighbours that they have devoted serious time and effort to developing alchemical and magical alternatives to sustain themselves — and, in the process, allow themselves to be viewed as less of a threat in the eyes of their neighbours.
There are examples of Vampires living openly among their non-Vampire neighbours and even become valued pillars of their communities or benevolent and beloved leaders and rulers.
The exact origins of the first Vampires are clouded by hearsay and legend and a historically-verifible account remains elusive. It is generally held that the first Vampires arose magically rather than through any sort of nature biological function.
Similarly, the exact limits of a Vampire’s powers remain unclear and the secret is usually a closely-guarded secret among the Vampires themselves, though that Vampires are superhuman in many areas is widely-attested.
That Vampires possess an affinity for the darkness and the night has led to the widespread misconception that Vampires are destroyed by sunlight. In actuality, the sun has no appreciable negative effect upon Vampires.
Additionally, Vampires do not, in fact, say ‘Bleh!’
Well, some might, but only as a result of personal choice, rather than as an inevitable aspect of being a Vampire.
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