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Vampires are a race of predators who feed on blood. They were once humans transformed by a conscious act of will, known as the Embrace, into powerful creatures of the night. During the Embrace, a vampire drains a candidate of all their blood and replaces it with a small amount (generally a single drop) of their own. This causes the corpse to rise as a new vampire, usually instantly. The vampire who initiates the Embrace is the Sire; the new vampire is the Sire's Childe.


Vampires have every manner of supernatural power, such as turning into animals, flying and wielding the strength of a dozen men. While these powers are not universal, vampires have unique abilities known as Disciplines, which can grant individual undead capabilities such as these and more. The sunlight burns vampires, however. As part of their curse, vampires recoil at the touch of the sun, its vital rays scorching their undead flesh. Vampires typically spend the daylight hours in the cold sleep of undeath, and only the most resolute can shake off the weight of the day’s forced slumber for even a short time.


Vampires aren’t destroyed upon being staked through the heart, they’re held in stasis. A vampire’s body slowly withers and turns inward while trapped in this state, desiccating and becoming ever more corpselike. Garlic and running water do not repels vampires. Such notions are nothing more than old wives’ tales, cultural biases or perhaps the banes of certain bloodlines of Kindred. They are also not repulsed by crosses and other holy symbols. But there are rumors of the devout sometimes being able do affect the Kindred with miraculous aspects of their faith. Curiously though, the Kindred don’t show up like normal people on camera or in mirrors. Their features appear obscured in photographic media (including video footage) and reflexive surfaces. They can temporarily counteract this effect, but the “default” is a sort of occlusion. The same is not true for voice recordings; vampires’ voices are captured normally on those.


For the Kindred, the act of feeding becomes highly sensual. The process of taking blood is euphemistically called the Kiss or feeding - and a vampire leaves little to mark her passing if she is careful, cause all a vampire must do to heal the wound left by her feeding is to lick it when she’s done. The vessel feels ecstatic when the feeding happens, and the vampire undergoes a heady rush as well. Certain vampires sustain their undeath by drinking the blood of animals, but rarely for long, as either their tastes or the needs of their cursed bodies force them to seek human blood. Although vampires do not appear to age, and some survive for centuries, the Kindred use the word “undead” rather than “immortal” to describe themselves. Vampirism is a curse, not a blessing. It does carry with it great power, but the state of being a vampire also brings with it numerous detriments, not the least of which include the internalized rage of the Beast and feeding on human blood


While a vampire might believe that he feels an emotion, what he actually feels is the echo of mortal emotions that the remnants of his soul apply to his current experience. That is, a vampire who feels angry might indeed be angry at the subject of his ire, but the resonance of the emotion actually comes from some situation the vampire dealt with in life. This condition results in many strange situations. It should be noted, that while the act of feeding replaces all physical urges, vampires can still indulge in sex and even take pleasure from it. Curiously, however, the emotional aspect of sex vanishes after the Embrace. A vampire might enjoy the physical sensation of sex, but no more than she enjoys a particularly savory smell or the touch of a luxurious fabric.


Physiology

Vampires change considerably after the Embrace. When a vampire is Embraced, their internal organs atrophy, and almost all their bodily fluids are replaced by blood. Vampires use blood (also called Vitae) for a variety of purposes; blood replaces most bodily fluids, so vampires will sweat blood and cry blood under certain circumstances. Blood is also used to get up and move; every night, vampires expend a certain amount of blood to rise.


In addition, vampires can use blood to enhance their physical attributes and use supernatural powers called Disciplines. Blood is used to Embrace, as noted above, and also to create Ghouls. Finally, vampires can use blood to heal damage to their bodies.


Once Embraced, vampires become immortal and are locked into a form of stasis. Apart from wounds, vampires are restored to their condition at the time of Embrace every time they rise up for the night. This physical condition eventually extends to their mindsets as well; old vampires find it very hard to learn new things. While mostly incapable of eating food, vomiting it up almost instantly, vampires who have trained to do so can hold down food for longer before they must expel it from themselves, therefore keeping their façade of humanity intact. As a result, the vampire is paler and generally thinner than they were before the Embrace. Certain clans have more extreme physical changes.


Psychology

In addition to the physical changes, vampires experience extreme intellectual and emotional changes. The vampire is now a predator, and has a raging inner monster called the Beast. The Beast reacts to a variety of stimuli, notably hunger, anger, fear. The Beast continuously assaults the character, and if the Beast's demands exceed the character's own capacity to control it, will react in a Frenzy or Rötschreck. Vampires can permanently lose control to the Beast, entering Wassail, a state of permanent Frenzy. In this condition, all humanity is lost and the vampire becomes a draugr, a mindless killing machine.


Vulnerabilities

Vampires are highly vulnerable to a some physical threats, most importantly sunlight and fire. Vampires burn easily, and will burn up almost instantly in sunlight. However, outside of these, vampires are very hard to kill - bullets do not cause much damage, and their superior strength and speed make them hard to hit, let alone damage in combat.


When wounded, vampires can pass into a deathlike stasis called Torpor, which allows them to heal more extreme damage. Torpor can last for centuries depending on the circumstances, and as a vampire gets older, Torpor becomes a more attractive option. Some vampires have been in Torpor for millennia. One of the dangers of Torpor is the Fog of Eternity, which can muddle the vampire's memories.


Powers and Abilities

main article Discipline (VTR)

Vampiric powers and capabilities which have often given rise to old wives' tales of superhuman speed, strength and endurance possessed by the Damned, along with their piercing gaze, their hypnotic and seductive voices and the unholy power to vanish into shadows and shapeshift into bats, wolves and mist.[1]


These Disciplines are powers inate to vampires. They are determined by the clan, covenant or bloodline the vampire belongs to. These are special abilities associated with their curse which, like their undead bodies, are "fed" in a way by the living blood they take from mortals. Many of the Disciplines provide Kindred with preternatural means of ensuring their continued existence, or of easing the process of hunting and stealing blood from mortals.


Disciplines are generally recognized as common (common place among the Kindred and more than one clan has an innate knack for them), unique (the proprietary abilities of each of the five clans), covenant (possessed only by a specific covenant and never shared with outsiders), and bloodline (known only to the members of a particular bloodline within a clan). Powers that combine aspects of two or more Disciplines are called Devotions.


Here are some of the known disciplines:


Animalism - Power over animals and even the Beast of Kindred;

Auspex - Preternatural senses and perception;

Celerity - Superhuman speed;

Dominate - The ability to overwhelm the mind;

Majesty - Tremendous force of personality;

Nightmare - Manipulating fear itself;

Obfuscate - Hiding aspects of one’s self, even one’s body;

Protean - Shapechanging and adjustments of the vampiric form;

Resilience - Legendary toughness;

Vigor - The epic strength of many men.