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"Vampirism is a horrible virus carried in the saliva of predators. In 72 hours, it spreads through the human bloodstream, creating new parasitic organs."
"Like cancer."
"Cancer with a purpose."
Blade and Eli Damaskinos

Vampires (Hominis nocturnae, Latin: "Nocturnal Human") are an offshoot of humanity created by exposure to a unique virus, granting them super-human abilities, at the cost of needing to consume human blood to survive. Virtually all present-day vampires have forgotten that the virus actually has a supernatural origin, though the legends are ultimately real.

Overview[]

Within the modern present-day universe of “Blade” vampirism is believed to be a biological condition, caused by a Parvovirus (contrary to it’s origin as a supernatural affliction, as told in traditional vampiric folklore) however, it’s been proven vampires have retained some aspects of mysticism for evolutionary change, specifically one’s who have received the virus through bite and not birth. One ritual in particular involved awaken the vampiric blood god “La Magra” by using Twelve pureblood vampires, however, the origin of these rituals are left ambiguous. This indicates the vampiric virus possessing anonymous supernatural elements. Vampires are looked upon as a biological species (as opposed to being mythical or supernatural). Their scientific classification is a branch of Homo-sapiens known as Homines nocturna; as such they are unaffected by religious symbols such as crucifixes and holy water. Other attributes traditionally associated with vampires, such as turning into mist or bats, are unknown.

Mostly forgotten legends in ancient vampire texts say that they descend from Drake, also known as “Dracula”, an ancient Sumerian immortal who was worshipped as a god, by which being the original source of the virus. Almost all present-day vampires, however, have forgotten the origins of their species.

Vampires are intricately involved in virtually every aspect of modern human civilisation, and most have become adept at manipulating the capitalistic nature of the population within America to cover up and finance their illegal and unethical activities. Rather than feral monsters, vampires maintain a secret, mafia-like power cabal in the bounds of society.

Infection[]

Vampirism is a virus most often transferred via the saliva of a vampire into the victim's bloodstream through a bite. The incubation period is usually 72 hours after infection, by which time the virus will mutate the victim into a vampire by creating new parasitic organs. During this incubation period the infected will start feeling an aversion to sunlight, and intense thirst no matter how much they drink.

Even a person who is technically "killed" shortly after becoming infected will still revive as a vampire, if they are not properly drained of blood. So long as their brain and heart are intact, their body's tissues won't actually die, but will be regenerated by the virus (they are medically "dead" in the technical sense that their heart stops for several hours - but it is impossible to infect and revive someone who was already dead). Infected humans who die and revive in this manner have a shorter incubation period, only a few hours as opposed to 3 days.

Marcus Van Sciver reveals that transformation from bites is not a highly reliable means of transmitting the vampire virus, and is considered uncivilized and savage. Van Sciver turned Krista Starr by injecting her with his blood via hypodermic syringe and dropping her from a two story building onto a car, killing her. She rises as a vampire over one hour later. When an infected person is "killed" - in the process of the virus reviving them - they experience an After Death Experience (or ADE), in which they have visions both of their own dreams and memories as their cognitive functions reconstruct, and of when the vampire that infected them was turned (the latter is obtained via the infector's genetic memories transferred to the infected person). The ADE also gives a permanent neuro-genetic connection between the new vampire and the vampire that turned them, although it is usually difficult to access and can only be triggered via a specified blood ritual.

Biology[]

The vampirism virus radically alters the host's physiology and metabolism, somewhat like cancer - but “cancer with purpose, structure instead of chaos, creating entirely new parasitic organs inside of the body. Outwardly, vampires looks like regular humans and can visibly blend into society without being noticed by people. Vampires do grow fangs to aid in feeding, but they are retractable. Vampires have a much lower average body temperature than humans, around 50 degrees Fahrenheit compared to the average human 98.6 degrees - thus making it possible to spot vampires in a crowd using an infrared camera.

A vampire cannot produce sufficient amounts of hemoglobin, for this reason it is essential for vampires to consume human blood as a dietary source of hemoglobin. Ordinary food is edible to vampires, but it is unclear if it has nutritional value to them or if it’s only done for pleasure, as they can live entirely on blood alone. This biological need for blood is known as "the Thirst" and is considered to be a vampiric weakness, as well as the primal urge that drives all vampires. This permeates every aspect of their existence within our society and often causes discourse within the vampire community itself due to a unbalanced ratio of vampires to humans.

Otherwise, vampires have several strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths[]

  • Longevity: Unlike most vampiric lore, the Vampires that appear in the Blade movie-verse are not immortal creatures, but rather age at a much slower rate than humans. Pure blood vampires will age into adulthood, while turned vampires maintain the physical form they had when they were still human. While Vampires appear to be immortal, due to the drastically slow rate at which they age, they can eventually die of old age; albeit after several thousand years.
  • Superhuman Strength: Vampires possess enhanced strength equivalent to that of ten strong men; allowing any vampire (regardless of gender or size) to lift between 1000lbs and 4000lbs. Vampires can exert greater strength and force, they always have the advantage of overwhelming, raw physical strength against any human opponent; being able to easily overpower, lift, toss and throw humans. Vampires can also leap across large distances, lift and throw objects with great speed and force, tear doors off of their hinges and deliver powerful blows; sufficient to toss an adult male across a room with enough force to crack solid surfaces (like concrete). Vampires who die at the hands of a well-trained Vampire Hunter are usually killed due to their lack of skill or discipline.
  • Superhuman Agility: Vampires are able to move with great speed, agility and flexibility, far superior to that of normal humans. Vampires are able to run fast enough to quickly hunt down their prey, and can sprint fast enough to briefly keep up with moving vehicles such as subway trains. Vampires are also able to quickly climb tall buildings, as well as scale sheer surfaces like walls and ceilings. Vampires can also leap higher and further than humans and animals; Krista Starr, a newborn vampire, was able to jump from her window, onto the roof of another building in a single bound. It is also possible for vampires to dodge gunfire; as Deacon Frost was able to easily dodge bullets fired by Blade, however this is a rare feat amongst vampires.
  • Protractile Fangs/Claws: Vampires will develop an adapted musculature around the canine teeth, that allows for the teeth to extend in order to form sharp fangs. Similarly, they can also extend their fingernails to claw-like proportions. A vampires fangs and claws are primarily for offensive purposes; such as to more easily tear flesh and obtain fresh blood.
  • Superhuman Senses: A vampire's senses are sharper than those of a human; they are able to see, hear and smell with greater clarity and across greater distances. Vampires can hear sounds and conversations that Humans cannot, and their sense of smell allows them to catch the scent of blood. Vampires can also see into the ultraviolet spectrum and possess perfect visual clarity, even in complete darkness; Vampires will even make use of their vision to view glyphs that have been hidden in ultraviolet ink.
  • Superhuman Endurance: With certain exceptions and restrictions, Vampires are invulnerable to most conventional causes of fatality. Vampires are able to endure and survive normally fatal traumas, such as multiple gunshots, stab wounds, immolation, even close range explosions, and continue to function. Vampires will suffer wounds and experience pain when injured, however these injuries will eventually heal. Despite their resilience, Vampires are still vulnerable to, and can even be killed by certain trauma and substances; such as silver, garlic, EDTA and ultraviolet light.
  • Accelerated Healing Factor: Vampires are able to heal and recover from trauma and injury at a greatly accelerated rate. As well as being immune to terrestrial diseases and illnesses, any injuries that a Vampire suffers will usually heal within the span of 24 hours; even severe burns, gunshots and stab wounds (however severed limbs can take several days to completely regenerate). This process is accelerated by the haemoglobin content absorbed from blood. Vampires will more effectively heal and recover from their injuries, they can regenerate normally permanent injuries, perfectly heal any wound (as purebloods were born as vampires they have no scars; visible scars are a giveaway that a vampire was turned), and in most cases, any injuries will only temporarily slow the vampire down.

Weaknesses[]

  • Blood-Thirst: Because vampires have an inability to sustain enough hemoglobin (the virus causes hemolysis), they develop a form of anemia. This causes them to have a craving for blood, similar to food craving and substance dependence. If a vampire does not feed on blood for a long period of time, it will develop withdrawal symptoms and become gradually weaker and eventually die. The need for blood is referred to as "the Thirst" and is considered the defining and driving factor of all vampires.
  • Ultraviolet Light: Being exposed to sunlight will severely burn and ultimately kill a vampire. This is not a supernatural relationship with the sun, as any UV light source will harm a vampire due to their inability to produce defenses in the skin. Blade uses a portable UV flashlight unit in the first film, and by the second film is using smaller gun-mounted UV lights. Some vampires have discovered that by applying heavy amounts of sunblock, mascara, or other materials to their exposed skin, they can functionally move around in daylight for a limited length of time without significant harm. Others have worn full-body covering suits (i.e. motorcycle helmets) to move around during the day. Those that produce a natural defense in the body from UV-light, allowing them to move around in daylight are called "Daywalkers" - but they are one-in-a-million rarities.
  • Silver & Garlic: Vampires are fatally allergic to silver and garlic which causes them to go into anaphylactic shock and possibly death. For this reason vampire-hunters like Blade rely on weapons made of silver, such as hollow-point silver bullets filled with garlic. Non-lethal wounds from silver weapons are more difficult for vampires to heal. Whistler also developed an aerosol mace composed of silver nitrate mixed with garlic, which was quite effective.
  • Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid: The EDTA blood-thinner used in hospitals for clearing out blood clots in arteries reacts incredibly violently with vampire blood. Injecting a vampire with a syringe filled with EDTA will cause them to literally explode into a cloud of blood in a matter of seconds.

Language[]

See main article, "Vampire language"

Vampires also possess their own language, which many vampires speak. It is unclear if it is learned culturally, or passed down through genetic memory. This language also has its own writing system, referred to as "vampire glyphs", which are often used in graffiti to mark vampire hideouts.

Government []

Vampire society on the local or regional level is broken up into over a dozen major clans or 'Houses', e.g. the House of Erebus or the House of Chthon. The Houses form a united front in the Vampire Nation; the international governing hierarchy of the entire vampire race.

Over the generations, the vampires have developed an international power cabal; they control about half of the global financial institutions and own the police, bribing off human officials throughout the world to ignore and/or aid their activities. The Vampire Nation's leadership has decided that a full-scale war with humans is undesirable, so they maintain a secret truce with human governments; human politicians will ignore the vampires, and in return, the vampires will keep their numbers relatively low (not turning too many humans into new vampires).

Most of the Vampire Nation believes maintaining the truce is in their best interests. Occasionally renegade vampires pop up who disregard the Vampire Nation's rule. One such renegade was Deacon Frost, who felt that vampires should rule humans directly. Frost's actions were considered dangerous by the House of Erebus, with one leader warning him that the human governments would make things very difficult for them if their numbers increased too much.

Pure-Blood and Turn-Blood Vampires[]

Vampires are divided into two socio-biological categories; Pure-Blood and Turn-Blood. Pure-Bloods are born as vampires, the offspring of two people who are already vampires; this happens very rarely. Turn-Bloods vampires have had a human existence before becoming a vampire and are looked at with disdain by most of the Pure-Bloods due to their lack of vampiric purity, seeing them as a lesser breed or false vampires.

Pure-Bloods age very slowly. For example, Charlotte, a Pure-Blood vampire of the House of Chthon, was about 300 years old at the time Blade killed her, and still maintained the youthful appearance of a little girl. A Pure-Blood vampire that looks like an elderly adult is truly ancient. While vampires do have a massively extended lifespan, they are not truly "immortal", though they can live for so many thousands of years that the eldest among them may have been around since the dawn of human civilization.

Very few pure-blooded vampires have scars, because they have the ability to biologically regenerate from birth - meaning that unless injured with silver, they will heal all injuries flawlessly and age at an incredibly slow pace. In contrast, a turned-vampire will retain any scars they had from when they were a human, only healing new injuries once they became a vampire.

While all vampires are capable of having offspring both through reproduction and turning, the birth-rate between mating vampires is so low that it is practically non-existent (even after many centuries, they may only have one or two children).

It is possible to use retroviral gene therapy, modified from the kind used to treat sickle-cell anemia, to cure someone who has been infected with the vampirism virus. While dangerous if done long after incubation, it is even possible to change a Turn-blood vampire back into a human. The retrovirus won't work on pure-bloods, however, because they were born with viral genes integrated into their DNA and replicating naturally (in contrast to an infected-vampire, in which foreign DNA was added to their pre-existing DNA).

The differences between Pure-Blood and Turn-Blood vampires results in a class system: Pure-Bloods tend to take positions of dominance, regarding themselves as superior and looking upon Turn-Bloods with contempt. Turn-Bloods are often lackeys, minions, or lieutenants. Turn-Blood reaction to this of affairs is diverse and varies between individuals, some accept the hierarchy as natural, while others resent Pure-bloods. Biologically speaking, there is no inherent difference between pure-bloods and turn-bloods, though socially, pure-bloods tend to be better-trained and more experienced.

Familiars[]

Familiars are humans who willingly serve vampires. Familiars serve vampires in exchange for wealth, protection, and the possibility of one day being rewarded for their service by being turned into a vampire themselves. Familiars usually have tattoos of vampire glyphs located somewhere on their body (e.g. the back, neck, or base of the wrist), which is much like a cattle-brand. This glyph warns other vampires that if they attempt to feed from or otherwise harm this human, they will have to answer to the vampire the human serves. Familiars can function in daylight and may occupy crucial positions in human society which aid the vampires' infiltration, i.e. police officers, prison psychologists, powerful lawyers, teachers, etc.

Daywalkers[]

Daywalkers are a type of vampire or half-vampire who can walk in the daylight without harm. Blade is a Daywalker due to his mother being bitten and turned while she was pregnant with him. As a result, he has all of their strengths, but none of their weaknesses. Drake is another Daywalker. As the first vampire, he is stronger than most of his descendants. Daywalkers still have the vampiric need for blood; Blade staves this off using injections of a special serum, but over time, his body builds up a tolerance to it and he has to develop a new one. Vampires have a much lower body heat temperature than humans, particularly apparent when viewed through a heat vision scanner, while a Daywalker can give off the normal heat signature of a human.

Daywalkers are exceedingly rare; Blade and Drake were the only two of their kind before Drake's death, leaving Blade to be the only Daywalker on Earth. Vampires are very jealous of Daywalkers and have tried to create more Daywalkers if it were easy to achieve.

Revenant[]

On extremely rare occasions, something goes horribly wrong in the normal transition process from infected human to vampire. The result is a Revenant, a badly malformed zombie-like creature. The reason for this is not understood and it is unpredictable, though such “mistakes” occur so infrequently that vampires do not usually consider it when they try to turn a human. Pallid and cadaverous, a Revenant is covered in patches of dying flesh that are shedding and sloughing off. Revanants have an insatiable desire to eat anything, from animals, rodents, and corpses, to humans and even vampires. Revenants are still conscious and capable of complex speech, but their minds are clearly deranged. Vampires usually destroy Revenants when they occur.

Karen’s ex-boyfriend Curtis was infected by Quinn, but to the surprise of Quinn and Frost he turned into a Revenant. They attempted to feed Karen to him, but she bashed him in the head with a bone and was able to escape. His final fate was unknown, but it's likely he was destroyed after being found.

Reapers[]

See main article, "Reapers"

Reapers are an enhanced strain of genetically engineered vampires, who are named to be much more dangerous than normal vampires.

Vampire Hunters[]

Many Humans who are aware of Vampires, but do not desire to become one, will pursue the destruction of the Vampire species. Vampire Hunters can come from all walks of life, however they are usually forged by a traumatic experience with Vampires; such as a death of a loved one. Well-trained Human vampire hunters can bring down multiple Vampires, however it is usually Vampires who do not have the discipline or experience to hone their strength (typically young vampires, with an impatient fighting style). This can also apply to older Vampires, who are too arrogant and over confident in their abilities to consider humans a threat. Thus, only the oldest, wisest, and most patient of vampires, who combine the full force of their inhuman physical prowess, with centuries of experience and discipline, are able to prove virtually unstoppable; even a turned-blood may defeat a pureblood under such circumstances.

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