Chapter Text
Vampires do not need to be invited into homes. Vampires can enter churches and places of worship without being harmed; similarly, crucifixes and holy water do not harm them. Prayer does not harm them. That said, some vampires do not enter churches or engage with certain religious materials as a matter of practice, and there were some cults/covens who believed they could not enter churches without being harmed, as discussed between Armand and Lestat. Vampires as a group, and some vampires specifically (such as Pandora, Mael, and Marius) precede Christianity and have differing views about it.
Vampires cannot shapeshift. Vampires cannot turn into mist, or wolves, or bats, etc. Vampires cannot inherently find or indicate buried treasure, but they can potentially read the mind of someone who does know where it is. Vampires cannot speak to animals and do not have animal familiars. Vampires can see their reflections in mirrors. Vampires cast shadows. Vampires are not affected by religious imagery, prayer, or religious practices (except for personal reasons), including piles of salt or sand. Some of them enjoy counting, but they are not compelled to count objects. Vampires are not averse to garlic, or any other foodstuff, although non-blood food is unpalatable and they cannot digest it. Vampires are not affected by running water or by silver. Rice described the Vampire Chronicles vampires as “preternatural not supernatural”. (Later, she introduced clearly supernatural things such as ghosts, but this sensibility generally holds for vampires.)
Vampires are “static” in appearance but not in capacity. Vampires increase in strength both inherently, over time, and as a result of feeding on blood. Vampires can become slightly stronger or at least persist feeding on animal blood, and become stronger yet feeding regularly (usually nightly) on human blood. However, a key capability is strength by consuming the blood of other vampires, which is usually a shared act ranging from a favor to an act of intimacy, but is occasionally applied purely mechanistically. For example, when Lestat is gravely afflicted, he seeks Armand in Paris for the favor of Armand’s blood to assist in his healing; this is a favor. Meanwhile, Marius offers his blood to Zenobia in order to meet what he feels is an obligation in leaving a newly-created vampire without its sire. Access to Akasha, the original vampire, is access to the most powerful vampiric blood. Eudoxia, Lestat, Bianca, Pandora, and Marius were all given implicit permission by Akasha to feed on her blood (and it was foisted upon Khayman in his creation) and therefore become significantly more powerful than vampires who have not done so.
The strength of the vampire which created a fledgling vampire will also define a recruit’s initial strength. A stronger vampire will create a stronger fledgling. Furthermore, it takes vampires time to “recharge” this capability. The longer it has been since a vampire has created another vampire, the stronger the recruit will be. Armand, for example, explains to Lestat that Nicolas is perhaps only half as powerful as Gabrielle initially, and Louis at best half as powerful as Nicolas.
Vampires have a range of powers they tend to accrue over time as they become older and consume more blood (particularly the blood of other vampires, particularly the blood of other powerful vampires such as Akasha). These are usually referred to as Gifts, such as the Mind Gift (psychic abilities) and the Cloud Gift (levitation). These are nonlinear and seemingly depend on the individual vampire as well as their specific preceding experiences. Psychic communication with other vampires is immediate. Others, such as the Fire Gift (pyrokinesis) take more time and not every vampire will develop them. Some abilities, such as inhuman strength, are intrinsic. Louis, a weak vampire especially for his age, cannot even hypnotize humans effectively as of the sixth book (as noted by Armand in “The Vampire Armand”). Others, such as Marius, might have powers that outstrip even older vampires, such as those of Avicus, and significantly outstrip those of equal tenure, e.g. Mael. I forgot what umbrella the ‘can explode rats with your mind’ talent is, so I will call it the Explode Rats with Your Mind Gift, which Marius possesses, allows one to explode rats with his or her mind. These terms are invented by vampires to discuss their powers and aren’t intrinsic, nor do they derive from any established “rulebook” of any kind. Vampires are forever iteratively attempting to figure out what their powers actually are, and many are unaware of certain skills they may have.
The ability of vampires to speak to one another telepathically is a major feature of the Dark Gift (the term for vampirism overall). However, sires cannot speak to direct fledglings. This mechanism is incredibly important in the books, as vampires are often made by people who have a pre-existing relationship of some kind with that person. Marius makes Sybelle a vampire for Armand, which means Armand can speak to her, even though Marius cannot, as a way to bypass Armand’s inability to communicate with her telepathically if he were to make Sybelle a vampire himself. Meanwhile, Marius and Armand cannot communicate telepathically which probably would have solved a lot of problems. This can be circumvented by using another vampire as a conduit, as Armand points out that Gabrielle could help Lestat more often, even though she cannot hear him and he cannot hear her, just by routing whatever he is trying to communicate through a third party.
Many vampires feel ignorant and purposeless and are thus susceptible to cult mentalities. For example, Santino established a number of Satanic cults before losing interest and eventually being destroyed by Thorne. However, there is never any indication that these cults are more than a coping mechanism for the vampires who are members. These cults however often policed the creation and existence of vampires within certain territories.
Vampires are generally territorial and often do not like the presence of other vampires. To the extent they interact, it is usually fleeting, which is to say either incidental meetings (as with Bianca and Armand in Paris) or a cat-colony-esque gathering that comes into being and disperses without an obvious hierarchy or purpose. (Vampires are so regularly described feline terms that their behavior is honestly best explained as “becoming a vampire makes you a cat”.) The population of vampires is often controlled by younger vampires killing older vampires, especially in cult settings, once they go mad, and older vampires killing younger vampires for being verminous. Armand, for example, explains the necessity of killing Alessandra for having lost her mind due to her age, and then later explains he enjoys “clearing out” cities of younger vampires as well (“Queen of the Damned”), and that he is forced to steer clear of the rare vampire who is even older than he is, lest they decide to kill him in turn. Vampires are not generally incentivized to make other vampires except as lackies or via an established cult pathway. Vampires may turn people they knew in life or get to know later, but this requires vampires to show interest in specific living persons which happens but not necessarily often.
New vampires have very high attrition rates. All “successful” vampires are essentially mentally ill in personally-tailored ways. Vampires tend to be very emotional and rather reckless, though there are semi-exceptions like Gabrielle. Vampires will also cycle through fixations or obsessions to help pass the time, as is implied to have happened to Santino despite the devastating effects of having conscripted Armand during his Satanic promotion phase. Some fixations can be considerably more benign, like Louis rereading Keats, Marius copying paintings, or D’s basement of model trains. Some vampires are numb (Pandora), some withdraw entirely from the notions of human civilization (Gabrielle), some assign themselves seemingly benign if useless causes (Marius), some indulge in fashionable depression (Louis), some are fanatically insane (Armand), and some are forever whacking the metaphorical wasp’s nest just to see what happens (Lestat).
To be a vampire, an individual must have in some way or for some reason a cavalier approach to the value of a human life, although quite a few of them would attest otherwise. However, when the cards are down, basically any vampire will kill any human in a pinch. Many are utterly indifferent, such as Claudia and Gabrielle, and remain utterly indifferent. Some cycle through how much they do or do not pretend to care about human beings. Even vampires who are characterized as “more reluctant”, such as Louis, are regularly highlighted for essentially playing games with themselves, as noted by Akasha. The extent to which they police their hunting varies book-by-book.
Vampires reproduce by sucking the blood from the recruit, mixing it with their own blood within their own body, and then sharing that mixed blood with the recruit. There is no requirement that blood comes from any specific font on either the giver or receiver. The receiver will then later die and spew whatever had previously been in his or her digestive system. From that point forward, the receiver is a vampire and will have basic vampire skills such as improved strength and reversion to one’s default physical state during the day. There is no technical limitation requiring this transformation to be consensual, and in key examples, such as Claudia, it is not.
Vampires are not supposed to turn children into vampires, although there isn’t an overarching authority that establishes this beyond other vampires choosing to individually become involved. It’s self-evidently cruel towards someone who is extremely young, which is not to imply that vampires do not do it anyway. Marius specifically warns Lestat not to make vampires as young as Armand (17), which Lestat later does with Claudia (5) regardless, and then Marius later converts Benjamin (14). Eudoxia was also a similar age as Benjamin, approximately fifteen, and conversely maintains that only the young should be made into vampires, such as her fledglings Asphar and Zenobia. The Satantic cult in Rome, for a time overseen by Santino, never made vampires of those over thirty. Pandora and Marius are relatively unusual for being older when they became vampires.
Vampires are generally very good-looking, largely for cultural reasons, which is to say that some cults had rules about only making vampires from attractive humans but it really seems that these “rules” to whatever extent they existed generally derived from vampires being incorrigibly vain. (The Doylist reason of course being the likelihood said vampire would feature in erotic passages in the novels.) Even vampires that are considered especially attractive also seem to become easily infatuated with one another if only for brief stints.
As vampires cannot have sex, vampires have odd relationships with one another that are by necessity described in human terms but clearly do not quite map to human terms, which in part is established by often listing different human relationship types in sequence when trying to characterize relationships to one another. E.g. the terms “paramour” and “lover” show up even for characters who don’t have what would regularly be considered romantic much less sexual relationships.
Vampires can engage in some sexual activity, in that they can provide manual stimulation or oral stimulation to living people, but they do not have “sex” as such (*reminder that this is a books 1-8 summary). As a result, the “sexuality” of vampires is difficult to define. Armand specifically notes that Lestat was actively sexual with women and men before he died, but that is considered noteworthy vis-à-vis his or any other vampire’s relationships postmortem. Of course, Armand also had sex with women and men pre-mortem so this might again be one of Armand’s tangents about how he isn’t sure why Lestat won’t be his companion, completely ignoring the fact that Armand is markedly mental even by vampire standards and that surely has more to do with it. Owing to their inability to have conventional sex, this means some implicitly sexual activity toward a vampire includes licking the blood out of a vampire’s eyes.
One would think the absence of “sex” would make vampires less weird about sex and suffice to say that would be a misapprehension.
Vampires are casually violent, again like cats. Vampires that like one another will often have beaten or otherwise injured one another, often many times. As a result of their long lives and the strangeness of their existence, vampires tend to be very forgiving of extreme behavior but still sensitive to more human slights. For example, Lestat and Armand are on good terms and are strong allies even though they beat the daylights out of one another now and then. By the time Louis and Lestat reunite in Los Angeles, Lestat is ambivalent about having been set on fire several times. Meanwhile, Pandora and Marius had fairly normal arguments and have been unable to reconcile for over a thousand years.
Vampires do not need to sleep in coffins, and some don’t. The coffin or sarcophagus is traditional but it exists primarily to block out light. Gabrielle, for example, sleeps in the dirt, and Lestat in a pique has done the same. Marius at times sleeps in a regular bed in a lightproof room. A sarcophagus can also offer some protection, as a vampire is strong enough to move a stone lid that a lone human could not. Some vampires have been instructed to use a coffin by other vampires, but it isn’t necessary.
Speaking of vampire sleep, vampires choose when they go to sleep but they do not choose when they awaken. Vampires are insensate while they sleep. Some vampires wake earlier than others and this is implied to depend more on the person than his or her intrinsic power. For example, Lestat canonically wakes about an hour before most other vampires and simply ascribes it to being an early riser. During sleep, vampires will return to their default physical status. For example, if a vampire cut its hair during the day, it will regrow that night. Armand has video recorded his hair growing during the day while he is asleep. (Of course, if a vampire is grievously injured, this return to their fixed status cannot happen in only one day.)
If a vampire is made while the person is wounded or dying, their condition will improve as part of becoming a vampire, as with Gabrielle. That said, vampires have been known to heal persons who are about to be turned before turning them, as with Marius’ turning of the wounded Armand. Vampire blood has a mending effect on wounds, and it is not uncommon for vampires to use this to disguise the damage their bites leave on corpses to help keep their murders or other feeding inconspicuous.
Vampires do not inherently need to kill the people they feed on, but they usually do. The practice on non-lethally drinking from a human is difficult and requires practice and power—power that usually derives from having lethally fed on thousands if not tens of thousands of people. The vampires who care about human lives at all, or the potential moral implications of feeding, generally resort to the idea that feeding on “bad people” isn’t quite as morally awful, but the reality is that no vampire described in the series has ever represented a remotely moral existence. Vampires such as Lestat might reach a point where they suspect feeding is no longer necessary for their survival, but they kill and feed nevertheless because they enjoy doing so.
Children are even more pleasurable to feed on than adults, according to Armand. It is taboo to create a child vampire, but children are routinely fed upon.
Vampires usually feed and kill every night. Many vampires prefer to kill early in the night as this makes them appear more passably human. Vampires flush with vitality after they feed. This can stack, as vampires who feed on multiple people in one night will appear more human than those who have only eaten one or two. When Marius slays the banquet, Armand notes that he appears afterwards nearly human.
Vampires must stop feeding before the person they are drinking from dies, or they become seriously ill. Vampires can be made ill by poison in the blood of the person upon which they fed.
If a vampire starves or is seriously wounded or burned, it may appear skeletal or otherwise scarred and strange. Vampires recover by drinking blood, either the blood of animals or humans or the blood of other vampires. The blood of other vampires is much more effective than the blood of humans, which is more effective than the blood of animals. The more powerful the “source” vampire, the more powerful the healing effect. For example, Lestat seeks out Armand when he is wounded for Armand’s healing blood.
Vampires can recover from virtually any injury. A “stake through the heart” would be essentially irrelevant although potentially annoying. Vampires do not turn to dust when they die, although, as fire and sun are the only ways to kill a tenured vampire, many die as ash.
Vampires can be killed by beheading, sun, and fire, although with age a vampire becomes resistant to all three and impervious to the first. Mael, even then a well-tenured vampire, is beheaded and his arm is severed, and Avicus and Marius are able to reattach both by re-severing them and attaching them again properly. This process is described as essentially the operation room scene from John Carpenter’s “The Thing” but in reverse, with tendrils reaching out to join the various components. The sun becomes less effective over time, with several vampires (including Mael again) finding the process too long and agonizing as a means of suicide. Fire is apparently always a mechanism, although vampires can survive being severely burned provided they are not fully carbonized (such as Lestat, Marius, and Teskhamen, as opposed to Magnus). Vampires are also said to die by starvation, but it’s suggested this is reversible if their mummified remains are exposed to fresh blood.
Vampires commonly terminate via suicide and particularly for the eldest vampires, nothing is likely to ever kill them aside from another more powerful vampire, or self-immolation.
Vampires become increasingly plasticky over time. Their skin also tends to whiten, although many vampires are described as very ashen essentially right away. Even early in the series, Akasha and Enkil in particular are described this way, as appearing to be made of a strange polymer or mineral. The extent to which vampires become increasingly inert is not clear, or whether this is a response to outside events. Vampires can become comatose, and they can also leave this comatose state, and it does not appear to be dependent on blood the same way as recovering from skeletal starvation. Thorne, Marius, and Lestat all have noteworthy coma periods.
Vampires can experience injury, including fatal injury, if the holder of the Sacred Core (this core also being known as the Amel) is correspondingly wounded. For this reason, Akasha and Enkil are referred to as “Those Who Must Be Kept”, despite appearing as statues and only rarely moving or communicating. This stems from a misunderstanding of the couple, as only Akasha actually holds the core and eventually kills Enkil with no consequence. When Akasha is killed, the Sacred Core is eaten out of her body by Mekare, although later books indicate it was damaged during transfer.
As a result of vampires originating in Egypt, vampirism has largely radiated out from Egypt. Particularly in accounts of the early existence of vampires, e.g. the First Brood, vampirism is an Egyptian phenomenon which then spreads out to incidents within territories bordering the Mediterranean.
Vampires are often described as having unusually pretty eyes, though the extent to which this is true depends on how much is assigned to the author’s description versus objective reality. However, it is clearly true that vampires have strange fingernails which appear perennially lacquered. There are the prettier traits. Vampires also weep in a mix of blood, and they sweat blood. Vampires can make themselves appear “more human” by slaking their faces in human blood which temporarily makes their skin appear more human.
Though vampires, broadly speaking, don’t tend to fear humans very much, they can be captured by humans. Magnus captured a vampire to steal the Dark Gift, for example, and some druidic cults had a practice of keeping starved vampires under trees to exploit their powers, as with the Gods of the Grove Avicus and Teskhamen.
There is a secret society with knowledge of vampires, the Talamasca, but they are not vampire slayers. They catalogue the actions of vampires and help them disguise their existence in the world, as well as offer other services like research and acting as a point of contact (as with Raymond Gallant). Members of the Talamasca have been known to become vampires themselves, such as David Talbot.
Sometimes vampires to choose to change the names by which they are known. The vampire known as Pandora was, in life, “Lydia” and Armand in life was originally “Andrei” and then in Italy known as “Amadeo”.