Grand Change

Those who know about the subject call it “The Grand Change”. I hope that’s hyperbole.

Because the existence of any vampire starts with a ritual that fades from our memory, and decades of mute insanity. A period when we have no ability to think in word, and no control over our own actions. Only feeling starvation, in a state of monotonic murderous rage. When our minds start reorganizing themselves in something that gradually starts remembering intelligence, we find ourselves with no memory about our past. When memories start emerging, finally, more than a century has passed since our last day as humans. We are different people, and integrate that with the memories of our human past is for most of us. A necessary self-. That is my reference for “grand change”. If what is ahead is even more radical than that, I am not sure if I want to stay in existence long enough to experience it.

My time is coming. They say that it comes about 500 years after a vampire leaves the cannels.

Does not take between 70 and 120 years, like the period in the cannels takes. It lasts only something between 3 and 5 years, for most individuals.

Externally nothing happens, the vampire is the same person he used to be. Only those who know the individual closely will notice something is happening.

A vampire has the same internal organs of a human. Those organs do not work exactly in the same way. However, we can make them work as human organs do. Digesting food, for instance. Our body is more resistant, and it can be reinforced considerably with the right powers, and we regenerate a lot faster. However, a big bullet in my leg will broke my bones, and a big bullet in my head will stop me. If those bullets carry magic in them, the shot in the leg will take me many hours to regenerate, and the shot in the head will destroy me for good. If they do not carry any magic, the first will only slow me down for a couple of seconds, but the other will put me down for the night.

My body will fall, and dissolve into dust.

Next night, or a few nights after that, I will awake again. Intact. Naked. Parched. Somewhere safe and dark. Probably either in my home or in the sewers.

Every vampire has the experience. It happens from time to time.

When this Grand Change starts, according to what was explained to me, the bones and organs inside my body will start dissolving. Melting and mixing with each other, in some indistinct dark goo. That is similar to what we found when we cut shadows during combat.

The movement and the external appearance remains the same. However, vampires find less difficulty to learn shapeshifting powers after endure that transition.

They also became a lot harder to put down. For a vampire more than 500 years past cannel a shot in the leg and a shot in the head are the same. And neither is as bad as a shot in the head is to me. Still now.

After the Grand Transition I will be more powerful, everyone agrees about that.

What scares me is that I will be also less, me. Less a person. More “like a shadow”. Is not possible to imagine such a deep structural transformation in the substance and form of a brains having no effect in the mind.

As a matter of fact, vampires older than 500 years post cannel are somewhat alien in their ways. Have a cold or sometimes theatrical behaviour.

What is important for the rest of us, seems to be only a routine to be played by memory for them. They deduce what they should think and feel, ratter than thinking and feeling in the moment. As if there was some distance between who they are, or what they are, and the reality of their presence in this world. Well, its hard to explain, that’s not something obvious and could be just my own fears talking.

Perhaps I see this, because I fear that is what will happen to me.

It is a natural part of aging. Part of the process of reaching maturity as a vampire. As “natural” as anything can be, assuming we are choosing to apply the world “natural” to vampiric condition. I probably should not be afraid of that.

Nevertheless, I am.