Vampiric Ecosystem

Since I can remember I always liked vampire stories. Goes without saying, I never believed they were true, not even as a child. Nice fantasy. I wasn’t that crazy.

Of course, some New Age cults could worship vampires, or pretend to be vampires in some metaphorical sense. Some actual lunatic could kill people and actually eat human flesh, perhaps drink the blood. Those are serious tales that make more sense and can be believed. Specially when they are in the news. Or in medical literature. Not the same than immortal people with super-powers who don’t need to breath and sustain themselves exclusively by drinking blood.

Imagine my surprise when I was included in the loop.

Didn’t even had to be turned into a vampire myself. Old friend of mine was, and got a exceptionally sweet deal, promoting directly to ruler of a vampire family. Vampire families have human members, they recruit new vampires preferably from them, and this old fellow invited me to be “adopted” in his house. As a mean to leave the legal category of prey, and became somewhat protected from vampires in general.

That, and get basically a lifestyle of British Royalty or Big-Tech Billionaire without have to do almost nothing for it. I would have said “yes”, even without the chance to also get more information about how the world actually works bellow the layers that show up on news channels.

Still, that is the really fascinating part.

Vampire society is much older than ours. I am not entering in the extraterrestrial, reality bending, aspects of it. I don’t want this to look like Lovecraft’s tales. Is insane, and there is still a chance that this is all mythology. Vampire version of mythology. So, let’s leave it alone, for now.

Vampire have a diet as balanced as anyone else should. Civilized vampires, I mean. Just, in their case, it is all blood.

They mix animal blood, cats, dogs, bulls, what have you. With human blood they get from voluntary donners and keep in bags. Blood they take from voluntary human doners directly from the source. All that is as you would expect, make sense. However, on top of all that they need to hunt from time to time.

Took me a special lot of time and attention to the matter to understand that need, “The Hunt”. All I can do to classify it is to say it is not psychological or neurological. Is not cultural, and cannot be ignored by individual choice.

I can call it “supernatural” if you agree. Keep in mind that I am admitting from start that is only my way to formulate the negatives in a positive way. “Supernatural” don’t really mean anything to me, I don’t know if it means something to you. Or to anyone. I could just as well use “vampiric”. It is, beyond physics.

And, it is complicated. I don’t exaggerate when I say that is the most important contingency shaping the Nocturnal Civilization from its core.

Vampires need to hunt intelligent prey (humans, to stay simple) and that prey must have some specific characteristics. Otherwise, vampires degenerate into insane predators unable to reason and mostly self-destructive. For starts, they must not be voluntaries, the act of take blood during the hunt must not be consensual. It has to be something the prey tries to escape from and, or, fight against. Not just pretend to fight. Ergo, the prey must not believe the vampire is all powerful. The prey must not be entirely defenceless, or, at least it must believe defensive measures are possible and could be effective.

That necessity is the reason why we exist. Normal human society, what is know among vampire families as “wild humanity”. If vampires didn’t needed the hunt all humans would be born in farms and subjected to selective breeding programs.

Like human cow actually is. The humans raised inside vampiric domains. Who are not family members of the vampires who own that domain.

Most of them live long and very comfortable lives. Utopic, compared to the lives of most “wild humans” even in present time. Obviously, more dramatically if we compare it with darker periods of History. Human cattle is just completely subjected to their master’s whims. No right, no accord or contract, no chance to escape or fight back.

I have met exceptionally intelligent and smart individuals among the cattle. Who swear they are completely satisfied with their place in existence, this fate that looks like a unfair tragedy to me. Still, even now.

Of course, they would prefer to be like me. Human Nobles, members of the vampire family.

On the same time, they would not, under any circumstance, like to “fall” into wild human society. Go figure it!

Well, vampires are “immortal”, in the weak sense of the expression. They don’t age. They are also immensely hard to kill compared to us humans. And also, real life vampires are hard to kill even compared to the average vampire in our wild human literature, movies and videogames. Still, vampires can be destroyed permanently.

Takes specialized knowhow though. If you hit a vampire with a missile powerful enough to explode the fellow into dust his family will bring him back couple of months latter or less. All they need is a ritual and a bathtub full of human blood.

That is reality in civilized Nocturnal Society. Vampires have means to kill each other, humans who know how have means to kill vampires. Is possible, just hardly ever practical.

Around this world you have the “Lowlife” vampires. In theory, Juridic Fantasy if you will, those vampires are illegal, their existence is a crime, and they should be systematically exterminated by all vampire families.

In practice, according with my old fellow, head of our family, no one is actually trying to exterminate this people.

Their populations are contained and pruned constantly. Never to the point of extinction.

Because, they are part of this delicate ecosystem that involves Noble Vampires, and Hunters.

Hunters, or “human hunters”, are the groups of humans who hunt vampires with the objective of exterminate all them. In theory.

They are separated in 2 large categories, the religious and the non-religious. The religious seems to work fine among themselves, across all religious denominations. They all hate vampires more than they distrust each other, and this provides their common ground. That, and full commitment to a religious doctrine or another. Non-religious vampire hunters are less organized, have less resources, but are as committed to end the vampiric existence as their more pious cousins. Religious and non-religious hunters do share information and cooperate with each other from time to time.

Hunters want to destroy all vampires, but they end up mostly killing lowlifes. Some now and then a Noble Vampire is found and destroyed by hunters. That is inevitable because all vampires must hunt humans from time to time. As I explained.

The vampire enters a state of semi-conscience during The Hunt. That sometimes end up with vampires killing the human prey, but also usually means the vampire leaves the security of more controlled areas and seeks to hunt alone. That’s when they are vulnerable to ambush by human hunters.

Still, even under those circumstances, the average Noble Vampire has advantages over the lowlife. The Vampiric Families cultivate vampiric powers and have deep knowledge about what they are and how to identify and develop the potential of each individual vampire. Lowlifes are lucky if they have any potential at all, and end up developing it by trial and error.

Strangely to me, is considered healthy for Noble Vampires to have this risk of being destroyed by human hunters. Small as the risk is.

In order to keep the human hunters viable, as organizations, the Noble Vampire Families need lowlife vampire nests. To serve as regular prey and training exercise for those human hunters of vampires.

Contradictory as it sounds, that’s how their society works.

If the Nocturnal Courts of Noble Vampires wished they could exterminate both human hunters and lowlife vampires. Problem is, that would cost Noble Vampires most their sanity. By making the hunt less effective to sustain their necessities related to The Hunt.

The scale of this hidden world is, disturbing.

Not just the individual power of really old vampires. And how old they can be. That is certainly scary! “Uncle Bob” is over 2 million years old. He was not born a homo-sapiens, the specie didn’t existed on Earth yet when he was born. That is how old the man is. And he does not look extraordinary now, big, blond, fellow with thick moustache.

I was not referring to that, what I mean be disturbing scale is how much land vampires have. Those farms that we know nothing about in human society. Wild human society, I mean, the normal world for most of us.

Sovereign domains where a vampiric family is the only law.

Not medieval technology either! Vampires have had computers and internet since there are vampires on Earth, practically. That is 7 million years, give or take. They have sources of energy, means of communication, materials and means of construction we can barely imagine or dream about. Strange laws about how to use those things.

Has to do, again, with their mythology about an Creator Race that will destroy everything alive in our corner of the galaxy once wild humanity reaches a specific level of intellectual and scientific development.

Vampires do commerce with more advanced “Life Pockets” in other galaxies, in our universe. However, they do not mass produce anything here that is more advances than what wild humans on Earth are able to mass produce themselves.

Also, that’s why vampires do not teach sciences to humans. Except their own human families, and those keep what they learn inside the family.

There is one Space Elevator on Earth, since the days of Paleolithic, when the Bering Strait was still dryland. Mostly ice, apparently. On top of that there is a entire nation of corridors and gardens. Universities, pretty cosmopolitan neighbourhood. The best educational institutions available for vampires nearby.

All that is invisible to wild humanity, by design. Noble Vampire Families know all about, both the humans and the vampires in those families.

They know there is life outside Earth. Not in our galaxy, but in many other galaxies in this universe. The vampires have access to a net of portals, Stargate fashion more or less. Supposedly only Vampire Clerics are able to control those portals, and they need permission of their supernatural deities to allow communication between different Life Pockets in our universe.

I actually saw those things. I was in orbit of Earth, transported by this Space Elevator. Otherwise, I would not believe. Much less mention it.

Those humans who hunt vampires have no idea. If they could figure out the scale of the enemy they have elected to destroy, any sanity they still have would end. There is no possibility of winning that fight.

Vampires don’t live in orbit, however. Never for long, anyway.

Because there are no proper hunting grounds up there. And, again, The Hunt is fundamental necessity for vampires.

Vampires need to stay close to wild humans, or some substitute with similar characteristics.

However, vampires do not necessarily need to keep their existence secret.

There are worlds out there where humans and other intelligent alien races know vampires exist. Some insist in the idea that vampires should present themselves for humanity here on Earth too. Would be practical, would be interesting.

Hard to imagine, but I suppose the difference would be small.

After the initial impact, vampire existence would be just one more fact of life for contemporary urban society. Business as usual.

Vampires neither can destroy nor conquer human civilization. Because that would make humanity on Earth useless for their purposes. Humans on Earth cannot impose any rules to vampires or take by force anything they don’t choose to give, because the Nocturnal Courts are just far too powerful, even for all the combined might of UN member states.

Knowing or not knowing, makes zero practical difference.