Sanguine vampiris

This article page is about sanguine vampiris. For category page, see Category:Vampires.

Nikola Tesla, a descendant of vampires.

Sanguine vampiris was a once powerful race of long-lived beings who enslaved humanity in prehistoric times. Commonly known as vampire, these blood-drinkers were among the first abnormals and were known both to the ancient Sumerians and Praxians as the Akhkharu.

History

War with the Praxians

Thousands of years ago, the technologically sophisticated Akhkharu fought a war against the Praxians, a culture of highly intelligent humans, for control of the surface. Though the Praxians massed an army of human and abnormal allies, the Akhkharu were eventually victorious and forced them into Hollow Earth. The Akhkharu fought a war of attrition against Praxis for centuries, but were never able to successfully infiltrate the city or Hollow Earth in general. Thus, the vampires were forced to be content with ruling the surface, while Praxis guarded down below.

Rise to power

The vampires then used their advanced knowledge and technology to enslave humanity, becoming the pharaohs and kings of civilizations such as the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman empires. Under their rule the world entered into a golden age where science, technology, arts, and architecture made enormous strides because of the vampires' influence. While humans were discovering what fire was, vampires were building an empire.

The vampires had a monarchy based system of government; meaning that when the current king/queen would die, their son/daughter would rule. However, because vampires are immortal they eventually had to implement a turn-based style of ruling to stop continual regicide; where only one member of the royal family at a time would be awake while the rest where in stasis. The current ruler would be in charge of the kingdom for a few centuries until it was time for the next ruler in the cycle to be awoken. Then the rulers would switch places: the current ruler would bring the next family member in the cycle out of stasis while they themselves would enter stasis until it was their turn to rule again.

Fall from reign

Eventually humanity, primarily the Catholic Church, rose up against the vampires and overthrew them. Using an unknown method, they were able to render vampire blood fallow, preventing the perpetuation of the species. With the vampires removed from power human society entered the period known as the Dark Ages as technology and culture regressed to a more primitive state.

Possible return

Outside of Nikola Tesla's experimental efforts, the vampires nearly returned in the early 21^st when Helen Magnus and Tesla accidentally released Afina, a vampire queen put in stasis shortly after the defeat of the Praxians. Afina attempted to awaken her court and usher in a new vampiric age (kianaru: the time of returning), but Magnus and Tesla were able to stop her. Although Tesla is theoretically the world's last vampire, there is no way to know how many may still be in stasis below the earth.

Abilities

Vampires were born endowed with superior strength and speed in relation to humans and with senses comparable to predatory animals such as enhanced hearing. They enjoyed an indefinite lifespan which made them effectively immortal with the added power to regenerate severe injuries. As stated by Nikola Tesla, vampires were impervious to radiation poisoning. Although it was never confirmed in the series, it is likely that their superhuman healing ability also provided a supercharged immune system to fight off otherwise incurable diseases and chemical poisons.

Vampires are discernible by their solid black eyes, a more pallid skin pigment, sharpened teeth either in the canines or in each tooth, and elongated black fingernails.

They require blood as nutrition, however they can sustain on a synthetic substitute created from animal plasma.

Contrary to popular belief, vampires are unaffected by sunlight or other alleged repellents such as crosses or holy water. A stake through the heart will have no lethal effect, and eating garlic simply results in bad breath. These myths were perpetuated by the vampires themselves to spread misinformation among dissidents to help preserve their race against their enemies.

Breeding

Before the sterilization of the species was carried out, vampires were capable of interbreeding with humans as evidence by a small percentage of the human population possessing recessive vampire genes.

In the Spring of 1886, a group of researchers at the University of Oxford known as the Five acquired a sample of pure vampire blood that was untainted by the earlier contamination. Upon injection of a derived serum exposing him to the blood, Nikola Tesla who had unknowingly possessed dormant vampire traits passed down to him through heredity, was turned into a partial vampire. None of the other four members of the Five had vampiric genes contained in their own DNA; thus their gifts largely appeared unrelated to the natural abilities of a vampire, just it being their own activated human abnormality.

While Tesla considers himself an actual vampire due to his distant genetic lineage, other pure natural vampires such as Afina consider him unworthy, referring to him as a "mixed-blood mongrel". She literally threw him 'away' down a shaft and then proceeded to try to awaken the rest of her entombed court that was full of pure-blood loyal vampire warriors with whom she could mate with in order to start to repopulate her species.

Notes

• Art Direction / Continuity: The aesthetic look of the vampires seen in the TV series is different from how they were originally portrayed in the web series.
  • In the webisodes, vampires were visually based off of the tv series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997 - 2003) / "Angel" (1999 - 2004).
  • In the TV series, vampires were visually based off of the 2007 film "30 Days of Night".
• Trivia: In the Sanctuary web series universe, the Corporate Vampire in Episode 0x08 - "Webisode 8" self-claims to Ashley Magnus to be "the first" (the presumed originator) of the 'lawyer vampire' cliché.
• Trivia: Attempts of scientists to try to turn a regular human into a vampire is very difficult; particularly due to the host's antibody rejection of the foreign DNA being added to their systems.
• Trivia: The vampire language is in-fact Daedric script from "The Elder Scrolls" video game series by Bethesda Softworks with only a few minuscule changes. Whether or not Bethesda gave Syfy permission to use the language or if it was a plagiarism on the part of the set designers is unclear.
• Trivia: The decision for vampire royalty to 'take turns ruling' by putting the others into stasis may have been inspired by or based on the 'one awake, two asleep' elder rule seen in the 2003 film, "Underworld".
• Trivia: Vampire blood has a bitter aftertaste while human blood does not.
• Trivia: Based on Gregory Magnus's theory about the creation of the most powerful abnormal races, vampires came about as their DNA aggressively sought to define itself.

Embedded Communications in Blood

Afina displays the ability of quickly learning the English language by simply tasting a finger-swipe sample size of Nikola Tesla's spilt blood she collected off of a stone bench. Tesla marvels at the vampire race having supposedly embedded communications in blood to solve the babel problem.

• It is unknown if this ability is restricted to only pure-blood vampires or further exclusive to only vampire royalty.
• It is unknown if only vampire/vampire descendant blood carries this 'babel key' or if all of human blood does as well.
• Nikola Tesla made a vow after his vampiric tendencies manifested from the source blood injection to not feed on human blood, which as a result left him completely unaware of this 'blood language key'.
  • Based on points mentioned above, though Tesla carried a 'babel key' within himself, even if he had fed on human blood, he still may not have been capable of 'reading' the 'babel key' present in other's blood based on him being a "mixed-blood mongrel" - leaving him unaware of its existence. In addition, if the 'babel key' were exclusive to only vampire blood - not human blood - Tesla would still be left unaware, as by the time Tesla's vampiric tendencies manifested, the vampire population had been exterminated by the Church - leaving him the sole partial-vampire to roam the Earth with no other vampires around to trade blood with in order to find out.
• Speculation: Helen Magnus being able to know (learn and retain) at least fourteen different languages (including her native English) may in some miniscule way relate to this vampiric babel ability, as traces of the source blood (untainted pure vampire blood) still actively lingers in her system.

Praxian Fort

In Episode 3x16 - "Awakening", while studying the holographic map's database, Helen Magnus and Nikola Tesla learn of the location of a Praxian stronghold in East Africa (travelling to the last known stronghold before the vampires forced the Praxians into Hollow Earth). Weary of anti-vampire defense mechanisms, they both wear a vampire shield to protect against a scan when entering the fort. Once Tesla opens the perimeter stone door/wall and steps immediately inside without taking any precaution, he's mortally wounded by a defensive energy beam. As Tesla lays dying, he asks Magnus to read to him the vampiric writing inscribed on tableaus mounted around them. When she does, she learns of the vampire queen being entombed there and presses a button, revealing the queen encased in crystal. Magnus then damages the crystal through combination of a modified stunner weapon and bashing it with a rock to create a crack large enough to insert a hypodermic needle syringe to collect a blood sample; subsequently injecting the sample into Tesla to revive and revamp him. At witnessing the crystal continuing to slowly degrade, Tesla touches it, causing the entire structure to immediately fall apart, releasing the queen Afina. Afina eventually explains that her family used to kill each other in order to become ruler until they adopted a turn-styled way of ruling, which Tesla comments as being "so evolved".

The main issue throughout the episode is that this converted fort is full of technology that is continually misattributed by Helen Magnus and Nikola Tesla to have been vampire creations when in reality it was actually Praxian technology that the vampires subsumed.

Bhalasaam - the seat of vampire culture - has neither any defense mechanisms nor anything to do with crystals. Both of these technologies are associated with the Praxians. Considering that it's absent from Bhalasaam, it indicates that the vampires themselves couldn't replicate it elsewhere, meaning that it would be exclusively found in vampire invaded Praxian strongholds.

It was actually the Praxians that were "so evolved", not the vampires as Tesla wants to believe, considering that the vampires murdered each other until they came across Praxian crystal technology along with the Praxian biometric scanning systems. The vampires afterwards with aid of the Praxian crystal decided to create a stasis system; programming the stasis crystal with a biometric lock to break apart upon contact from another vampire. The vampires also took advantage of the biometric sensors that searched for vampire DNA: reprogramming the defense laser to fire when vampire DNA was absent instead of present within an individual person.