Bram's Vampire Hunter Handbook

Chapter 5 - Vampire Magic

As stated in early chapters, vampires are far more adept at magic than common humans (and even most fairies). While their biology is basically human, their magical powers make them incredible tough.

Humans have to study a lot to learn how to harness their inherent magic, since what little they have are in their blood. Magic users have to learn to be aware of this magic flow (which is, in itself, a challenge), and then how to control it. After that, they can learn how to project that magic to the outside of their bodies. Without going too deep on the specifics, we can say that you do magic by saturating something with your particular magic energy, in order to make that thing temporarily a part of your own body, thus controllable by your soul. As simple as it might sound, you need a deep working knowledge of nature to learn where to direct magic in order to achieve your goals more easily.

Since vampires have (a) a easy-to-detach soul and (b) lots of magic they drain from the victims' blood, they are naturals at magic and will do it without even noticing it. It also helps that they find it easier to do spells that their master knew.

The spells a vampire might know instinctively can be divided between 'passive' spells and 'active' spells (not to mention the magic that binds them alll together, which will be discussed separately). Notice that all magical spells are technically 'active', because they do not happen by themselves, without somebody to active them. However, spells that vampires do to themselves happen so effortlessly that we might reasonably call them 'passive'.

Passive spells

As stated, they are the ones that a vampire cast on themselves. Since the magical energy does not have to travel outside of the body, these spells are not affected by sunlight. Some of them even work when the vampire is unconscious.

Regenerative spell: The most important spell for a vampire, since it enables all the other physical spells to work without posing a threat to their lives and grants them their abnormally large lifespan.

Regeneration magic works best at containing bleeding (because the blood has a high magic content), at least in humans. Since all vampires have high amounts of magic running through their whole bodies, their regenerative magic not only can cure pretty much everything (up to and including neuronal degeneration), it works even when they are in a coma. When someone turns into a vampire, the regenerative magic will heal anything that is not genetically determined, excluding missing limbs (a vampire can get missing limbs back, but it will take a more advanced level of magic, explained in the 'active' spells section).

The regenerative process is very fast if the vampire is properly fed, or if they are unconscious. However, an unconscious vampire will need someone to feed them constantly, so their process do not slow to a crawl.

Enhanced senses: All the senses in a vampire are more developed than those of a human. It happens because they do not need their bodies to feel things. Their souls have a huge amount of freedom and can expand and detect almost everything in their vicinity, sending the signals directly to the vampire's brain. They might think they are using their ears or noses (most of them even sniff when smelling something), but it is all in their souls. That is why vampires quickly learn how to 'lock' their sharp senses when it is inconvenient - they simply switch to their bodily senses, which are the same as any human.

Enhanced vision: Since they do not see with their eyes, exactly, vampires can see in the dark and discern colours at the same time. The more experienced ones can even see through solid matter. The downside of this mode of vision is that sunlight impairs it a lot, due to the fact that sunlight reacts badly with magic. Vampires interpret this sensation as if they are being dazzled by strong sunlight and close their eyes in a reflex, but the effect is purely magical.