This article collects a number of notes on writing/worldbuilding Vampires (focused primarily on a contemporary fantasy setting). I spun it off from the original article due to how complicated it ended up getting.

Seeing how this is one of the first such articles, I figure I should explain the purpose. It’s mostly me thinking about the most reasonable results of a few conditions, serving as ‘guides’ or inspiration/notes for…whatever it is I’m writing about.
In the case of vampires, the baseline would be something like: immortal, hates the sun, drinks blood. Despite how little information that appears to be, we can speculate a lot about what they’d actually be like in reality.
On top of that, I’m also thinking about other conditions (like where it’s most likely vampires originated).

What should be kept in mind is that these notes are a suggestion and not a rule. Vampires not resembling exactly what I’m speculating about doesn’t mean the vampires are bad. Buuuut…that doesn’t mean that you can just do whatever you want.
To give a very simple example: vampires need to drink human blood to survive. Thus, it can be logically assumed that vampires would prefer to live in cities, or near cities. But if, instead, it’s suggested vampires prefer to live in isolated communities in the countryside…then that just doesn’t make sense. Some additional justification must be given for why the situation is like this.
So that’s kind of what my notes are about. Assuming a generic vampire…well, what would generic vampires actually look like in real life?

This section contains notes that should apply generally in all situations.

Thru a discussion with a friend, I realized it’s probably of the utmost importance to think this aspect of vampires thru: would they want to maintain secrecy?

Especially for the Contemporary Fantasy worldbuilding, I assume that they do want to maintain secrecy, though it was pointed out to me that based on how vague I made vampires out, it’s just as likely they’d place themselves on top of human hierarchies.

So this section exists to weigh whether or not vampires would want to maintain secrecy or not.

I think the following conditions dictate whether or not they want to stay hidden from humanity:

• What abilities they possess and how powerful they are.
• When they appear.
• How much blood they need to survive.
• Their weaknesses.

But I think that, in general, vampires would lean towards hiding from humans unless the conditions are especially favorable to them. Whether it’s our world or not (though if it’s based in our world, they should remain secret if you want things to still line up).
Let’s go down the list one by one.

What abilities vampires have is something that I generally consider to be unimportant. I say this because the abilities of the average vampire make them exceptionally weak compared to the entirety of humanity. But if vampiric abilities are downright god-like…yeah, the situation changes a bit. Though in that situation I find it most likely for vampires to go extinct together with the rest of humanity (assuming they start out early). I’m defining “god-like” as having no serious drawbacks.
It also depends on what those abilities are. Turning invisible is beneficial, but is it more beneficial than mind-control? What about blood magic? And so on and so forth.
I generally assume that vampires are immortal and possibly stronger than humans, but otherwise leave abilities out because there are too many to possibly speculate about.
However, if you consider god-like mind-control (for example), where a single vampire can control the minds of thousands at once…then secrecy has no reason to be maintained at all and the world is just a chess board where millions of humans are constantly fighting millions of other humans because two vampires don’t like each-other. But assuming any reasonable limitations (like the more you control the greater strain you’re under, so you can only realistically control like 5)…then the situations shifts very much in humanity’s favor. Thus, vampires maintain secrecy.
Even god-like abilities don’t guarantee vampire supremacy, since all it takes is one person getting lucky to kill a god.

When vampires appear is something that I talk about in Origins, though the general rule is that the earlier they appeared the smaller the incentive to remain hidden. For example, if they appear in the Bronze Age it’s very likely that they’d just become the rulers of the Bronze Age civilizations.
However, and this is key: as time goes on, the incentive to hide grows. Even if they started out as ruling openly, they’d eventually go into hiding due to various factors. This includes the explosion of the human population, technological developments and the spread of new ideas. The Enlightenment (significantly divorced from the Bronze Age aside) could conclude that vampires are bad and should be eliminated, for example.
I think this rule also applies in Fantasy/Other worlds.

How much blood they need to survive I talk about in the Vampire:Human Ratio. The general rule is that the more (human) blood vampires need to survive, the smaller the vampire population can be. If the vampire population is too small, they will be outnumbered by humans and are consequently in a lot of danger.
The situation does change slightly if they don’t need to drink human blood specifically. I feel that, in general, vampires can drink non-human blood, but it isn’t as filling or nutritious, making it undesirable. More could be speculated on that front, but if non-human blood is just as good as human blood, vampires have a much smaller incentive to remain hidden.

What harms vampires also significantly changes the situation. Though I did list it, I’m not actually sure how much this affects anything now that I think about it. I think that it depends on how common their weakness is and how deadly it is.
IE: does the Sun kill them or weaken them?

It was pointed out to me that I was assuming that vampires are fewer in number than humans…but that I never explained why I assumed this, so this section exists to point that out.

The ratio of vampires to humans is primarily determined by how much (human) blood vampires need to drink. This obviously also includes how often they need to drink blood.

For a basic estimate, let’s assume that a vampire needs to drink 1 pint (≈0.5L) of blood a month. From what I could find, the average human requires 8 weeks to recover that amount of blood after donating.¹⁾ Assuming 1 month = 4 weeks, a vampire needs a minimum of two other humans around to prevent causing significant harm to humans.
If we increase the blood requirement to 2 pints, we’re now looking at 4 people. And so on and so forth.

Leaning on Vampire: the Masquerade, the average 8th Generation vampire has a blood pool of 15 points (the player has that many in Bloodlines). A blood pack provides 3 points, meaning a vampire who is starving requires 5 blood packs to get a full belly. That’s a significant amount.

The number of vampires further decreases if using their abilities (assuming they have any) requires blood.

These aren’t sorted alphabetically…but, I hope in an order where later entries are dependent on earlier ones.

In general, I’m working from the following assumptions: they need to drink human blood^A) to survive; avoiding the sun is a must;^B) they prefer to remain secret from humanity as a whole;^C) a vampire has to consciously turn you into a vampire via a bite.^D)

These are also focused on an Contemporary Fantasy setting, rather than on vampires in general…but I do think that a lot of it is still universally applicable.

This is concerned with the possible origin points of vampires. I tend to favor one over all the others, but I’m mentioning the others because it would affect a lot.

This is, of course, assuming all vampires are related to each-other as one ‘species’…or at least ‘evolved’ from the same species. You could totally pick multiple origin points at the same time. As in, vampires are actually not all the same creature and are just very similar. I’m actually realizing that I’m favoring that possibility, kinda.
Basically, all of the stuff written in this section assumes that vampires are one species, rather than multiple. But, assuming that they are multiple species…the only thing that matters is deciding where each species started and, generally, it’s better to favor earlier origin points (to a reasonable extent) because vampires need time to establish themselves.

I’m also leaving out mythological origins (IE: Masquerade’s Caine & Abel) because those could be slotted in basically anywhere and, depending on the origin, you could change history wildly.

What I tend to consider when picking origin points is these factors:

• (Human) Population Density
  • Vampires need to feed off of humans to survive,^E) meaning they’re more likely to appear and thrive where there are a lot of humans.
• Ease of outward spread
  • Vampires that appear in an isolated location are likely to go extinct eventually (losing a food source or being wiped-out), so outward expansion is required for long-term survival of their species.

Another consideration I’ve started to keep in mind is “major wars”, though I don’t put too much weight on it. Basically, a high degree of bloodshed could have resulted in vampires.

If you’re a little lazy, maybe you’d like to refer to this table instead of reading the sections.

Vampires started around the same time homo sapiens appeared as well, making the oldest living vampire (assuming they’re still alive) over or around 100,000 years old.

This origin means that humans either started in Africa or the Middle-East.^H) And, of course, vampires then followed humans around the globe.

This also means that vampires might be ‘native’ to every continent, rather than European or Middle-Eastern in origin. Of course, that depends on whether they actually follow people everywhere.

I find this origin unlikely due to the fact vampires need to drink blood from humans. Prior to civilization, humans tended to live in nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes which weren’t particularly large…meaning the number of vampires that could run around is somewhat limited.
Note that Vampire: the Masquerade assumes a ratio of 1 vampire per 100k humans.^2)I) Assuming the global population was 1-10 million prior to civilization,^J) the total vampire population would have been 10 or 100. And the other consideration is population density. Vampires would have to wander around to hunt for tiny tribes in a vast area of land.
All of this suggests that actually surviving is unlikely, though I think it could be justified by elaborating on how vampires actually work. For example, maybe vampires don’t actually need to drink blood regularly, or only need to drink it in specific circumstances. Or vampires can survive off of non-human blood.
The latter could explain survival into the modern day.

Possible origins could be some ancient disease, an off-shoot of humanity that began predating on them, an ancient curse and so on.
Regarding a disease, it could have come from inter-breeding between different Homos. That’s only a possibility I’m bringing up.

I think this period of time is the most reasonable origin point for vampires, as it’s around the time civilization started.
That means there’s a population of tasty humans to sustain populations of vampires concentrated in a small area.

I think there are four possible origin places for the vampires, but favor two over the others.
These are Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and China.

This refers to a post Bronze Age origin of the vampires. This one is favored by…Vampire: the Requiem, again. Requiem puts a lot of emphasis on Rome and ties the origin of the Masquerade to Rome. Though outside of that, I won’t mention it further.

And here I find it more likely that vampires could appear outside of Mesopotamia or Egypt, though I’d still place those as likely origin points. This is because, past the Classical Era, vampires may end up being “too young” if that makes sense, though that might just be a concern nobody else has.
Here I’ll be a bit more broad.

This refers to all the Mediterranean civilizations: Greece, Rome, Egypt, Cyprus, Crete, Carthage, Phoenicia and so on.

It’s easy to justify vampiric origins with a lot of these. The gladiatorial games and sacrifices in Rome could be tied to vampires. The child sacrifice in Carthage can be tied to vampires. Etc.

All of these are likely due to population density and centralization. But if you assume (like me) that vampires would prefer to exist in centralized societies, then it’s less likely they’d appear in places like Greece.

Persia being one of the first big empires grants it a special mention, though that’s all I’m granting it.

China actually had the first states appear around this time, which is why I find this origin point a bit more likely compared to the Bronze Age China.

India I realized might be a more likely starting point, like how I think China is a better starting point now. Though I’d need to think about it a bit more.

I may expand on this later when I think about it, but I think that at this point a European origin for vampires should be prioritized over some other origin as, otherwise, you can’t realistically have vampires with a European aesthetic.

A consequence of a medieval origin would also mean vampires are guaranteed to follow a Christian or Christian-derived^L) faith.

Also, the Medieval Period is really long (around 800 years or more by my estimate) so it could also depend on when during the medieval period they originate.

The most likely one would be the Carolingian Empire due to being one of the last major empires to control a big chunk of Europe and for being centralized.

I imagine if vampires started here, they’d maintain a lot of terminology, traditions and aesthetics from the early Middle-Ages.

I’m picking this one due to what a massive shock it was on the world stage. And part of the whole “there was a lot of bloodshed so it could have resulted in vampires” group of origins.

This origin point suggests that vampires wouldn’t like Muslims and spread outward possibly as a means of opposing them.

This origin point could actually explain why vampires would dislike crucifixes and, in terms of ‘blood curse’, this could work.

Though it would also mean that the earliest vampires would be very anti-Christian and anti-European.

Similar to the Islamic Invasions, though focused around the Crusades specifically. Vampires could be pro or anti Islam/Christianity or a mix.

The Mongol Invasions were incredibly destructive, so it isn’t difficult to assume that maybe vampires could originate here as a kind of blood curse.

Though this one makes European vampires incredibly unlikely, since the Mongols barely touched Europe (relatively-speaking).

I’d consider this the latest realistic origin point for vampires and, again, I’d place their origins in Europe. You could tie their origins to the increased in vampire sightings during this time as well as Dracula!

England is a more likely point of origin compared to other countries due to the Industrial Revolution that they would experience near the end of this era.

Only mentioning because of the French Revolution. I don’t think it’s very likely though.

Obligatory Dracula.

The religious views of vampires would largely depend on location and how old the vampires in charge are, though I think they’d broadly look like this:

• European Vampires: split roughly equally between Christians and pre-Christian pagan continuations.
• American Vampires: primarily Christian.
• Middle-Eastern Vampires: split roughly equally between Christians and pre-Christian pagan continuations.
• African Vampires: unclear. Possibly primarily Christian.
• Indian Vampires: derived from pre-Buddhist Hinduism. Or Pre-First/Second Council Buddhism.
• East Asian Vampires: Confucian/Daoist/folk beliefs.

This also depends on just how stubborn vampires are. If vampires are extremely stubborn, it’s entirely possible (and potentially hilarious) that they’d continue following the Ancient Egyptian religion in the modern day.
But assuming a more moderate position – where vampires are willing to adopt other religions, I think the above would generally stick.

Regardless of the underlying beliefs, more emphasis is bound to be placed on blood and definitely around what role vampires play in existence.

Something else of note is that vampires are more likely to be religious than not…because they are walking proof of the supernatural. Though that depends on just how supernatural they are. If they’re walking corpses like in Masquerade, then denial is delusion…if they’re kinda in-between like in Requiem then it’s still delusional. If they’re fully biological (like in Underworld) then it makes a bit more sense.
Though putting that aside, they’d also be old and live forever. If they come from a religious society, they’re likely to remain religious (and influence others in turn). Even if they started as an atheist, they might end up just becoming religious due to old age.
Another factor – which will be emphasized in politics – is that vampires are very likely to prioritize stability. And, when it comes to stability, religion is a very effective stabilizing force. So even if a leader doesn’t believe in a god, they’d still probably encourage religiosity (and unintentionally become religious in-turn).

Before we move on to the individual religions, I think it’s best to address the question of religious warfare…namely, would there be?
I think the answer is yes with an asterisk.

The vampire population is likely to be small and isolated (which I’ll get into more detail later), so interactions between groups of vampires might actually be fairly limited. That said…individual faiths would probably be more aggressive than others.
However, that’s vampire-vampire conflict and not vampire-human conflict. So what about those?
Vampires would probably ignore whatever the Hell humans are doing to maintain secrecy, though they’d almost certainly disapprove of whatever they are doing. If a human who follows a displeasing faith wanders among vampires, they might choose to kill her on sight, but that’s a big might.

Now we move onto the social structure and whatnot and…to be clear, this is only concerned with the societies that they form.

So…what would they be like?

I think that vampires would generally fall into one of two ‘configurations’: wanderers and cities.
Wanderers are vampires that live in tiny groups of up to 3 people but who are mostly alone. Cities are the ‘civilized’ vampires who live in organized city-states (or just states) who contain much larger numbers of vampires.
Most vampires would live in cities and there would be no in-between: you’re either in the city, or you’re a loner. No small vampire villages or larger groups. Though that doesn’t mean these wouldn’t exist at all, just that they’d be so rare and last such short periods of time that they may as well not exist. That said, if vampires don’t need human blood specifically to survive, then it’s possible for nomadic and semi-nomadic vampires to exist. Though, even then, I think that these groups would be much rarer than the cities/wanderers and they’d eventually be absorbed into cities anyway.
These two ‘configurations’ would be dominant because of the need to maintain secrecy as well as natural tendencies of vampires stemming from what they are.

Wanderers can maintain secrecy no problem by just paying attention to themselves. All they have to worry about is not being caught doing anything suspicious but, otherwise, they can do almost whatever they want.

I imagine that wanderers will be the most diverse among vampires, in that no two wanderers will believe the same things or act the same. This is also where the atheists, party-girls, socialists and way more will be concentrated. Though keep in mind that the wanderers would comprise a small percentage of the total vampire population anyway, so it’s not like there is a significant number of any of those.

It can be assumed that the life of a wanderer is pretty miserable, unless they’re exceptionally good at existing. Most wanderers will die fast or eventually assimilate into a city. Assuming cities accept them. Wanderers would also live in a near-constant state of paranoia – scared of being discovered as vampires and killed, or being killed by the cities.

Now for the cities (the exciting ones). Most vampires would be located in these cities, which would be concentrated in or around human cities (or former cities, which has worldbuilding potential).

Cities would exist if you factor in what vampires are. The average vampire might not be open to the life of a wanderer with all the paranoia and, like most humans, would rather delegate that work to someone else: thus come in the cities.

The cities would be organized by vampires for the specific purpose of helping them all survive long-term. Vampires in charge of the city would make sure it remains hidden and safe, while also providing the rest of the city with the supplies needed to keep them functioning. Meanwhile, the average vampire inside the city would provide labor for the ones in charge – servants, producing goods, providing entertainment and so on.
This arrangement would be seriously appealing to most vampires, since you can walk around in a city openly without worrying about being discovered (because everyone else is also a vampire) and without having to worry about the Sun or not getting enough blood.
Think Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade from Harry Potter. Places that are isolated from the outside world (but still accessible) where you can just walk around as yourself – in Harry Potter’s case, as a wizard…but in this case as a bloodthirsty walking corpse.
The population density in these cities would probably be quite high, though I’m thinking it would be closer to Japan or China rather than Macau or the Kowloon walled city. So, unfortunately, rich vampires probably just live in a large suburban house instead of a massive sprawling manor…or castle.

Something I came to conclude is that vampires would have an interesting approach to gender.
First of all, I think it’s likely that the ratio of female to male will be higher among vampires than among humans. This is due to the priority of stability and men tend to be more rebellious, meaning they’re more likely to end up on the bad side of the people in charge. Though how big the disparity is, I wouldn’t be able to predict.
Second and more importantly, females would dominate internal city politics, while males would dominate external politics. That is to say, men will be in the army, while women will control the government.
This is due to the simple fact that women are better at navigating social situations…so assuming a society that is mostly insular and isolated, it is logical to assume women would begin to dominate internal politics…even if men were the ones who established the system.
Also, if female vampires can get pregnant, they’d be considered even more valuable internally.
More stuff on male/female vampire relations is in Sexism.

Within the cities, vampires would prioritize political systems that promote stability and, as a result…vampires would be ultra-conservative.
What this means is that republics, democracies and other modern(ish) political systems will be virtually non-existent, while very hierarchical systems like monarchies, aristocracies and theocracies would be dominant.
Now, to be clear, ‘stability’ isn’t the only deciding factor here. The others are age, influence from the old, historical awareness and burn-out. So let’s go at them one by one.

The dominant economic system among vampire society would doubtless be patronage.

This is a system where a patron (a Lord for example) financially supports several artisans and businesses.
The Patron is effectively the ‘boss’ and the artisans are her ‘employees’ – though that isn’t super accurate. The relationship between the two actually looks like this:

• The artisan is supported by the Patron. If the Patron buys from the artisan, they get a discount for it.
  • This can also include a contract like “produce an x amount of stuff for me regularly”.
• The artisan is still independent though and can also produce stuff for other people, who buy it at a regular price. And a portion of the profits go to the Patron.
• If the artisan falls on hard times (in a recession or when nobody buys), the Patron continues to financially support them, to prevent complete failure.

Vampires would favor this system for a few reasons.
The big reason is that it is a very stable system as compared to other economic systems…and, as has been established, vampires would favor stability.
Capitalism is unstable because it relies on businesses failing every now and again, alongside economic crashes. Socialism is unstable because everything in the economy is concentrated into one place, which is a potential fault point.
Patronage combines the decentralized nature while having some kind of safety nets in place. It’s the best of both worlds.

The other major reason they’d favor this system is that it was the dominant economic system across history until the Industrial Revolution…so, yeah.

Though that might not apply with an Early Modern origin. Ah, well.

I almost forgot to mention an important factor to consider: the population size.
There are not as many vampires as there are people. Even if we assume vampires have humans helping them out, their numbers would still be quite small.

I’m noting it here because it’s important but, really, beyond that I don’t have much else to say.
The small population size would create a bunch of issues for vampires, but not enough issues for it to be relevant. Though they may favor technologies that help automate jobs.

I had to think about this for a while, but I eventually decided that vampires would use coins and, further, would mint their own coins…and then that they’d stick to metal money over paper money.

I think this way because, from their point of view:

• Paper money is more prone to inflation.
• Paper money is easier to counterfeit.^Q)
• Aesthetic sensibilities.
• Inertia – why bother changing stuff?

However! I think that they’d maybe still rely on regular ‘mortal’ currency…though not in any significant way. This would only be done as a means of taking part in the economy of the rest of the world.
Though something I imagine that could happen is that, within cities, you can choose to buy/sell goods/services using either their internal currency or external currency. This would be fine since the cities would still want to have the currency to deal with humans.
What that means is that if you became a vampire yesterday, you could probably convert your existing wealth into vampire wealth fairly easily. Surprisingly…quite helpful for new vampires.

Due to the vampires favoring stability, being immortal and having a small population…most vampires would have a job. Shocking, I know.

Though how they define ‘profession’ and how they approach certain jobs might be different. Consider that, in real life, being a gambler was considered a respectable profession at some point.

I think that the majority of jobs would look very “Early Modern nobility”. You’ll have a lot of jobs focused around artistry (paintings, sculpting, engraving, sewing), servitude (maids, butlers, etc.), the military and entertainment. Though this also depends on whether vampires can (or need to) eat and drink.
Due to the low population, I imagine that there would be pressure on vampires to have a job even if that job doesn’t seem to contribute to society from our point of view.
One job I’d like to highlight as potentially being accepted is ‘socialite’. The socialite’s job is quite simply to arrange parties^R) and would spend a lot of time socializing. This is valuable in a very insular society dominated by women.
One thought I had related to that is that socialites might actually charge for attendance, which would make it align with the “have a job” thing. Plus this could help new vampires develop a social network early on: all they have to do is pay to enter a party.

Anyway, I think vampires would also prioritize artistic interests and entertainment due to immortality: you will get bored very fast.

There might also be a high degree of professionalism and a high work ethic as a result of their conservatism, immortality, community pressure and the desire to survive.

This worldbuilding note is focused around blood and depends heavily on how the vampires drink blood, alongside the related conditions.
In Masquerade and Requiem, for example, getting bit actually feels really good for the vampire and the person getting slurped…while in Abraham Lincoln Vampire: Hunter, the bite is always fatal.
These two separate extremes radically change a lot about vampires…though once you reach modernity with blood bags and refrigerators, you don’t have to worry quite as much.
I mostly assume that the bite is non-painful and non-lethal.

In general, vampires would prefer to acquire blood thru blood banks (which they would own)…because it just makes sense.
Obviously, the blood banks would fulfill their surface-level function…but they’d also discreetly get rid of blood that “goes bad” or “gets contaminated”, which they’d send to their settlements. Though this assumes they can drink blood outside of biting someone.
Besides that, the main possibility is that vampires have mortals they can rely on. Who those mortals are can vary, though I think that for the sake of secrecy (and moral principle if that’s factored in) vampires would avoid anything too morally dubious.
They could simply kidnap undesirables from society, but they might object on the grounds that they don’t want to drink the impure blood of criminals.

Cities would likely have blood rations in place. I think the most reasonable system would be one in which every vampire receives the same ration for free, but they can pay to get extra. This would be the fairest (from the point of view of everyone) and avoids headaches. Plus it allows the upper classes to indulge themselves.

This is to include all the other views that vampires are likely to have. So, let’s not delay and get into it.

Since the Moon reflects the Sun, it’s possible that vampires might feel some kind of warmth (or get a tan) from the Moon. In that case, Moonbathing is totally a thing that could happen.

Assuming that most vampires live in small dense cities, what would those cities actually look like?

Well let’s consider that vampires would have to be close to a food supply (humans) while also avoiding the sun.
The obvious conclusion is that vampire settlements would be located underground.

However, I’m actually not sure if they’d build those settlements underground. I have two reasons for thinking this:

1. Technological limitations. It would be difficult to dig down and then dig out a city.^W)
2. Aesthetic issues. I imagine many vampires wouldn’t be happy to live underground without any plantlife.

So I think it’s actually a bit more likely that vampire settlements would be partially underground, but mostly above-ground.
Obviously, they’d have to block out the Sun anyway, so the settlements would look strange on the outside. Like one big irregularly-shaped building rather than a city or town.

Thanks to the influence of Masquerade and Requiem, they have popularized the idea that, instead of one type of vampire running around, there are multiple types of vampires running around.

I’m not gonna expand on this too much – because everything else written on this article is just a remix of what I’ve already written or thought about prior and I only started thinking about this now…
But I’m not sure if this makes a lot of logistical sense, because how would evolution logically occur?

Masquerade and Requiem justify it via different clans developing different traits thru randomly inheriting traits from their sire.^X)

I think this can only be justified with magic, the vampires being alive or the vampires being in a weird semi-alive semi-dead state (as is implied with the Requiem vampires)…or the vampires already starting as separate species with similar traits.

One of the big considerations is numbers…assuming the above ratio of 1 vampire per 100k humans…there would be 80,000 vampires globally nowadays. The more species there are, the less believable it’ll become. So this requires a lot of care.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if vampires are different species…it’s likely vampires will start engaging in, well, genocidal wars against each-other.

Imagine if a specific vampire ‘clan’ were pre-disposed to instability in some way – like they naturally have a higher libido or they’re all kleptomaniacs – this would incentivize the other clans to simply get rid of them. Remember that they’re also likely to be uber-racist. Even my suggestion of ‘pre-disposed to instability’ wouldn’t be required…just knowing they aren’t the same species would be.

Vampires have an interest in using unequal (temporal) hours. Why?
Because temporal hours are defined as 12 day hours and 12 night hours. Normally, the times when night ends vary by day because the positions of the Sun and Moon vary day-to-day and depending on the Season. On the other hand, temporal hours are always based around when the day/night ends. This makes them extremely useful for vampires. Though the only real issue is that the length of an hour varies, at least you can keep track of exactly when the sun comes up.