Right, hear me out. Vampirism was basically a mutation which arose in a small, isolated village in the Northern hemisphere due to a chronic low sunlight and iron scarcity in the particular foods said people were eating. Vampirism means a severe lack of iron transport and heme metabolism, leading to often insatiable blood cravings. It’s like an addiction basically.
Biting is rarely in the neck. Biting in the neck is more of a sign of desperation. Often vampires will bite in the thighs or arms where they won’t puncture an artery. Their spit contains an anti-coagulant and is immediately numbing, but the place where someone has been bitten becomes itchy after.
Vampirism doesn’t mean you live forever or are vulnerable to sunlight, as a vampire lives as long as any human normally, often at times shorter due to their finicky food supply.
However they’re distinguished by their fangs, which are actually retractable like the tooth version of a cats claw. So can be automatically retracted or manually by squeezing the cavity where they come out of (where canines normally reside). Fangs then can also be removed, but this often kills vampires (no way to get food duh) or makes them much more aggressive as they need to find other ways to get blood easily and quickly… cough cough potential cannibalism…
Blood does heighten senses so vampires are usually at their peak after drinking it.
They’re paler as a result, but are prone to sunburning more easily. Vampires also grow their nails more strongly and faster, as well hair, if they drink blood often and regularly. Other than that, they’re effectively just parasitic primates. Still human tho obviously. They are prone to getting sick more easily and have higher mortality rates among infants as a result, so are rare to encounter.
It’s a genetic disease, so is inherited via reproduction and not passed around like a cold. To become a vampire is to be born from one.
Furthermore, the spread of vampirism took a particular rise in war and colonialism, as vampires (both willing and unwilling) would be used as weapons due to the fear surrounding them and often their brief increased strength after drinking blood. Enslavement and forced reproduction let vampires grow in significant number and spread to numerous countries as a result.
In earlier centuries they were largely contained to Europe, with a combination of records from historians and medicinal books alluding to larger populations around England, France, and Spain. Whilst they were seen as dangerous and taboo, they were also often coerced or forced to fight. There were small cases of vampirism in countries outside Europe, but these people/infants rarely survived.
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