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Vampires were parasitic, long-lived creatures who inhabited countless worlds across the universe and beyond. They descended from the Great Vampires and reproduced by infecting other life forms. They subsisted on blood.
According to the data bank of K9 Mark II, accounts about the vampires came from at least 19 different inhabited planets. (TV: State of Decay)
Vampirism was a phase that almost every inhabited planet went through. Because of this, there were several vampiric species who called themselves names other than "vampire". These included Necrobiologicals, (AUDIO: Zaltys) Haemovores, (TV: The Curse of Fenric et al) Gelezen, (COMIC: Signs of Life) and Plasmavores. (TV: Smith and Jones)
Biology
Characteristics
The vampire "curse" had different strains. (PROSE: Vampire Science) The vampires encountered by the Fourth Doctor in E-Space, for instance, had pale skin and fangs, and aged rapidly to the point of death when their creator, the King Vampire, was destroyed. (TV: State of Decay) An equally alarming vampire attacked the Second Doctor while he was on a mission for the CIA. It was very tall, skeletal, with glowing red eyes in a dead-white face. (PROSE: World Game)
According to one account, to be infected, an individual had to be repeatedly fed upon. Those infected had only a small chance of living through the mutation process. (PROSE: Blood Harvest) Another account stated that it was very easy to become a vampire. If a victim was not completely drained of blood, they would become a vampire. (AUDIO: Litefoot and Sanders)
Those who turned into vampires became stronger and developed a sensitivity to light, mild hydrophobia and an allergy to the allyl component in garlic. Their mutated selves developed a hunger for protein and so they compensated for this by drinking blood. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors, Blood Harvest)
They preferred the blood of the living to that of the dead (TV: State of Decay), and could not survive solely on animal blood without lapsing into a fugue. They had a highly advanced cardiovascular system and fast recuperative powers, so small wounds healed nearly immediately. A significant blow had to be made to kill one, such as puncturing the heart or decapitation. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
A related group of vampires, encountered by the Fifth Doctor had the ability to fly. They were capable of rapidly healing injuries and could summon other vampires by exuding a bloody mist, carried on the wind. They could change their shape and turn into mist. The DNA of these vampires was so contagious that even flowers growing on a vampire's grave would be affected. Vampires were affected by the faith of others, as it affects the transition between the quantum and classical states of physics in the humanoid mind. It was therefore possible that Ice Warriors would be unable to perceive vampires. Faith or garlic could, in large-enough doses, make a vampire completely vanish. When attacked by a vampire in Paris, the Second Doctor wished for an axe, a stake, and a crucifix. (PROSE: World Game)
Because, as in Time Lords, the bioplasmic fields were centred on their brain stem, decapitation caused vampires to crumble into dust. The stomach of a vampire was bigger on the inside. They were unable to cross running water and instinctively slept during the daylight hours. If a vampire converted a new individual but was destroyed before the next full moon, the new vampire would revert to normal. They were telepathic. (PROSE: Goth Opera)
Another group of vampires was encountered by the Eighth Doctor in San Francisco. These vampires crumbled into red ash if staked through the heart, could be destroyed by sunlight, and had reflections. If two vampires drank each other's blood, a psychic connection would form between them, a process known as bloodfasting. Two vampires linked in this way would feel each other's pain. Converting a new vampire required the initiate to drink a vampire's blood. These vampires also suffered from malnutrition if they tried to live on animal blood, in this case that of cows. (PROSE: Vampire Science)
Vampires and Time Lords shared 98% of the same genes; regeneration was similar to vampiric abilities. (PROSE: Goth Opera, AUDIO: Project: Destiny)
History
War with Gallifrey
- Main article: Eternal War
During the Dark Time, the Time Lords of Gallifrey, under the command of Rassilon, came into conflict with a race known as the Great Vampires (TV: State of Decay) or the Yssgaroth. (PROSE: The Pit) They were accidentally unleashed into the universe by a Time Lord experiment. (PROSE: The Pit) The Time Lords used Bowships, which fired huge bolts of steel into the vampire's heart. (TV: State of Decay, Interference - Book One)
Eventually, the Great Vampires were all slain, with the exception of the King Vampire, who escaped into E-Space. (TV: State of Decay) The war destroyed dozens of inhabited planets. After this time, every Time Lord had a duty to deal with any vampires they encountered. (PROSE: Vampire Science) The Fourth Doctor found the King Vampire buried on a planet in E-Space, where it had infected three crew members of the Hydrax, turning them into vampires. The Doctor destroyed the King Vampire by flying a scout ship into its heart. (TV: State of Decay) However, the three had infected many of the humans who lived on the planet. The Doctor and Romana met with a group from the House of Zarn. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)
According to a "half-true" projection created by the TARDIS, the Great Vampires lived only on the blood of self-bred mindless animals, and had done nothing to offend the Time Lords, but Rassilon chose to purge them from the universe. The Vampires disguised themselves as humans in an attempt to escape attack, but Rassilon continued to slaughter them. (AUDIO: Zagreus)
Aftermath of war
A Time Lord story shows an owl, symbolising Rassilon, being overcome by a bat. It was claimed that the Great Vampire bit Rassilon and that Rassilon became a vampire himself. (PROSE: Goth Opera) In the ducts and serviceways of the Capitol there were vampire shrines still used in the Doctor's time. Small groups of heretics called the followed the Cult of Rassilon the Vampire. (COMIC: Blood Invocation, PROSE: Goth Opera) Ruath claimed that Rassilon deliberately became a vampire, knowing that the Time Lords had reached an evolutionary dead end and faced certain extinction. Ruath claimed that he knew vampires would become the dominant life in the universe, and lay undead in his tomb awaiting that moment. (PROSE: Goth Opera)
Vampires were one of the few things that could still frighten a Time Lord. The Second Doctor had to break free from this conditioning in order to fight the vampire sent to kill him, while his companion Serena was unable to move at all. The Doctor contemplated that the legends of the wars against the Great Vampires and bowships had remained as an atavistic fear. He found it difficult to battle the creature, for it was already mostly dead and felt almost no pain, but it smelled the garlic on his breath and was repulsed. He killed it with a makeshift stake.
A number of vampires remained in the Death Zone after the games were closed. One was the vampire Luco sent to murder the Second Doctor in Paris. The Doctor realised the trick when the staked vampire slowly dissolved (de-materialised) instead of crumbling to dust. He recognised the work of a Time Scoop and found it even more terrifying than fighting a vampire. (PROSE: World Game)
Vampires on Earth
In 1903, after receiving a wealth of information from the future, Grigori Rasputin saw vampires. (AUDIO: The Wanderer)
In 1911, the Forge harvested vampire DNA in South America. They initiated Project: Twilight, a program to create a vampire super-soldier to fight in World War I. On 4 October 1915, 57 vampires escaped from the Forge Alpha Facility. William Abberton, the scientist in charge of the project, injected himself with the vampire DNA and vowed to kill all of the escaped test subjects. (AUDIO: Project: Twilight, PROSE: Project: Valhalla)
In the 1970s, NASA conducted experiments involving vampires. (AUDIO: Zaltys)
In 1973, the Third Doctor and Jo Grant fought a vampire in Los Angeles. (AUDIO: The Elixir of Doom)
By the end of November 2001, William Abberton had killed all of the Project: Twilight vampires, with William Moore being the final one. (PROSE: Project: Valhalla) However, before Abberton killed Reggie Mead and Amelia Doory, they infected Cassandra Schofield with the Twilight Virus. (AUDIO: Project: Twilight) The Forge recruited Cassie and brainwashed her into becoming one of their agents. (PROSE: Project: Valhalla)
Creatures mistaken for vampires
The Corvids were mistaken for vampires in 1972. (COMIC: The Highgate Horror)
The people of Saturnyne as well as their leader Sister of the Water passed themselves off as vampires in 1580 Venice. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)
Society
Vampires sometimes came together in covens. The traditional number for a coven was fourteen, one more than the number of lives allotted to a Time Lord. (PROSE: Vampire Science) The Second Doctor knew it was possible a "colony of vampires" existed somewhere in Paris. (PROSE: World Game)
