Mythology

Many scholars, vampirologists, and vampire hunters alike believe that vampirism is a kind of “supernatural disease”, for which there is no known cure. It has been long theorized that the vampire’s bite deposits a kind of enzyme found in the vampire’s saliva into the bloodstream of its victim.

According to Marvel Comics mythos, vampires were first created about 15 thousand years ago when a small band of pre-Cataclysmic Atlantean sorcerers discovered the Darkhold, a collection of arcane knowledge scribed by the primevil demon Chthon, and used one of the spells contained therein to cause their enemies to return from the dead in vampiric form. The vampires were more powerful than the sorcerers predicted. Slaying their creators, they escaped from Atlantis before the continent sank. The first vampire may have been Varnae, formerly an Atlantean sorcerer, who ruled Earth’s other vampires until ceding his position to Vlad Dracula, who remained the lord of Earth’s vampires in a nearly unbroken reign from that time until the vampires of Earth were finally destroyed by the sorcerer Doctor Stephen Strange.

Vampires required the fresh blood of living beings, preferably human beings, in order to sustain their existence, and usually procured it through biting their victims, usually on the neck, and draining their blood. The vampire’s bite deposited an enzyme found in the vampire’s saliva into the bloodstream of the victim. If the vampire drew enough blood to cause the victim to die, the enzyme triggered a metabolic change in the dead victim’s body, beginning with the production of a green liquid called ichor in the bloodstream.

The victim will almost always develop a perverse, often amorous attraction toward the vampire that bit him/her as well. The victim may be spared the horrible fate of becoming a vampire (and returning to normal) if the host-vampire is properly destroyed before the enzyme metabolizes itself -claiming the victim as a vampire. Likewise, should the victim suffer more attacks from the vampire-host during this time, the metabolizing process will be expedited, causing the victim to “turn” at a much quicker rate.

In approximately three days there was sufficient ichor to nourish the victim’s body in the same way that blood once did. The victim then returned to “life” as a vampire, capable of all the basic functions of life (except for procreation) plus a number of supernatural feats such as transforming into a bat. If the victim’s blood loss was not severe enough to cause death, the victim would show signs of anemia because of the effects of the enzyme in his or her bloodstream (as well as the debilitating effects of blood loss), but will not die. Until the enzyme was fully metabolized (a process that could take anywhere from two weeks to several months), the victim would be weak and sickly as well as susceptible to hypnotic commands, conveyed verbally or through long-range mental contact, by the vampire who attacked him or her. The victim would also develop a perverse erotic attraction to that vampire. Most vampires preferred to attack victims of the opposite sex, since the vampire’s own sexual drives were linked to his or her lust for consuming blood.