Before I dive in I want it to be known this is entirely my head cannon and not based on any one particular story. My vampiric stories are written from these general rules regarding what drives a vampire, what their behavior is based on, and so forth.
Consider this my profile of what a vampire is and isn’t.
Vampires Are Not Humans
After a human dies from the curse/infection ravaging their body they undergo some immediate transformations. They no longer produce their own blood supply, they are undead beings who are animated by unknown forces, the only way to sustain themselves is through a weekly ingestion of blood.
At this point they cease to be humans in the physical sense so it only makes sense that they would cease to be humans mentally as well. The average human is motivated by the average human’s needs. The need for food, water, shelter, companionship, and sex. The last one is important as it’s related to the biological need to reproduce and continue the survival of the species.
Vampires are immortal beings that feast on blood, and are incapable of standard reproduction. As a result their behavior and mental functions must change if they have any hope of survival.
Tainted Love
I’ll get the big one out of the way. Sex is meant to serve two basic functions for humans, continuing the species and developing deeper social attachments with others. Humans as a species can only survive so long as humans are producing children, so there’s an inherent biological need for humans to feel attraction, love, intimacy, arousal, and other positive feelings associated with sex in order to reproduce.
Vampires survive as a species in two ways, the immortal vampire remains alive or they create a bloodline by biting humans and turning them into vampires. Sex is not necessary for the continued survival of vampires and as a result they no longer posses the emotions and feelings related to sex. A vampire cannot feel arousal, intimacy, love, attraction, or any other such emotion because they do not need sex to survive.
Additionally, they are undead beings incapable of producing their own blood supply. Therefore, female vampires are incapable of bearing children and male vampires are incapable of sustaining an erection due to the lack of necessary blood flow.
Vampires do not become romantically involved with others and are incapable of having sex. Any outward appearances of either state is for an ulterior motive. They are not capable of such emotions, but they are capable of faking them if it suits their needs.
Predatory Instinct
A vampire’s sole source of nourishment is blood obtained from a living being. If the victim is a human it becomes infected with the vampiric essence/virus and starts changing, currently the only way to prevent this is to kill the host. Given this source of nourishment is typically involuntary a vampire will be instinctually driven to drain as much blood as possible to kill their victim’s via exsanguination. Once a vampire starts drinking it takes a tremendous amount of willpower to stop in time for their victim to live. An already sated vampire with tremendous willpower may be capable of doing this, but it is rare and they will often finish killing the victim through some other means.
Because their nourishment is derived from the death of a living being they have developed emotions useful for hunting and killing. Anger, violence, rage, bloodlust, and the thrill of the hunt. When chasing down a living being a vampire will experience a type of euphoria motivating them to continue the chase until they’ve drunk from their victims.
When a vampire senses blood via taste, smell, or touch their bloodlust becomes an all-consuming force that overrides many of the other emotions. This is necessary to avoid losing a chance to feed if the victim dies from blood loss and to ensure they continue drinking once they’ve bitten someone. They become extremely dangerous in this state and many will lose their ability to think of anything other than consuming the blood they sense.
Socializing
Vampires are typically solitary predators as operating in groups requires large numbers of victims to sustain the blood supply which often draws attention from humans. This is also why they rarely possess an urge to create more vampires as they instinctually understand that doing so would put a burden on the blood supply and increase their risk of being discovered.
There are rare exceptions with older vampires who have managed to curb many of their baser instincts. Some of the older vampires recognize that having a large and powerful group would enable them to overwhelm other predators, namely humans, and enable them to establish blood farms to ensure a safe and steady supply of blood.
Even so these vampires are very careful to manage the size of their broods and will only create more vampires if they anticipate a loss in numbers or if doing so would ensure a surplus of blood that would offset the additional requirements a new member would create.
Vampires will never develop attachments to other vampires beyond that of a mutually beneficial relationship. Once the relationship begins to prove disadvantageous to a vampire all feelings of attachment will fade if not evaporate immediately.
As a result, it’s very hard for leaders to stay in power without routinely culling their disaffected members.
Becoming A Sociopath
To facilitate the emotions necessary to survive, most of a vampire’s humanity is stripped away shortly after turning. All former attachments, positive emotions related to places, things, and living beings will fade if not immediately dissipate upon becoming a vampire.
After a full conversion a vampire will no longer recognize friend, family, pets, or any other positive social attachments as such things could put the vampire at risk. They will retain the memory of these connections solely for the purpose of exploiting them to their advantage.
An example would be convincing a spouse to permit a feeding or tricking a former companion into providing shelter and protection until the vampire can venture out on their own.
Vampires And Humans
Humans pose the greatest threat to vampires out of all other living beings, because of this a vampire’s biology is designed to crave human blood.
Humans can be seen as little more than livestock that pose a threat to the vampire’s livelihood. Given these urges to feed and kill, vampires are incapable of developing emotional attachments to humans as doing so would put them at risk.
There are only a few exceptions to this rule. The most common occurrence is when a vampire is newly turned. A vampire in this stage is still in the process of losing their humanity and may retain emotional attachments for a while before they completely fade from their consciousness. This commonly takes anywhere a week to a few months depending on how empathetic and emotionally stable the individual was in their human life. At most these feelings will be gone within a year or so of turning.
Another possibility is if the vampire is injured or in danger. A vampire can on rare occasions develop a sincere emotional attachment to a human to facilitate an alliance and combat the greater threat. Once the threat has been dealt with or the injury has healed the emotional attachments will fade and the human will be no different than any other in the vampire’s eyes.
The final and most rare occurrence of a vampire developing an emotional attachment to a human is in the event that the vampire is part of a corrupted bloodline that enables emotions not present in traditional vampires. The corruption can occur as a result of a natural, albeit extremely rare, mutation present in the vampire, or due to the interference of some outside force that can affect the vampire’s psyche in some way.
Aberrations
If a vampire ever encounters another vampire with an altered mental state the vampire will treat it as an aberration and seek to destroy it immediately. This is similar to animals in the wild killing off the deformed or sick in their pack as it could risk infecting the bloodline and corrupting an entire brood.
It also presents a tremendous risk to the vampire’s survival, so any aberrations that do occur do not live long as a vampire will risk exposure to humans to ensure the aberrations demise. For all intents and purposes an aberration is considered more of a threat than a human.
Overview
Generally speaking, a vampire is a predatory sociopath typically incapable of emotional attachments or positive feelings such as love, intimacy, friendship, or kindness as they are usually not essential for a vampire’s survival. Social attachments between vampires is solely the result of mutual benefit and not out of any camaraderie. Vampires are incapable of holding emotional attachments to humans unless newly turned, vulnerable, or if they have become an aberration.
And there you have it, my general overview of what makes a vampire. The vampires in my books are vicious killers who will only seduce or woo a human if it will lead to a swift and deadly kill. Kind and tender-hearted vampires are the result of corrupted bloodlines or mutations and are not traditional vampires.
If you go into my books expecting vampires to have emotional attachments to humans, to be capable of love, romance, or sex, then you are going to be sorely disappointed. These are undead creatures who have lost their humanity and have no need or the capacity to express such things.