Becoming a Vampire

David Artsmith  -  The idea of the vampire as a creature in literature and media is one which is actually a lot broader than people think. When using the word "vampire" it can be applied to any of a wide variety of creatures, from demons lurking the earth, to genetically altered humans who thirst for blood, to pale skinned aliens that can only come out at night time. Each of these types of vampires have something in common with the traditional archetype, and usually blood is an integral key to the character, but the other characteristics of these creatures can be as wide ranging as the imagination of their creator.

The method by which a vampire is created is tied in to what kind of vampire the creature will actually become. A traditional model has a vampire biting a victim, with the bite turning the victim into something just like them. It can be effected through a blood exchange, viral infection, magical means, or genetic manipulation.

A variation on this has the vampire drinking the blood of the victim, and then replacing it with their own blood, either through feeding it to them, or through some sort of transfusion.

Another way to turn into a vampire in many pieces of literature is through magical means, invoking some sort of a spell or charm to effect the transformation. This process involves the magic fundamentally altering the person both physiologically, and physically, causing them to take on vampiric traits. However depending on the vampire spell, those characteristics can be accentuated or changed in a variety of ways.

Possession is another popular method for turning an otherwise normal human into a vampire. In this method a demon, or some other spirit, inhabits the body of the human, changing their physiology from the inside to match that of the vampire that they will become.

As you can see there are a wide variety of methods for becoming a vampire, and each one results in a very different type of creature being created.