JCC [Image heavy]A thread for art: See note on page 776

Alien Gene by Xathoa on DeviantArt

Spoiler

This is a sketch for my partner's 10-point project.
He had played Final Fantasy VII. While he enjoyed some aspects of the game, overall, he wasn't particularly impressed.
Cid is also an awful character in the game...

ANYWAY, I think Sephiroth was, by far, the most interesting thing in the game. I also wish more unpacking went into Jenova, and the horrors that could come from it.
One of my favorite moments was getting out of the cell early on in the game, and following the blood trail. The game literally turned into a horror RPG then and there, and it was engrossing!

Anywho, enjoy!~

 

Druids Garden by DonatoArts on DeviantArt

 

Look at this.



Not artwork, but hopefully it still belongs here.

 

Definitely art, it belongs.

 

GeterafromFaerunnn: Mystra (Midnight)

https://www.deviantart.com/geterafromfaerun/art/Mystra-Midnight-822396636

 

barn-swallow: Adelia

https://www.deviantart.com/barn-swallow/art/Commission-Adelia-653918750

 

Frog Lady by Phraggle on DeviantArt

 

Stabri Killinov 7 by MeMyMine on DeviantArt


Stabri Killinov 8 by MeMyMine on DeviantArt

Spoiler

He borrowed this gentle beast from a local guy (yes, it’s based on azhdarchids, but not a particular species). I guess a saddle isn’t the best option for a body plan like this. Probably a better way to ride it in flight is strapped close to it, maybe slung underneath the belly, like a deltaplan, but since these animals seem good at striding, I thought it would work in that regard.

Stabri Killinov 8 closeup by MeMyMine on DeviantArt

 

A Venice painting by Antonietta Brandeis

 

Know Your Vampire - part 1 by ValhaHazred on DeviantArt

Spoiler

What is a vampire?
A vampire is a predatory or parasitic entity that sustains itself on the vital forces of its prey. The common folklore of Earth focuses primarily on the consumption of blood, although in truth this is largely incidental to the true target of vampiric consumption. Sothic energy. Many vampiric species don’t even bother with the extraction of fluids, instead pulling energy directly through their victims.

The difference between vampires and ectovores or Sothic parasites like the Drowners is that they primarily target mortals as intermediaries rather than attempt to draw directly from the source.

Space Vampires
There are several species known to occultists that might prey on human blood and energy that originate from distant stars within the material universe. The following are five of the most recorded, and therefore most likely to be encountered on Earth.

Fire Vampires of Cthugha
The most common type of fire vampire are those of Cthugha, the living red star. They appear as spheres of incandescent plasma, wreathed in strangely animate fire. The size of fire vampires varies greatly, from vast spheres to tiny motes that could be mistaken for floating embers.

Fire vampires feed on both heat and sothic energy, without both they simply burn themselves out. They use a spike of pyrokinetic energy to pierce the walls of a victim’s astral cord and draw out ectoplasm as the victim is burned alive in a rush of ghostly flame. Some cases of spontaneous human combustion could be blamed on these creatures.

When not hunting, Fire vampires of Cthugha can be found basking on the surface of high-heat planets, such as the sunward side of Mercury.

Fire vampires of Cthugha are weakened by low temperatures and can be disrupted by powerful magnetic fields.

Fire Vampires of Fthaggua
These fire vampires are only found accompanying their Great Old One, in its journeys across the universe on its comet-fortress Ktynga. Individual vampires look like sprites of crimson lightning.

When encountering a victim, the fire vampires tears their soul out through their mortal form, disintegrating it in a burst of red flame. The soul is added to their collective, giving the vampires the memories of their victims.

The secret of the Fthagguan fire vampires is that there is only one of them, Fthaggua itself. Each of the crimson electric sprites may appear to be separate entities but each is simply the end of a feeding orifice that projects through higher dimensions before linking back to the core. The fire vampires are limited by this connection, with range seemingly related to Fthaggua’s perspective. From space, they can dominate entire hemispheres but with Fthaggua planet bound they can travel less than a few miles from their core self.

Fthaggua itself appears to be a singular being and its origin is unknown. It does claim some relation to Cthugha and may be a child-entity to the hungry star.

Fire vampires are hard to permanently destroy, as Fthaggua will simply grow a new one. Only killing the Great Old One would actually result in the death of a fire vampire.

Sarchroma
Better known as the Colour Out of Space, these energy beings of indescribable color are only vampires in a terrestrial setting. Those that appear on Earth are lost, confused and desperate to return to their natural environment, deep space.

The mere presence of a Colour exposes everything around it to Tillinghast radiation, thinning the veils to the Beyond and flooding the area with subspatial energy. At first this manifests as manic energy and mild audio-visual hallucinations to those in the area but can quickly worsen to physical mutations and extra-dimensional awareness. This results in a feedback loop in the local life as more and more t-rays are introduced to the environment through mutated individuals.

The sarchroma are normally passive absorbers of cosmic energy but in the presence of such an energy rich environment they will begin opportunistically hunting, starting with affected sentients with the highest concentration of energy and moving down the scale until nothing is left of the area but ash. This usually provides enough energy to initiate a space launch but sarchroma have been known to mistime their escape, trapping themselves in a deadzone and starving themselves out.

Sarchroma are impossible to combat directly without breaking dimensional boundaries but they can be banished. It’s also quite easy to avoid becoming a victim of a sarchroma. Simply leave the area before the t-rays alter your metaphysical balance enough to be a tempting target.

Nioth-Korghai
The Nioth-Korghai are incredibly dangerous. They are highly technologically advanced, possess powerful natural psionic abilities and they retain some of the physical advantages of their shoggoth ancestors. Fortunately they’re fairly passive, generally keeping to stasis and only leaving from time-to-time to feed, rather than trying to maintain their demanding bodies at all times. They’ve learned their lesson from the destruction of their homeworld and the hunger wars that preceded their spread into space. Still, if they ever decided to, they could end our civilization in a matter of days.

To feed, a Nioth-Korghai need prey that are descended from the Shoggothim, like they themselves are. The Nioth-Korghai connect their twsha with the local analogue (in humans, the pineal gland) and use it as a conduit to drain sothic energy, even as they pull every drop of fluid out of their victim for physical consumption. They remain connected to their dead victims for several hours and can animate them as husks, which can themselves drain further victims and pass the energy on to the vampire through their subspace link.

Feeding is far from the only psychic talent they possess. The Nioth-Korghai are capable telekinetics and have an array of invasive telepathic abilities, including mesmerisim, mind reading and outright possession.

On the physical side, the Nioth-Korghai are large and have incredible strength in their tentacular limbs. The Nioth-Korghai are shapeshifters, although in a far more limited capacity than their ancestors. Most can only handle a couple of forms and must practice them as untrained shifting can be dangerous to them. It’s common for them to at least learn a body appropriate for hiding among the local prey population.

Killing a Nioth-Korghai is difficult. They have few vital organs but destroying their twsha can render them brain-dead. The exact location of the twsha varies across individuals but is usually kept somewhere within their center of mass, giving it as much protection as they can. Otherwise they need to be overwhelmed by sheer damage. As powerful as they are, the Nioth-Korghai are still mostly physical beings and enough high explosives could tear them apart.

Rhan-Tegoth
Although often treated as a singular entity in aeonist lore, the Rhan-Tegoth are an entire species and little more than animals at that. They were imported to Earth millenia ago by the Fungi on behalf of the followers of Ithaqqua. To the Ithaqquans they are a sacred animal, a vessel to receive blood sacrifice.

Interestingly, while the Rhan-Tegoth do indeed drink blood, they don't actually do much with the magical energy within. They can even be trained to channel it back to their handlers, allowing them to serve as living ritual batteries.

The Rhan-Tegoth are not particularly hard to kill, as despite their apparently indefinite lifespans, they can be treated as any other large animal. If a hunting rifle can down a moose, it can down Rhan-Tegoth.

TO BE CONTINUED

Hey everyone! I really wanted to post this all at once but since it took me so long and I wanted to post something while it was still Halloween somewhere, I chopped it up. So this is part one! I should have the rest in the next day or so. Art's done for the other vamps, I just need to write out their ectobabbly descriptions.

I got really stuck on this one. My motivation was down all month and I kinda drew myself into a corner. First I was doing full paintings for each but that got out of hand and spun off into that other Nioth-Korghai piece from earlier on. Then I was going to have this in the same style as my Fungi overview but I started hating drawing like that about half-way through and couldn't bring myself to finish it or start over for quite a while. Oh well, lesson learned!

Know Your Vampire - part 2 by ValhaHazred on DeviantArt

Spoiler

Terrestrial Vampires
In the vast annals of life on Earth, vampirism has arisen many times. Most of them are true blood drinkers, small creatures that drain the blood of larger animals for some quick protein. However a tiny handful have through natural selection or artificial modifications gained the ability to suck sothic energy from their prey instead and become true occult vampires.

Miri-Nigri
The extradimensional alien god-thing, Chaugnar Faun, found its way to Earth in the middle Triassic. It tore a bloody swath across the land, killing and consuming the lifeforce of anything in its path, unstoppable even for the mighty shoggoths. But it lived in cycles and a vulnerable period approached. It needed caretakers during its long sleep. Squirming in the blood soaked muck beneath its latest meal, Chaugnar found the perfect candidates.

The Miri-Nigri are the descendents of those ancient bloodsucking salamanders Chaugnar Faun uplifted to serve as his hunters and guardians. Today they are very rare, as immortal as they are, they are not invulnerable. Most of them have died in combat or misfortune in the millions of years since their transformation. Others transmuted themselves and traded their immortality for greater freedom from their god, becoming the ancestors of the “cannibal” tcho-tcho people.

Miri-Nigri, like the Rhan-Tegoth, do not actually make much use of the blood magic they take from their victims and instead pass it on to the great Chaugnar Faun.

Chaugnar Thrall
The Miri-Nigri might be the first of Chaugnar’s servitors but they are far from the only beings it created to serve. One type in particular is closer to Chaugnar than any other, including its own spawn.

The thralls are both a reward and a punishment meted out by Chaugnar at it’s alien whims. Minions that serve it well are elevated, while those outsiders that trouble its sleep are made to serve. Either way, Chaugnar imparts a piece of itself to the soon-to-be vampire and transfigures it into a powerful new form, overtaking the thrall’s natural form. The thralls are bound very tightly to their maker and while some independent thought remains, their bodies and actions ultimately belong to Chaugnar Faun. The matter remains entangled with Chaugnar, allowing it to connect with its thralls and their thoughts at all times over any distance. As long as the god-thing wakes they dance to its directives.

Killing a Chaugnar Thrall is a difficult prospect. The alien matter they are partially made of is shockingly resistant to mundane force. If grievous injuries are dealt, as long as Chaugnar is awake it will reinforce their bodies with more of itself, not just granting them seemingly infinite recovery but strengthening them at the same time. The best chance to destroy one is a powerful blow to the head. If the thrall is killed in such a way as to destroy the brain, Chaugnar will release the body to a sudden, exotic decomposition. If Chaugnar is not awake, the regeneration is not an issue.

Y’nathog
The gorgonopsid people of Y’nathog were the second sapient intelligence to arise from shoggothim genetic stock on Earth. It was through their interfacing with their technology that they became vampires. They used artificial biological organisms paired with a curious form of reanimation to enhance it far beyond the normal limits of flesh and bone. The electrorecepting tendrils of Y’nathogguan necrotechs were modified to serve as the perfect control surface for their biochines. This came with the unexpected side-effect of energy vampirism. A few generations later and all of the Y’nathog possessed the ability. Some exceptional Y’nathogguans were offered the opportunity to go even further, uploading their preserved minds in immortal necrotechnological bodies, powered entirely by sothic power.

Despite their vampiric transbiology and ominous technology the Y’nathog were not the villains we might expect, at least not originally. While they might have felt stifled by the neighboring civilizations, they lived in peace for hundreds of years. Unfortunately for them, that changed when they came into contact with the entity known as Quyagen. It gave them access to eldrtich power they’d never discovered on their own and whispered ambition into the ears of the Y’nathog lich council. Suddenly the lands they’d lived on since their rise to intelligence wasn’t enough. The world would be theirs under the banner of Quy. Their ambitions did not last long, as the crinoid things and the Yith united against Y’nathogguan aggression, destroying their civilization and banishing Quyagen to a timeless prison.

The Y’nathogg are functionally extinct but fragments of their miraculous technology remains. Despite millions of years and literal fossilization it lies ready to be awoken by blood sacrifice. Sometimes it even works!

Fungal Vampire
Mind controlling parasites aren’t actually that rare in nature but humans don’t usually need to worry about them. However, there is one very rare fungus that we need to be very afraid of and no, it isn’t the cordyceps.

Native to New England, there is an unnamed mold that not only takes over human bodies, it creates a shocking form of vampiric haunting. Upon inhalation of the spores, the mold develops within its host’s nasal passages and works its mycelium into the blood-brain barrier where it can directly infect the central nervous system. Once it has access, the host feels compelled to stay in a cool, wet and dark environment as they grow sicker and sicker. Once the host dies and the mold overtakes them, the true horror begins.

The soul is just a recording of the body and mind, rendered in the akashic records. What affects one can very easily affect the other and somehow, in whatever way the mold replaces the brain of the deceased, it hijacks their very soul! Under the control of the mold, the soul becomes a feeding tube, astral projecting to living things and subtly draining their energy from the subspatial realms. While the fungal vampire usually only takes only a little at a time, its victims weaken steadily. When it is nearly depleted the vampire will tear out its prey’s astral cord and add it to its own, sucking hollowly on the akasha for as long as the vampire exists.

The mold can summon the twisted ghost of its dead host as long as it remains connected to the body, which the mold maintains to a certain degree. The host bloats into a vast and slimy mass of fungal tissue as the colony grows but the bones are enough to keep it anchored for a very long time.

Killing the mold is actually fairly simple once you know where it is. Acid or fire enough to engulf the fungal colony does the trick. Just make sure to wear a good dust mask.

TO BE CONTINUED

Part one here
www.deviantart.com/valhahazred…

I'll probably post one more chunk tomorrow or the next day, and then post the whole unbroken thing the day after that.

Know Your Vampire - part 3 by ValhaHazred on DeviantArt

Spoiler

Ultraterrestrial Vampires
Beyond the physical reality we know, there are countless universes which can range from near replicas to twisted realms where only madness makes sense. Sometimes those alternate universes brush with ours and something slips in through the cracks.

Haemophore
Vampires are so pervasive in human story-telling that it would be nearly impossible for them not to appear in the world of Dreaming in some fashion. However, the Dreamlands reflect our fantasies like a funhouse mirror, warping them in unexpected ways. A good example of this is the Haemophore, a nightmare of blood-drinking parasitism native to the rivers and swamps of certain Dreams.

Haemophores are amphibian-like creatures that spend most of their lives swimming in search of blood-bearing prey. They attach themselves, leech-like, to their host with suckers on their ventral surface and suck blood until disturbed. If given enough time a Haemophore can drain a completely disproportionate amount of blood, blowing up like a sanguine balloon. There are even stories of Haemophores filled up to 5 or 6 times their normal size and almost completely round being forced to roll and bounce away from vengeful (and likely hypovolemic) food sources.

Normally Haemophores are fairly small, ranging from a few inches to a foot in length but they never stop growing. The largest Haemophore ever recorded was a little over six feet long but blood drained corpses have been recovered with enormous wounds in the tell-tale w-shape of a Haemophore bite.

Haemophores aren’t actually that dangerous, relying more on their prey not noticing them than any ability to overpower them, at least not in the smaller specimens. Haemophores can be killed as any other animal, although their nature as nightmares does grant them some supernatural toughness. They are also attracted to shiny objects and can be coaxed off of their current host with bits of glass or coins.

Grume
A rare example of a completely passive vampire, Grumes are scavengers from a parallel Earth. Grumes are attracted to bloodshed and trauma and they can be found haunting places like hospitals and battlefields. The Grume are even slightly precognitive when it comes to the spilling of blood as the release of sufficient quantities of psychokinetic energy echoes in time and calls to the Grume's alien senses.

Just as a Grume is attracted to blood, blood is attracted to a Grume. Bloodshed flows in streams through the air to join the creature’s bloody halo. Being in the presence of a grume pulls on the blood in your veins like the tide and can even slow blood flow to the point of angina and even heart attacks.

Adumbrali
Written of in the Song of Yste, the Adumbrali are one of the most exotic lifeforms known to hyper-biology. They appear as living blots of shadow, shapeless aside from their extruded pseudopods and whipping feelers. Most incredibly they seem to be bound to a 2d plane, moving back and forth freely but completely unable to travel or even perceive up and down from their relative positions. They can alter their plane at will but must grope blindly through the z-axis to reach a point in 3 dimensions.

They dwell only in the Abyss, a lifeless realm populated only by the Adumbrali, the only terrain illusions. They cannot leave it to hunt so instead they send out Seekers, biological 3 dimensional drones that go out into mortal populations and prey on the lost, gullible and curious. The Seekers are designed to be powerful telepaths, able to lead their marks in Astral travel, bringing souls directly into the Abyss. They can also partially control minds and erase memories, abilities they use to suppress knowledge of their activities and dispose of evidence of the Adumbrali.

Adumbrali don’t actually need to feed, they simply enjoy it. By human standards they could be considered sadists and like to play with their food. A human drawn into their world will be tormented with illusions, given false chances to escape and taunted by the Adumbrali’s Seekers. When caught the victim is drained of all fluid and energy to the point that they looks mummified. The touch of the Adumbrali leaves no wounds, only shifting luminous markings to show where the shadowy things laid their life-draining tendrils.

TO BE CONCLUDED

One more section to go! I'm gonna give these a once over, edit them a bit and post the whole thing as one page.

Know Your Vampire! by ValhaHazred on DeviantArt

Spoiler

What is a vampire?
A vampire is a predatory or parasitic entity that sustains itself on the vital forces of its prey. The common folklore of Earth focuses primarily on the consumption of blood, although in truth this is largely incidental to the true target of vampiric consumption. Sothic energy. Many vampiric species don’t even bother with the extraction of fluids, instead pulling energy directly through their victims.

The difference between vampires and ectovores or Sothic parasites like the Drowners is that they primarily target mortals as intermediaries rather than attempt to draw directly from the source.


Space Vampires
There are several vampiric species known to occultists that originate from distant stars within the material universe. The following are five of the most recorded, and therefore most likely to be encountered on Earth.

Fire Vampires of Cthugha
The most common type of fire vampire are those of Cthugha, the living red star. They appear as spheres of incandescent plasma, wreathed in strangely animate fire. The size of fire vampires varies greatly, from vast spheres to tiny motes that could be mistaken for floating embers.

Fire vampires feed on both heat and sothic energy, without both they simply burn themselves out. They use a spike of pyrokinetic energy to pierce the walls of a victim’s astral cord and draw out ectoplasm as the victim is burned alive in a rush of ghostly flame. Some cases of spontaneous human combustion could be blamed on these creatures.

When not hunting, Fire vampires of Cthugha can be found basking on the surface of high-heat planets, such as the sunward side of Mercury.

Fire vampires of Cthugha are weakened by low temperatures and can be disrupted by powerful magnetic fields.

Fire Vampires of Fthaggua
These fire vampires are only found accompanying their Great Old One, in its journeys across the universe on its comet-fortress Ktynga. Individual vampires look like sprites of crimson lightning.

When encountering a victim, a fire vampire tears their soul out through their mortal form, disintegrating it in a burst of red flame. The soul is added to their collective, giving the vampires the memories of their victims.

The secret of the Fthagguan fire vampires is that there is only one of them, Fthaggua itself. Each of the crimson electric sprites may appear to be separate entities but each is simply the end of a feeding orifice that projects through higher dimensions before linking back to the core. The fire vampires are limited by this connection, with range seemingly related to Fthaggua’s perspective. From space, they can dominate entire hemispheres but with Fthaggua planet bound they can travel less than a few miles from their core self.

Fthaggua itself appears to be a singular being and its origin is unknown. It does claim some relation to Cthugha and may be a child-entity to the hungry star.

Fire vampires are hard to get rid of, as Fthaggua seems to simply manifest them at will. Only killing the Great Old One would actually end their threat to universal life.

Sarchroma
Better known as the Colour Out of Space, these energy beings of indescribable color are only vampires in a terrestrial setting. Those that appear on Earth are lost, confused and desperate to return to their natural environment, deep space.

The mere presence of a Colour exposes everything around it to Tillinghast radiation, thinning the veils to the Beyond and flooding the area with subspatial energy. At first this manifests as manic energy and mild audio-visual hallucinations to those in the area but can quickly worsen to physical mutations and extra-dimensional awareness. This results in a feedback loop in the local life as more and more t-rays are introduced to the environment through mutated individuals.

The sarchroma are normally passive absorbers of cosmic energy but in the presence of such an energy rich environment they will begin opportunistically hunting, starting with affected sentients with the highest concentration of energy and moving down the scale until nothing is left of the area but ash. This usually provides enough energy to initiate a space launch but sarchroma have been known to mistime their escape, trapping themselves in a deadzone and starving themselves out.

Sarchroma are impossible to combat directly without breaking dimensional boundaries but they can be banished or trapped, similarly to a ghost. It’s also quite easy to avoid becoming a victim of a sarchroma. Simply leave the area before the t-rays alter your metaphysical balance enough to be a tempting target.

Nioth-Korghai
The Nioth-Korghai are incredibly dangerous. They are highly technologically advanced, possess powerful natural psionic abilities and they retain some of the physical advantages of their shoggoth ancestors. Fortunately they’re fairly passive, generally keeping to stasis and only leaving from time-to-time to feed, rather than trying to maintain their demanding bodies at all times. They’ve learned their lesson from the destruction of their homeworld and the hunger wars that preceded their spread into space. Still, if they ever decided to, they could end our civilization in a matter of days.

To feed, a Nioth-Korghai need prey that are descended from the Shoggothim, like themselves. The Nioth-Korghai connect their twsha with the local analogue (in humans, the pineal gland) and use it as a conduit to drain sothic energy, even as they pull every drop of fluid out of their victim for physical consumption. They remain connected to their dead victims for several hours and can animate them as husks, which can drain further victims and pass the energy on to the vampire through their subspace link.

Feeding is far from the only psychic talent they possess. The Nioth-Korghai are capable telekinetics and have an array of invasive telepathic abilities, including mesmerism, mind reading and outright possession.

On the physical side, the Nioth-Korghai are large and have incredible strength in their tentacular limbs. The Nioth-Korghai are shapeshifters, although in a far more limited capacity than their ancestors. Most can only handle a couple of forms and must practice them as untrained shifting can be dangerous to them. It’s common for them to at least learn a body appropriate for hiding among the local prey population.

Killing a Nioth-Korghai is difficult. They have few vital organs but destroying their twsha can render them brain-dead. The exact location of the twsha varies thanks to their shapeshifting but is usually kept somewhere within their center of mass, giving it as much protection as they can. Otherwise they need to be overwhelmed by sheer damage. As powerful as they are, the Nioth-Korghai are still physical beings and enough kinetic energy could tear them apart.

Rhan-Tegoth
Although often treated as a singular entity in aeonist lore, the Rhan-Tegoth are an entire species and little more than animals at that. They were imported to Earth millenia ago by the Fungi on behalf of the followers of Ithaqqua. To the Ithaqquans they are a sacred animal, a vessel to receive blood sacrifice.

Interestingly, while the Rhan-Tegoth do indeed drink blood, they don't actually do much with the magical energy within. They can even be trained to channel it back to their handlers, allowing them to serve as living ritual batteries.

The Rhan-Tegoth are not particularly hard to kill, as despite their apparently indefinite lifespans, they can be treated as any other large animal. If a hunting rifle can down a moose, it can down Rhan-Tegoth.


Terrestrial Vampires
In the vast annals of life on Earth, vampirism has arisen many times. Most of them are true blood drinkers, small creatures that drain the blood of larger animals for some quick protein. However a tiny handful have through natural selection or artificial modifications gained the ability to suck sothic energy from their prey instead and became true occult vampires.

Miri-Nigri
The extradimensional alien god-thing, Chaugnar Faun, found its way to Earth in the middle Triassic. It tore a bloody swath across the land, killing and consuming the lifeforce of anything in its path, unstoppable even for the mighty shoggoths. But it lived in cycles and a vulnerable period approached. It needed caretakers during its long sleep. Squirming in the blood soaked muck beneath its latest meal, Chaugnar found the perfect candidates.

The Miri-Nigri are the descendents of those ancient bloodsucking salamanders. Today they are very rare, as immortal as they are, they are not invulnerable. Most of them have died in combat or misfortune in the millions of years since their transformation. Others transmuted themselves and traded their immortality for greater freedom from their god, becoming the ancestors of the “cannibal” tcho-tcho people.

Miri-Nigri, like the Rhan-Tegoth, do not actually make much use of the blood magic they take from their victims and instead pass it on to the great Chaugnar Faun.

Chaugnar Thrall
The Miri-Nigri might be the first of Chaugnar’s servitors but they are far from the only beings it created to serve. One type in particular is closer to Chaugnar than any other, including its own spawn.

The thralls are both a reward and a punishment meted out by Chaugnar at its alien whims. Minions that serve it well are elevated, while those outsiders that trouble its sleep are made into powerful slaves. Either way, Chaugnar imparts a piece of itself to the soon-to-be vampire, overtaking the thrall’s natural form. The thralls are bound very tightly to their maker and while some independent thought remains, their bodies and actions ultimately belong to Chaugnar Faun. The matter remains entangled with Chaugnar, allowing it to connect with its thralls and their thoughts at all times over any distance. As long as the god-thing wakes they dance to its directives.

Killing a Chaugnar Thrall is a difficult prospect. The alien matter they are partially made of is shockingly resistant to mundane force. If grievous injuries are dealt, as long as Chaugnar finds them useful it will reinforce their bodies with more of itself, not just granting them seemingly infinite recovery but strengthening them at the same time. The best chance to destroy one is a powerful blow to the head. If the thrall is killed in such a way as to destroy the brain, Chaugnar will release the body to a sudden, exotic decomposition. If Chaugnar is not awake, the regeneration is not an issue.

Y’nathog
The gorgonopsid people of Y’nathog were the second sapient intelligence to arise from shoggothim genetic stock on Earth. It was through their interfacing with their technology that they became vampires. They used artificial biological organisms paired with a curious form of reanimation to enhance it far beyond the normal limits of flesh and bone. The electrorecepting tendrils of Y’nathogguan necrotechs were modified to serve as the perfect control surface for their biochines. This came with the unexpected side-effect of energy vampirism. A few generations later and all of the Y’nathog possessed the ability. Some exceptional Y’nathogguans were offered the opportunity to go further, uploading their preserved minds in immortal necrotechnological bodies, powered entirely by sothic energy.

Despite their vampiric transbiology and ominous technology the Y’nathog were not the villains we might expect, at least not originally. While they might have felt stifled by the neighboring civilizations, they lived in peace for hundreds of years. Unfortunately for them, that changed when they came into contact with the entity known as Quyagen. It promised them eldritch power they would never have discovered on their own and whispered ambition into the ears of the Y’nathog lich council. Suddenly the lands they’d lived on since their rise to intelligence wasn’t enough. The world would be theirs under the banner of Quy. Their ambitions did not last long, as the Elder crinoid things and the Yith united against Y’nathogguan aggression, destroying their civilization and banishing Quyagen to a timeless prison.

The Y’nathogg are functionally extinct but pieces of their miraculous technology remains, some of it still somehow functional despite millions of years and literal fossilization. Among the deranged ramblings of the Cult of the Skull can be found instructions to awaken this necrotech. All it takes is a little blood sacrifice.

Fungal Vampire
Mind controlling parasites aren’t actually that rare in nature but humans don’t usually need to worry about them. However, there is one very rare fungus that we need to be very afraid of and no, it isn’t the cordyceps.

Native to New England, there is an unnamed mold that not only takes over human bodies, it creates a shocking form of vampiric haunting. Upon inhalation of the spores, the mold develops within its host’s nasal passages and works its mycelium into the blood-brain barrier where it can directly infect the central nervous system. Once it has access, the host feels compelled to stay in a cool, wet and dark environment as they grow sicker and sicker. Once the host dies and the mold overtakes them, the true horror begins.

The soul is just a recording of the body and mind, rendered in the akashic records. What affects one can very easily affect the other and somehow, in whatever way the mold replaces the brain of the deceased, it hijacks the astral self! Under the control of the mold, the soul becomes a feeding tube, astrally projecting to living things and subtly draining their energy from the subspatial realms. While the fungal vampire usually only takes only a little at a time, its victims weaken steadily. When it is nearly depleted the vampire will tear out its prey’s astral cord and add it to its own, sucking hollowly on the akasha for as long as the vampire exists.

The mold can summon the twisted ghost of its dead host as long as it remains connected to the body, which the mold maintains to a certain degree. The host bloats into a vast and slimy mass of fungal tissue as the colony grows but the bones are enough to keep it anchored for a very long time.

Killing the mold is actually fairly simple once you know where it is. Acid or fire enough to engulf the fungal colony does the trick. Just watch out for spores.


Ultraterrestrial Vampires
Beyond the physical reality we know, there are countless universes which can range from near replicas to twisted realms where only madness makes sense. Sometimes those alternate universes brush with ours and something slips in through the cracks.

Haemophore
Vampires are so pervasive in human story-telling that it would be nearly impossible for them not to appear in the world of Dreaming in some fashion. However, the Dreamlands reflect our fantasies like a funhouse mirror, warping them in unexpected ways. A good example of this is the Haemophore, a nightmare of blood-drinking parasitism native to the rivers and swamps of certain Dreams.

Haemophores are amphibian-like creatures that spend most of their lives swimming in search of blood-bearing prey. They attach themselves, leech-like, to their host with suckers on their ventral surface and suck blood until disturbed. If given enough time a Haemophore can drain a completely disproportionate amount of blood, blowing up like a sanguine balloon. There are even stories of Haemophores filled up to 5 or 6 times their normal size and almost completely round being forced to roll and bounce away from vengeful (and likely hypovolemic) food sources.

Normally Haemophores are fairly small, ranging from a few inches to a foot in length but they never stop growing. The largest Haemophore ever recorded was a little over six feet long. Alarmingly, blood drained corpses have been recovered with enormous wounds in the tell-tale w-shape of a Haemophore bite suggesting they get much larger.

Haemophores aren’t actually that dangerous, relying more on their prey not noticing them than any ability to overpower them, at least not in the smaller specimens. Haemophores can be killed as any other animal, although their nature as nightmares does grant them some supernatural toughness. They are also attracted to shiny objects and can be coaxed off of their current host with bits of glass or coins.

Grume
A rare example of a completely passive vampire, Grumes are scavengers from a parallel Earth. Grumes are attracted to bloodshed and trauma and they can be found haunting places like hospitals and battlefields. The Grume are even slightly precognitive when it comes to the spilling of blood as the release of sufficient quantities of psychokinetic energy echoes in time and calls to the Grume's alien senses.

Just as a Grume is attracted to blood, blood is attracted to a Grume. Bloodshed flows in streams through the air to join the creature’s bloody halo. Being in the presence of a grume pulls on the blood in your veins like the tide and can even slow blood flow to the point of angina and heart attacks.

Adumbrali
Written of in the Song of Yste, the Adumbrali are one of the most exotic lifeforms known to hyperbiology. They appear as living blots of shadow, shapeless aside from their extruded pseudopods and whipping feelers. Most incredibly they seem to be bound to a 2d plane, moving back and forth freely but completely unable to travel or even perceive up and down from their relative positions. They can alter their plane at will but must grope blindly through the z-axis to reach a point in 3 dimensions.

They dwell only in the Abyss, a lifeless realm populated only by the Adumbrali where the only terrain is semi-physical illusions generated by the Adumbrali themselves. They cannot leave it to hunt so instead they send out Seekers, biological 3 dimensional drones that go out into mortal populations and prey on the lost, gullible and curious. The Seekers are designed to be telepathic, able to lead their marks in Astral travel, bringing souls directly into the Abyss. They can also partially control minds and erase memories, abilities they use to suppress knowledge of their activities and dispose of evidence of the Adumbrali.

Adumbrali don’t actually need to feed, they simply enjoy it. By human standards they could be considered sadists, enjoying the suffering of their victims as much or more than the act of consumption. A human drawn into their world will be tormented with illusions, given false chances to escape and taunted by the Adumbrali’s Seekers. When caught the victim is drained of all fluid and energy to the point that they look like ancient mummies. The touch of the Adumbrali leaves no wounds, only shifting luminous markings to show where the shadowy things laid their life-draining tendrils.


Human Vampires
For humans vampirism is supremely selfish, taking the life of other humans to extend their own without the excuse of alien mindsets or animal need. Even worse, most vampires chose to become so. The means to become a vampire are varied and numerous alchemical and magical means to do so have been discovered through the ages. The vast majority of vampires are indistinguishable from a normal human, newly blood-based diet and longevity aside, while others are twisted and mutated by their turning. They rarely possess supernatural powers beyond what sorceries might have led them down the path of vampirism.

Salt Vampire
The essential salts are a substance created by ritual means to indefinitely preserve the “essence” of a human. These salts can be used to call up the ghost of the person and with the aid of the Dragon Ascending incantation bind them in a copy of their mortal bodies. These Saltborne souls usually appear as they did at the moment of their death but some versions of the ritual allow the caster to bring them back from any point in their material timeline. Essential salts are used by sorcerers to call up informants or servants, often with their continued survival on the line. Without magic, they’ll wither and die before disintegrating into dust and salt.

There are ways for these undead to continue on without the aid of a wizard. The salt forged body is a sponge for magic and introducing living blood can keep it going for a time. Some who know of this will even arrange to be brought back with the salts, fully intending to become a Salt Vampire.

Although the body generated by the Dragon Ascending is a copy of the original and appears to have all the vital signs of life, the salt undead don’t actually suffer from their cessation. The effect is similar to a possession as the spirit can drive its body as long as it has limbs and an intact head. They do feel the pain of bodily injury though. Dismemberment, particularly decapitation, is recommended. The Dragon Descending incantation can also return them to the essential salts.

Ophidians
One of the lost civilizations of the Indian Ocean that now fall under the catch-all of “Lemuria” elevated their ruling class through the creation of the Kleeyaun blood ritual. Through the sacrifice of Serpent Folk, these noble lemurians were made into immortal blood drinkers with a few minor snake-like features. The image of the vampire with a pair of penetrating canines may have even originated with the Ophidian vampires. Of course these fangs were used to inject a paralytic venom rather than to aid in drinking blood.

The last of the original Ophidians appears to have been killed in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, it is believed that the instructions for Kleeyaun ritual still exist and could lead to new vampires. The Serpent Folk at least are likely to keep the ritual from human hands by any means necessary.


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FINALLY! This was supposed to be done in October. Where did the time go?

There are quite a few other entities that I would consider vampires but I didn't really want to cover singular beings. It's meant to be a general overview of vampiric species. However, since I mention Chaugnar Faun a lot here's were I drew him before.
www.deviantart.com/valhahazred…

Also, I don't know if it's clear but the Human Vampire art doesn't correlate to the examples given in the text. They're just two random vampires since they're more representative of vampires in general.

 

Sucrose by Sunnypoppy on DeviantArt


Xingqiu by Sunnypoppy on DeviantArt


Yun Jin by Sunnypoppy on DeviantArt


Shenhe by Sunnypoppy on DeviantArt


Yae Miko by Sunnypoppy on DeviantArt


Lumine by Sunnypoppy on DeviantArt

 

ArtStation - Kabuki Pirates
"Exiled from their tribes, these pirates seek refuge in the lawless seas. / Being detached from law and society allowed them to used use traditional elements in whatever ways they pleased. / Each also brought along vices and obsessions of their own; namely: / Sake and opium / Collection of Defeated foe’s Tsuba (Hilt guard) / Treasure and Coins"

Indulgence


Ego


Greed

 

SlashCrash by Lord-Of-The-Guns on DeviantArt

"Slash and Crash from Quake III for /u/"

 

Cryptid-Creations: Deer Mouse

https://www.deviantart.com/cryptid-creations/art/3173-Deer-Mouse-912409037