In most cases, one receives one's first drink of blood on the night one becomes a vampire - one of the "Kindred", as we like to call ourselves. The process is called "The Embrace", and has two distinct and rather difficult phases. The first is simple: The vampire who wishes to create progeny drinks every last drop of the blood he can from his intended "childe". This is no different from normal feeding, save that one doesn't need to worry to about erasing the memory or disposing of the corpse afterward, and that one gets a very full meal indeed. The difference comes afterwards.
Once the last bit of blood has pulsed its way out, the "parent" vampire - the term is "sire", not that you care yet - then returns some of his ill-gotten gains. His bites his lip, or wrist, or whatever, and allows some of his blood to pass his victim's lips. Assuming that the mortal does not actively and successfully resist the process - few do, believe me - and assuming that the sire has not delayed too long in granting this gift, then the blood trickles down the victim's throat and revives her, albeit as a vampire.
Sounds simple, does it not? The truth is, as truth is always won't be, more complicated. My own Embrace would seem to be the epitome of the lushly romantic gloss your age has put on my kind, and even so I shudder in retrospect at the memory. All of the ingredients of romance were there - the candlelit boudoir, the half-drunk goblets of wine, a tall dark and handsome man - one would think we'd retreated from the party into the pages of a novel. And so we tumbled onto the bed, and, at the height of passion, he plunged his fangs into my neck. Between the pleasure of the moment and the pleasure of his feeding - yes, it is quite pleasurable for mortals, to the point of addiction for some - I was quite content to drift away.
And then, as I lay there watching that shimming door open before me, as my soul took its first faltering steps towards Heaven, he calmly slit his wrist and poured the vitroil of eternal life down my thoat. You can mock me for not rejecting what he offered, but even in the face of Grace, life is sweet. His blood seared as it tickled past my lips and down my throat, and I found myself wanting to live. The pain of the blood brought was prood that I was alive. And, then it became clear that I would not be ascending, the shining door vanished with a feeling of ineffable saddness, leaving me with my sire and a murderous hunger. Fortunately, my sire was kind enough to see me through the change; he stalked my lover, Paul, prior to stalking me, and locked him in an adjoining room like a shrike stocking its larder. While I felt my body dying cell by cell, he lay senseless, waiting for my hunger.
Ah yes, the hunger of creation. That little bit of blood that one's sire uses to bestow the embrace isn't much - a few drops with more mystical than nutritional signifiance. They certainly don't provide enough sustenance to satisfy the hunger of a newborn vampire. So the newborn childe had better pray that her sire has laid a few bottles or, better yet, a few bodies for the moment, so that there's something to feed on tight afer the change. I've witnessed the horror of newly Embraced Kindred giving in to that uncontrollable hunger, and ripping to shreds whoever was nearest in their madess. When that first thirst is upon you, you will do whatever you must to feed. You will kill your lover, your child, your parent or your priest to state that thirst, and you will be glad to do so - for as long as the fenzy lasts.
There, my dear, is the rub. Because no matter how long you're in that state of fenzy, no matter what triggered it - your fear or hunger or pain or rage - no matter how long you give in to the animal inside you, you can't control what you do and you always come down. And that's when you must deal with the consequences of what you did when that animal wearing your skin was in control. And the first frenzy is never the last. One would think it gets easier to deal with that loss of control as one grows more experienced. One who thought that would be quite wrong.
A vampire's animalistic side is called the Beast, in what is, I suspect, an attempt to demonize it by dissociation. Alas, merely giving the monstrous urge a different name is not enough to tame it. In the end the Beast always wins, I'm told. If one survives long enough as a vampire, one is forced by one's own nature to do some obscene things. And eventually, one gets acclimated to committing those atrocities and moves on to new ones, and whatever was human in that vampire dies. When the last but of humanity in a vampire dies - and once you watch enough friends, loved ones and descendants pass into the dust of ages, it does die, rest assured - then the Beast takes over once and for all. The vampire becomes an animal. If you ever reach that stage, the odds are you won't even notice when you get put down like a mad dog.
If your will is strong, and you've got a decent sense of self, you can hold out for decades. Centuries, even - I have spoken to a Kindred who is over two millennia old. But you are never, ever free of the fear that the Beast will one day trimph, and that fear is what the Beast will use to bring you to bay.
Of course, the best way to fight the Beast is to keep oneself in fighting trim, and that means eating regularly. Then again, eating regularly usually means that sooner or later, you start killing kine and the more kine you kill, the more easier killing gets. So the Beast wins that way, as well. Even if you don't mean to, even if the process begins with an accident, sooner or later you get inured to the sight of a brand-new corpse that you're responsible for, lying dead at your feet. After the tenth, hundredth, thousandth or whatever corpse, it stops being a person and becomes and object, a vessel. A footnote in your history of the ages. And you, at the moment, cease to be remotely human.
But there's more to blood than just food, a lot more. There's power to it, so much so that some vampires call is vitae - "of life". Blood above and beyond what is needed to survive can be put to a variety of uses. The legendary vampiric strength or speed? A product of the proper application of blood. Invulnerablity to mortal woes? Another draught from the same well. I've had pistols emptied into my belly and not slowed down a whit. Blood powers many of the "magical" talents ascribed to us as well; you've witnessed one. And of course, I can flush blood to my skin so as to appear, well, almost human.
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About the Toreador
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About the Sabbat
The Traditions
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Kindred Language
Toreador Disciplines
The Laws
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