If you decide to become a vampire, be sure to check out the Church of Eternal Life. They have councillors there for an easy transition. But they may not tell you everything. For instance, the master vampire who brings you over will have almost absolute power over you. Choose your master carefully.
You won't rise as a vampire if you're killed by more than one vampire in a mass feeding. You must have just one vampire feeding over a space of several days. There are some rare exceptions in which one bite can make a corpse rise as a vampire. A very powerful master vamp can sometimes contaminate every corpse it touches. But normally you must have three bites ending with death. Your corpse will emit a glow. After three days as a corpse, you will rise as a vampire. Hungry.

Vampires do not age, so whatever age you died at is the age you will remain. Oh, and don't worry about being raised as a zombie during your three days of death. If you're going to rise as a vampire you cannot be raised as a zombie. Whatever it is that makes a vampire interferes with a raising.

Be a Master -

If you're going to be a vampire, be a master vampire. Just be prepared to spend two or three centuries kissing vamp butt until you come into your full powers. Then go out and find yourself a nice city. You'll probably need to challenge and ultimately kill the master vampire in residence.
Next you need a stalking horse¹. This is another vamp who pretends to be the Master Vampire so all the challenges come their way. When your stalking horse is killed, you just find another to be your puppet. Not all Masters of the City use a stalking horse.

A Bite to Eat -

Vampires live on a diet of blood alone. They cannot eat solid food. No drinking either. If you feel the need, you can kick back once and a while and get drunk by feeding off beings with power. And no hangover!

Warning! You don't need to kill your victims to enjoy their blood. If you choose to kill, remember that it will be difficult to stop. People are like potato chips to vampires. Once you've tasted them, its hard to stop at just one! And don't flaunt your victims. It attracts attention, usually with a stake in one hand and a cross in the other. Vampires are practical. You won't stay alive for centuries unless you're discreet and ruthless. Most vampires stay near cities where its easy to hide their victims.
You will probably end up as a solitary hunter but you may end up hunting in a pack. You certainly will at the beginning when you are newly dead and an older vampire is teaching you the ropes. You may also be forced to hunt in a pack if the master vampire controlling you goes rogue. Some masters use a group kill to solidify the pack.
One last thing to consider is that no vampire can bite a victim three times within a month without running the risk of killing them and raising them as a vamp. So choose your victims carefully.

Handy Victims -

If the hunting is bad, you can always check out the local Freak Parties for hassle free dining. Vampire freaks are people that like vampires for sexual turn-ons. They usually hide their marks unless at one of their hangouts. If you see a human with visible bites, they are probably members of the Church of Eternal Life. They are proud of their bites and see them as signs of salvation.
A Reinfield is a human with just a couple of bites. There is nothing particularly special about them. The term came from the character in the novel Dracula. Before the book, they were called slaves.
A Pomme de Sang is considered very special. The name means "apple of blood" and is a sobriquet among the Council for willing food. If you feed from a Pomme de Sang you are duty bound to protect them, like a shepherd keeping the wolf from his sheep.

Human Servants -

Missing being able to taste solid food? Get yourself a Human Servant. A human servant is a human who is bound to a vampire by something called marks. Only a master vampire can have a human servant and not even all of them. Anything your servant eats, you'll be able to taste. You'll also be able to siphon their energy and enter their dreams. Be careful, though, your servant will be immune to your eyes. Also, if your servant dies, you die too. Pluses for your servant include strength, stamina, healing, resistance to injury, and immunity to disease and poison. These, thankfully, make them harder to kill. You'll need to mark them 4 times to complete the process. Caution! After the 4th mark, they'll be as immortal as you are so pick a good one!
A few points about human servant etiquette: Having to share blood with your human servant is a real faux-pas. Only a lesser vampire needs to take blood from his servant to renew his warmth. A strong vampire can do it with touch alone. But if the servant touches the master too long or forcefully, the servant's skin will deaden for the night. On the flip side, you can get a real buzz from drinking from your servant!

Look into my Eyes -

Unlike humans, your Vampiric powers will increase with age. After a certain point, however, your powers will level out and no amount of aging will make you any stronger.
There are a variety of powers that a master vampire can possess. Each master has a different arsenal of gifts such as calling an animal, levitation, or resistance to silver. You may be able to call wolves, rats, ghosts, or even butterflies! Some other possible powers are:

- Aura - Some vampires can hurt others thatt have an aura of power. As a general rule only other vampires have this aura but there have been exceptions such as Anita and Larry. They use this aura to cause physical damage without actually having to touch that person.
- Rot - A rare type of vampire is one that can rot and reform at will. It makes them much harder to kill. The only true surety is fire.
- Fear - Some vampires can feed off fear ass if it were blood. They are called night hags, or moras.
- Corruption - One of the rarest of vampiree talents is the ability to spread corruption from their bite. The bite will cause the victim to rot while still alive. The victim can be healed if another vampire takes the corruption into himself and conquers it. There is danger, for if the vampire is not strong enough, he will rot and die.
- Sex - Some vampires descended from Belle Morte, Beautiful death have the power of sex. They live on it, breath it. They can gain power through sex and use it as a second lure for mortals. In another time they would be considered an incubus. It is a rare power.
- Feel - A master vampire can feel his peopple like a background noise. In extreme duress, he can feel their pain, their fear. However, this awareness can be blocked by a more powerful vampire, such as a council member.
- Hide - Really old vampires can hide almosst in plain site. They have chameleons beat all to hell when it comes to blending in with their surroundings. They can wrap themselves in shadows, then fling them aside like a cloak.
- Smell - Vampires don't rely on scent the way shapeshifters do, but they have a much better sense of smell than humans.
- Cold - Vampires cannot freeze to death annd they do not get cold. Most vampires try to play human be wearing coats in the winter but they are not needed.
- Water - Vampires cannot drown. Nor is runnning water a deterrent to vampires.
- Day Walkers - Some vampires can walk arouund during the day as long as they are sufficiently sheltered.
- Eyes - All vampires seem to have to abiliity to enspell or "roll" humans with their eyes.

Vampire Council -

All vampires are descended from the Vampire Council. The council decides which of them will send their vampires out to make more. For thousands of years, it was the Queen of Nightmares, Morte de Amore or The Dragon. But they grew tired of the games and retreated inside the council chambers. You rarely see them. Belle Morte, Beautiful Death, sent forth her people to populate the world with vampires. Even her blood cannot make the ugly beautiful, though all is improved by her touch.
The Council consists of seven master vampires and acts not so much as a governing body but as a court or police. It is (thankfully) located in far-off France. The council members are masters at finding that which terrifies you most and using it against you. They will use your desires against you and twist everything you are into a shape of their choosing. They are the nightmare on which all vampires are based. The thing that even other vampires fear. The presence of the council gives unprotected vampires extra power: early rising and perhaps other gifts.

The Council Members - forthcoming

Important Safety Tips –

- Cross - The light hurts your eyes and itss touch can leave a nasty scar that will not heal. Remember that the cross must be blessed and backed up by faith. Feel free to munch on any atheist waving a cross at you. Other religious symbols probably work the same but the theory hasn't been sufficiently tested. On a curious note, be aware that crosses don't always glow around vampires. They seem to wait for ones that mean harm, though there are exceptions both ways.
- Holy Wafers - I'm not sure what would happpen if you actually touched one - probably a burn. But a holy wafer placed on windows and doors will prevent vampires from entering a building.
- Silver - Potentially fatal, depending on your age and where you get hit. The younger you are, the more likely it is to kill you. Wounds caused by silver will heal almost human slow.
- Holy Water - Burns like acid. You cannot heal Holy Water burns. - Fire - Vampires are very combustible. Oncce you get burning, you keep burning 'til someone puts you out.
- Burning Metal - Permanent scars can be crreated if you shove burning metal into a wound. Fire purifies and stops the healing process, unless you reopen the wound.
- Daylight - Stay out of it. Vampires burnn completely. The fire stops when theres nothing left to burn.

Physical Characteristics –

- Reproduction - Vampires cannot make babiees without a human partner. Most vamps over 100 are sterile, though using a hot tub to keep the body temperature up seems to help. Newly dead vampire males often have leftover sperm from before death. Doctors recommend you wait six weeks before sex after you've become a vampire. Remember, a baby fathered by a vampire runs the risk of Vlad syndrome, a rare birth defect. This can be tested with an amnio. Female vamps can get pregnant, usually with the newly dead. But the body spontaneously aborts or reabsorbs the baby. A dead body can't give life.
- Tears - Vampire tears are tinged red withh blood.
- Smell - Vampires in a closed, hot space ttend to smell. They don't smell like dead bodies. It's the smell of snakes and yet that isn't it either. It's a neck- ruffling smell. Thick, musky, more reptile than mammal. The smell of vampires.
- Glow - Strong emotions, like fear, lust, or anger tend to make lesser vampires lose their humanity. Their skin takes on a translucent, almost glowing quality.
- Saliva - Vampires have an anticoagulent iin their saliva that keeps the blood flowing.
- Bleed - Vampires bleed almost like a persson.

Fang Facts –

- It's a mark of the new dead that they flaash their fangs around. The like the shock effect.
- Coffin-bait is a whore that does vampiress.
- To stay in a city, all lesser vampires muust ask the permission of the Master of the City.
- A vampire who has been invited into a homme can be forced to leave if the invitation is revoked. You will hear a sound like a low sonic pop. A great roaring will fill the room. The door will smash open and a wind will rush in like an invisible river. The vampire will be forcibly removed as if by an invisible hand. The door will slam shut behind him. A vampire invitation can be revoked only by the person who issued it.
- The older vamps tend to be a bit technophhobic.
- Vampires offer their throat, or wrist, orr the bend of their elbow to each other as a formal greeting. The lesser offer up their flesh to the greater as an acknowledgment of power.
- When a vampire's companion places their hhand on the pulse of the vampire's wrist, it declares their status. It shows that they are his human servant or lover and that the vampire considers them his equal.

A Bit of History –

Two hundred years ago the Church joined forces with the military in Germany, England, and almost every European country except France. They burned out every vampire or suspected vampire sympathizer in a single day. The history books call is the Day of Cleansing. Vampires call it the Inferno.
It is believed that France did not join because the King of France had a vampire mistress. The French Revolutionaries put out propaganda that the nobility were all vampires at one point, which wasn't true of course. Some say that's why the guillotine was so popular. It kills both the living and the undead.

Daylight Death -

When you go to "sleep" for the day it is like dying. It is not gradual like going to sleep. There is pain then your eyes will close all at once. Either your soul or the force that animates you will leave your body. You will not breath and you will have no pulse. You are dead.