This last point may be surprising, but it is simply a matter of evolution. For most of known vampiric history, vampires were largely vulnerable to sunlight. They kept this weakness a closely-guarded secret, and found ways of adapting to it. However, during the Enlightenment (somewhere between 1650-1700), methods were discovered to adapt vampires to sunlight. Many were tried; few succeeded. Few was all that was needed; those with the adaptation gained great advantage over those without. Ultimately, it was realized that all known methods are merely helpful, not required--it is within the grasp of (almost) any vampire to adapt to sunlight, without necessarily requiring advanced age or power. It is simply a matter of subduing vampiric nature, sacrificing vampiric powers to reduce weaknesses.

The Sun, far from being a destructive force, is the ultimate source of life energy--one who could truly adapt to it would have a constant tap of energy, sort of like being "plugged in" instead of "on battery". Blood is said battery; it is a portable, concentrated form of life energy. As such, it is perhaps too potent upon first taste, but eventually fades, requiring replenishment. Unfortunately, it is not possible for the vast majority of vampires to replace blood with sunlight; sunlight comes in a form too pure, too primitive for a vampire to absorb directly. A complex food chain of progressively more complex living creatures converts sunlight into the energy vampires need. They have largely learned to adapt to the sun's danger, but not to feed directly from it. And it is worth noting that, though many have adapted to the sun, few enjoy it; most find it irritating, uncomfortable, or downright painful, and will take efforts to avoid overexposure.

Other Weaknesses

Many of the classic weaknesses of vampires have been nigh eliminated. That isn't to say they never existed--simply that those who had them were far more easily killed by mortal hunters, mages, and rival vampires. Much of the classic vampire literature of the 19th and 20th century was deliberately published to publicize these weaknesses, knowing it would betray vampires' greatest weaknesses to their enemies. The plan worked. It worked beautifully. But evolution works beautifully as well.

In times past, the majority of vampires were, by today's standards, incredibly powerful, from the first taste of blood. Bloodlines were, in loaded terms, "more pure" then, leading to vampiric strengths and weaknesses alike being more pronounced. In a way, it was almost incestuous how the extreme traits of the bloodlines were amplified with every generation, leading to such absurdity as vampires who couldn't stand the smell of garlic, and perhaps the equally absurd (but useful) power to transform into a swarm of bats.

The reality of the vampire "genome" is that the population tends to regress toward the mean; the average vampire is far less powerful than, say, Dracula, but also has far fewer weaknesses. In olden days, these "average" vampires were usually culled, or found protection in the shadow of greater sires. Now, they have successfully out-competed their more extreme forebears, and enjoy a life nearly free of inconvenient, easy death.

Nearly free.

Sanctity Magic

Vampires remain vulnerable to the power of true faith. While there is a slight tendency for vampires to favor (or rather, disfavor) symbols of their own former faith, in general, it is understood that no particular religion has a monopoly on this power; rather, it is the truth of the faith of whoever is presenting the symbol. Some peculiar vampires have been known to possess true faith themselves, successfully wielding sanctity magicks against other vampires (with great difficulty). Nobody is certain why symbols of faith affect them so much--the obvious explanation, that they are "demonic" or otherwise anathema to goodness, fails to adequately explain their pantheistic "appeal" to faith magic. And it's hard to argue to someone that they are a spawn of the Devil when they've never met the guy or received any marching orders from him.

Presented holy symbols are a rare nuisance, and never more than that. Without the power of actual magic, the best even the holiest of the faithful can manage is to ward a vampire's immediate physical presence. The symbol causes a powerful sensation, similar to fear, but more aptly described as awe. This is usually accompanied by involuntary motion to increase the distance from the object. Its power tends to attenuate quickly; the effects are overwhelming to all but the most powerful vampire at a few inches, but easily avoided at 5-10 feet by even a novice vampire.

Actual sanctity magic, wielded by a proper practitioner, has wide-ranging effectiveness across a broad spectrum of creatures, including many undead. Thus, the fact that it works quite well against vampires does lead many to wonder if they are, indeed, "undead", assuming such labels have meaning in a complex, modern world. In any case, it does work; a properly, magically-consecrated area is all but impenetrable to a vampire. Should one find himself inside such an area, he will immediately be forced into a state of absolute panic, seeking the shortest route to escape the area, regardless of other concerns. Forced exposure to the area can cause madness or even physical harm; it is unknown if this harm is physiological or psychological in nature; ethics aside, such experiments are difficult for vampires to perform.

(Note: in rare instances, vampires possessing true faith have been able to enter sacred ground without harm.)

The magic of thresholds, much more common than a truly consecrated religious structure or area, is exceptionally effective against vampires. Simply put, they cannot enter a threshold-warded area without invitation. All normal rules of thresholds seem to apply--they fade when the home is unoccupied for a time, or when the inhabitants die. Threshold-based wards are doubly effective against vampires; the wise vampire will study basic ward magic to know which buildings and areas to avoid.

There is of course the possibility of imbuing objects with faith magic. Perhaps the most practical application of this is holy water. When prepared by an actual practitioner of faith magic, holy water can act as a sort of weapon. On contact, it causes pain (penetrating a vampire's usual resistance to it) and scarification, similar to acid. It cannot kill, except perhaps in the most extreme circumstances (such as prolonged total submersion), but to all but the most willful, aged vampires, the pain sensation makes an effective ward, at least in the short term.

Physical Harm

Vampires are very resilient. That isn't to say they are unkillable.

Unless he has fed very recently, a vampire has very limited blood flow. Unlike a human, who must keep his heart, brain, and core organs oxygenated at all times, a vampire is capable of greatly restricting his blood flow. All of his tissues essentially become hyper-absorbent to blood; within minutes--rarely hours--of feeding, almost all blood has been absorbed by various tissues, leaving little to circulate, and the vampire's heart stops. This is actually quite advantageous when considering physical resilience.

The human body's greatest weakness to trauma is the circulatory system; without that pesky heart pumping all the time, a human could get an arm lopped off and could easily keep moving about for days, worrying only about the onset of necrosis and infection. Instead, such a wound spells doom in seconds or minutes, entirely because one of the human's own organs is swiftly and effectively spewing precious blood right out the newly-created hole.

So without a heartbeat, vampires shed the greatest weakness they once had. But it doesn't end there. While engorged vampiric tissue is particularly prone to bleeding and pain, it also heals...very, very fast. Were one to cause trauma to a vampire within a few minutes of feeding, one would be treated to an incredibly show of regeneration--the tissues would repair themselves before your eyes. Of course, the vampire would also be incredibly angry, and likely violent; engorged vampiric tissue is far more sensitive than normal, healthy human tissue, and thus injuries to it are far more painful. Couple this with the tendency of engorgement to suppress higher reasoning, and the aforementioned experiment becomes an effective form of suicide.

But what about non-engorged flesh? In fact, that is at least as resilient, if not more so. Non-engorged vampiric tissue is much harder than human tissue. Cell walls thicken, and motility decreases. It requires more force to penetrate skin, separate muscle, or even shatter bone. This does not seem to come with any drawbacks to strength or agility; muscles and tendons harden against injury, but not against their own proper motion; indeed, they twitch harder, and can take far more tension without damage. This would seem to explain vampiric strength and speed.

With all this taken into account, it is generally hard to injure a vampire. Most of the time, they are hardened against damage, and do not bleed even if that hardness fails. And then, even the most egregious injures--such as a missing limb, can be regenerated with enough feeding and time. So what, then, can actually kill a vampire?

It is a common misconception that beheading is sufficient. And this is generally true, although with a couple of caveats. Firstly, vampires do not possess vast, untapped thermal potential. That is to say, they do not instantly burn to ash when they are "killed". A vampire with a severed head will turn into...a vampire with a severed head. Apart from some nasty rigor mortis, it will look exactly the same two seconds, five minutes, and four months later. Severing the head appears to halt the vampiric nervous system, indicating that the brain yet plays an important role in vampire physiology. The same applies to any complete severance of the spinal cord that cuts the heart off from the brain at any other point.

The other, major caveat is that vampiric regeneration seems to occur at the tissue level, not the systemic level. That means that there are no known theoretical limitations to vampiric regeneration. There are, in fact, documented cases of vampires being successfully resuscitated after decapitation through copious application of blood. There are even skilled "vampire surgeons" with special training in the precise application of blood to necrotic vampire tissue--this usually involves painstaking irrigation of deep tissue, in a process that looks unsettlingly like flaying.

So what does one do to make sure a vampire doesn't come back? There is the old standby of fire: the flesh of a vampire who hasn't fed in a while (whether decapitated or not) is extremely dry, and therefore quite flammable. If properly burned, the tissue is destroyed, and incapable of being revived with any amount of blood. Indeed, flame can even work on "living" vampires, or rather those who are still mobile and active, if they are sufficiently dry for whatever reason (too long since feeding, very old, strange bloodline, etc).

And of course, there's one more thing. Wooden stakes.

Vampires would love it if this one weren't true. But it is. Wooden stakes, or, more specifically, any once-living, actual wood, or other hard, fibrous plant matter, when inserted into the vampiric heart, triggers an extremely volatile and deadly chain reaction. It seems to "confuse" the vampiric circulatory system, causing the heart to pump as if the system were full of fresh blood, in the same manner as during the act of feeding. The effect of this is that all of the vampire's remaining blood reserves are circulated very quickly, and either absorbed by tissue, or ejected through wounds within seconds. This causes the vampire to harden past the point of flexibility, becoming effectively paralyzed, not just for the duration of the "staking", but until external action is taken to restore the vampire (usually through the application of blood). Thus, staking a vampire is at least as effective as decapitation, and, when followed by the application of fire, a fine way to destroy a vampire.

Also, it's insanely difficult to pull off.

At the best of times, a sharpened stick is a terrible piercing weapon. This was obvious even to cavemen, who mastered flint tens of thousands of years before mastering language or clothing, because sharpened wood is that damn shitty. At penetrating normal flesh. Penetrating the extra-hard flesh of a vampire? Who may even be wearing armor or a heart-protecting plate? Forget it. It's a pipe dream.

Wooden stakes, when they are used at all, are usually metal-tipped. If the shaft itself makes contact with the heart, that is sufficient to cause the desired effect. Such stakes need not be thick--any more than a centimeter or so and the stake would be blocked by the vampire's ribs (assuming it was even properly placed between them). The minimum force needed to deliver a well-prepared, well-hardened stake to a vampire's heart, with no armor or special toughness, requires at least a proper crossbow, if not a specially-designed firearm. No ordinary human can ever produce that much force through arm strength alone. And this is to say nothing of the accuracy of the blow, which requires expert marksmanship well in excess of what is needed even, say, to fell a quick, angry werewolf with a silver bullet. The heart itself must be penetrated; the general region is just so much goop, most of it useless to a vampire (the lungs and digestive system).

So, the short version: chop off the head, burn the corpse. The end.

Being a vampire isn't all about weakness, after all.

Everybody knows vampires are strong and fast. But just how so?

Muscles and Motion

As previously discussed, vampiric tissue is (at most times) harder and more resilient than the human norm. Muscle, tendon, and ligament fibers become more responsive in their primary direction of motion, and gain great tensile strength. Indeed, the nervous system itself seems to increase in speed; synapses fuse, forming unbroken electric connections across long axial connections, and reflex time improves by orders of magnitude.

That is not to say that vampires ignore the laws of physics. A typical vampire is about 2.5 to 3 times stronger, in terms of pure force, than a human of equivalent muscle mass, at optimal tone. Thus, if a 90-pound woman with an 80-pound bench press would be considered to be in outstanding shape, were she a vampire, she might press 200-250 pounds with ease. Conversely, a large, bulky male, already in bodybuilding form, might press 2000-3000 pounds. It's a simple matter of physics.

Of course, weightlifting is not the same thing as practical lifting. Even the smallest of adult vampires can probably move a midsize automobile by utilizing their full range of muscle and practicing mechanical advantage. And for the purposes of combat, overall strength is nearly irrelevant; vampires' speed and reflex is far more important to their deadliness as opponents.

An average human has an eye-to-hand reflex time of around 200 milliseconds. Thus, if asked to watch for a given stimulus, and respond with a quick hand command (such as the flick of a finger), the time between the appearance of the stimulus and the hand response will be about 200 milliseconds. In a typical vampire, this time is less than 20 milliseconds, without training. With training and talent, response times of less than 1 millisecond are not uncommon. Such response times are sufficient to dodge almost any attack a vampire can perceive, even firearm projectiles, when fired from a reasonable range. Such agility makes them very difficult to hit, and their natural toughness makes even a hit far less impactful on their ability to continue fighting than it would for a human of comparable size.

What's more, the speed at which a vampire moves is greatly increased. A vampire's muscles can contract and release much more quickly, with greater force, and to greater extent than a human's. When combined with their physical strength, this leads to much more rapid acceleration of limb movement. When applied to a physical blow, such as a punch, this magnifies the effect of strength (mostly important for follow-through); the total force that can be delivered in a punch from a vampire of very slight frame is comparable to the heaviest punches from the largest and most conditioned heavyweight boxers. From a larger vampire, the blow easily exceeds human limitations; a single such blow is often fatal.

When applied to locomotion, the vampire enjoys much improved acceleration and maximum running speed compared to a human. While the laws of physics prohibit the fanciful, blurring motion of movie vampires (without advanced supernatural powers), the practical application of vampiric speed is nonetheless very impressive. At a full run, a long-legged vampire can keep up with automobiles at freeway speed limits; as far as acceleration, they are a match for high-end sporting race cars.

Of perhaps more immediate use in combat scenarios is the effect of this speed and strength on leaping. While a well-conditioned, long-legged human might be able to manage a 4-foot vertical leap, a typical vampire can easily manage 10 feet or more. With practice and talent, it is not uncommon to reach 20 feet vertically, or as much as 80 feet horizontally with a running start. When coupled with a vampire's reflex and finger strength, as applied to ad-hoc climbing, this can allow such feats as leaping up a three-story building in a few bounds.

The Microscopic Scale

Disease, poison, etc. Breath.

Generally immune to disease and poison, except blood-borne agents. Used to advantage when desiring inebriation (normally impossible). No need to breathe; blood provides everything. Without breath, can't speak. Etc.

Senses

Vampires don't actually have particularly heightened senses across the board. They do have vastly superior nightvision to humans. Their hearing is comparable. Touch and taste are muted most of the time, but greatly amplified when their flesh is engorged with blood. Smell is above average. All of these senses heighten when hunting; they have the ability to seek and "lock on" to trails of sensation, allowing them to focus their senses on a particular target, greatly magnifying their effect.

etc...

If all vampires just killed humans willy-nilly, they would soon be hunted down and exterminated. Thus, there is a need to suppress the inherent chaos of the young, for the good of all. To that end, the old, those with wisdom, self-control, and perspective, use their physical superiority to keep the young and chaotic under control.

This essential model evolved into a general way of life known today as The Old Order. In short:

• Vampires organized into a feudalistic hierarchy.
• Leadership was merit-based; the requisite wisdom, self-control, and physical power meant more than descent or age (though these things typically correlate with the latter).
• The smallest unit would be a clan of about 10-15 vampires. Such a population would require as much as 10,000 humans to sustain themselves without bringing undue attention on their clan.
• Larger cities could sustain multiple clans, requiring a higher order of authority to unite them, limiting territorial disputes and factional disagreements. Thus, a further tier of leadership was necessary.
• Regions (and later, nations) would be united by yet further tiers of leadership. Each tier was increasingly further from the essential purpose of guiding and protection a clan, and more concerned with esoteric matters of rulership. This came with increasing pride and privilege.

As the society of medieval Europe evolved, the vampiric order mirrored it; thus, by the High Medieval Period, vampire clan leaders were considered "lords", and those of higher tier might be called "count", "duke", or even "king" (though the latter was not common). With the trappings of nobility came the inevitable politics; merit yielded to descent, practicality yielded to ideals, and politics infested the whole system.

With the Modern Age (1500 AD and later) came great change. Human populations swelled, and so vampire populations grew in kind. Lands gave way to nations, and soon vampires found themselves organizing similarly. Wars grew ever bloodier, presenting great opportunity for unchecked feeding, but leading to a cycle of population glut and rapid, chaotic culling and correction. Human philosophy shifted away from patriarchy and toward individualism. And so the young began to question this order that so favored the old, at their expense. Finally, human expansionism brought the Kine to every corner of the Earth, and vampires followed--but the powerful did not so readily give up their homes of ages, leaving great vacuums of authority in the New World and other strange shores.

It all came to a head in the 20th century, with the Great Wars. Nationalism divided the great houses of nobility that had flourished for centuries. Massive populations and massive bloodshed led to a population of vampires that was simply uncontrollable. The Old Order tore itself apart, and the young exploited the chaos to live out their wildest fantasies. When the second World War ended, vampire society had been transformed forever. The young hopelessly outnumbered the old; gaps in the hierarchy of power were too great to fill; and clearly, power had permanently shifted away from the Old World. The Old Order was obselete. It was time for a new one.

In the decades following the collapse of the Old Order, the "wise" and "powerful" bickered amongst themselves, assigning blame, making up excuses, and generally getting nowhere. Meanwhile, vampire society continued, finding its own path. The youngest looked to their immediate elders--those with some of the wisdom and power of age, but not corrupted by being part of the established power structure. Indeed, the dominant leader figures of the young were not authoritarians or patriarchs, but rebels, diverse in manner, united only by their opposition to the Old Order.

In many cases, the establishment responded quite poorly to this rebellion. Despite offering no particular guidance or protection to a clan, they would crash down with all their might to quell challenges to their rule, ruthlessly cutting down any who dared grow too popular, regardless of the merit of their criticisms. Despite their harsh tactics, they were too few in number, and too out of touch with the changes in human society, to possibly make a difference against the rising tide.

Ultimately, one among their number, without as much regard as most, and with less noble descent, finally found his advice heeded, when all else had been tried. The Old Order would be effectively dissolved, and with it, the weaknesses it had developed over time. Instead of a rigid hierarchy that separates the highest level of leadership from its constituents by many layers of abstraction (and corruption), there would be a single, central authority of vampire society, to which every clan, great and small, would owe fealty. The central body would determine and enforce laws, applying equally to all vampires worldwide. The governing body, the Blood Council, would be comprised of representatives from every clan, so no vampire would feel they were disenfranchised. The oldest nobles would gain some special recognition, as part of a smaller, more secretive Elder Council, with final say in matters of the gravest import.

Clans would have greater freedom; they could enact their own laws, to supplement (but never contradict) the simple code laid down by the Blood Council. They could elect their own leaders (who were subject to review by the Council, or more often, by special delegates--often members of the Old Nobility). They would also elect a representative to the Council from among their number--by law, not the clan leader himself. Rather than micromanage the relationship between clans, they would vote to allow or disallow various levels of open conflict, ranging from Trials of Grievance (to right a specific wrong), Vendetta (a cycle of revenge, usually allowed to cleverly cull overpopulated clans), or open War (when a clan just needs to die).

And so the New Order was forged. And so it stands today...mostly. The Blood Council has, to many opinions, become exactly as corrupt as the Old Order. Indeed, many accuse the Council of merely being the mouthpiece of the Elder Council, now less beholden to their constituents than ever. Cynics point out that the fact that each clan must appoint a representative--who they can never then recall without Council approval--essentially forces them to admit a spy into their own ranks, allowing the highest level leadership to have a direct line of control to every clan, great and small, in ways they never had in the Old Order. Still, the majority are complacent, satisfied with their personal freedom, and with the pace of change at the highest levels that still, admittedly, eclipses the old by great strides.