Taxonomy: Nosferatu

Amongst the most famous and feared of all the dark creatures are the Vampires. These ageless monsters prey on humanity seeing us little more than cattle. They are a parasitic species and flourish as we flourish.

This entry’s purpose is to establish the proper nomenclature of the Vampire.

Kingdom: Animalia

Even at the highest level their taxonomy has raised many questions before on whether to classify the victims as part of the disease. However only a portion of vampires are created through a disease, others are created by Magic and unknown means.

Phylum: Chordata

All known vampires fit the requirements for a Chordate creature.

Class: Paradoxa

Being creatures that do not fit within the normal biological constraints Vampires fall under the Class Paradoxa.

Order: Nocturnae

As with all Nocturnal creatures, vampires solely operate at night. While with protection they can survive and function during the day their abilities are greatly reduced.

Family: Nosophoridae

The Nosphos or disease bearing creatures are those monsters that can infect and turn others into their own kind. The decision to put vampires into the Nosophoridae Family and not the Necromunidae is still a heated debate by Crypto-zoologists. However while generally considered undead, vampires often still have heartbeats, pulse, and other differences from normal undead. In this regards they are closer to werewolves (Order Nosophoridae) than to Ghouls (Order Necromunidae).

Genus: Nosferatu

All vampires fall within the Nosferatu Genus. From here vampires are separated into species based on their origin, first known sire, notable feature, or historic act.

Examples of this include the vampires descended from the first murderer Kain, (Nosferatu Traditor), Dracula (Nosferatu Imperator), and many others. To date there are over a hundred separate species of Nosferatu recorded. Although through the ceaseless work of the hunters which protect us many of these species are now considered extinct.

Common Weaknesses:

All Nosferatu suffer from a severe allergy to Fire, Silver, Sunlight, and Blessed Elements. They will find wounds inflicted with any of these items to be extremely damaging and difficult to repair. Each species and even individual vampires display varying levels of allergy to these elements, much as a normal human would to allergies.

Certain other items such as garlic will affect some Nosferatu, but not others. Examples of this would be that while garlic will repel a N. Traditor it would have no effect on the N. Salire (Jianshi or Hopping Vampire). On the other hand glutinous rice is a valid weapon on a N. Salire and has no effect on the N. Traditor. It is suspected that this has something to do with the primogenitor of each line, but this is pure speculation.