Vampires

"Ghosts are, of course, those spirits whose bodies have died but who remain to trouble us. Vampires are the opposite: their souls have long since been taken or destroyed, but their bodies remain, stalking this earth as predators, seeking blood of the living."

"Why blood, you ask? As any learned man knows, the life is in the blood. The soul and spirit is in the blood. Drain any of the other humors - black bile, yellow bile, or phlegm - and the subject is discomfited, but recovers. Drain the blood, and the subject perishes without fail."

"A vampire, having no soul, no true life, has an insatiable hunger for blood, the life that they lack. And so, they glut themselves on the blood of the living, devouring their soul, but never able to recover what they so hunger for. And their victim, blood drained and soul stolen, becomes a vampire like their tormentor. There are, of course, other means of becoming a vampire: the blackest hexes may damn souls on the spot, and there are always mad hellions who sell their souls to the ENEMY, thinking they somehow gain in the exchange. But there is only loss."

"Alas, the loss of soul has grave repercussions. Lost with their soul is their reason, their morality, and even their mortality, though these losses may take years or more to manifest. They say the most aged vampires, bodies still youthful as the day they died, have long since lost their ability to control their wicked impulses, grasp abstract concepts, or even use language, becoming mere beasts in all but form."

"The cleansing purity of Sun's fire, or, lacking that, a mundane blaze or blade of silver (both of which carry a glimmer of the True Fire of the Heaven in their form), is all that may rid our world of these abominations. Otherwise, any possibility of these creatures' deaths departed with any remnant of life."

- From the writings of Erbius the Lorekeeper, Magus of the Fifth Order