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Description
What is a vampire?
A vampire is a predatory or parasitic entity that sustains itself on the vital forces of its prey. The common folklore of Earth focuses primarily on the consumption of blood, although in truth this is largely incidental to the true target of vampiric consumption. Sothic energy. Many vampiric species don’t even bother with the extraction of fluids, instead pulling energy directly through their victims.

The difference between vampires and ectovores or Sothic parasites like the Drowners is that they primarily target mortals as intermediaries rather than attempt to draw directly from the source.

Space Vampires
There are several species known to occultists that might prey on human blood and energy that originate from distant stars within the material universe. The following are five of the most recorded, and therefore most likely to be encountered on Earth.

Fire Vampires of Cthugha
The most common type of fire vampire are those of Cthugha, the living red star. They appear as spheres of incandescent plasma, wreathed in strangely animate fire. The size of fire vampires varies greatly, from vast spheres to tiny motes that could be mistaken for floating embers.

Fire vampires feed on both heat and sothic energy, without both they simply burn themselves out. They use a spike of pyrokinetic energy to pierce the walls of a victim’s astral cord and draw out ectoplasm as the victim is burned alive in a rush of ghostly flame. Some cases of spontaneous human combustion could be blamed on these creatures.

When not hunting, Fire vampires of Cthugha can be found basking on the surface of high-heat planets, such as the sunward side of Mercury.

Fire vampires of Cthugha are weakened by low temperatures and can be disrupted by powerful magnetic fields.

Fire Vampires of Fthaggua
These fire vampires are only found accompanying their Great Old One, in its journeys across the universe on its comet-fortress Ktynga. Individual vampires look like sprites of crimson lightning.

When encountering a victim, the fire vampires tears their soul out through their mortal form, disintegrating it in a burst of red flame. The soul is added to their collective, giving the vampires the memories of their victims.

The secret of the Fthagguan fire vampires is that there is only one of them, Fthaggua itself. Each of the crimson electric sprites may appear to be separate entities but each is simply the end of a feeding orifice that projects through higher dimensions before linking back to the core. The fire vampires are limited by this connection, with range seemingly related to Fthaggua’s perspective. From space, they can dominate entire hemispheres but with Fthaggua planet bound they can travel less than a few miles from their core self.

Fthaggua itself appears to be a singular being and its origin is unknown. It does claim some relation to Cthugha and may be a child-entity to the hungry star.

Fire vampires are hard to permanently destroy, as Fthaggua will simply grow a new one. Only killing the Great Old One would actually result in the death of a fire vampire.

Sarchroma
Better known as the Colour Out of Space, these energy beings of indescribable color are only vampires in a terrestrial setting. Those that appear on Earth are lost, confused and desperate to return to their natural environment, deep space.

The mere presence of a Colour exposes everything around it to Tillinghast radiation, thinning the veils to the Beyond and flooding the area with subspatial energy. At first this manifests as manic energy and mild audio-visual hallucinations to those in the area but can quickly worsen to physical mutations and extra-dimensional awareness. This results in a feedback loop in the local life as more and more t-rays are introduced to the environment through mutated individuals.

The sarchroma are normally passive absorbers of cosmic energy but in the presence of such an energy rich environment they will begin opportunistically hunting, starting with affected sentients with the highest concentration of energy and moving down the scale until nothing is left of the area but ash. This usually provides enough energy to initiate a space launch but sarchroma have been known to mistime their escape, trapping themselves in a deadzone and starving themselves out.

Sarchroma are impossible to combat directly without breaking dimensional boundaries but they can be banished. It’s also quite easy to avoid becoming a victim of a sarchroma. Simply leave the area before the t-rays alter your metaphysical balance enough to be a tempting target.

Nioth-Korghai
The Nioth-Korghai are incredibly dangerous. They are highly technologically advanced, possess powerful natural psionic abilities and they retain some of the physical advantages of their shoggoth ancestors. Fortunately they’re fairly passive, generally keeping to stasis and only leaving from time-to-time to feed, rather than trying to maintain their demanding bodies at all times. They’ve learned their lesson from the destruction of their homeworld and the hunger wars that preceded their spread into space. Still, if they ever decided to, they could end our civilization in a matter of days.

To feed, a Nioth-Korghai need prey that are descended from the Shoggothim, like they themselves are. The Nioth-Korghai connect their twsha with the local analogue (in humans, the pineal gland) and use it as a conduit to drain sothic energy, even as they pull every drop of fluid out of their victim for physical consumption. They remain connected to their dead victims for several hours and can animate them as husks, which can themselves drain further victims and pass the energy on to the vampire through their subspace link.

Feeding is far from the only psychic talent they possess. The Nioth-Korghai are capable telekinetics and have an array of invasive telepathic abilities, including mesmerisim, mind reading and outright possession.

On the physical side, the Nioth-Korghai are large and have incredible strength in their tentacular limbs. The Nioth-Korghai are shapeshifters, although in a far more limited capacity than their ancestors. Most can only handle a couple of forms and must practice them as untrained shifting can be dangerous to them. It’s common for them to at least learn a body appropriate for hiding among the local prey population.

Killing a Nioth-Korghai is difficult. They have few vital organs but destroying their twsha can render them brain-dead. The exact location of the twsha varies across individuals but is usually kept somewhere within their center of mass, giving it as much protection as they can. Otherwise they need to be overwhelmed by sheer damage. As powerful as they are, the Nioth-Korghai are still mostly physical beings and enough high explosives could tear them apart.

Rhan-Tegoth
Although often treated as a singular entity in aeonist lore, the Rhan-Tegoth are an entire species and little more than animals at that. They were imported to Earth millenia ago by the Fungi on behalf of the followers of Ithaqqua. To the Ithaqquans they are a sacred animal, a vessel to receive blood sacrifice.

Interestingly, while the Rhan-Tegoth do indeed drink blood, they don't actually do much with the magical energy within. They can even be trained to channel it back to their handlers, allowing them to serve as living ritual batteries.

The Rhan-Tegoth are not particularly hard to kill, as despite their apparently indefinite lifespans, they can be treated as any other large animal. If a hunting rifle can down a moose, it can down Rhan-Tegoth.

TO BE CONTINUED

Hey everyone! I really wanted to post this all at once but since it took me so long and I wanted to post something while it was still Halloween somewhere, I chopped it up. So this is part one! I should have the rest in the next day or so. Art's done for the other vamps, I just need to write out their ectobabbly descriptions.

I got really stuck on this one. My motivation was down all month and I kinda drew myself into a corner. First I was doing full paintings for each but that got out of hand and spun off into that other Nioth-Korghai piece from earlier on. Then I was going to have this in the same style as my Fungi overview but I started hating drawing like that about half-way through and couldn't bring myself to finish it or start over for quite a while. Oh well, lesson learned!

Description
What is a vampire?
A vampire is a predatory or parasitic entity that sustains itself on the vital forces of its prey. The common folklore of Earth focuses primarily on the consumption of blood, although in truth this is largely incidental to the true target of vampiric consumption. Sothic energy. Many vampiric species don’t even bother with the extraction of fluids, instead pulling energy directly through their victims.

The difference between vampires and ectovores or Sothic parasites like the Drowners is that they primarily target mortals as intermediaries rather than attempt to draw directly from the source.

Space Vampires
There are several species known to occultists that might prey on human blood and energy that originate from distant stars within the material universe. The following are five of the most recorded, and therefore most likely to be encountered on Earth.

Fire Vampires of Cthugha
The most common type of fire vampire are those of Cthugha, the living red star. They appear as spheres of incandescent plasma, wreathed in strangely animate fire. The size of fire vampires varies greatly, from vast spheres to tiny motes that could be mistaken for floating embers.

Fire vampires feed on both heat and sothic energy, without both they simply burn themselves out. They use a spike of pyrokinetic energy to pierce the walls of a victim’s astral cord and draw out ectoplasm as the victim is burned alive in a rush of ghostly flame. Some cases of spontaneous human combustion could be blamed on these creatures.

When not hunting, Fire vampires of Cthugha can be found basking on the surface of high-heat planets, such as the sunward side of Mercury.

Fire vampires of Cthugha are weakened by low temperatures and can be disrupted by powerful magnetic fields.

Fire Vampires of Fthaggua
These fire vampires are only found accompanying their Great Old One, in its journeys across the universe on its comet-fortress Ktynga. Individual vampires look like sprites of crimson lightning.

When encountering a victim, the fire vampires tears their soul out through their mortal form, disintegrating it in a burst of red flame. The soul is added to their collective, giving the vampires the memories of their victims.

The secret of the Fthagguan fire vampires is that there is only one of them, Fthaggua itself. Each of the crimson electric sprites may appear to be separate entities but each is simply the end of a feeding orifice that projects through higher dimensions before linking back to the core. The fire vampires are limited by this connection, with range seemingly related to Fthaggua’s perspective. From space, they can dominate entire hemispheres but with Fthaggua planet bound they can travel less than a few miles from their core self.

Fthaggua itself appears to be a singular being and its origin is unknown. It does claim some relation to Cthugha and may be a child-entity to the hungry star.

Fire vampires are hard to permanently destroy, as Fthaggua will simply grow a new one. Only killing the Great Old One would actually result in the death of a fire vampire.

Sarchroma
Better known as the Colour Out of Space, these energy beings of indescribable color are only vampires in a terrestrial setting. Those that appear on Earth are lost, confused and desperate to return to their natural environment, deep space.

The mere presence of a Colour exposes everything around it to Tillinghast radiation, thinning the veils to the Beyond and flooding the area with subspatial energy. At first this manifests as manic energy and mild audio-visual hallucinations to those in the area but can quickly worsen to physical mutations and extra-dimensional awareness. This results in a feedback loop in the local life as more and more t-rays are introduced to the environment through mutated individuals.

The sarchroma are normally passive absorbers of cosmic energy but in the presence of such an energy rich environment they will begin opportunistically hunting, starting with affected sentients with the highest concentration of energy and moving down the scale until nothing is left of the area but ash. This usually provides enough energy to initiate a space launch but sarchroma have been known to mistime their escape, trapping themselves in a deadzone and starving themselves out.

Sarchroma are impossible to combat directly without breaking dimensional boundaries but they can be banished. It’s also quite easy to avoid becoming a victim of a sarchroma. Simply leave the area before the t-rays alter your metaphysical balance enough to be a tempting target.

Nioth-Korghai
The Nioth-Korghai are incredibly dangerous. They are highly technologically advanced, possess powerful natural psionic abilities and they retain some of the physical advantages of their shoggoth ancestors. Fortunately they’re fairly passive, generally keeping to stasis and only leaving from time-to-time to feed, rather than trying to maintain their demanding bodies at all times. They’ve learned their lesson from the destruction of their homeworld and the hunger wars that preceded their spread into space. Still, if they ever decided to, they could end our civilization in a matter of days.

To feed, a Nioth-Korghai need prey that are descended from the Shoggothim, like they themselves are. The Nioth-Korghai connect their twsha with the local analogue (in humans, the pineal gland) and use it as a conduit to drain sothic energy, even as they pull every drop of fluid out of their victim for physical consumption. They remain connected to their dead victims for several hours and can animate them as husks, which can themselves drain further victims and pass the energy on to the vampire through their subspace link.

Feeding is far from the only psychic talent they possess. The Nioth-Korghai are capable telekinetics and have an array of invasive telepathic abilities, including mesmerisim, mind reading and outright possession.

On the physical side, the Nioth-Korghai are large and have incredible strength in their tentacular limbs. The Nioth-Korghai are shapeshifters, although in a far more limited capacity than their ancestors. Most can only handle a couple of forms and must practice them as untrained shifting can be dangerous to them. It’s common for them to at least learn a body appropriate for hiding among the local prey population.

Killing a Nioth-Korghai is difficult. They have few vital organs but destroying their twsha can render them brain-dead. The exact location of the twsha varies across individuals but is usually kept somewhere within their center of mass, giving it as much protection as they can. Otherwise they need to be overwhelmed by sheer damage. As powerful as they are, the Nioth-Korghai are still mostly physical beings and enough high explosives could tear them apart.

Rhan-Tegoth
Although often treated as a singular entity in aeonist lore, the Rhan-Tegoth are an entire species and little more than animals at that. They were imported to Earth millenia ago by the Fungi on behalf of the followers of Ithaqqua. To the Ithaqquans they are a sacred animal, a vessel to receive blood sacrifice.

Interestingly, while the Rhan-Tegoth do indeed drink blood, they don't actually do much with the magical energy within. They can even be trained to channel it back to their handlers, allowing them to serve as living ritual batteries.

The Rhan-Tegoth are not particularly hard to kill, as despite their apparently indefinite lifespans, they can be treated as any other large animal. If a hunting rifle can down a moose, it can down Rhan-Tegoth.

TO BE CONTINUED

Hey everyone! I really wanted to post this all at once but since it took me so long and I wanted to post something while it was still Halloween somewhere, I chopped it up. So this is part one! I should have the rest in the next day or so. Art's done for the other vamps, I just need to write out their ectobabbly descriptions.

I got really stuck on this one. My motivation was down all month and I kinda drew myself into a corner. First I was doing full paintings for each but that got out of hand and spun off into that other Nioth-Korghai piece from earlier on. Then I was going to have this in the same style as my Fungi overview but I started hating drawing like that about half-way through and couldn't bring myself to finish it or start over for quite a while. Oh well, lesson learned!