Sanguine vampiris



 was a once powerful race of long-lived beings who enslaved humanity in prehistoric times. Commonly known as vampire, these blood-drinkers were among the first abnormals and were known both to the ancient Sumerians and Praxians as the Akhkharu.

War with the Praxians
Thousands of years ago, the technologically sophisticated Akhkharu fought a war against the Praxians, a culture of highly intelligent humans, for control of the surface. Though the Praxians massed an army of human and abnormal allies, the Akhkharu were eventually victorious and forced them into Hollow Earth. The Akhkharu fought a war of attrition against Praxis for centuries, but were never able to successfully infiltrate the city or Hollow Earth in general. Thus, the vampires were forced to be content with ruling the surface, while Praxis guarded down below.

Rise to power
The vampires then used their advanced knowledge and technology to enslave humanity, becoming the pharaohs and kings of civilizations such as the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman empires. Under their rule the world entered into a golden age where science, technology, arts, and architecture made enormous strides because of the vampires' influence. While humans were discovering what fire was, vampires were building an empire.

The vampires had a monarchy based system of government; meaning that when the current king/queen would die, their son/daughter would rule. However, because vampires are immortal they eventually had to implement a turn-based style of ruling to stop continual regicide; where only one member of the royal family at a time would be awake while the rest where in stasis. The current ruler would be in charge of the kingdom for a few centuries until it was time for the next ruler in the cycle to be awoken. Then the rulers would switch places: the current ruler would bring the next family member in the cycle out of stasis while they themselves would enter stasis until it was their turn to rule again.

Fall from reign
Eventually humanity, primarily the Catholic Church, rose up against the vampires and overthrew them. Using an unknown method, they were able to render vampire blood fallow, preventing the perpetuation of the species. With the vampires removed from power human society entered the period known as the Dark Ages as technology and culture regressed to a more primitive state.

Possible return
Outside of Nikola Tesla's experimental efforts, the vampires nearly returned in the early 21st when Dr. Helen Magnus and Tesla accidentally released Afina, a vampire queen put in stasis shortly after the defeat of the Praxians. Afina attempted to awaken her court and usher in a new vampiric age (kianaru: the time of returning), but Magnus and Tesla were able to stop her. Although Tesla is theoretically the world's last vampire, there is no way to know how many may still be in stasis below the earth.

Abilities
Vampires were born endowed with superior strength and speed in relation to humans and with senses comparable to predatory animals such as enhanced hearing. They enjoyed an indefinite lifespan which made them effectively immortal with the added power to regenerate severe injuries. As stated by Nikola Tesla, vampires were impervious to radiation poisoning. Although it was never confirmed in the series, it is likely that their superhuman healing ability also provided a supercharged immune system to fight off otherwise incurable diseases and chemical poisons.

Vampires are discernible by their solid black eyes, a more pallid skin pigment, sharpened teeth either in the canines or in each tooth, and elongated black fingernails.

They require blood as nutrition, however they can sustain on a synthetic substitute created from animal plasma.

Contrary to popular belief, vampires are unaffected by sunlight or other alleged repellents such as crosses or holy water. A stake through the heart will have no lethal affect, and eating garlic simply results in bad breath. These myths were perpetuated by the vampires themselves to spread misinformation among dissidents to help preserve their race against their enemies.

Breeding
Before the sterilization of the species was carried out, vampires were capable of interbreeding with humans as evidence by a small percentage of the human population possessing recessive vampire genes.

In the Spring of 1886, a group of researchers at Oxford University known as acquired a sample of pure vampire blood that was untainted by the earlier contamination. Upon injection of a derived serum exposing him to the blood, Nikola Tesla who had unknowingly possessed dormant vampire traits passed down to him through heredity, was turned into a partial vampire. None of the other four members of The Five had vampiric genes contained in their own DNA; thus their gifts largely appeared unrelated to the natural abilities of a vampire, just it being their own activated human abnormality.

While Nikola considers himself an actual vampire due to his distant genetic lineage, other pure natural vampires such as Afina consider him unworthy, referring to him as a 'half-breed mongrel'. She literally threw him 'away' down a shaft and then proceeded to try to awaken the rest of her entombed court that was full of pure-blood loyal vampire soldiers with whom she could mate with in order to start to repopulate her species.