Vampire

Vampires are magically reanimated human corpses which are inhabited by the spirits of the deceased person and who closely resemble the living human they were before their transformation. Vampires feed and survive on the blood of the living, typically on that of humans, and they can also transform other humans into more of their kind by sharing their own blood with them. Vampires were created by witches.

Creation
There are two ways to create a vampire:

1) Humans can be changed into vampires from another vampire's venomous bite, and vampire venom is nothing more than a deadly poison to animals. Transformation from human to vampire is described as being "the sharpest memory they have of their human life." Once a human is bitten, the venom from glands inside the vampire's mouth is injected into the bloodstream and will travel throughout the body to change every living cell.

Depending upon "how much venom is in the bloodstream, and how close the venom enters to the heart", the transformation could last anywhere from two to five days. During this time, the human will endure indescribable pain. Once the venom is injected, it is described very close to being burned alive. The venom will then make its way throughout the body. Next through the heart, and it will pump again and again in the heart until it starts meeting itself in the veins. Then it will burn all the veins until the heart stops beating. It moves slower than blood because it is thicker, which makes the transformation long-lasting. Each beat of the heart can only push it so far. The changing/burning process is slow. The venom has to saturate every cell in the body before the process can be completed.

There is no medicine that is strong enough to numb the pain; the best one could do is to immobilize the body.

2) A human who has consumed vampire blood in some way (whether by drinking it, having it poured into their open wound, or by being injected with it) and has subsequently died with the blood in their system will be magically revived as an undead vampire, just like the vampire who sired them. The exact nature of the human's death is irrelevant to this process; the only condition that must be met is that the body has to be more-or-less intact and able to function once they reawaken in transition, though the upper limits of physical damage upon a human body by which vampirism can recover has yet to be defined.

Transition
If a vampire is created by the second method, they must complete their transition. n order to complete the transition into a vampire, the person must then consume a significant amount of human blood, at least a sip's worth, within the next twenty-four hours, or else they will die. Vampires can only feed on human blood in order to complete their transformation-- animal blood or vampire blood is not sufficient to finish the transformation from human to vampire.A vampire in transition is neither truly living nor truly dead until they make their choice to either complete their transition or to abstain from feeding and ultimately die. This puts the semi-vampire in a strange liminal space between the two states that can affect them in different ways.

Physiology and Diet
Blood (especially human blood) does not only satisfy a vampire’s thirst, but it also heightens their supernatural abilities, making them stronger, faster, and able to heal much more quickly than they would after not eating for a significant period of time. The longer a vampire abstains from blood, the more likely the vampire will becoming feral until they are eventually unable to resist feeding on whomever they come upon. In many cases, a vampire who has been starved for a long period and is risking desiccation will eventually become so overwhelmed with hunger that the lose all sense of their humanity and rationality altogether and finally give into their bloodlust. It has been demonstrated that vampire blood, just as with human and animal blood, can be used to revive a vampire who has been desiccated (even if they ordinarily do not partake in the consumption of vampire blood), and it can also help a badly injured vampire heal more quickly if human or animal blood is not available. However, human blood is most compatible with a vampire's dietary needs, and because of this, the majority of vampires rely on it as their sole food source. Despite their main food source being referred to as "human blood," this term also extends to the blood of both witches and werewolves who are in their human form, as their blood seems to be functionally identical to that of regular humans.

Due to their acute senses, a vampire can detect whether or not a human has recently consumed alcohol or drugs, because their blood tastes unclean and can leave a vampire with a chemical aftertaste. This also extends to vervain as well, as vampires who feed on a human who regularly ingests vervain will be burned and weakened upon contact with their blood, which can often be used to the human's advantage. Due to a vampire's amplified senses and feelings, their hunger cravings are much stronger and harder to control than the mundane hunger for food that they felt when they were humans, and this hunger will often be connected to and amplified by powerful emotions.

Similarly, a vampire has human-like physiology, and their bodies continue to function normally as long as they have a steady diet of blood; for example, their heart still beats to pump the blood they've consumed through their system to maintain their vitality. Because of this, vampires can eat human food, though it doesn't sustain their life or provide any nutrition like blood does, and their digestive system will continue to process it and produce wastes just as a healthy human's does. Regardless, many vampires continue to eat regular food for several reasons, including out of human habit, to maintain human appearances in order to prevent their exposure, and to help sublimate their eternal hunger for blood and thereby keep their bloodlust at a manageable level.

Vampires can also become intoxicated by drugs such as alcohol and marijuana just as humans can, although they do have much higher tolerances due to their accelerated healing, which rapidly regenerates the cells damaged by these drugs which causes the sensation of being drunk or high. In fact, most vampires frequently drink alcohol throughout the day to help them deal with their perpetual hunger, much in the way that some vampires eat human food to help curb their cravings.

Vampires are immune to the majority of human diseases and illnesses. One exception of this rule is cancer, though vampires cannot actually develop it-- they have to have had the cancer prior to being turned, as vampire blood cannot cure it in humans. These aforementioned vampires continue to have cancer even after their transition is complete, as cancer cells rapidly regenerate in the presence of vampire blood due to the cells being functionally immortal; normal human cells have "suicide buttons" that allow them to die once their organelles have worn out, but cancer cells have no such button, and vampire blood only serves to accelerate the regeneration of cancer cells. The only known substances that can have a serious negative effect on vampires are vervain and Werewolf Venom.

Physical Appearance
Vampires are extraordinarily beautiful, some more attractive than others, such as Rosaile. Their beauty is described as angelic or even god-like. This is one of the several features meant to attract their prey—more specifically, to attract, fascinate, and (if necessary) seduce, unsuspecting humans. How physically appealing their prey finds them is determined by how desirable they were as humans themselves. If an already attractive human were to be transformed, their physical beauty would be "beyond breathtaking". If they were of average interest, their attractiveness would be lower, but still stunningly beautiful. If however they were not particularly pleasing to the eye, they would become average, but this is a rare occurrence, as vampires normally select exceptional humans to turn.

Vampires are magically preserved in the physical state that they were in when they died, therefore making a vampires body a freshly dead corpse, though it is reanimated and protected from decay with dark magic. Vampire's bodies remain in the exact same state as they were just prior to their deaths as humans (aside from the injuries or effects of most illnesses that caused their death) from an anatomical standpoint, except when it comes to their supernaturally-enhanced abilities. The bite of a vampire is so powerful that it can sever the limbs of both animals and humans, as vampires are known for having extremely sharp and strong teeth. A vampire's skin is described as "chalky", alabaster, or marble (because of its texture and feel, as well as its appearance). Regardless of original ethnicity, a vampire's skin will be exceptionally pale.

Eyes
A vampire's eye color changes with both his/her age and diet. Newborn vampires show bright red eyes regardless of how long they abstain from blood, or their diet. A diet of human blood would eventually darken them to a rose red color. However, a diet of animal blood would instead dilute the eyes to a golden color. A vampire who has recently fed on animal blood will have light, honey gold eyes, while a vampire who has recently fed on human blood will have vivid crimson eyes. All older vampires' eyes darken perceptively as they abstain from blood, until their eyes become onyx, or coal black. The process usually takes one to two weeks before the eyes are turned completely black.

Only the Cullens and Denali covens are known to be vegetarian vampires, feeding only on animal blood instead of human. Their eyes are liquid topaz, or honey-gold, reflecting their diet. These eyes, however, are viewed as strange and somewhat unnatural by other vampires whose diet consist of human blood, such as James and Victoria, and whose eyes are of a vivid deep crimson, becoming even more vivid as they continue to feed on human blood, and a darker burgundy as they abstain.

Newborn vampires are known for having incredible strength as well as brilliant crimson eyes. Both traits are caused by their own blood that still lingers within their tissues, producing the shockingly bright red eyes that "fade slowly over the course of a year" and incredible speed.

If a Cullens were to drink human blood, his/her eyes would instantly turn burgundy, and if two weeks were to pass without blood, his/her eyes would grow dark. If he/she were to return to a diet of animal blood, his/her eyes would become dark gold, and a lighter golden color, if they were to continue on animal blood. As a vampire's thirst grows, his/her eyes grow darker with it, until they at last become a coal black. In contrast, as vampires feed, their eyes become lighter. In addition to the thirst, the purplish-black bruises under their eyes become more pronounced as their thirst grows. Though if they have recently fed the bruises becomes less noticeable, and all but disappear (depending on how well-fed they are).

Teeth
The bite of a vampire can sever the limbs of their opponents,                                                                                as vampires are known for having extremely sharp and strong teeth. A vampire's teeth appear no different than regular human teeth. They do possess fangs which are hidden in their canine teeth. Their canine teeth extend into razor-sharp fangs. On some occasions, a vampire's fang teeth can include both their canines and their lateral incisors. However, a vampire's teeth are flawless, unbreakable, and razor sharp at the edges. They are also incredibly strong, able to bite through almost any solid substance, including vampire skin. Their teeth are also venomous, affected by the vampire venom that flows in their mouths.

Powers and Abilities
The supernatural forces that sustain vampires also endow them with superhuman physical abilities as well as powers of mind control. Their physical abilities such as strength, speed, agility, durability, healing and senses all grow stronger with age and experience. Vampires who feed on animal blood will not be as powerful as those who feed on human blood. Human blood is also known to increase the speed of healing when ingested by a vampire after being seriously wounded.

Strength
Another enhanced trait is their unstoppable physical strength. A vampire is said to be thousands of times stronger than any human, able to lift objects several hundreds of times their own weight. They can crush granite boulders, subdue any prey, throw cars, crush metal, and uproot trees with their bare hands. Newborn vampires are stronger than older ones, since their strength derives from the lingering human blood left in their body from their human life, but this doesn't last for more than 3-6 months. The older the vampire, the stronger they are.

Diet does not have a massive impact on strength, since it always depends on the individual vampire. Although, a diet of human blood makes a vampire stronger than animal blood, albeit only fractionally. Vampires who feed on animal blood (vegetarian vampires) find that "big game"—predators like bears or wildcats - not only smell more appealing to them, but also make them stronger than the "weaker" blood of herd animals such as deer or cattle.

Strength, of course, is not always physical. If a vampire possessed great mental strength and willpower as a human, he will find it easier to control his wild, animalistic instincts. Even so, if a vampire has not fed for a long time, he will be less likely to think clearly and more likely to give in to his thirst, attacking the first living thing he detects and draining it of blood within seconds, all without a single thought (human or animal). If, however, an unlucky human were to be near their vicinity, they will preferably attack him/her rather than the animal.

Speed
One of the most amazing among their abilities is their speed. They are able to run in excess of a hundred miles per hour, substantially faster than the human eye can see. When vampires run, they appear as vibrating blurs of motion allowing them to appear or vanish quickly and quietly. The Quileute wolves are noted to be one of the few things that can keep up with them. We see the speed of all the Cullens again during the baseball game. Emmett is described as "a blur around the bases", and Edward can move so quickly that he is able to intercept a ball that has been hit "like a meteor."

Their reflexes and dexterity are similarly heightened, allowing them to catch certain projectiles such as arrows and thrown stakes in the air with ease. Like their strength, their speed also increases with age.

Agility
Vampires possess super-human agility. They have shown that they can move quickly, jump very high, climb, and run incredibly fast without difficulty or exhaustion. Vampires can jump with their super speed too. A vampire's body movements are uncannily flexible. Their agility is more advanced than humans, which allows them to rapidly respond to change by adapting to its initial stable configuration; They can make numerous gymnastic, or martial arts implements with little effort using a combination of strength, balance, reflexes and speed. They can even swing, flip, bend and twist themselves without failure due to their enhanced sense of balance and flexibility. Using their physical senses as allies, they can find motions at human speed too slow for them to miss.

In battle, vampires can swiftly dodge an attack without having to think how to move their bodies first. In general, only something that moves at vampire-speed can render a vampire unnoticed to the motion. Part of this enhancement is based on the enhanced activity of their brains, which allows them to think and move much faster than humans.

Super Senses
Vampires have extremely keen senses of hearing, sight, smell, and taste that far exceed those of humans and werewolves. They can hear whispered conversations, even ones in far of buildings and on phones, though most vampires typically learn how to tune out most ambient noises when it's not necessary to hear them. Vampires can turn their enhanced hearing off, which explains why they can occasionally miss auditory warnings (such as the footsteps of approaching enemies) when they're paying attention to other things. Vampires can also smell blood from several meters away, and see in total darkness. These senses improve and grow stronger with age and experience. Their senses of taste are also enhanced as well, allowing them to detect the presence of drugs, alcohol, or vervain in someone's blood.
 * Sight: While running, a vampire can see and sense everything that is around them, allowing them to keep tabs of their surroundings and avoid hitting anything unnecessarily. A vampire's vision is incomparable. Everything is much sharper, and more defined as a vampire, and their vision is unhindered by darkness. As a vampire, colors are much more vibrant. Humans are considered blind or mud-eyed in comparison. Their sense of sight exceeds by far that of a hawk: They can see objects in microscopic detail, and can see into the invisible spectrum of light. Vampires also have much better depth perception than humans. Their enhanced vision allows them to see the smallest details, and extends into the ultraviolet region of the light spectrum. Vampires find wearing glasses or contact lenses to be uncomfortable or irritating because they see the smallest imperfections such as very small scratches and optical aberrations imperceptible to humans.


 * Smell: When a vampire hunts, he uses his sense of smell to find prey and hearing to track its movements. Vampires can smell objects several miles away in a good breeze. Smell is most intense to vampires, because one can smell the blood of his prey. As they grow older and more disciplined, vampires can learn to smell differences between the scents of various humans' blood, as well as scents of other things (like fabrics - the unique scent of denim). The range of their senses can be increased (though only fractionally) through concentration. Vampires mostly rely on smell to find their prey and take in the environment.
 * Hearing: Vampires can hear the most muted sounds. hey can hear whispered conversations, even ones in far of buildings and on phones, though most vampires typically learn how to tune out most ambient noises when it's not necessary to hear them.  Vampires can turn their enhanced hearing off, which explains why they can occasionally miss auditory warnings (such as the footsteps of approaching enemies) when they're paying attention to other things.
 * Touch: Despite being indestructible and hard-skinned, vampires can feel the things they touch, no matter the softness; such as fur, the coolness of wind, etc. They can feel the slightest changes of temperature around them, though they are not bothered by it. They can feel the heat radiating from a human several meters away. When their skins meet sunlight, they can also feel its warmth. Physical pain is implied when their bodies are being ripped apart by something with similar supernatural strength.
 * Taste: Vampires have a similarly enhanced sense of taste allowing them to taste flavors with much more depth and precision. They can taste the differences of particles in their atmosphere. They can also detect minute differences between similar flavors. Even as a newborn, vampires are able to taste if the human they are feeding on has recently ingested drugs or alcohol.
 * Sixth sense: Vampires also have a keen sense to danger, usually from something strong enough to harm them. Sometimes, they may even detect danger before they know it consciously.

Indestructibility
Vampires can take a great amount of physical damage without being slowed down. Even vampires who have been shot with wooden bullets, which have a weakening effect on vampires, have been seen to continue fighting so long as they were not shot in the heart or the head. Vampires still react to physical force in a human manner, particularly young vampires, who will occasionally be affected even by human-strength-level force. Vampires can also still be stunned and dazed by strikes and trauma, though their tolerance for it will increase as they get older.T heir bodies are so hard that they are unable to be harmed by human weapons, and the only creatures capable of killing them without specialized weapons are other vampires, or werewolves. Because of this indestructibility, it is quite impossible for a vampire to kill itself.

Healing
Vampires recover tissue from any form of physical damage to their bodies within seconds, though they still feel the pain of a wound before it heals. Vampires can snap their bones back into place after they have been broken and have been seen to fully recover from gunshots, stab wounds, and torso impalement very quickly, so long as they had consumed a regular diet of human blood prior to the injury. Those vampires who feed on animals will still heal much faster than a human, but their injuries, especially severe ones, will take much longer to heal than a vampire who feeds on human blood. The only injury a vampire can sustain that cannot be healed on its own or by consuming more blood is a werewolf bite. Also, a vampire's enhanced healing is limited to physical damage to their bodies—many forms of magical damage and psychological damage are beyond its capability. Vampires cannot grow back body parts, though they can reattach the severed limb with their venom.

Immortality
A vampire stops aging once turned. Upon their transformation, vampires become immune to all conventional illness, diseases, viruses and infections.

Enhanced Emotions
Vampires experience emotions more powerfully than humans. Emotions like love, joy, and happiness are magnified for vampires, allowing them to live life more intensely. This ability allows vampires to feel emotions at their peak regardless of their age. Original vampires have been shown experiencing emotions as powerfully today as they did 1,000 years ago. Conversely, sadness, depression, guilt, fear and anger are also amplified, causing many vampires to become so overwhelmed that they "turn off" their humanity to block out the more painful emotions. After time and practice, the overwhelming sensations of heightened emotions fade as the vampire learns to overcome their emotions without turning off their humanity all together.

Emotional Control
Vampires have the supernatural ability to remove or dull their emotions by "turning off" or "switching off" their humanity, which is directly connected to their emotions. Doing so allows them to block out their more negative emotions, such as fear and guilt, allowing them to feed and kill without remorse, go against any opponent without fear, and relieve themselves of painful feelings such as grief, loss, depression, and shame. A vampire without their emotions is far more calculating and direct than one who keeps them on. However, the vampire can become a remorseless killer, and are almost unrecognizable from the person they truly are, as blocking out negative emotions also causes their positive emotions to become dulled or nonexistent as well. Vampires are capable of turning their humanity back on and bringing back their emotions, but it is difficult as a result of the fact that they will be bombarded with all of their repressed emotions in addition to the guilt of anything they did without their humanity (such as killing or torturing innocent people or loved ones) with enhanced intensity. This ability fades with time and vampires who are over 500 years old have said that they have lost the ability to turn off their humanity altogether.

Mind Compulsion
Vampires have the ability to influence and control thoughts, emotions, and behavior and can alter or erase memories. There is a sort of hierarchy as to how this ability works. Original Vampires can compel Humans, Doppelgängers, untriggered Werewolves, regular Vampires, and vampire-werewolf Hybrids. Regular vampires, as weaker forms of their Original progenitors, cannot compel hybrids or other vampires, though they can compel the other aforementioned species. However, no vampire can compel a witch or a Siphoner, a triggered werewolf, or a Supernatural Hunter of the Five, and Original vampires cannot compel other Originals.

Special Powers
Telepathy: Some vampires have a limited form of telepathy that allows them to easily enter the minds of humans, and with more effort, the minds of witches, werewolves, doppelgängers. They can also enter the minds of other vampires, though this ability is dependent on the vampire being younger or weaker than the one using telepathy. Other ways to weaken a vampire to use telepathy on them are to starve them/drain them of blood, inject them with vervain, or expose them to werewolf venom. It is one of the hardest abilities to master, and because of this, it is usually the last of the mind-control-related abilities a vampire learns after becoming proficient in mind compulsion. Normally, this ability works through tactile contact, usually by the vampire placing the palms of his or her hands on the temples of the vampire whose mind they want to enter. The vampire then closes their eyes and focuses on the information they wish to seek, allowing them to sort through their victims' memories until they see what they're looking for.

Dream Manipulation: Some vampires can also use their power of telepathy to control dreams and the subconscious. This is an aspect of telepathy that is much easier to learn, and with it, a vampire has the ability to produce and modify dreams, bestow nightmares and lucid dreaming, distort people's perception of reality and trap someone in their dreams. Vampires can manipulate and enter the subconscious of other vampires and even an Original vampire if they are vulnerable enough. However, this is a learned skill that requires practice to achieve.

Illusions: Some vampires have the power to trick the minds of other younger vampires into seeing/feeling things that aren't actually happening.

Weaknesses
If vampires are killed by a wooden object stabbed through their heart, their body desiccates into a gray color, and their vampiric veins thicken and protrude from their skin. Vampires can build up tolerances to some weaknesses, such as vervain, allowing them to protect themselves from compulsion by an Original and to help lessen the likelihood that it will seriously incapacitate them when used by enemies. However, it will still burn them upon contact, but if ingested, it will not weaken them as much if they take small amounts over time to increase their immunity.

Broken Neck: Breaking a vampire's neck will not kill them, but it will render in a death like state for varying amounts of time, depending on the diet and age of the person in question.

Decapitation: Dismembering or manually removing the head of a vampire will result in instant and permanent death.

Desiccation: Vampires who abstain from blood for extended amounts of time will eventually desiccate and mummify. Witches can use magic to desiccate a vampire

Fire: Vampires are highly flammable and sensitive to fire, and will quickly burn and die from it if the flames are not extinguished in time. This quality has been proven to be useful in disposing of the remains of a dead vampire without any physical evidence. Molten lava will also accomplish the task. It helps to dismember the vampire first to prevent them from putting out the fire before it can do serious damage.

Heart Extraction: Removing the heart of a vampire will result in permanent death. Vampires have the strength to plunge their hands right through the flesh of humans (including witches, doppelgängers, and supernatural hunters), werewolves, or other vampires, allowing them to punch their hand through the thorax of a person and pull out their heart. If it is a vampire who has been subjected to this, then they will desiccate upon their death, causing their bodies to become a grey, dry husk with their vampiric veins exposed all over their body.

Magic: Vampires are susceptible to the powers of witchcraft.

Physical Trauma: Minor physical injuries such as gunshots, stab wounds and broken bones will cause a pain and also slow them down. However, this is momentary as they will heal completely within seconds so long as they haven't been weakened by other means such as vervain or werewolf bites.

Pure Sunlight: Sunlight and UV rays burn vampires on contact, and prolonged exposure will cause them to burst into flames and die. However, this weakness can be mitigated by the use of a lapis lazuli stone enchanted with a specific protection spell by a witch for a particular vampire, which is usually affixed to jewelry, though it requires the vampire to wear the stone at all times. Vampires can also get around this by living in shaded climates with cloud cover.

Shape-shifter (werewolf) Bite: The bite of a shape-shifter, which involves injecting a toxic venom into the wound, is extremely lethal to vampires. It will cause them to hallucinate, grow severely weak and go rabid until it kills them. Vampires suffering from the bite seem to always hallucinate either significant moments from their past, significant people in their lives, or specific actions of the vampire that they feel guilty or ashamed about. While typical vampires will eventually die from shape-shifter bites, it isn't lethal to Original vampires, though they still will experience the sickness and hallucination that accompanies it for several hours or even days, depending on how many bites/how much venom was ingested, until their body heals itself.

Vervain: Exposure to or ingestion of vervain causes a vampire to become severely feverish and weak to the point that it can even hinder their healing abilities as well. Also, physical contact with vervain will burn a vampire's skin. Vampires cannot compel anyone who has ingested vervain or has it on their person. Many vampires drink small amounts of diluted vervain to protect themselves from Original vampires' compulsion and to reduce its effects when used against them by enemies.

Wood: Wounding a vampire with a wooden weapon such as wooden bullets will incapacitate them, and it will take longer for them to heal their injuries than if the wounds were caused by any other substance. Stabbing a vampire through the heart with a wooden stake will result in instantaneous and permanent death. However, this requires immense strength and it is usually not a viable option for humans.

The Original Family
During the late 970s in what was then the Kingdom of Norway, a Viking family (composed of the powerful witch Esther, her husband Mikael, and their young sons Finn and Elijah) abandoned their homeland due to the plague that was sweeping through Europe at the time that had supposedly killed their eldest daughter, Freya. With the help of Esther's friend and mentor, another powerful witch named Ayana, the family decided to set sail for the New World, which they had heard was populated with many healthy and strong people whom they would later learn were werewolves. Once they arrived, they settled in a village that would eventually became modern-day Mystic Falls, Virginia, and gave birth to four more children: Niklaus, Kol, Rebekah, and Henrik.

However, at the very beginning of the 11th century, their family once again was stricken by the loss of one of their children when their youngest son Henrik was accidentally killed on a full moon after he and Klaus sneaked out of their home to watch the men from their village transform into wolves. Devastated by their son's death, Mikael eventually convinced Esther that they needed to protect their family using an adapted version of Silas and Qetsiyah's immortality spell, which they were sure would make them more powerful than the werewolves. Though the two begged Ayana for her help, she refused, as she believed that Nature would turn against them for causing such an imbalance of power, and that what they were planning would start a plague of their own.

Despite being warned of the consequences, Esther proceeded with their plan and asked Tatia, a Petrova doppelgänger and the object of both her sons Elijah and Klaus' affections, for a small amount of her blood to be used in the ritual. Esther then cast the immortality spell on Tatia's blood, calling upon the sun for life and the eternal White Oak Tree for immortality, before slipping the blood into the wine her children and Mikael drank at dinner that night. Afterward, Mikael stabbed each of his children through the heart with his sword to kill them before presumably turning his blade on himself. When the Mikaelson children awakened, Mikael forced them to feed on the blood of a girl from their village, turning the six of them into the first immortal beings to exist since Silas and Amara became truly immortal in the 1st century BC, as well as the first known vampires to ever exist. (Though Silas and Amara subsisted on blood to maintain their immortality just like vampires, Silas has insisted on many occasions that vampires are merely "disgusting perversions" of himself and Amara and that they are actually immortals). Rebekah later described her first taste of human blood as euphoric, and after they all completed their transitions into vampires, Rebekah, her father, and her siblings all inherited supernatural speed, strength, agility, senses, healing, and an array of psionic powers such as mind compulsion and telepathy upon their transformation, though they didn't gain control of the latter powers until much later in their eternal lives.

However, as Ayana predicted, Nature was furious that one of their witch servants disrupted its balance using their magical gifts, and so, to counter this imbalance, it created a weakness for every strength the Originals had gained through the dark magic, which were then inherited by the Originals' vampire offspring as well, sometimes in even more potent forms than their progenitors. The sun, which gave them life, burned them and kept them indoors until Esther came up with a magical protection amulet for it (though the sun wasn't fatal to the Originals, it did severely burn them, and the creation of their weaker progeny later revealed that sunlight was fatal to them); the wood of the white oak tree that gave them their immortality was also the one substance that could kill them if they were stabbed in the heart with it (and their progeny would be vulnerable to all wood used in this manner); vervain, which grew at the base of the white oak tree, also burned and weakened them and their progeny if they touched or ingested it, and humans who ingested or carried it on them were protected from the vampires' powers of compulsion; and finally, they were unable to enter the homes of humans without an explicit invitation by the owner of the domicile. Worst of all, they developed an overwhelming hunger for human blood that only intensified after their first taste, a side-effect that none of them predicted when Esther cast the spell.

As Ayana expected, the creation of the Original vampires eventually led to the start of a "plague" in 1002 after the Originals inadvertently learned they could turn humans into more of their kind by feeding them their blood and killing them, which caused the population of vampires to multiply in increasing numbers over the centuries following the species' creation. However, the progeny of the Original vampires soon proved to be much weaker than their sires, even those who were closest to them in age, giving the Originals a high status that demanded respect from their younger sired vampires.

Vampires at war
After being turned, the Original vampires became slaves to their bloodlust and their heightened emotions. When one of the Mikaelsons, Niklaus, killed for the first time, he discovered that he, unlike the rest of his siblings, was also a werewolf due to being a product of his mother Esther's affair with the North East Atlantic Pack's Alpha, Ansel, making Niklaus the world's first hybrid when his werewolf and vampire natures combined. Mikael, furious at the discovery that Niklaus was not his child, forced his wife to suppress Niklaus's werewolf side (an order that was also given to Esther by the forces of Nature) before finding and killing her lover, Ansel, a powerful werewolf Alpha. The deaths of Ansel and at least half of his family at the hands of the new vampires turned the werewolves against the new race. After their father's rampage, Klaus, furious at his mother's betrayal and hurt that she would turn her back on him, killed her when he lost control of his werewolf anger and then blamed it on Mikael so his siblings wouldn't abandon him as well. Knowing that Mikael would hunt them down and kill them, the five vampire Mikaelson children left the New World for Europe, where they eventually settled in Marseilles in 1002, living in the woods and feeding upon the humans they came upon on back roads.

After the five of them realized they had fed on and killed four noblemen and a noblewoman, they figured out that their victims had been headed to the Court of Marseilles and decided to take on their identities and hide in plain sight from their father, giving them the opportunity to actually live in a home rather than squatting wherever they could find shelter. With the help of the Count de Martel's servant, Lucien Castle, who offered to help them by teaching them the customs of French nobility and royalty in exchange for the Mikaelsons sparing his life, the Mikaelson children went to the Count de Martel's castle and introduced themselves as the children of the Count de Guise before being invited to stay as guests in the Count de Martel's castle. Once there, they settled into their new lives of comfort as noblemen and made friends with those at court, including the Count's children Tristan and Aurora de Martel, the latter of whom was the object of both Klaus' and Lucien's affections.

It was shortly after they had come to stay at the Marseilles court when they realized they could heal humans with their blood; this fact was made apparently after they found Lucien had been viciously tortured by Tristan, who mistakenly believed Lucien had made amorous advances toward Aurora (though, in reality, it had actually been Klaus). After Tristan whipped Lucien's back dozens of times and sliced his mouth open from ear to ear, Lucien angrily stabbed Klaus with a knife and caused the vampire's blood to drip into his own wounds, healing them completely as the blood circulated through his system. Incorrectly assuming that he had been turned into a vampire like Klaus, Lucien went to attack Tristan in revenge for being tortured by him and was promptly killed by the lord's guards. Klaus tried to feed him more blood to heal him, leading Elijah to presume that their blood only healed the living. However, once Klaus and Elijah prepared to give Lucien a traditional Viking funeral, Lucien awakened in transition as the first non-Original vampire to exist in the world, as well as the first vampire progeny to be created with Klaus' blood. Lucien then completed his transition by feeding on a servant and joined the Mikaelsons as vampires at court.

Not to be outdone, Aurora, after learning of Klaus' secret, begged Klaus to turn her as well so that she, who was dealing with melancholy and other mental illness, would be strong and healthy like them, but he refused, not wanting to curse Aurora to his fate. Knowing she would never be able to convince him to turn her, she slit her own wrists in a mock suicide attempt, tricking Rebekah into healing her wounds by feeding her vampire blood. She then tried to get Rebekah to kill her to turn her, as well, but when Rebekah refused for the same reasons Klaus did, Aurora angrily asked her to leave. Having what she needed to turn herself, Aurora walked over to the window of her tower and allowed herself to fall off of the ledge, killing herself and transforming herself into the second non-Original vampire and Rebekah's first progeny.

Unfortunately, in time, rumors started to spread in the village about demons who fed on blood as a result of the seven vampires' feeding habits, and it soon became clear that Mikael would be coming after them. In the middle of a heated argument between Aurora and Elijah in which Aurora confessed that Klaus had killed Esther, Elijah accidentally and unintentionally used mind compulsion for the first time to cause her to see Klaus as a monster and to stay behind rather than trying to flee with them. Before the Mikaelsons left court, Elijah, who had gotten the hang of compulsion and could now use it intentionally, fed Tristan his blood and killed him, making him his own first vampire progeny. He then compelled Lucien, Aurora, and Tristan to believe that they were Niklaus, Rebekah, and himself before forcing them to flee the castle, allowing them to be the bait that Mikael chased while the real Mikaelsons traveled on to Italy and settled in Tuscany.

Lucien, Tristan, and Aurora, who eventually became known as The Trinity, believed that they were actually Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah for over a century, until Elijah being daggered for the first time in 1114 caused their compulsion to be broken. Though they then knew their true identities, Mikael continued to chase after them, causing the three younger vampires to become incredibly resentful toward the Mikaelsons, which is what eventually pushed them to search the world for weapons they could use to destroy their sires.

The growth of the vampire race led to several attempts to end them before they grew too powerful. One attempt involved a witch descended from the powerful Qetsiyah who created an order of five magically-enhanced vampire hunters called the Brotherhood of the Five to hunt down and destroy the vampires and the immortals on Earth. They began hunting vampires in Italy during the early 12th century as the Normans conquered southern Europe. However, they attempted to defeat the Originals with White Oak Ash Daggers created by the witch who empowered them, not knowing that Klaus' werewolf heritage made him immune to weapons made of silver.

This allowed Klaus to kill all of the hunters and undagger all of his siblings, with the exception of Finn, who he hated for his self-loathing attitude toward vampirism. However, the spell that empowered the hunters did not die with them—instead, several new hunters emerged during the following centuries with the same powers and dedication of the first. Several freelance (and often ordinary human) Vampire Hunters also began to appear as a result of the vampires' amoral actions, and various weapons were created to use against them, such as stake-shooting guns and vervain grenades, as technology began to improve throughout the ages.

At some point, the initial conflict between the vampires and the werewolves emerged once again when the vampires discovered that a bite from a transformed werewolf was fatal to them (though a werewolf bite proved to not kill the Originals, who would only become feverish and delirious with hallucinations for several hours until they healed). Determined to protect themselves, the vampires declared war on the werewolves and drove them to near extinction. Several packs survived but, by the early 2000s, most vampires believed that werewolves were merely a myth.