Mythos
Dev Diary 2: Vampires
Throughout history, cultures all over the world have held legends of creatures beyond death who drain the life from the living, usually by drinking their blood. Though the details of the myths change with place and time, the idea has stayed in people's minds for centuries.
Secrecy
All vampires are represented by two traits - a general vampire trait that gives them their stats and immortality, and a trait showing whether or not they are known to the world at large.
Every vampire starts off as a secret vampire, known only to other vampires. This secrecy helps them avoiding being targetted while they feed and gain power.
However, sooner or later, a vampire will be found out. Be it by a spy, an inquisition, careless feeding, or people slowly noticing that they don't age, they'll be revealed sooner or later. A known vampire is hated by most people in the world, save for Satanist and those who are used to being ruled by vampires. Additionally, they may find themselves facing revolts by monster hunters.
Hunger and feeding
Over time, a vampire's hunger will grow, represented by the icon of an increasingly bloody tooth. As it increases, the vampire will become more likely to get caught, until they lose control and feed on the nearest person, not caring who may see them, likely getting exposed as both a vampire and a murder. Fortunately, a vampire does not need to simply wait for hunger to take over, but can feed on those around them in secret.
A vampire can deliberately feed on a member of their court, either trying to drain them completely or feeding just a bit, with the former sating their hunger completely and the latter just reducing it. Fully draining your victim is more likely to kill them, which also makes you more likely to get caught. However, killing your victim does have advantages - if you completely drain your victim's blood and their attributes are higher that yours, your attributes may increase. Drinking blood in either case has a chance to heal your injuries, even regrowing missing body parts.
Feeding comes with risks - the most obvious being getting exposed as a vampire or caught in a murder. Additionally, despite vampires normally not catching illnesses, feeding on the sick will spread their disease to you. Likely, if you feed while ill, the illness may spread to prey that survive. Beyond that, survivors have a small chance of becoming vampires themselves.
Spreading
Vampires, being dead, are infertile, which would make continuing the family line difficult if they were to be slain or die of illness. Fortunately, they still have a way of continuing their dynasty.
Should a suitable candidate be found, a vampire can approach them and offer to deliberately turn them into another vampire, potentially adding them to the dynasty as their own son or daughter.
Blood Court
Should a known vampire hold a king level title, they may adopt the vampire culture. Any feudal vampire with vampiric culture will use the Blood Court government, where the realm is ruled by group of elder vampires. They will also gain a number of Blood Court minor titles, which act as a voting title, similar to the adviser position. Unlike advisers, the Blood Court position will automatically be filled by the oldest courtier and vassals, typically vampires, though other immortals or long-lived dragons and demi-gods may occasionally take this position for themselves. This can allow more powerful but unskilled vassals into unimportant positions, freeing space in the normal council roles, but at the cost of having many more voters to please, especially as the Blood Court government cannot fully abolish the council.
Non-muslim Blood Courts always use seniority succession, even if their religion doesn't otherwise allow it.
What's next?
Release should be coming up fairly soon. I expect to write two more dev diaries before the initial release, but the wait should be shorter. The next diary will focus on werewolves, then patch notes for the first release.
