The Vampire Dimension

Where do vampires come from?
A perfectly legitimate questions, one might think.  One many have sought to answer.  But most often, said answers focus upon chronology--what events led to the undead walking among us?  Here, let us examine another direction.  What specific location might provide an answer?  In what place did vampires arise?

That answer proves rather more important than at first seems.

Modern scientific research indicates ours is not the only universe, that an unknown number of similar or wildly different existences lie a fraction of an atom's width away from us, separated by a gulf of infinitesimal width and very nearly infinite depth.  Mystics and scholars of the paranormal knew this already. In places like Sunnydale, California and Twin Peaks, Washington as well as a room in a mansion in Collinsport, Maine plus many others fissures between our reality and others can be found.  Some lead to extremely similar places, populated very nearly by the people we know but leading somewhat different lives (an entire division of the FBI has become devoted to one such alternate universe).  Others lead to eerie realms, some infused with light and love, while others seethe with pain and horror.  The latter have been dubbed "hell dimensions" by those who study same.  And they come in a wide variety indeed.  There is even a second hand report of a cosmos composed entirely of shrimp.

One such hellish realm apparently has become--or perhaps always was to some extent--the domain of vampires.  The heroic android known as Atomic Robo dubbed this place The Vampire Dimension.  It seems a good name.  Let us keep it.  Careful examination of available evidence now allows for a scenario that more or less explains the nature and general history of this place.

It all goes back to what Gallifreyans called "The Dark Times" when our universe was young and the sun around which our planet orbits might not even have started burning.  Many extremely predatory species arose in this ancient era, including the banished Carrionites and so-called Lonely Assassins.  But perhaps most feared of all were the Great Vampires.  They "came out of nowhere and swarmed...all over the universe."  Vast batlike humanoids they were, capable of draining the life out of whole worlds.  Among their powers were the ability to (at least sometimes) traverse universes.  One such, at the end of their great war with the Time Lords, escaped into an alternate reality called E-Space.  There, this creature was able to infect relatively normal human beings with vampirism.

But where did they come from?  It seems clear they arose in a world or reality suited for such a race--the Vampire Dimension.  Why did they leave?  Perhaps their numbers grew too vast, or other forms of vampiric life competed against them rather too successfully.  One real possibility remains that their reality faced invasion by supernatural vampires.  As the mysterious creature called Lilith (the original, a she-demon or some such, often called the Mother of Vampires, sometimes known ironically enough as Eve) lost purchase on the reality we know, she and her blood-drinking offspring sought a new, better place.  That universe they made their own.  Accounts by those who've visited it indicate that once it was home to a species of humanity, virtually identical to us.  Perhaps they were inter-dimensional travelers, either voluntarily or accidental (like the Telmarines) colonists in the earth-like regions.  Given that we're talking about something the size of a universe, they may not have even been noticed at first.  They certainly had time to build castles and cities.  One castle would apparently be location a human mystic banished his son after he became a vampire (as chronicled in the motion picture Van Helsing).  Interestingly, this last appeared to be in a frozen wasteland far from any human habitation.  Why would anyone build a castle there?

Herein lies two clues about the nature of the Vampire Dimension.  It apparently suffered some kind of ecological catastrophe, as confirmed by Atomic Robo.  The castle where Vladislas Valerius was banished obviously hadn't always existed in an area where humans could not survive.  One very likely scenario is that the Earth-like world where humans dwelt, probably in happy ignorance, finally attracted the attention of the vampires.  Quite likely, a version of what happened next may have become the basis for the motion picture Lifeforce, which depicted the start of a gigantic disaster for the human inhabitants there.  Storytellers from other worlds (such as our own) picked up on the psychic trauma of events less than a breath away, then retold what they sensed of that history--the army of batlike beings led by a beautiful, seductive female, come from the depths of space to feed upon and infect their world.  Other fictionalizations of such psychic projections--demonstrating the long defeat as vampires took over that world--may include I Am Legend and Stake Land and the trilogy written by Guillermo del Toro as well as Chuck Hogan, called The Strain.

But this brings up another interesting point about the Vampire Dimension.  Evidently, its timestream has very little relationship to our own.  If one were to open some kind of scientific or mystic portal into that place, where it emerged in that universe's timeline is random--or at least subject to rules we do not understand.  When the ensouled Turokian vampire known as Angel was banished to this realm, and emerged from it only months later in terms of our history, evidently decades if not centuries had passed for him.  Yet a corollary to this would apparently be that any portal so created does not "shift" in time while it exists.  It remains fixed from a point in time and proceeds from that point so long as the portal remains open.  One particularly vivid example of this is the blood mirror used by the Dracula-Edgar soul-clone to insure his family's transition into full vampires.  Such hints that the Vampire Dimension may well be the source of the mindless demons with which the soul is replaced in the Turokian bloodline and perhaps all vampires (in many ways undeath appears to be a physical disease whose major symptom is demonic possession).  This might help explain the existence of Doomsday Cults among some factions of the undead.  One suspects that the Atlantean sorcerors such as Varnae and Qu'ra whouse the Darkhold to make a new army of vampires used something like the Blood Mirror or opened a hellmouth to the Vampire Dimension.

Which brings up another aspect of the Vampire Dimension, probably the most disturbing one.  Entering or exiting that realm involves a lot of effort, but people demonstrably have done it.  But worse--the same thing seems to be happening from the other side!  My researches indicate the Vampire Dimension seems on the verge of being used up.  Much of it seems now devoid of life, drained by the various and sundry vampires that dwell there.  Entire worlds have died.  Consumed.  Left as husks.  A few areas remain relatively comfortable, even pleasant.  One such I believe was the home to Lady Rawhide (aka Anita Santiago), the 19th century adventuress who became the victim of Carmelita Rodriguez, a vampire sired by none other than Dracula Prime.  Sometime after the trauma of becoming a vampire, Lady Rawhide seems to have lost herself in the swirling instincts and drives of her new state.  I believe she became one of the many ubiquitous Brides that Dracula (and his soul-clones) kept in various castles.  Further, I believe she was pulled into the Vampire Dimension during an attempt by Dracula-Rominoff in 1897 to destroy a powerful amulet for good (as depicted in the motion picture The Monster Squad).  The tellers of that tale called that realm "Limbo" but if I am right, Anita Santiago/Lady Rawhide then fell under the sway of Lilith who convinced her the girl was her daughter as part of an overall plot of Lilith's own.  Anita even took a new name--Vampirella.  Her memories of this place became blended in her mind with those of past life, when in a previous incarnation she was a citizen of the planet Krypton (as was the individual known as Dracula-Mordante).  Along the way, it seems likely Lilith imbued 'Vampirella' with some of her own mighty power, making her invulnerable to sunlight as well as holy objects.  Sometime around 1970, she then returned to Earth with muddled memories.

With this in mind, here follows a rough outline of what we can infer about the history of this parallel space/time continuum.

Like realities, what became the Vampire Dimension began much as our own.  Certainly an Earth or an Earth-like world became home (one way or another) to human beings not noticeably different from ourselves.  Almost certainly other species called this reality Home also.  But for some reason vampiric life took hold somewhere within this universe and went unchecked.  In our history, the Time Lords defeated the Great Vampires.  Not so, there.  In time, the plague of vampires spread.  World after world fell, devoured.  In the equivalent of our XXth century, the vampires came to that Earth.  Even as dread Cthulhu once troubled the sensitive as He stirred in the sunken city of R'lyeh, so the onslought on that other Earth was felt in some way by artists on this one.

How long it took for that version of our world to fall we may never know.  Certainly less than a century.  Possibly only decades.  Or years.

And once it was done, maybe the original invaders left, seeking new races and planets to fatten upon  What they left behind were remnants of cities, the equivalent of New York and Hong Kong, Moscow and Jerusalem.  Left to rot while the undead scrounged for victims, eventually turning upon each other.  The ecology collapsed, or maybe without a high tech civilization generation global warming the next ice age came that much sooner.  It hardly mattered.  Eventually, that Earth no longer lived at all.  Yet it wasn't dead.  For vampires still roamed, still hunted one another for the blood in each others' veins.  Who knows for how long...

But in that future (or what we might call the future if we shared its timeline) hungry mindless ghosts of who knows how many different vampiric entities became the only inhabitants of the ruined Earth.  And in our own time, the history native to our world and universe, the horrible book known as the Darkhold was used to create a means for those demonic spirits to escape!  A coven of sorcerors used that book to make a disease, a pathogen of some kind (although whether they understood that concept remains debatable) which turns a human being into the host of such a vampire ghost from that other world.  Evidently, these ghosts truly are mindless.  They have instincts and drives, enough to overwhelm a weak personality, but no mind as such.  Victims of this terrible condition provide that, a mind which often goes insane.  At least in human terms.  But they aren't human any more.

Indeed, this makes the blood mirror of Dracula-Edgar an even more impressive artifact.  Clearly it serves as a a portal, giving the gnawing vampire wraiths of the Vampire Dimension's future a chance to find form and identity again--from those who've gazed into the mirror and are of the right bloodline.  An impressive magical achievement!  Clearly the Impaler did not waste his years of study at the Scholomance!

I am indebted to the researches of Christopher Nigro and others of the MONSTAAH website and organization as well as Professor John Small for his seminal "Kiss of the Vampire" and members of the Crossover Forum on Facebook without whom this article would have proven impossible.

The House of Karnstein (pt. 2)

The Vampire Witches
A pattern emerges in the Karnstein family history, that of women who came to worship the forces of darkness, becoming not only witches but remarkably powerful vampires. More than once, these women survived their own homicides, lingering in spiritual form until the opportunity to be reborn presented itself.  Three in particular stand out.
1. Wandessa "Satan's Favorite Mistress"
Circa 1480, Countess Wandessa d’Arville de Nadasdy, age 28, was murdered by her lover after discovering she was a vampire.  Wandessa had in fact been born a Karnstein and practiced all manner of black magic.  The murder weapon was a silver dagger cross, made from the Chalice of Mienza.  That it took an actual holy relic to dispatch her--which in the end proved insufficient--gives some idea as to her inherent power.  Once the dagger had pierced her heart, she was buried in a remote part of northern France.  Her epitaph read "Satan's Favorite Mistress."  When accidentally revived in the 20th century by a history student named Elvira, Wandessa lost little time in seducing the young girl and turning her into a vampire [It remains possible the student in question survived the ensuing adventure and became a horror movie hostess in America].  Her next step was an attempt to open the doors between realities, allowing some vastly powerful demonic entity to come through and bring Chaos to the world.  This would seem to be the same CHAOS later to prove a foil for Vampirella, and might be identified as the Lovecraftian deity Azathoth.  Wandessa herself seems to have been solely attracted to women, which makes it likely the lover who managed to successfully kill such a powerful vampire-witch was one of the mystical line of Slayers.  Wandessa died a second, presumably permanent, time at the claws of the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky.

2.  Donia, the Other Impaler
Very nearly the same time as Wandessa fell to a silver blade, her younger sister Donia (Baroness Varga) became the first known Karnstein to fall victim to an angry mob of peasants.  Like the far-more-famous Count Dracula, her cruelty often took the form of impaling those who displeased her upon a wooden stake.  At last her home in a remote part of the German mountains fell to a peasants' revolt and she herself burned at the stake, her ashes scattered.  Clearly her death was the work of amateurs, for this allowed the Baroness to influence the world still.  Nothing sealed her in her grave, as the silver dagger did Wandessa.  Rather, a malign influence in and around the castle ebbed and flowed for centuries.  More than one follower/worshiper of Donia became a vampire and had to be destroyed, including a wicked old woman in the 1930s.  Following the second world war, the entire area had become deserted, until two young women were lured to the castle in 1969.  Donia had had a daughter, who ended up in the care of a loyal servant named Ulla Borisov, who in turn had a daughter the same age.  The two young women were direct descendants of the two daughters, and the decadent cult under the control of Donia's spirit brought them together in order to incarnate herself in the flesh once more.  She succeeded in possessing one of the girls, but was destroyed by an occult expert whose brother had fallen under the vampire-witch's sway.

In retrospect, one has to wonder what kind of home produced two such extraordinarily evil and rapacious women?  Their lives do coincide with the construction of Castle Karnstein itself for whatever that is worth.

3.  Sasha, Bane of Her Own Blood
Unlike the other two of this list, Sasha Karnstein did not marry.  She lived over a hundred years after her forebears and in fact sprang from the cadet or Hungarian branch of the Karnstein family tree.  Her tale was chronicled twice in different motion pictures, each changing all kinds of small details but keeping the basics intact.  In this they resemble two more-or-less faithful adaptations of Dracula--that of the BBC in 1979 and the Francis Ford Coppola version in 1992.  Yet apart from the peculiar details of the story which remain identical, other hints clearly show them to be the same story--not least the reference to the silver griffin which is the heraldric sigil of House Karnstein!  Neither film uses her correct name, however.  One dubs her Asa and the other Sera (the former also relocates the story to Moldova in the Russian Empire). 
Essentially, Sasha Karnstein fell victim to an Inquisitor of the Church, her brother Gregori Karnstein.  He discovered her crimes, including the worship of Satan and the practice of vampirism, and oversaw her execution.  She leveled a curse upon him and his descendants, vowing to return.  He evidently took precautions, nailing an iron mask upon her face and sealing her casket with a cross to hold her there.  This was April 23, St. George's Day, 1660 CE.  According to legend, exactly one hundred years later she sought to escape her grave but failed.  Masha Karnstein, her physical twin, died that very night mysteriously.

At this point something truly strange--but for Sasha, fortunate--happened.  One of Dracula's soul clones, dubbed Mordante (who would later encounter Vampirella), suffered pretty clearly from what we would call bipolar personality disorder.  His lair in Transylvania lay near the Borgo Pass, in an abandoned asylum once used as a kind of 'blood farm' by Dracula Prime and/or his get.  But Mordante, emotionally unstable, somehow got ahold of some notes by one of the Van Helsing family speculating about Dracula's many appearances.  Taking these theories as gospel, Mordante decided he needed to resurrect "Dracula's Daughter" to be fully himself again.  Either he himself or his servants stole the mummified corpse of Sasha Karnstein, intending to resurrect her in a blood ceremony.  However, having fallen in love with the woman whose sacrifice was to be the heart of this ritual, Mordante let her go.  Instead, he tossed Sasha's coffin into the river and destroyed the other vampires he had created there.

I date this event to 1909, in terms of how the characters have heard of Count Dracula (making it well after 1897 when Stoker's novel saw publication) but also due to events surrounding the somewhat convoluted life of Mordante (who at one point ended up stranded in his own past).

Sasha Karnstein's body was found by a doctor who soon fell under her power.  Although lacking (as yet) a body with which to fully reincarnate, Sasha proved fully capable of killing most of the young females of her despised brother's family, including Tilda daughter of Franz Karnstein.

Now by this time the Styrian title had gone to the Hungarian branch, by then headed by one Count Ludwig (circumstantial evidence indicates his mother was English, of the same family that gave rise to the Dracula soul-clone known as Denrom).  He had two children, Konstantin and Katia.  This latter was the physical twin of Sasha.  More she possessed psychic gifts.  In her dreams she saw her young cousins dying one by one, saw herself as the guilty party, and began to believe herself somehow damned.  A young doctor staying at her father's castle tried to comfort her, but to little avail.  Then Sasha's astral form--insubstantial but real to mere human senses--infiltrated the household as a beautiful stranger.  Slowly she began to feed upon Katia, initiating the process that would allow her to possess the living girl's body and live again.  The young doctor, following clues in the family portraits at the castle, eventually tracked down Sasha's grave, destroying it.  He believed he'd saved his love.

He was wrong.  Not knowing precisely how to destroy a vampire-witch like Sasha Karnstein, he merely delayed her.  Katia married her seeming savior, until the taint within her grew too strong and she consumed his life's blood.  Rather than threaten her brother Konstantin and his family (his daughter Carmilla would run afoul of a another vampire soon after WWII), Sasha fled to America.  There she found a small town called Astaroth that she slowly converted into her own personal territory, eventually having to fight off an attempt by Orlockians to take it over.  In this she found herself behaving more and more like the long-dead Sasha, even as she changed her name to Lemora. 

The 1973 film that chronicled a portion of this story noted how "Lemora" became entranced by a girl named Mary Jo, who ultimately died without becoming herself undead.  While the film indicates Mary Jo died sometime in the 1890s in fact she must have died between 1910 and 1920.  Sometime before 1933 (the end of Prohibition) another beautiful girl child came to Astaroth, named Lila. Her appearance coincided with the final battle between Lemora's vampires and the Orlockians.  Lila herself accidentally removed the wooden stake with which Lemora had been defeated, leading to her own victimization.  Unlike Mary Jo, she did become a vampire. 
Parenthetically, it seems more than likely Lila come to the town of Los Alamos New Mexico in 1983 where she was responsible for several murders, yet evidently fell in love with a twelve-year-old mortal lad named Owen.  They left the small town together.  By then Lila, like many undead who move around a great deal, had changed her name, to Abby.

Katia/Lemora on the other hand would seem to have taken another name in the interim, that (ironically) of Diana Le Fanu who lured both men and women into her arms to feed upon their blood.  Her lair in the 1970s had become a ranch in the Southern California desert, which made preying upon the swingers of that era so much easier.  

By the 1980s she was on the other side of the continent, hunting and seducing in New York City under yet another name--Rachel.  Interestingly, her prey still only sometimes turned into vampires themselves (although one memorable victim named Peter came to believe he was undead).



Werewolf Shadow (motion picture)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (t.v. series, comics, novels)
Vampirella (comic book)
The Devil's Plaything (motion picture)
Lust for a Vampire (motion picture)
Vampyr (motion picture)
Mask of Satan (motion picture)
Dracula's Great Love (motion picture)
Crypt of the Vampire (motion picture)
Lemora (motion picture)
Let Me In (motion picture)
The Velvet Vampire (motion picture)
Vampire's Kiss (motion picture)

Addendum

The above clearly disputes some of the conclusions of Mr. John Small in his seminal work Kiss of the Vampire, in which he traces the life and undeath of Vampirella.  However, for the record, I totally agree with primary point, the identification of that lady with the 19th century adventurer Lady Rawhide.  I have my own theory about what this individual was doing between her falling victim to Carmelita and her appearance circa 1969 as the aforementioned "Vampi."

Upon the Classification of Vampires

A word of warning--my tendency is towards being inclusive rather than exclusive when it comes to vampires and their tales. Should, in my opinion, something be able to fit into the Wold Newton Universe, that will tend to find a way in here.

Perhaps controversially, I regard the material from White Wolf as of real (albeit very limited) use. The theory that they got ahold of an incomplete copy of THE BOOK OF NOD as well as hearing some rumors appears perfectly workable in my eyes. However, using White Wolf terms creates the wrong impression. With that in mind...

PRIMORDIAL vampires aren't so much a bloodline as they are a category, including the Turok-han (Buffy) as well as creatures like the Great Vampires (Dr. Who) and other beings encountered in pre-history such as the adventures of Conan the Barbarian. Most of these have vanished from the world we know, did so before the sinking of Atlantis.

Most other vampires arose from efforts by a coven of powerful magic users to create a new (or recreate an old) kind of demon/monster. Since this occurred on the lost continent of Atlantis, the bloodlines that arose can be called ATLANTEANS. But there were several such types, probably because of the different sorcerors involved and/or different demons used to "create" vampires.

ORLOCKIAN vampires are a bloodline named for their most famous member. They don't look very human, dislike sunlight, and when they do gather in groups behave like predatory packs--obediently serving the Alpha Vampire. In fact, killing such an Alpha in combat confuses these undead, making them unwilling to attack the successful vampire hunter in front of them since their instincts evidently say this is the new Alpha. Examples: Graf Orlock in "Nosferatu" and the creatures in both 30 Days of Night films as well as the nameless vampire in Shadow of the Vampire but the Asian Seven Golden Vampires likewise belong to this bloodline.

DACIAN vampires are so-called because that area (roughly equivalent to modern Romania) seems their ancient stronghold. Dacians in many ways are the most 'human' vampires, looking normal as well as not requiring great quantities of blood. They are, however, not hurt by sunlight. But, they are weakened when separated from their native soil.  The most obvious such vampires are Dracula Prime and the Count of Saint Germain, as well as their many progeny.

SUTEKHITES vampires originally arose in the land of Kemet, or Egypt. Whereas some vampires burn in sunlight, Sutekhites combust. More, they find holy objects intensely uncomfortable. Their founder, Qu'ra, seems to have been an acolyte of evil who initially sought out the most horrible examples of humanity to turn. His powers stirred the worst instincts of all his get until Dracula Prime committed the crime of devouring his blood and power sometime around 1500. Thus Dracula Prime gained many of Qu'ra's powers but many of his get also gained Sutekhite weaknesses. All vampires in the Forever Knight series are Sutekhites, as is (indirectly) Denrom. (Note: A web comic provides a crossover between Dr. Who and Forever Knight providing the vital clue showing Sutekhites as part of the WNU)

KARNSTEIN-TYPE vampires predate that notorious family by many centuries, but have become associated with it. Immune to sunlight, gifted with powers to control men's minds (this ability can be learned sometimes by others), they however suffer from a terrible thirst that often leads them to kill their prey in one feast. Also, relatively few people can become Karnstein-type vampires, which is why the Patriarch (aka Red Death, Barlow, etc.) fostered that family and tried to spread it throughout the world. In fact the Karnstein-types have dwindled in numbers and influence, especially over the last two centuries. Apart from the Patriarch, vampires in films like The Vampire Lovers and Vampire Circus as well as The Moth Diaries belong to this type.

[Note: Although Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla about one of these creatures is accounted as part of the WNU, it remains difficult to say for certain that the Karnsteins are indeed part of the WNU.]

BESTIAL vampires also burn in the sun, but do not combust. They assume a 'game face' while feeding or hunting, and have very powerful predatory instincts although not so much as the Orlockians. These two bloodlines may well be related. Examples include the undead in Buffy and Supernatural as well as The Lost Boys.

WAMPHYRI come from an alternate earth known as Starside where an ecological catastrophe occurred. Only a few were exiled here, where conditions forced the evolution of their governing parasite into a more covert form. Apart from the Wamphyri in Brian Lumley's Necroscope novels it seems certain those in the novel Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Linqvist as well as the film Hanna Queen of the Vampires are this type.

[Note: that Wamphyri exist in the WNU remains speculative]

CORVINI vampires seem pretty clearly to be an experimental hybrid created by the Patriarch, a blend of the Karnstein and Wamphyri. In particular they share a rare ability with the latter--that of fertility. Corvini vampires can breed rather than infect, as can the Wamphyri. Apart from Victor, Selene, etc. from the Underworld films the Dracula soul-clone in Van Helsing are all Corvini.

[Note: that Corvini vampires exist in the WNU remains speculative]

 
OCEANIC vampires originally come from many thousands of years in Earth's future, as noted by renegade time lord The Doctor. One was pulled to the 9th century CE by an ancient evil entity called Fenric. From then, other such creatures have been created. The so-called mermaids of Pirates of the Carribean 4 would be an example, as would the priest in Children of the Night. It seems likely the Patriarch tried to experiment with them as seen in another Dr. Who adventure, "The Vampires of Venice."