Poster Note: Below is a list of vampiric characteristics, aside from the standard characteristics you already know. If you wish to use these characteristics for a vampony character (or race) for your story feel free to do so.

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So one of the things that makes vampires fun and exciting is the various interpretations of these mythical creatures of the night. As a result various stories have different interpretation of the characteristics these creatures would have.

For example in Monogatari (may have spelled this wrong) is an anime where the vampires also have the ability to shed tears of blood. Then there is also Twilight (cringes from PTSD) where the vampires "sparkle" in the sunlight (if you ignore this trait the book isn't too bad).

And these are just a few examples of such interesting characteristics. Thus this topic is where you can share other cool vampire characteristics and can even discuss how they can be adapted to the MLP universe for writers to use in their stories.

These characteristics could just be some bizarre traits that the vampires have, new stengths (or powers) or even new bizarre weaknesses.

Here is a list of characteristics so far (all of which are optional for your story):

Cosmetic:
-Bleeding Eyes
-Sparkle in Sunlight (bleh )
-Eyes that glow when hungry (color is usually red but can depend on the source).
-Unicorn horn growing small spikes (like the stem of a rose).
-Altered Cutie Mark to reflect both the original Cutie Mark and the Vampony's vampiric qualities.
-A long (possibly even forked) tongue.
-Bat like wings (only for vamponies that used to be pegasi).

Offensive:
-Can turn victims into zombies.
-Magical Limbs
-Blood based weapons
-Hypnotic gaze
-Hypnotic words
-Super Powers (yeah it happens sometimes).

Passive:
-Addicted to certain types of blood (surgery or spicy).
-The ability to control blood.
-Being incapable of revealing the identity of another vampire to others.
-Shapeshifting
-Enhanced Perception/Reflex
-Enhanced Strength
-Shadow Melding (traveling through the shadows completely unseen).
-Can't be seen in mirrors or photos.
-Can transverse through mirrors.

Weakness:
-Rushing water like rivers and streams.
-Decapitation (which would honestly kill anyone).
-Must fight the urge to count grains of wheat or rice placed around their lair.
-Sunlight, which can either severely burn or even kill the vampony. This is due to the UV rays.
-A stake to the heart (which can either kill the vampony or put them into a conscious yet paralyzed state).
-Affected by religious objects, this depends on if the vampony believes in the religion the objects belong to (Sun/Celestial based objects can have this effect).
-May be weak to magical or enchanted items.

Well there is one where Vampires can make zombies and offspring that they control.
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There was also one where one vampire had some werid magic arm.

I am of course talking about Hellsing

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Rosario and Vampire is a great one when trying to come up with vampire features. Along with other fanfiction I just can't remember the title of — I do remember that the vampires would all prefer a different kind of blood. Such as sweet or spicy, if that's possible…

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I got a fanfic coming in October where a vampire can't out another vampire, as in you can't reveal to someone that someone else is a vampire.

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I liked the idea of Blood Control, from TnaB's Vampire Cheerilee series.

Being the cybernetics nut I am, I proceeded to turn that into what is basically going to become a variant of nano-augmentations.

5510429 Sounds interesting. I'll have to look into this Vampire Cheerilee story. Do you have a link by any chance?

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Vampires should have little control over their states. After all, in real life, the more beer you drink, the more drunk and wonky you get. So maybe, the more blood a vampire receives, the less guilty they'll feel over their actions. The more sadistic and psychotic they'll become. This should also affect their normal state as well.

That being said, if somebody gets turned into a vampire, it will affect them and their personality. For example; If Pinkie Pie was to become a vampire, the more blood she'd drink, the more comfortable she'd get with the matter. Because of this, most likely, she won't be as squeamish about seeing blood as she may have been before. A character will have something change about them. After all, you can't get hit by a meteor and expect to come out the same.

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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/48308/4
Its a directory, since TnaB has a butt load of fics.

I liked the features that was given to vampires in Rosario+Vampire, turning one into a vampire by injecting blood through a bite, shapeshiffting is also a popular trait, enhance perception and reflexes, I also saw long ago ( like, 10 years ago) an anime where the vampire used his blood as a weapon like in Lord of Shadows 2

So I decided to try to categorize the characteristics/features that have been mentioned. This can be seen in the main post.

I personally take The Vampire Masquerade tabletop(aka World of Darkness) as my canon for vampirism.

5510614 I haven't used the masquarade but I do have the requiem book from White Wolf.

Vampires also tend to become localized, vague boogiemen. Ghouls, drowners, revenants, etc. It seems that there's simply something inherent and symbolic about sucking one's blood. In the end, the term 'vampire' unfortunately came to mean to describe any kind of blood-sucker or life-sucker, period, despite the clear distiction in media. Or rather because people are only interested in the one, all the other versions seem to have been thrown into the same boat because no one really cares. It's not like Cryptozoology is a real thing, or anything.

Well, the list has been ungraded and the title has been changed. I hope you all enjoy.

Does anyone know the reason behind why vampires can't cross running water. It seems like a random weakness that makes little sense to me.

5524280 From what I gather it has something to do with baptism.

Another theory is rotted in the belief that vampirism may have been inspired by the disease known as rabies. Often individuals during the later stages of rabies will express Hydrophobia (a fear of water). Unfortunately once you are at this stage you are as good as dead.

In the vampony fic I am working on I actually do plan on explaining the whole "traversal" of water matter, but that is something I would like to hold onto... for now.

If you drink the blood of a pony you can use their talent for a while if you drank from a Alicorn like you'd get overpowered!
Hahaha! I looked up vampony images and this came up!

A couple traits I haven't seen here:
One folkloric vampire trait that doesn't see much use nowadays is a form of extreme OCD - if someone leaves a trail of poppy seeds, sand, or similar fine grain, than the vampire will be obligated to count each one before proceeding, ideally to the point where the sun is about to come up and they must return to their grave.

One trait that's not in folklore, but was in an old serial (c. 1845-47, one of the first literary vampires) called Varney the Vampire, was that vampires were healed by moonlight (should be noted that within the story vampires were not harmed by sunlight). I've always liked that idea since hearing about it, despite it being incredibly rare.