I’m planning a vampire story set in the Equestria Girls universe and am making custom mechanics for it and am looking for advice and opinions on them. The basic premise is that during the Anon-A-Miss incident (Holiday Special comic), Sunset is running away from some students, falls off of something and ends up unconscious, and gets saved by Vinyl, who happens to be a vampire, and Sunset gets taken in by her clan/family. Anyways, a few things I’m trying to accomplish with these mechanics. First, I don’t like having anything as just because. For example, there will be a reason for the sunlight weakness and the need for blood. Next, I’m trying to avoid chosen one concepts and the hierarchy/generation mechanics, where who turns you decides your power and potential. All vampires will have roughly the same changes, though how they were before the transformation will effect the end result. Lastly, there won’t be any religious elements to them as I don’t see religion meshing well with the Equestria Girls world.

First off, the idea behind magic in the story is that aether is an ambient energy that flows around raw and unfocused. Living beings and certain materials and processes generate/release focused aether. The way magical creatures use magic is by converting the aether they produce and converting it into specialized mana. For example, a pegasus would naturally be generating pony aether, which would then be converted by its wings into a type of mana that would let it fly while the other parts convert it into mana for weather manipulation. An earth pony would generate the same, or at least very similar, aether, but would instead convert it into mana that gets sent into the ground to help cultivate crops or stone. As for unicorns, they have finer control over how what kind of mana is made and how to use it, which lets them cast spells, though it requires more training and can’t reach the levels a pegasus or earth pony can reach if they try to replicate those effects. A cutie mark helps/guides turning the aether into specific mana, causing the pony to have a natural enhancement towards their talent. Outside aether can be used, but it’s very tricky to use aether that isn’t the kind that you produce. It would either have to be converted or be formed in a different way. Lastly, aether is required for something to survive (Tirek basically drained all of a pony’s mana, including the natural part that converted aether into mana).

The main concept is that the vampires will be magic based. Essentially, the transformation is a process that shifts the body into a full magical conduit. They would be closer to elementals than to undead, especially since they will still be partially alive. A vampire’s body would is able to convert a wider variety of aether naturally into more forms of mana, more potent than most. While this does enhance their physical traits, stops them from aging past a certain point, gives them access to a lot of magic, and renders them very hard to kill, it does come with a few catches. The first is that the vampire is much more receptive to many kinds of aether another creature would barely feel. The main examples are the sun in the human world, which produces very powerful and focused aether, aether conductive materials like silver and mythril, and certain occurrences like thresholds. Something like the sun would overload a vampire’s body due to the sheer amount of aether it produces since vampires would naturally process it. Aether conductors would both pump and drain the vampire as well. A vampire would also have trouble crossing dense aether like a threshold as the aether is a type that repels when processed. A vampire can learn to deal with these weaknesses, but it requires a lot of knowledge about magic, the ability to distinguish types of aether, control over their body, and skill to execute it.

The second draw back is that it skews the body’s aether production. While it is overall more powerful, it’d not the general type living creatures normal produce, the type needed to sustain the body. While in emergencies, experienced vampires can convert other types of aether into the kind they need, it’s extremely inefficient and and won’t sustain a waking body for too long (though it can sustain a hibernating one). In order to get the aether they need, a vampire needs an outside source. The highest concentration of aether in a living being are the brain and blood. The brain converts aether to mana, so when a being dies, most of the aether leaks out, leaving blood. Blood transfers and stores large amounts of aether through the body, so even after death, it doesn’t leak much if preserved, and is the only part of the body that effectively stores aether. It’s also the most renewable. While most living beings produce similar either, there are enough differences between species to hit efficiency. For example, a pegasus would get the most from other pegasi, but less from earth ponies and unicorns. They would get roughly the same from griffons as the other pony tribes. Unicorns get the most from other unicorns and less from earth ponies and pegasi. However, they would get less from griffons than a pegasus as the differences are greater.

The differences between the sapient species are pretty small though, so the differences between the pony tribes, humans, griffons, dragons, changelings, and so on is minimal. From their, none sapient species are more significantly less effective. For a mammal, other mammals are the best, the closer to the species, the better. For example, for human vampires, apes > equines > rodents > birds > reptiles and fish > bugs. Plants are near useless for this. Putting other humans as 100% efficiency, ponies would be 95%, griffons and dragons 90%, apes 65%, cow 30%, mice 20%, birds 18%, snakes 12%, and crickets 5%. These numbers are by no means exact or final, just to get an idea of the drop off. Also, fresh blood is more efficient than preserved. A human vampire can go a few days on a pint or two of fresh human blood casually. Heavy strain or injuries, particularly those caused by aether conductive materials, will also up the need for blood. To kill a vampire, you basically just starve or keep injuring them until they run out of aether. Leaving them in the sun or impaled with an aether conductive weapon would do pretty fast, at least until they learn to control their aether, at which point killing them is a much harder and slower process. A vampire doesn’t store the aether they use to live in their blood, but it does contain other aether. Bleeding out a vampire will weaken their magic, but won’t hurt them more than other injuries.

The only visible changes are the bite mark, glowing eyes, and fangs. The bite mark can easily be covered up with an easy glamour, as can the fangs, but the eyes are much harder to do. Their bodies are also easier to manipulate with magic, making transformations, especially minor ones, easier. Their physical attributes are passively enhanced, though a vampire can actively channel mana to enhance them further. For example, as a human, you bench 200 lbs, as a vampire with the passive enhancements 500 lbs, and with the active channeling 1500 lbs with some experience. Again, numbers aren’t final. I’m leaning on having the passive enhancement be additive (for example plus 300 lbs to benching strength instead of 2.5 times) and grow with age/experience/training. Senses are enhanced, and the vampire gains an aether sense (or an enhanced one if the creature already had it), which can be mixed with other senses, like seeing or hearing aether flow.

While some communities know about vampires, as do many people in power, general knowledge of them is almost nonexistent. None of the older vampires feel like dealing with all of the issues that the knowledge would cause (they already have enough drama with the leaders who know), and none of the young ones can handle it. The older vampires are very good at localizing information, keeping it from spreading, which is also why none of the Equestria stuff ever left Canterlot. Historically, vampires acted like a secret society and nobility, but by modern day stopped caring about that. Different lines and the like have become irrelevant status wise, as has the concept of clans. In most cases, the type of relationship between the newly turned vampire and the one who turned them is a close student mentor relationship, with other recently turned vampires being like classmates/teammates. Unless it’s a case like lovers, usually once the newly turned vampires complete their training, they go their separate ways, sometimes keeping in touch.

That’s the basics of the concept. Any thoughts, opinions, or advice?

Well, if you are able to convey that in a interesting way in a good story, then go for it! At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how good the idea is, it’s all in the execution. You have certainly thought hard about this idea and I would be interested in reading your story. Just remember that the story should always come first.