Age of the Vampire Species

[Enderdragon1201]

Hello. I was wondering if it's stated anywhere how old vampires as a whole are, as in when might some of the first vampires been created? If this is not stated anywhere, when would you have them first come into existence? And what are some of the earliest time periods in the books where they mention vampires?

[Nyrufa]

Hello. I was wondering if it's stated anywhere how old vampires as a whole are, as in when might some of the first vampires been created? If this is not stated anywhere, when would you have them first come into existence? And what are some of the earliest time periods in the books where they mention vampires?

Judging by the information throughout the various books, the earliest records of vampire society are traced back to the Roman Empire.

Details on how vampires were before that are sketchy, but seem to indicate they weren't as organized back then. The Roman Empire saw the rise (and eventual fall) of the Camarilla, which the Invictus seek to emulate in the modern nights.

[atamajakki]

They exist back into The Sundered World setting, in the Neolithic. I'd argue they're as old as humanity.

[Resplendent Fire]

There are earlier records of vampires. Mekhet go back to at least Akhenaten's reign and I believe the Khaibit's history goes back pretty far as well. Clanbook: Ventrue heavily references the Trojan War. Both date to earlier than Rome.

There's no reason to assume vampires don't go back even farther, though. The history is far from set in stone and often too vague to make definite declarations.

[Stupid Loserman]

Hello. I was wondering if it's stated anywhere how old vampires as a whole are, as in when might some of the first vampires been created? If this is not stated anywhere, when would you have them first come into existence? And what are some of the earliest time periods in the books where they mention vampires?

The answer depends on what you consider to qualify as a "vampire," which may not necessarily be set in stone. We know that the Mekhet of the modern nights, for example, are quite different from the Mekhet thousands of years past, and that there are dead things which steal the blood of the living to sustain themselves and their power, but which do not share the bonds of the Kindred. Similarly, the genesis of a type of vampire is not necessarily something you can nail down to a particular date or even range of time, because it may be that these things recur. It would not be outside the bounds of imagination to think a Mekhet of the type found before the rise of Rome might emerge today, in a similar way to how those vampires emerged back then.

The tales of creation the Kindred clans most commonly tell one another generally relate to pre-Hellenic divine myths: the Ventrue speak of inheriting the blood of the gods of Troy, the Mekhet of the uprising against the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten, the Daeva of the Sumerian goddess Inanna and her dalliances with the witch Lilith. These shared myths can be found in the respective clanbooks. Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras gives us a mention of life-stealing corpses hovering a few centuries before 5,000 BCE. A more open-ended, ambiguous hint in Mekhet: Shadows in the Dark may possibly take us back to a time before words, into a deep, black antediluvian cave.

[glamourweaver]

They exist back into The Sundered World setting, in the Neolithic. I'd argue they're as old as humanity.

Those aren't necessarily Kindred though. I'll need to reread the text, but I definitely got the impression at that point you'd just have spontaneously risen revenants and Strix possessed corpses. No embrace-lineages yet.

[atamajakki]

Those aren't necessarily Kindred. I'll need to reread the text, but I definitely got the impression at that point you'd just have spontaneously risen revenants and Strix possessed corpses. No embrace-lineages yet.

A simpler time, a better time.

[Stupid Loserman]

Those aren't necessarily Kindred. I'll need to reread the text, but I definitely got the impression at that point you'd just have spontaneously risen revenants and Strix possessed corpses. No embrace-lineages yet.

Question wasn't "when did the Kindred clans arrive?" If it walks like a duck, develops Disciplines like a duck, and drinks the blood of the living like a duck... well, you should spend less time around ducks.

The emergence of the modern vampire, point being, may be less of a series of points than a gradation, with occasional accelerations and decelerations.

[Nyrufa]

The answer depends on what you consider to qualify as a "vampire," which may not necessarily be set in stone. We know that the Mekhet of the modern nights, for example, are quite different from the Mekhet thousands of years past, and that there are dead things which steal the blood of the living to sustain themselves and their power, but which do not share the bonds of the Kindred. Similarly, the genesis of a type of vampire is not necessarily something you can nail down to a particular date or even range of time, because it may be that these things recur. It would not be outside the bounds of imagination to think a Mekhet of the type found before the rise of Rome might emerge today, in a similar way to how those vampires emerged back then.

The tales of creation the Kindred clans most commonly tell one another generally relate to pre-Hellenic divine myths: the Ventrue speak of inheriting the blood of the gods of Troy, the Mekhet of the uprising against the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten, the Daeva of the Sumerian goddess Inanna and her dalliances with the witch Lilith. These shared myths can be found in the respective clanbooks. Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras gives us a mention of blood-stealing corpses hovering a few centuries before 5,000 BCE. A more open-ended, ambiguous hint in Mekhet: Shadows in the Dark may possibly take us back to a time before words, into a deep, black antediluvian cave.

To be fair, the concept of vampires being intelligent and cultured sex symbols is a fairly recent take on the myth. In the old days, vampires were monsters and the people portrayed them as such.

Some myths don't even portray vampires as being reanimated corpses, but rather has them existing in the form of ghostly spirits. And others don't even look human at all, but have the visage of animals, or even demons.

Asking when the first Vampires came into being is almost impossible to answer, because there are thousands of cultures all over the world who have their own idea on what constitutes a Vampire. You're better off just drawing one myth out of a hat and trying to see how far back you can trace its origins.

[Shawarbaaz]

Vampires are as old as humanity. The Roman Empire only records the first time all clans assembled together and organized themselves in covenants, factions and coteries.

[Tessie]

The first mention of the five clans that I know of would be in ancient Egypt, during the reign of Ramesses II (Ramses II).
The Egyptian Daeva, Gangrel, Mekhet, Nosferatu and Ventrue* had organized themselves in at least six different cults devoted to different gods, but Ramesses was ghouled and used to protect the different cults from Akhenaten's previous attempt of introducing monotheism. This lead to the creation of the Great Covenant, some thousand years before the rise of the Camarilla. Interestingly enough the Covenant didn't fall until the spread of Christianity by Ventrue* which would be during the decline of the Camarilla. Christianity (kinda) managed to kill the two greatest Covenants that we know of.

*The Ventrue may or may not be Julii since the book uses the term Ventrue for both clans.
All of this is written in Ancient Mysteries. The earliest date mentioned is 1279 BCE.

[Malus]

Judging by the information throughout the various books, the earliest records of vampire society are traced back to the Roman Empire.

Details on how vampires were before that are sketchy, but seem to indicate they weren't as organized back then. The Roman Empire saw the rise (and eventual fall) of the Camarilla, which the Invictus seek to emulate in the modern nights.

Incorrect. That's the earlier record of an organized vampiric society. There are published Bloodlines from as early as Ancient Mesopotamia.

[Tessie]

Incorrect. That's the earlier record of an organized vampiric society. There are published Bloodlines from as early as Ancient Mesopotamia.

If you're refering to Ancient Bloodlines there's two even older bloodlines in the last chapter, relating to my post above.

[Malus]

If you're refering to Ancient Bloodlines there's two even older bloodlines in the last chapter, relating to my post above.

Right, my point is still made.

[nofather]

Mekhet were meant to have pre-human origins. So very long time.