Dead Apostle

Dead Apostles (死徒) are humans that became vampires either by the use of Magecraft (like Nrvnqsr Chaos, though this kind is rare) or by the actions of another vampire of similar nature (in this case, either a True Ancestor or another Dead Apostle). Among the creatures that fall under the vampire category, they are the most numerous. The main targets of the Executors of the Burial Agency, an organization created for the purpose of stopping the spreading of the heresy known as vampires by exterminating the Dead Apostles and sealing The Twenty-seven Dead Apostle Ancestors.

Origin
The original members of this kind of vampire were created to act as counter-measures in the case of a True Ancestor being overwhelmed by his or her thirst for blood. In exchange for losing their free will and becoming a tool to relieve the vampiric impulses of the True Ancestors, these individuals were granted powers and longevity similar to their masters. However, what they received was still a flawed form of immortality and it was soon discovered that they needed to suck the blood of others to survive. Then just like the True Ancestors, have these vampires the instinct known as Vampiric Impulses (吸血衝動), which pushes them to suck the blood of others. But differently than the vampirc impulses of the True Ancestors, these vampires have the physical need to suck the blood of others in order to maintain their own bodies.

The result of repeatedly sucking the blood of humans was the emergence of a sense of superiority in the heart of the servants of the True Ancestors. Such a thing eventually gave birth to a feeling of rebellion towards their masters, which then lead the servants to find ways of strengthening their mental control and escaping from the domain of the True Ancestors. After the rebellion, these blood-sucking humans became known as the Dead Apostles.

Although the Dead Apostles are maverick and individualistic by nature, there is a form of ruling body among them: The Twenty-seven Dead Apostle Ancestors. At first a group formed only by the original Dead Apostles who escaped from the True Ancestors, today however it is more of a collection of very odd, but powerful bloodsucking characters who are divided into multiple rival factions. Most of the original Dead Apostles were destroyed along the generations or sealed away by the Church. Afterward, their seats among the 27 Ancestors were either left empty or filled by somewhat suitable replacements. On a side note, those sealed away are actually just placed into eternal imprisonment inside special coffins, for the Church lacks the means to definitely destroy them. Meanwhile, some of the factions of minions of those sealed Ancestors still remain and are slowly gaining power to either free their masters or destroy them. There are two primary factions that divide the Apostles, there are those who follow the formal King of the Dead Apostles, Trhvmn Ortenrosse, and those who follow the Princess of the Dead Apostles, Altrouge Brunestud.

Society
For the Apostles amusement is the same as breathing. For those who were once human and achieved imperfect immortality, boredom is their greatest enemy. As soon as someone realizes they have no value---that their life is stopped, then their meaning of existence disappears too. So they started to wear down and to counter this they started to create their own amusement.

The Apostles began a game of conquest and saw themselves as lords of a castle expanding their territories. Additionally, Ortenrosse suggested a game of hunting the remaining True Ancestors. The Apostles find territorial wars and power struggles entertaining and, for their own enjoyment, they place their own blood inside the humans they preyed upon. These corpses go through the Growth Process to become Vampires and eventually kill their parent Vampire in order to become new Dead Apostles themselves. For the Dead Apostles, killing another Dead Apostle isn't something wrong for them, then the overall number of vampires doesn't change after all. However, those Apostles, like Enhance who want to destroy the existence of all vampires, become unforgivable traitors. Should a Dead Apostle be killed then all of his children vampires should die as well, but those who are treated as successors can live on even after the parent's death. The area needs investigation even after the parent is exterminated, and the real job of purification only begins after that point.

The Apostles, however, consider to maintain the balance between society and themselves. They exploit the humans in secret, for no other reason than self-preservation. They don't want it to be known that vampires exist at all and to protect their own lives, they hide the bodies of their victims, expand their territory and use various magical techniques to make things appear not out of the ordinary. But there were also Dead Apostles, like Einnashe, with values unchanged since the Middle Ages and sucked blood with reckless abundance. Then Aged Apostles set their own rules and by abiding by them enjoy bloodsucking as entertainment. Most of the long-lived Apostles don't use their names from their human lives anymore. And they don't make up a new name for themselves, but the Church assigns them one. They add on names as they find new, special characteristics of the vampire so some of them have names as long as spells. The common goal of all Dead Apostles is to achieve perfect immortality, who does not rely on the ingestion of blood. Their exist a variety of approaches of Apostles who tried to achieve it but no one has succeeeded, yet.

Characteristics


Although they appear to have capacities beyond human limitations, most vampires actually acquired their powers by constantly refining human-inherent abilities throughout their extended lives. In other words, anyone with a similarly long lifespan has the potential to reach a level comparable to the Dead Apostles. Also, contrary to popular belief, vampires can be killed with conventional weaponry. However, that is a feat near impossible to accomplish since their superior reflexes and physical abilities allow them to dodge a bullet after it has been shot. They can gain these inhuman physical abilities because their hands and feet are not connected by nerves, as the only thing that connects a vampires body together is the blood of others. They also gain vampire claws and their senses also become keener than those of a human. Then as long as you are human, you can't deceive the vampires sense of smell or their sense of taste who can even detect alcohol in the blood of their victims. They are also able, through their long life and training their abilities or finishing their magical research, to develop their own 'special abilities'. An example would be that some vampires can change their bodies freely so that you cannot rely on appearance to identify them. Gransurg Blackmore has the ability to change his shape into a large bird several kilometers in size and transforming his minions into hybrids with the heads and wings of birds or Michael Roa Valdamjong who altered his soul and attained the Magecraft of reincarnation. Incidentally, the 10 strongest of the Dead Apostle Ancestors can no longer be killed by ordinary means. That is because after dwelling so deep into the supernatural, their existences became something similar to high-level mysteries: a fantasy that can only be suppressed by an even greater fantasy.

However, the downside of acquiring a power that humans originally would not have is that the bodies of the Dead Apostles are constantly degenerating and once they die they won't leave a trace as their bodies turn into ash. The only way to interrupt and reverse this degeneration, even if just temporarily, is by regularly ingesting the blood of living creatures. On that note, even though human blood and especially the blood of virgins, because one's blood cells are more pure before one has exchanged bodily fluids with others, are the most suited to the needs of the vampires, the blood of animals is a viable alternative. Due to their advanced age, Dead Apostles that have lived for at least one thousand years require enormous amounts of energy. Rather than a measure of their power, it is instead because compensation is needed for the maintenance of such a long-lived existence. One such Dead Apostle, Nrvnqsr Chaos, has colossal meals including over one hundred people in ten minutes. Basically, there are two "weaknesses" common to all Dead Apostles which are sunlight that greatly hastens their bodies degeneration and bodies of water which they are unable to cross. But powerful Apostles are capable of conquering the sunlight and move around during the day and use the advances of technology like a plane or a ship for their advantage.

On the issue of the actual bloodsucking process, a vampire can either hunt prey himself or acquire the blood indirectly through the use of familiars. The actual bloodsucking process is described as if, all the life in the body is liquified and sucked out, the consciousness of the victim is being destroyed. A victim thats gets all of his blood sucked, becomes all shriveled up like a mummy. A vampire can so intentionally skip the process of becoming a vampire by controlling the dead body. Although The Dead are the traditional familiars of the vampires, few actually use them today since their presence will alert vampire hunters such as the Burial Agency. Thus, the use of familiars from different species is somewhat more widespread. These familiars are created when a vampire feeds his blood to a living creature. These cretaures cannot disobey their master and nor can they hide their thoughts, as the vampire can now read their mind. For a Dead Apostle living a long time and stabilizing his body with normal lives is not sufficient, so it's more effective to repair one's body by absorbing beasts, as they surpass the human species in this respect. By pushing his capacities to their limits, a Dead Apostle can possess either about 30 animals of the same species or one member of the Phantasmal Species that belongs to the Monstrous Beast or Phantasmal Beast-class as familiars. Stronger Dead Apostles were known to have used familiars of different animal species simultaneously. Those Apostles who repair their own bodies with beasts can return them to their previous forms and use them as familiars when they need to.

Dead Apostles have regenative powers which do not simply heal, but causes their bodies to turn their time backwards to a point in which they were unharmend, thus you cannot cause wounds greater than the speed of their recovery. Most of the older and powerful Dead Apostles possess the Mystic Eyes of Enchantment, who are capable of high-level hypnosis. The people are enchanted when they look at the vampire's eyes at the time this ability is executed. Yet their are many Apostles who possess other types of Mystic Eyes or use words inorder to enchant others. Some Dead Apostles are also known, for creating a spare body of themselves and control it by transferring their consciousness into the spare body. Once it served its purpose, they cut the prana flow and it returns to dust, which gives them the impression of turning into mist. The powers of the blood, shared by relatives of Dead Apostles would exponentially increase when fighting together, since their powers are not calculated by addition but by multiplication. Additionally, since they're related with the moon, the lunar cycle over the Earth has effects on them. Granting to them more power than their normal estate is depending on the lunar cycle.

When creating their lairs, they make layers of Bounded Fields to form Dead Apostle Territorial Fields (死徒領地田畑). This invisible protection is similar to the ones that hide away the world of the fairies, which fool even nature itself. The lair is accessible only by those who are invited in, and they are difficult to invade, taking even the trained magi of the Mage Association several years to find one. These lairs are enshrouded by darkness, by shadows, by longing for rationally, and by fear towards the taboo, so they cannot be found by humans.

Growth Process
If a vampire injects some of its own black blood into a human victim’s bloodstream, the said victim will be infused with some of the vampire’s own power and their body becomes unable to completely die. The black blood violates and burns the whole body from the inside. But in most cases however, the body dies and with it, the soul of the victim. The final result would be a mindless undead familiar known as The Dead. But in the rare occurence of the said victim possessing an above-average life force, he will become a Ghoul and embark on climbing the ladder to becoming a full-fledged Dead Apostle. The extent in which the newly created Ghoul will progress is decided by their magical potential of the body, which is stored inside the soul. Furthermore, the extension of its powers is dependent on the abilities and amount of minions pertaining to its parent vampire, whom it is bound, both mentally and spiritually.

Ghoul
屍食鬼 - Shishokuki

Corpse Eating Demon. They are born, when the brain of a vampire's victim is unable to completely die, after several years in the grave, the brain will rot and the human soul will be freed from the cage of the body. The decayed corpses now begin activity as Ghouls and their transformed souls, have now bypassed the necessity of the brain to hold the soul, as the soul is now separate from the body. They have mental capacities pretty much equivalent to that of a savage beast and they must devour other corpses to reconstruct their own degenerated flesh. 1 out of 100 individuals has the potential to become a Ghoul.

Living Dead
リビングデッド - Ribingu Deddo

The result of a Ghoul that successfully reconstructed its own body and thus, their brain. They are inferior to The Dead in terms of raw strength but the fact that it regained its own will, a full fledged ego and that it can maintain its own soul now puts it on a different standing than a mere puppet. The Living Dead have very limited to no intellect and to restore their intellect and memories, they need to suck the blood of humans. 1 out of a 1000 individuals has the potential to become a Living Dead.

Vampire
吸血鬼 – Kyuuketsuki

Blood Sucking Demon. After several years of development, the Living Dead regains all of its memories and a full human intellect, it now attains power of his own and becomes a mature Vampire, capable of creating other vampires and having his own minions. However, he is still bound to the will of his parent vampire and forced to supply him with blood. A vampire can only become a full-fledged Dead Apostle after breaking free from the control of his parent vampire.

1 out of a 10,000 individuals has the potential to achieve this level but it takes at least a hundred years of development. Satsuki Yumizuka was a rare case among rare cases, for she had enough magical potential to skip the first two steps and become a vampire from the beginning.