Marc Loewe – the quintessential stuck up, gorgeous Vampire. A natural born, of course. From a wealthy family (of course). He’s everything one would expect a vampire to be, really. Stuck up, arrogant, and really bad at Shakespeare. (Okay, that last one isn’t really expected, but it’s true and I find it amusing. So, there it is.)

Vampires have this sort of innate ability to charm and manipulate people. It seems to be tied to their natural telepathic abilities. It’s a much stronger ability for natural Vampires, so I guess that’s why Marc has so many people at the school falling over themselves to be around him despite how much he basically ignores the attention. Everyone has apparently figured out it’s pointless to try and talk to him, so they just admire him from afar.

I read one book that indicated the reason Vampires drink blood instead of living off a normal diet is because their bodies require obscene amounts of protein for cell regeneration so they can stay young forever. Not sure how true that actually is, but I guess it’s an interesting theory. That said, I don’t know if they really need a ‘reason’ for having a blood-based diet. Seems like most supernatural creatures kind of defy reason anyway.

‘Ravin’ – apparently coming from the word ‘ravenous’ – is a Vampire term for someone a Vampire has marked as their prey. More than that, it’s also a term for someone who has completely fallen under a Vampire’s spell and no longer has the will or ability to resist the Vampire’s commands.

While Vampires don’t experience the crazed blood-thirst you see in a lot of fiction, their abilities are more closely tied to their hunger than humans. They apparently go from being totally fine to completely famished rather quickly. Their stamina rapidly fades, and they lose energy very quickly. Even their oh-so-superior Vampire abilities fade away to almost nothing when they haven’t eaten in a while.

There are some pretty strict laws that Vampires have to follow about eating. Which does seem a little weird until you consider that for most Vampires, ‘eating’ typically refers to biting people. In which case, it does make a little more sense. That said, having a host of regulations about consent and contracts over something as basic as eating seems a little unfair and punitive. Especially having it dictated to you when you can eat, where, with whom, etc.

I guess because ‘eating’ for Vampires often involves close interpersonal…interaction…with another person, they’ve had to set some guidelines. All sorts of things come into play including things like how both parties are. It gets even more problematic when you factor in the Vampire ability to just charm people into doing whatever they want by batting their eyes a few times.

There’s more than one type of Vampire! There are several sub-classes, but the most common are Sanguine (blood drinkers) and Vitae, who drain the life energy from people by touching them. There are other types I don’t know the name of – such as those that feed off psychic energy released by emotions, and things like that.

Vitae are a less common type of Vampire that feeds off life energy. They don’t have to bite people like blood drinking types but can simply siphon off energy via touch. In a lot of ways, they’re far more dangerous than a Sanguine. I mean, if someone tries to bite you, you can least fight back. But if someone is able to drain out all your energy just by touching, you might not even realize you were being attacked until it was too late.

Another common ability for most Vampires – natural or infected – is the ability to shape shift. A lot of Vampires turn into animals like wolves or bats. Sometimes they can even turn into sentient…plants? But, of course, there are more unique transformations as well such as fog or mist, which aren’t even animate! If Vampires can turn into inanimate objects, I have to wonder if there’s ever been a Vampire who transformed for the first time only to realize they got the worst transformation of them all – a toothbrush or something….

Faeries have always had a bit of a fascination with humans. So it comes as no surprise, really, that they have something of a penchant for, you know, kidnapping them on a whim. Usually, they take children, but there is some evidence to suggest they’re not above carrying off adults as well. In fact, there was a case in the 1800's of a man who burned his wife alive because he claimed she’d been taken by Faeries and it was trying to get her back by killing the Changeling. Scary….

There are many items and plants that Faeries are less than fond of. Iron, bells, St. John’s wort…. These are things called Faerie banes. Some of them simply keep Faeries away like supernatural pest control. Other can physically harm Faeries, thought, and make an effective way to keep Faeries out of house and away from your loved ones.

Like everything else, the paranormal wreaks complete havoc on the topic of genetics the moment it rears its head. For those of us with a Fae heritage, it’s totally possible to have a single Faerie ancestor ten generations back and yet still end up completely, totally, and in all ways Faerie. One top of that, so many outside forces can impact how your Fae traits assert themselves. Where you live, if you’re exposed to magic, if you’re raised according to human ways instead of Faerie ways – all these things can completely change the way your heritage behaves. It’s as if ‘being Fae’ isn’t some solid thing, but some kind of amorphous, malleable state of being that changes on a whim.

Faerie mounds, Faerie forts, Faerie raths, Faerie hills…from ancient times Faeries have been associated with any sort of mound or raised area in the earth. Whether the hill was just a popular haunt or whether the Fae were believed to live beneath it, it’s always been dangerous for mortals to trespass onto Faerie lands.

Will-o-the-Wisps are Faerie lights that some believe to be the souls of dead children. Some legends paint them as harmless lights while others say they’ll lead unwary travelers astray. Others have them feeding on people and draining them of their life force. It makes me wonder about the overlap between some Fae and other Cryptics, like Vampires. At any rate, apparently you can just through some graveyard dirt at the lights to ward them off – not really sure who keeps graveyard dirt in their pockets, but there you go.

Faerie food is known to have highly addictive properties to mortals and non-Fae. It’s said to have the most incredibly delicious flavor, and those who eat it are unable to ever become full afterward. They are tortured by ravenous hunger unlike anything they’ve ever experienced and can eventually waste away and die. That said, it’s not actually the food itself that winds itself into people so strongly, but essence inside it and the nature of the Fae magic to create it.

Drifters are strange Cryptic unattached to any one place. They drift along the magic currents in the atmosphere carried from one place to the next without any real purpose. They’re strange, nameless beings who mostly have only a vague awareness of the human world. Most are harmless, but some are predatorial creatures that feed on others like them, slowly draining away their life, or even possessing them.

The Murder is a magical café in Pine Hollow. One side exists in the human world and functions as a pretty standard café that serves pastries, sandwiches and coffee. The other side, however, is a world-famous shop renowned for its ability to tackle problems withing the paranormal community. They’re a think tank, information brokers, and people who can solve problems no one else can. Weirdly enough, it’s run by Corvin and his sex brothers, all of whom are wizards.

The Murder doesn’t do their work out of the goodness of their hearts. They don’t work for free, after all. Everyone at the shop is a ‘Pillar’ which is something of a special status in the paranormal community. That shop is their work – for them, solving problems is like a need. It’s something they have to do. In some ways, because of their status, they exist a bit outside of society. They have to be able to stay neutral, so they can’t get involved with things as they like. It always has to be from a professional standpoint. Which seems…a bit lonely to me.

Stone Circle Academy is home to an awful lot of Cryptics. It’s known in the community as a safe place for Cyrptic children to go, for one. And the admin go out of their way to get Cryptic kids to the school so they can be with others like them. They offer complete scholarships to those who can’t afford the tuition as well. Of course, not everyone chooses to go there, so not every Cryptic in Pine Hollow goes there.

The Sophia Athenaeum is basically a huge library that exists in Sophia, Bulgaria…sort of. There is a physical building there, but even that building doesn’t house the entire athenaeum. Only a portion of the building – the main area – is in Sophia. Much of it exists in a sort of ‘other space’ created specifically for the library. It doesn’t house just books and research materials. There are also lots of magic artifacts, as well as a massive vault with dangerous objects locked into it or something.

Life energy is a type of spirit energy emitted by all living things, no matter how small or large. Plants, animals, people, and even the planet itself are constantly emitting this energy. There are some creatures out there that feed on it. Not just Vampires, but all sorts of Fae and other Cyrptics as well.

Different species and types of creatures have very different types of life energy which means that creatures who feed on it can’t just go drain the energy from a houseplant and be content. The strength of the life energy, purity and complexity all differ from species to species. Fae are known to have really weak life energy, which humans have really potent life energy, for example.

Life energy and ‘aura’ aren’t quite the same thing. A person’s aura is made up of all their energies combined – life energy, magic energy, psychic energy, and so on. So life energy is basically on a part of a person’s full on aura. A person’s other energies can affect the qualities of their life energy, which is one reason different species have such different life energies.