40K Vampires?

[Dimreapa]

In Inquisitor, the 40K role playing game, you can actually take a power that is called something like 'Vampirism', and said power allows you to regain strength/wounds at the cost of drinking your enemies blood or such. I'm even sure the description said something like with fangs

I forget the exact wording, but it is certainly called vamp-something. Whether Inquisitor is 40K canon however, is another question, but I think it shows that it certainly exists in the Universe.

Duluoz has the right of it. If you want to find "Vampires" in 40k, the best place to look is the games and novels with a closer focus on 40k societies. I'd probably say one particularly good place to look is Necromunda.

Wyrds, Mutants and Scavvies are good candidates for this. Scavvies are cannibals, and they make use of what is basically undead: Scavvy Dogs, Plague Zombies and Ghouls. The special character, Karloth Valois is pretty much a Vampire. He can control Zombies (and more turns up if you use him), and he even has vampiric powers. There's a type of Wyrd, basically (i.e. unsanctioned mutant psykers) that can drain life force from others to preserve their own.

There's even fan rules for a Ultra Violet Vampyre gang that were in Gang War 3 (an old 6-part magazine devoted to Necro), and you can probably find them online via Yakromunda. They aren't amazing, and they're ridiculously overpowered, to the point of giving Underhive's (**spits**) Redemption rules (i.e. perpetual novice machine) a good run for its money.

But it does show the possibilities. It's difficult to get a "straight" example of vampires, but in a universe where mutation is a major threat, and the warp, psychic energy and whatnot can turn average joes into superhuman killing machines, Vampires (or Vampyres) are perfectly plausible.

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Sadly no pure vampires in 40k.

Only mentions of feeding from things like a vampire.

Blood Angels have the closest link with their Black Rage, Red Thirst, Drinking blood openly and in combat, having a measure of their primarchs blood given to them as part of their siring but the bigest thing may be when becoming a blood angel they are put into a sleep and placed into a sarcophagus where their bodies change and many continue to sleep in them aven after becoming marines.
This is also stated in the BA dex.

 

[Loran]

Indeed, there is no mention of a race of vampires in the same sense as vampires in the FB setting.

Blood Angels do practice exsanguination as part of their beliefs, and every aspirant drinks blood from the chalice as part of their initiation to the Chapter. This seems to be more in line with the actual implantation process instead of them drinking the blood for kicks and giggles... After all, they could just implant the blood with a needle, but there's not that much ceremony involved in that method :tongue:
As for the Black Rage and Red Thirst, the Blood Angel doesn't drink the blood to feed, as that's just a side-effect. The Rage triggers within the afflicted the feeling that they are Sanguinius, fighting against the traitors aboard the Vengeful Spirit in orbit around Terra. This fight culminates in the fight against Horus, but as there is only the testimony of the one Chaplain (forget his name, but it's in the BA Codex) the exact feeling that different Blood Angels feel can differ. The Rage and Thirst are triggered through the blood of Sanguinius, but probably just the gene-seed would be enough for this. This isn't confirmed, but the gene-seed is an organ which technically needs blood to function so there you go...

Night Lords on the other hand do look the part as they are, but I don't remember there being any mention of them drinking blood. Uzas may have drunk some blood, but he was a Khornate maniac, so that may have more to do with the Blood God than actual vampirism... As to why they look gaunt, that's due to Nostramo being a world without light, so there was no way for them to get a tan, and the reason why the Night Lords see so well in the dark Of course, some of this was down to the Kurze's geneseed, but most of it was due to the Nostraman heritage. IIRC, Kurze filed his teeth because of the chance to look like a vampire from legends. Can't remember where I read this though

- Loran

 

[The Dread King]

I found mentions of 40k vampires. Behold, the beauty of lexicanum:

Vampires in 40k

 

[Ordo Cruentus]

Well, I guess that settles that.

 

[Irisado]

I wish that I'd logged in to check that reference while I was at home for Christmas, as I could have looked it up. Quite a lot of stuff from the original Rogue Trader background was not very convincingly written, and was a bit odd. I'd say that the lack of subsequent mentions suggests that it's not a very reliable piece of evidence personally, but if it is there, its presence cannot be completely disregarded.

 

[Sanai]

It wasn't just in rogue trader- it was in a black templars codice. Still, its only 4th ed. Also, just look at Mephiston- he just screams vampire.

 

[Irisado]

I'd have to read the Black Templars reference for myself. I'm always very sceptical of the Lexicanum. It's a bit like wikipedia in terms of its reliability.

Mephiston is a better bet, as was touched on with the Blood Angels discussion earlier, but while it's reasonable to say that Blood Angels behave in a similar way to vampires, they are not actually vampires per se.