The Features And Characteristics Of The Dhampir
Because of the remarkable terms of conception, the dhampir has been enabled throughout legend to have skills that are beyond the realms of both human and vampire abilities. However, the birth of the dhampir, and the way he or she looked, were incredibly dissimilar with anything that Hollywood or the gaming industry has produced so far. While a vampire female, or a male vampire may be seductive, and attractive, the offspring of a human and vampire union was most certainly the exact opposite. Forget Wesley Snipes, and the pixilated curves of Rayne; we’re talking full-on ugly here.
Because of the vampire’s ability to seduce the living, at least in South Slavic and Belarusian legend, historically speaking, one must assume that a vampire either was attractive, or could at least appear attractive in order to entice its prey. So why should the offspring be so hideous? Well, naturally, such a union with a demonic or undead creature is found to be against nature’s intentions. So there would be a defective child born from the two. Such defects are found to be either of advantage and disadvantage. A vampire traditionally has a large amount of strength, can turn invisible, transform into other beasts, feeds off of human blood, seduce its prey to easily overcome an attack or to feed. It also has weaknesses to holy water, or other Christian religious symbols, as well as a volatile allergy to daylight.
The disadvantages of the dhampir are its hideousness, aside from its half-vampire form. According to folklore, a dhampir was said to be extremely filthy, and had facial deformities. The deformities were that he had either a snub nose, like a bat, or worse, no nose at all, according to Bulgarian legends. In Serbian tales, the dhampir had an oversized head, and a small, with no shadow. Other Bulgarian myths say that the dhampir has no bones, such with their belief that neither did their vampire fathers or mothers, no fingernails, and also a deep mark on their back, as though they were missing a tail.
The South Slavic and Belarusian dhampir, instead has none of the disadvantages of their vampire father or mother, and instead has all of their strengths. Modern folklore perpetuates the belief that a dhampir must also feed from human blood to sustain its existence. However, because dhampir are also traditionally hunters of vampires, one assumes that the dhampir instead fed from animals, or other legitimate sources rather than murder or prey on humans. Naturally, hunting vampires would become fairly irrelevant if a dhampir only made more every time it got hungry.