LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Vampires
built 633 days ago
Vampires were popularized by the Irish author Bram Stoker with his story of Count Dracula, a Transylvanian vampire, in 1897. The story was probably based on Vlad Tepes, a medieval character of exceptional bloodthirst. He supposedly impaled his enemies (hence his nickname Vlad The Impaler) and cut off their heads. He ruled Walachia as Vlad III in the 15th century, which is now part of Romania. He signed his letters with Vlad Dracula, which can be translated as Vlad, son of the dragon or son of the devil. His father was called "Dracul" because he had a dragon depicted on his coat of arms.
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Vampires were able to shut themselves down for decades, dessicating down to this biologically dormant condition and entering what's commonly known as an "undead state." This worked in three ways: firstly, it drastically reduced their energetic needs, redressing the original imbalance between prey production and predator consumption. Secondly, it gave the prey population time to recover in the event that it had been severely hammered by predation, and let the vampires wait out food shortages. And thirdly, it's possible that these extended leaves-of-absence might have given humans time forget that they were prey. By the Pleistocene era, humans were intelligent enough to pass information from generation to generation, but were ... intelligent enough for skepticism. Stories of "nightstalking demons" were likely taken as mere tales of fantasy by senile elders.
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Stakes: Staking a vampire in the heart with a wooden stake is the most popular way of destroying vampires. This method of killing a vampire has been around for literally hundreds of years. The stakes were typically made of ash or aspen. The stake must penetrate the vampire's heart to destroy it. In medieval times the stake was ... used as prevention of vampires. Deceased individual who were thought to have a higher risk of becoming a vampire were staked in their coffins so that the stake would pin them to the ground.
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Vampires are ... strangely affected by plates. However, it is not the plates themselves, but rather the smashing of the plates that causes the Vampire intense mental pain. A Vampire likes the natural order of things and Ceramic plates are the epitome of balance. Breaking a plate causes a rift in the space-time continuum that affects a Vampire's heart and soul.
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This larger set bought the Red List, vampires that had committed crimes so bad that they could be hunted down by any other vampire. The rewards for destroying them were Trophies, cards that gave powerful abilities. Also Abominations made an appearance, these are vampire werewolves, that are shunned by all. It was made up of three precon starters and boosters containing 83 vampires and 231 library cards.
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Western scholars seriously considered the existence of vampires for the first time rather than just brushing them off as superstition. It all started with an outbreak of vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Austro-Hungarian empire from 1725-1734.
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Vampires