Dhampyr

A subtrope of Half-Human Hybrid, a Dhampyr is a child born of a vampire and a human. Generally they have all of a vampire's powers and none of their weaknesses, or watered-down versions of both: half as strong but only uncomfortable in sunlight (a stake to the heart is still lethal though). They are also frequently portrayed as vampire hunters. Just as some cultures once believed that murderers and suicides could rise as vampires, a child born approximately nine months after the death of the father might have been accused of this.

It is more common for the father to be the vampire in this mixed marriage, since it's universally far easier for a male vampire to impregnate a mortal woman than for a female vampire to carry a child to term, due to their dangerous unlifestyles and strict diet. Sometimes avoided altogether by just having a Vampire (male or female) bite and turn a pregnant woman (see Blade).

Dhampyrs are usually at high risk of being Mary Sues and/or very, very Wangsty. When done "right," however, they're usually tormented with an uneasy childhood, either because Kids Are Cruel and they're Half Breeds surrounded by bigots, or because their vampire half is rightly feared by mortals. Of course, that's assuming their vampire parent is around.

See also I Hate You, Vampire Dad and Lineage Comes From the Father. Contrast Undead Child.

Examples of Dhampyr include:

Anime and Manga

  • Vampire Hunter D: "D" is a vampire hunter and the main character. The anime renders the word as "dunpeal" due to filtering it from English-loanword-from-Albanian to Japanese and back again.
    • At the end of the first movie, it was revealed that Lamica is also a dhampire.
    • A third dhampir crops up in the sixth novel Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane: the Girl they're hired to escort is pregnant with yet another and implied to be D's half sibling to boot!
      • Granny Viper, the Badass person-finder is revealed to be a Dhampir at the end - and her conversation shows that a Dhampir's child with a mortal still has vampiric traits
      • D also got rather upset when Left Hand teased him about Mier Link and Charlotte producing more dhampires.
  • Bloody Kiss: Kuroboshi from chapter 6.
  • Blood: The Last Vampire: Created by crossbreeding experiments between vampire hunters and captured Chiropterans.
    • In the live-action Hollywood movie adaptation, Saya is a dhampir born of the ancient (and apparently East Asian) vampire queen and a Japanese warlord/vampire-hunter, who she tricked into marrying and later murdered.
  • The Record of a Fallen Vampire: This series actually uses the word dhampire. They frequently become vampire hunters and are less magically powerful than vampires, but lack vampire weaknesses.
    • It is a plot point that this depends on how much vampire blood do they have. A dhampyr with a lot of vampire blood has more powerful magic but has to keep it in the night (but not as much as a vampire) while a dhampyr with little vampire blood has little power in comparison but can walk in the sun with little to no discomfort.
  • The manga version of Karin features a Yuriya, a Dhampyr of the human mother variety. She's fine in the sun and she can work the series' bats and their powers. She's a major player in the second half of the series. It is worth noting that Our Vampires Are Different in the respect that they are a separate living species with their own culture and history and politics and all; the Dhampyr are all sterile. Everything else seems to hold except for the main vampire.
    • Technically, Kanon is also one, although with the events surrounding her existence, she might as well be human.
  • Ghost Sweeper Mikami displays the character of Pietro de Blado (Pete), who is a 700-year-old half human, half vampire. So it makes him a dhampyr, also if the word it not used in the manga. The vampire parent is, of course, the father (nothing is said about the mother!)
  • In Bloody Cross, the character Tsukimiya is described as a hybrid of vampire and angel. It is never explained what vampires or angels even are, or how she became a hybrid of the two, so the significance of this is unknown. She is capable of reading the memories of others by drinking their blood with her fangs, turning her spilled blood into spikes and bladed weapons, and has a strange brand on her chest over her heart as result of her angelic nature. For a never explained reason, all angel hybrids possess this brand, which will kill them after an unspecified period of time.
  • The anime Vampire Knight has a classification to the vampire that depends of their purity, so every vampire in the series except the purebloods and the e-level vampire (humans turned into vampires by a bite) are dhampyrs.


Comic Books

  • Dhampyr: in the first issue of this series, Harlan Draka pretends to be a Dhampyr, until he finds out he is really one. In this series, vampires are burned and killed by also a drop of blood of damphyr (apparently because of its hybrid nature). Vice versa, also if Harlan is mainly human, he is able to suck blood from the Master of the Night (the high vampires), reversing the use. By the way also the Masters of the Night, if willing, are able to suck blood from other Masters - also if rarely; usually they try to avoid a war between themselves, but they are very territorial.
  • Blade: The main character Blade is Dhampyr. Later writers changed the definition of what the word means in the Marvel Universe to make him closer to the movie character.
  • In the graphic novel Dhampire Stillborn, the protagonist Nancy Collins is a Dhampyr.
  • A short strip published in an old issue of Vampirella features a dhampir with many of the same abilities as vampires and the power to turn vampires into dust with a mere touch. The last vampire in the story is saved from this fate when a human who misunderstands the situation kills the dhampir instead...only to discover in the last panel that this hunter had a twin sister with the same powers.


Fan Works

  • Luminosity has the same half-vampires canon has, which means that they have one-half the powers, no extra color senses, and also one-half the blood lust. It also confirms that you can have quarter-vampires, or quarter-humans, which have one- or three-quarters vampires' power and baggage, and that female half-vampires are fertile. Yet unknown whether a female half-vampire can have a child with an activated shape shifter.


Film

  • Blade: The title character's mother was turned into a vampire when she was pregnant with Blade, causing him to develop into a vampire/human hybrid. He is immune to all the vampiric weaknesses, but still ages. He has super strength. His tag line is All the strengths, none of the weaknesses, despite that fact he doesn't have all the strengths, and is constantly fighting his blood addiction.
  • While not born one, Black Hat from the Priest becomes the only human/vampire hybrid as a result of drinking the blood of the vampire queen, and like Dhampyrs, he has all the vampire's strengths and lacks their vulnerability to sunlight.
  • Dracula 2000: A Dhampyr is born to a human that has used the blood of a Dracula to increase his life span and another human.
  • Vampire in Brooklyn: Rita is a Dhampyr born of a human mother and a vampire father that displays none of the abilities of a vampire.
  • Averted in The Monster Club, in which vampires readily crossbred with other monsters (werewolves and ghouls) and produced some weird hybrids, but apparently not with humans, who were just lunch.
  • Grave Of The Vampire has the child produced from a vampire raping a woman clinically dead in the womb, and, after it is born, the mother feeds him on her own blood, and keeps him out of direct sunlight. Upon adulthood, he is sensitive to sunlight, and eats VERY rare steak. He also hunts down his daddy. Eventually, after killing his pop-pop, he becomes, apparently, a vampire himself.


Live Action TV

  • Angel: Angel's son Connor appears to be completely human as an infant, and later develops the superhuman strength, speed and senses of a Dhampyr. His body is not truly undead, though, so his healing powers are inferior. Despite being born to two vampires (a predestined event that, until that point, had been thought impossible).
  • Kamen Rider Kiva: Wataru, the eponymous Rider, is born to a human male and a Fangire mother and fights against the Fangire.
    • Ironically, the mother's job was to kill Fangires that fell in love with humans, presumably to prevent a Dhampyr.


Literature

  • In the short story 15 Painted Cards From A Vampire Tarot by Neil Gaiman, the Lovers Card segment features an implied dhampir birth, from a vampire mother and a human father.
  • The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Vlad Tod is the son of a vampire and a human, though he is referenced as a vampire.
  • Lost Souls: The character named Nothing is a technically a Dhampyr (vampire father, human mother). Somewhat recursive as the story implies that a Dhampyr is really just a juvenile vampire.
  • Midnight's Daughter: Dorina Basarab is a Dhampyr, and as a result is prone to blacking out and going on murderous rampages.
  • The Pine Deep Trilogy: Mike Sweeney is the off spring of a human woman and an undead werewolf.
  • Slayer: Alek Knight is a vampire hunter, Anti-Hero, as well as being Dhampyr.
  • Breaking Dawn: Renesmee Cullen, the child of Edward and human at the time Bella, is a half vampire that show both human and vampire traits. A few other Dhampyr are mentioned briefly in this series.
    • They're not all just brief mentions. There is Nahuel, who ends up being a major factor in stopping the Big Bad
  • Vampire Academy: Rose Hathaway is a Dhampyr and dedicated to protects her friend Lissa, a Moroi princess, from the Strigoi.
  • Demon in My View: Jessica's mother became a vampire while pregnant, leaving the unborn Jessica in suspension for several years. After a witch converts her mother back into a human, Jessica is born looking like the daughter of the vampire sire and not her natural human parents. Because of this (and the strength of her mother's sire) Jessica experiences dreams about vampires, which she then writes into novels. Unfortunately when the characters in her novels turn out to be real, the connection turns deadly and Jessica is eventually attacked and later becomes a fully fledged vampire
    • Arguably, the protagonist of another Nyeusigrube book might qualify. Erin Misrahe's Disassociate Identity Disorder is brought on by an encounter with a vampire while still in the womb. Her alter is actually a psychic imprint of the vampire in question
  • The Saga of Darren Shan does this a bit differently, in that vampires are created when a full vampire pumps half of his/her blood into a human and pumps half of the human's blood into himself. Half vampires are created when the vampire pumps a smaller amount of blood around. Half vampires in this series do not suffer from sunlight, and are stronger that humans, but weaker than full vampires. Likewise, their thirst for blood is weaker than that of full vampires, though their actual need for it is not (this has lead to the death of many reluctant half-vampires). They can become full vampires through the transfusion of more vampire blood, but given enough time, they will turn full anyhow.
    • They also lack the extra abilites of a full vampire, such as flitting, sleeping breath and healing saliva, and age one fifth as slow as a normal human as opposed to one tenth as slow like a full vampire.
  • Blindsight vampires (which are an extinct hominid species, rather than standard undead types) are stated to have been able to reproduce with humans, and given that the extinct species was brought back from dormant genes in humans it's pretty safe to assume a fair number of early humans must have had children with them. This actually seems rather surprising given that Blindsight vampires were very creepy creatures; among other things they were visibly inhuman, nocturnal, sociopathic loners and spent most of their time hibernating in a mummy-like state to conserve their food supply (not to mention the fact that they ate people). It's pretty hard to imagine many humans ever wanting to have a relationship with something like that; one suspects most of the human partners were less than willing.
  • Averted in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where the title character was only claiming to be half vampire on his mother's side. Or rather, vigorously and repeatedly denying he was, to set up a fake psychic scam and rip off his college classmates.
  • In the Brazilian André Vianco's books from the Os Sete chronology (there are two different universes with different vampires), half-vampires, with all dhampyr abilities compared to usual vampires and great but not deadly discomfort at sunlight, come from a human who drank vampire blood but still didn't steal blood, and when he does he will slowly go the way to vampire, increasing both powers and weaknesses, until his heart stops beating. Apparently also, if the stolen blood (not the one from the transformation) is from a vampire with (more) supernatural abilities, like Lobo's vampire werewolf transformation or Inverno's freeze powers, the new vampire also gets them.
  • Sonja Blue, from Nancy A. Collins' Midnight Blue series, is an extremely rare Half-Human Hybrid vampire, which means she has many vampire strengths and lacks most of their weaknesses. However, she also has a raging case of Split Personality and Super-Powered Evil Side, so it kinda evens out.
  • In the Night World series, Jez Redfern, who can act as a vampire or a human, dependent completely on what or whom she eats. (Though she can, like all vampires, act human when she is drinking blood. She just has great senses, too.)
  • The main character of The Saga of the Noble Dead by Barb and JC Hendee, Magiere, is a dhampir (though she doesn't know it at first). The first book in the series is actually entitled Dhampir.
  • In The Society Of S by Susan Hubbard, the main character Ariella finds out she is this. However, her mother became a vampire shortly after she was born, so it is somewhat of a subversion.
  • Cat, the titular Night Huntress, is the product of rape between her vampire father and her human mother. While she's stronger, faster and more durable than humans, she's still weak compared to vampires. Her primary advantage is that half-vampires are incredibly rare and she still has a pulse, so vampires think she's a human and underestimate her capabilities.
  • Malachi, one of the central characters in the second and third books in the Red Moon Rising series by Billie Sue Mosiman.
  • The protagonist of "The Lost Art Of Twilight" by Thomas Ligotti, born from his mother's staked corpse, is his own, very special subset of this trope. Unlike most fictional Dhampyr, however, he has very few actual powers, aside from the ability to paint bizarre abstract canvases that are literally nauseating to look at. He's also quite curious about his father's side of the family, and so invites them to visit . This being Ligotti, this doesn't go well for him. At all.
  • Tales of the Frog Princess has a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, Prince Garrid. Garrid falls for and marries a real bat, Li'l. They have five kids, the one we know most about being Princess Zoe.
  • Daniel Alfonz, in Family Bites by Lisa Williams. The son of a human father and a vampire mother (who subesquently married a male vampire at her family's insistence), Daniel can't fly (not that well-brought up vampires in this universe ever do), can be seen in mirrors unless he concentrates, and has slightly less powerful senses than his relatives. He also has no craving for blood, and is actually rather squeamish about it, but has to drink some once every few weeks.
  • Shori in Octavia Butler's Fledgling was designed so she could walk in daylight. She was spliced with human DNA. She also is half-black, causing more problems.


Newspaper Comics

  • In Candorville, these can't normally appear, but advanced fertilization technology has created at least one of them, in accordance with an Either/Or Prophecy that may allow his mother to Take Over the World. The definite dhampyr, Saxon, is a Properly Paranoid Knife Nut, but also a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, and is trying to protect the main character. The other is still an infant, and it's uncertain how he will develop (or, for that matter, whether he's really a dhampyr or just an abducted human infant.) The strip has been vague on the differences between a dhampyr and a vampire, but there definitely are some--Saxon's Game Face has Milky White Eyes instead of the red ones found on true vampires, and his fangs are noticeably smaller.


Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons has several examples.
    • 3rd Edition has the following separate examples:
      • The 3rd Edition supplement Libris Mortis introduces the half vampire template.
        • The online "Savage Progressions" vampire template class cannot take a half-vampire from this book to a standard templated vampire.
      • Dragon #313 under the name Katane.
      • Ravenloft: Denizens of Dread under the name Dhampir.
        • But Ravenloft also averts the Mom-bitten-while-pregnant variant, as the products of such prenatal infection grow up to be "vampyres" -- living blood-drinking monstrous humanoids, with mind-controlling saliva—rather than dhampirs. The dark lord of Forlorn, Tristan ApBlanc, is such a vampyre.
    • 4th Edition introduces the Dhampyr races; they're broken into a series of feats instead of being a separate race per se.
    • Averted by the 1st Edition half-strength vampire, which was simply a vampire-victim that had arisen as a less-powerful undead controlled by its sire. Also by the pseudo-vampire, which was a living creature with a vampire's appearance, hit dice, and slam attack, but none of its powers or undead traits.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade: A dhampir is the result of a 15th generation vampire breeding with a human. Also, ghouls who crossbreed for a generation can produce a revenant, which is biologically almost the same as a dhampir.
    • And apart from being capable of going out in the sunlight, they're pathetic. Every generation, the vampire blood thins out a little bit- double the generation, half the blood, and vampires capable of making dhampyr are pretty wimpy already. A dhampyr is double the generation of the (usually) father- which means they've got almost no vamp blood at all. They're also one of the signs of the apocalypse- the "Time of Thin Blood" is one of the main parts.
      • One notable ability that they can have (depending on the storyteller—see the Time of Thin Bloods book), however, is the ability to see through ALL supernatural illusions, and see the world for what it truly is. They can also have another drawback—thin and fragile bones, due to one of their parents being dead. So... Blessed with Suck, really.
        • White Wolf, in later editions, made a habit of doing this with a lot of the Special Snowflake character types that had popped up in earlier editions. Take the classic Abomination, for instance. Half-Vampire, Half-Werewolf, all kick-ass? Not quite. It has all the weaknesses of both races, loses almost all werewolf powers, is despised by Vampires who won't teach it Vampire powers...oh, and is immediately inflicted with a permanent supernatural suicidal depression. They got a little less subtle as time went on, to the point where trying to turn a Kitsune were-fox into a vampire causes the Kitsune to explode in a pillar of flame killing both itself and the vampire.
    • In the Asian setting Kindred of the East, a Kuei-Jin (Asian vampire) breeding with a human can produce a Dhampyr. They have minimal access to vampiric disciplines, but their main power is their supernatural luck, the spiritual side-effect of the unlikelihood of their birth. This also justifies why the mother is usually human: Kuei-Jin are fertile only if they spend a certain kind of chi when they wake up. If a vampire mother ever ran out of that kind in the course of nine months, she will miscarry, while a vampire father need only spend that type on the night of conception. Ironically, both parents can be vampires. This is very rare, however.
  • Vampire: The Requiem introduces the Dampyr in Wicked Dead. This time, they're children born of an unnatural desire for a Kindred to procreate and nursed on vampiric blood. Often, they grow up completely unaware of their heritage. Their bodies produce "flat" blood that can't be used for vampiric powers (and has to be expelled -- violently—before any others can be used), and they have the ability (even if they don't know it) to deactivate vampiric Disciplines. What makes Dampyr truly dangerous to the Kindred is that they act as often unwitting psychic booby-traps for vampires, leading them down the path to self-destruction.
    • Note that the parents don't need to be a female human and a male vampire. Depending on precisely which dark ritual is used to induce conception, they could also be a female vampire and a male human, or two men, or two women. In the previous example, the mother could even impregnate the father. Moving forward, a pregnant male vampire will have to hide from his Masquerade-enforcing peers for nine months, but a pregnant male human is pretty much going to die of organ damage and internal hemorrhaging.
    • Another variant is presented as part of the "Dark Fantasy" option in Mirrors. These dhampirs are Half Human Hybrids able to give birth to more of their kind, forming families. Their heritage makes them tougher than humans, able to sense the undead, and resistant to their powers; on the downside, they're prone to going to unnatural lengths to slake their vices, and they manifest a minor supernatural deformity as a mark of their condition.
  • Palladim Books' Nightbane has Wampyrs, which are not quite half-bloods, but rather an anomaly in creating a Secondary Vampire. Water doesn't hurt them like it does full-blooded ones, and they can tolerate Sunlight. Naturally, they're not as powerful.
  • As of the Pathfinder Bestiary II, the Dhampyr is both a monster race, and one of seven additional Player Character Races, being created when a fresh male Vampire impregnates a mortal, or a pregnant mortal is vampirised. They're more agile and charismatic than humans, have lowlight and Darkvision, are resistant to most diseases and poisons, live as long as Elves, and can detect true undead. On the downside they're vulnerable to light, can't channel positive energy (which makes healing a pain in the rear end), have a weakened constitution (due to having "one foot in the grave" so to speak), and suffer from an innate bloodlust, on top of the standard persecution. It's worth noting that a vast majority of Dhampyr are every bit as evil as their Vampire parents; as in the case of Orcs and other recent Race options the PCs are the exception, not the rule.


Theater

  • Sera Myu has Bloody Dracul Vampir, daughter of the Vampire Count Dracul and Le Fay, a human woman.


Video Games

  • One of the villains in Fate/stay night speculates that perhaps the Tohsaka Family (Rin) had a vampire somewhere in their ancestors. The only aspect of this though is an affinity to earth Prana.
  • BloodRayne: Rayne is born to a human woman raped by the vampire king Kagan. She also has quite a number of Dhampyr brothers and sisters that she must slay. She seems to be just as strong as full-blooded vampires, or very nearly so, and shares the exact same weaknesses as them(sunlight, water) but instead of instantly killing her, she's able to survive them for brief periods.
  • Castlevania: Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes, also known as Alucard, is the son of Dracula and a human woman named Lisa. He is apparently immortal like his father, but has notable weakness to water (which can be overcome by a holy snorkel), and can only transform with magical relics and a good amount of effort.
  • Darkstalkers: Donovan Baine, in addition to being a Buddhist monk and a vampire hunter, is a Dhampyr.
  • Oblivion: The character Agronak gro-Malog AKA The Grey Prince is found out to have been fathered by a vampire.
  • Nocturne: Svetlana Lupescu from the first act of this PC game.
    • Foreign language bonus: 'Lupescu' means 'wolf-like' in Romanian
  • Vampire Night: You control one of two vampire hunters that are both Dhampyr.
  • Scribblenauts: One of the many summonable creatures and is one of the few things that scares vampires.
  • BlazBlue's hero, Ragna the Bloodedge, is technically a half-vampire, which is hinted to be a side-effect of Rachel drinking his blood anyway. However, fortunately, he's more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold than an angsty Marty Stu. It probably has to do with the fact that he's the resident series Butt Monkey (after Bang was "elevated" to the status of The Chew Toy).
  • League of Legends: Evelynn the Widowmaker, the blue-skinned stealth assassin. Her background is a mystery although it's theorized she was cursed with "a mild form of fantastic vampirism" rather than born with it. She's savage, vicious and a heartless assassin who thoroughly enjoys her job and dresses like a bondage queen.


Web Comics


Western Animation


Real Life

  • In Medieval Eastern Europe, villages would often hire the services of a "Dhampir" to rid them of vampires who were giving them bad luck. These vampires were invisible to normal people, but a Dhampir was able to see them by looking through the sleeve of his coat. He would then grapple with the invisible vampire and eventually succeed, inspiring fanfare, food, and income from the villagers. It is highly unlikely that they thought "How cool, a dhampir who comes to save us," since Dhampirs were rumored to die horribly young due to not having bones, or suchlike. There was also the "Your mom slept with an undead" thing, which was more likely to bring pity and repulsion than admiration. The job was often done by a traveling gypsy who'd move on soon enough.and not because, say, it was a con job and the "Dhampir" would have to leave town very soon to avoid anyone cottoning on that the guy who spent an hour wrestling with his coat didn't really help their crops grow.
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