@Valley: Truth. Like the rest of the series, the amount of colour in Annie's life is dictated by how much she feels alive and sure of herself. Though it's very odd for other people to lose colour when Annie is still in colour.
....they aren't vampires. YET. I may have to take this in a new direction. o.0
@mittfh: I do not believe in sparkling vampires of any variety. True Blood was a travesty. There is no good in the romantic vampire. Hell, I can barely touch Vampire: The Requiem without cringing a little. buncha nably pamby mincing... just... urg... Brujha fo life.
@GreenKrog: Interestingly, folkloric vampires (before vampiric fiction) tended to be dark and bloated rather than pale and gaunt, fangless, and depending on the tradition, either caused mischief or death in their home town. While nocturnal, they didn't have a sunlight aversion. However, they were vulnerable to garlic and religious items. Staking was a popular method of dispatch, but in some traditions via iron or steel rather than wood. Decapitation and incineration were also used.
@mittfh: The traditional method in Europe was to confound the body by pinning the vampire to a tree root, prompting the tree to grow over it. If you could do this at a crossroads (as standard with the gibbet) then it would also confuse the vampire should it arise. If you are squeamish, you would simply flip the body over, so it cannot "rise", it would instead fall into the earth where it could not escape.
The garlic was heavily influenced by the Egyptians, wherein the embalming method included replacing the organs with herbs 'n' spices. So the fear is of the embalming, making the host body for the demon uninhabitable.
..incineration works on all the thing.
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