False Vampires

The "false vampires" call themselves "cruorans" but they don't share this name with outsiders.
They look and act like humans with vampirism, but they are not vampires. They know enough vampire lore to exploit this. The main difference between "false vampires" and original recipe vampires is that they are alive, not undead.
False vampires try to avoid leaving witnesses alive, but if they cannot avoid leaving witnesses behind, they are smart enough to pretend to be vampires. This means if they do trigger an organized response of soldiers or adventurers, they are going to arm themselves with anti-vampire weapons and anti-undead magic which they are immune to.
Famously, undead are harmed by healing magic, but cruorans are fully mortal so they are healed by healing magic. They love it when enemies try to "attack" them with healing magic.
False vampires prefer to hunt in darkness, but they occasionally like surprise opponents by attacking during the day.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Without blood in their system, cruorans are lanky and scary looking human mutants.
With blood, especially human blood in their system, they can shapechange. They can impersonate normal humans, or they can use their shapechanging to become more inhuman growing claws, harden their skin to deflect blades, and cling to walls and ceilings like spiders.

Biological Traits

Without blood in their systems, false vampires are roughly and strong and fast as normal humans that eat well and get lots of exercise.
With blood in their system, false vampires grow and stronger and faster in addition to their aforementioned shapeshifting abilities.

Genetics and Reproduction

Cruorans breed in the same general fashion that humans do. They can and often do have recreational sex, but the risk of accidental pregnancy low. Most pregnancies are planned and conception success is almost 100% when planned.
To enter a breeding state, the females needs to drink lots of blood before copulation and during the pregnancy. Gestation is roughly half of what a normal human's is and most births are twins or triplets.
Cruorans are physically capable of coupling with normal humans, but they do not seem to enjoy it and will only do this if they need to maintain cover. If human-curoran hybrids are possible, this is unknown.

Growth Rate & Stages

Curorans mature much faster than humans. They reach adulthood between five and ten years. The more blood they have available, the faster they develop physically and mentally

Ecology and Habitats

With the Cruorans' shapeshifting abilities, they can theoretically hide in plain sight masquerading as normal humans, and live in villages or towns in normal houses.
Unfortunately, false vampires are largely ignorant of many normal human social nuances. They can pass for a normal person for short interactions, but they usually their foot in their mouths if they are impersonating a normal people long-term. Not enough to expose that they are blood drinking monsters but certainly enough to expose that they are really weird people worthy of suspicion.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Cruorans do not require blood to live. They can live off of any ordinary food that humans can and have added bonus of having hardy constitutions to let them consume raw meat and somewhat questionable fruits and vegetables with no ill effects.
They can eat cooked food just fine, but they prefer raw food and sometimes this unusual pallate makes it hard for them to pretend to be normal people.
Cruorans do not need to drink blood but they like to drink blood. Blood makes them stronger. Human or demihuman blood makes them much stronger and can become addictive.
Cruorans are pretty strong willed and can repress their addictive drives to abstain from human blood for extended periods if doing so can throw off enemies. Curorans can fast without blood much longer than actual vampires can.

Biological Cycle

After reaching their adult size and mental capabiliites, additional blood does not accelerate aging, the opposite actually. Under ideal circustances, a cruoran will survive 40 years of spry adulthood. A cruoran that goes on many blood fasts often is likely to only surive 20 years of adulthood.
Given the fact that they hunt the most dangerous prey for food, few false vampires live long enough to die of old age. Adult cruorans age very slowly then they age very quickly. Cruorans usually remain in their physical prime for most of their adult lives and then they age very rapidly over their last two to three years developing symptoms of old age very quickly. Many choose ritual suicide rather than endure this.
The fact that cruorans do visibly age and all seem to be in their physical primes helps sell the idea that they are actually vampires.

Behaviour

Cruorans greatly prefer to hunt at night because it gives them an advantage when stalking their prey, but they are not harmed or impaired by sunlight in anyway.
If they catch wind that "vampire hunters" are after them, they will try to evade them long enough for the hunters to switch to a nocturnal schedule and try to attack them during the day while they are sleeping.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Cruorans usually live in clans of between ten and a hundred individuals. They recognize their own kind instinctive and are nearly always cordial with outsider cruorans.

Facial characteristics

Cruorans are shapeshifters and the more blood they have in their system, the better they are at shapeshifting.
A cruorans that has not drank any blood recently looks like hairless ebony skinned fanged monster with glowing eyes. They have scary raspy voices.
A cruoran supped on animal blood can tone down their crazy eyes, soften up their skin tone to a mostly normal earthy human skin tone and grow a little hair including eyebrows, a lack of eyebrows being a huge giveaway that something is off. Their voices sound more or less like a normal humans but maybe with a sore throat.

by me with Midjourney

A curoran fed recently on human blood can basically take on any face, hair, skin tone, or voice that they want. A very well-fed curoran can change his/her height and visible muscle tone and or effectively impersonate the opposite sex.
Impersonating specific people is difficult, but not impossible. Like many skills, shapechanging is something that gets better with practice.
Curoran shapeshifting is not stopped by anti-magic effects though crorans are subject to the moon's affects on disguises.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

Most false vampires lair in Scarnoctis, but relatively close to the surface so they can prey on humans in Scarterra.
Most prey on humans in isolated rural areas on the edge of civilization or they pick off stragglers from nomadic barbarians. They've discussed changing their hunting grounds to more densely packed urban areas but few if any have taken this daring step.

Average Intelligence

Cruorans have roughly the same problem solving abilty and general reasoning power of normal humans but they have superior recall. Just like how frequently feeding on blood helps physical health, it helps mental health. Well-sated curorans can learn new things much faster than normal humans.
They can memorize new things quicker than normal humans making them very fast learners with languages. They can learn almost any new skill rather quickly.
On the downside, they have next to zero innate creativity and can only copy innovations, they cannot make innovations have negigible instincts for artistic aesthetics.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Cruorans can see perfectly in absolute darkness and have a sense of smell and hearing well above ordinary humans.
They are not immune to sensory overload, but they are resistant to it, a bright flash or a loud bang is not going to impede them more than it would a normal human.

Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms

False vampires can derive benefit from animal blood and derive more benefit from mortal blood but when it comes to mortal blood, they crave human blood above all others. They also have an easier time impersonating humans than they do impersonating nonhumans.
Their second favorite food is creatures fairly similar to humans including elves, satyrs, gnomes, and dwarves.
Creatures like tengku and goblins do not taste very good to them. Kobolds are probably the least appetizing humanoid targets to false vampires.

Civilization and Culture

Beauty Ideals

Given that they are shapeshifters and dwell in darkness, they are not overly concerned about appearance.
Males and females alike are attracted to strong and cunning partners as potential mates.

Major Language Groups and Dialects

Cruorans speak Grauen as their mother tongue but they can pick up new languages quickly. Most speak Common and more than a few speak several languages, if only to be better hunters.

Common Dress Code

False vampires have inhuman resistance to heat and cold so they don't need to dress for the elements. They tend to dress in simple robes or loin cloths out of scavenged materials unless they need to impersonate normal humans in which case they will usually steal clothes.
A well-fed cruoran can shapeshift clothes onto themselves and a great many false vampires have sorcery and an ability to change their clothes and apperance is often one of the first spells they learn.

Culture and Cultural Heritage

Some cruorans clans are very pious towards worshiping Greymoria and some are only somewhat pious towards Greymoria. About one in twenty are Greymoria-aligned theurgists.
As of yet, no clan has taken to the worship of any of the rest of the Nine.
Whether part of their innate biology or a gift from the Dark Mother, a disporportionately high number of false vampires wield sorcery though relatively few cruorans are especially powerful spell-casters.
Beyond worshiping Greymoria, they pragmatically value the acquisiton of knowledge and wisdom. They have no native crafts of their own but have picked up the languaged and technologies of the mortals around them rather quickly.

History

In the First Age, Greymoria was famous for creating new races simply to attack and harass the ancient dragons because they didn't love and worship her enough and deserved to be punished.
In the the Second Age, Greymoria was famous for creating new races simply to attack and harass the ancient elves because they didn't love and worship her enough and deserved to be punished.
Greymoria's "Punishment Monsters" are generally known because they speak Grauen as their native tongue. There were reportedly hundreds of Grauen speaking monstrous in ancient times but in the Third Age, the number of races with clear Grauen heritage can barely fill a hand.

Greymoria, Named by Zeta Gardner

It is speculated that the Third Age, Greymoria has softened up a bit or perhaps the tales of Greymoria's monstrous children in ancient ages were exaggerated because Scarterrans don't see many new monsters in recent centuries.
Greymoria may or may not have slowed down on her tendencies to lash out those who wrong her, but when she does lash out, her minions and methods tend to be more subtle and sneaky than her loud giant monsters of yesteryear.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

Cruorans are a new race, so they haven't had time to develop many ties with other races. They are relatively newcomers to Scarterra so very few other individuals or groups are aware they exist and if they are spotted, they are usually misidentified as vampires, Fair Folk or an asympomatic person with Cannibal Sickness.
Besides the natural xenophobia that comes with being one of Greymoria monstrous children, the fact that they crave the blood of mortal races does not help them make peaceful overatures with mortal races.
A few have made some ilmited alliances with other misanthropic dwellers in Scarnoctis but as of yet these alliances are small scale and short-lasting.
Given that they don't consider kobolds a viable food source, they have made a fair few alliance overatures to some Greymoria fearing groups but even then, kobolds are not prone to trust them.

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Geographic Distribution

• Scarnoctis