ErikModi

Still, the steps are pretty much the same. Separate fact from myth, at least within the rules of your story. Are all vampires destroyed by sunlight? Are all vampires repelled by crosses (or any holy object)? Does the wielder actually need to have faith for it to work? Do they need to sleep in their native soil? Are the rules the same for all vampires, or are there offshoots/subspecies/"Clans"/whatever that have different rules? Are the myths just that, myths, or are they distorted versions of the truth, or are they misattributed to vampires and actually describe another beastie entirely? Have vampires spread disinformation? "Haha, wooden stakes, that was a good one!" Basically, decide what is and is not true about vampires in your world, what people do and do not believe about them (which can be two completely separate things), and then work on the reasons why, if that aspect is important. I'd say that, as far as getting the general public to accept what you call a vampire is actually vampire, you really only need three things: drinks blood, lives forever barring specific methods of killing, primarily or exclusively nocturnal. Anything else you want to make them, there's foundation in folklore and fiction for it. Heck, if you want to decide the actual vampires are incorporeal entities who sometimes possess corpses to walk around and drink the blood of the living, or sometimes just move around as a spirit-thing and drain "life-energy," that's pretty accurate to some of the earliest folkloric descriptions of vampires.

Really, vampires are whatever you need them to be for the story. In most older folklore, they're more or less about fear of death, decay, and corruption. For Bram Stoker, they were basically fear of STDs that no one was acknowledging existed. In the modern times, they can be fear of stalkers, date rapists, abusive partners, authority figures, whatever. First, ask yourself "what purpose to vampires serve in my story?" That'll give you a basic starting point for what "kind" of vampire you want to make, whether it's the modern sexy vampire, the slightly older disturbing vampire, the older-still monstrous vampire, the even-more-older rotting corpse vampire, or the oldest-of-the-old incorporeal vampire. That'll also help you figure out what weaknesses make sense. Are your vampires legitimately cursed by God? Then holy objects (or maybe just crosses) will work. Do humans have some special ability to resist them? Then holy objects will probably still work, but for different reasons. Are they literal "creatures of the night?" Then sunlight fries them into crispy critters. If not, maybe sunlight just weakens them, or has no effect at all. Are they abominations of nature, causing natural and physical laws to break down around them? Then you have a reason for them to cast no reflections and such. The important part isn't necessarily finding definitive answers to why vampires are the way they are, but why they are the way they are in your story. There's so much vampire fiction and folklore that "accuracy" isn't so much a moving target as it is a nonexistent one. For instance, sunlight destroying vampires is wholly an invention of Hollywood, created for the film Nosferatu as one of the changes necessary to avoid a lawsuit for being an unlicensed adaptation of Dracula. Coffins are also a Hollywood invention, this time from the Dracula films, Bram Stoker originally just had "boxes of earth," since Dracula had to sleep in his native soil. So you really are free to use, modify, and discard any particular rules you want, and create your own if it serves the story better. I hesitate to go into anything more specific, since I have my own series of vampire novels I'm writing (self-published the first one), and don't want to give away too much about how the vampires in that world work just yet.

Bruteblood (Pewter Misting Gold Ferring). Burn Pewter to make yourself physically better all around, negating some of the worst effects of storing health, and have reserves of health to tap when someone actually manages to hurt you while burning Pewter. It would be great at my real life job. Pewter gives me the energy to get through my day, Gold erases the aches, pains, soreness, scrapes, and bruises I gradually accumulate.

Just finished Bands of Mourning today, and I'm really liking Steris and her relationship with Wax. I was strongly suspecting she fell somewhere on the Aspberger's/Autism scale, so it's nice to see confirmation that was the intent. And I love that she is, in her own way, a strong female character who's existence isn't solely defined by her male romantic partner, without being a kickass awesome action girl. Not that I have anything against kickass awesome action girls, but it's nice to see a character with more traditionally feminine interests who still manages to be important, competent, and proactive. And it's really nice to see a romance develop between two characters realistically. It's not love at first sight, it's not fate or destiny or raw sex drawing Wax and Steris together, it's how their personalities complement each other, how they grow to learn about each other and respect each other for who they are, not who they want each other to be. It's a very mature kind of relationship, one we need to see a lot more often in fiction, in my opinion.