Follow TV Tropes

Following

Dhampyr
aka: Dhampire

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tepesfamily2.png
He has his mother's hair... and his father's teeth.
"My mother found it difficult to tell me that I wasn't like other children; I could never share a life with whole human beings. I slowly learned that the thing that raped my mother and fathered me was no living feeling man, but a malignant force of cancer that refused to be destroyed. It wasn't only her blood my mother gave to keep me alive, her youth and her own life was sucked up into the syringe that fed me."
James Eastman, Grave of the Vampire

A "dhampyr" is a child born of a vampire and a human. They are a prime example of Hybrid Power.

In vampire folklore, they were said to be normal humans, but would eventually become vampires after death, with the process repeating itself for generations. In modern fiction, they may 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. That being said, fire, beheading, and a stake to the heart are as lethal to them as they would be to a human. In some instances (video games especially), holy objects or magic will remain a problem for them even if they are good. Dhampyrs are often vampire hunters and hunters of their own kind, with their vampire parent often being at the top of the list. Just as some cultures once believed that murderers and suicides would rise as vampires, a child born approximately nine months after the death of the father might have been accused of this.

Whether or not a vampire can make babies the old-fashioned way depends on the rules for vampires in the setting, and even that often depends on their level of deadness; the ones closer to their humanity are usually the most likely to sexually reproduce. In any case, it is more common for the father to be the vampire in this mating. Not only is it easier for a male to do the deed and fly off whereas a female has to carry the baby to term (a huge vulnerability given their dangerous unlifestyles), but according to folklore, male vampires had far higher sex drives than their female counterparts and were often rapists who targeted human women because they were easier prey. There's also the Fridge Logic that if a female vampire is fertile, would she have the same finite number of eggs, monthly cycle, and inevitable menopause as a human. Sometimes the question of sexual reproduction is avoided altogether by just having a vampire (male or female) bite and turn a pregnant woman (see Blade).

Dhampyrs who receive all of a vampire's strengths and none of the weaknesses are usually tormented with an uneasy childhood when done right, either because Kids Are Cruel and they're hybrids surrounded by bigots, or because their vampire half is rightly feared by mortals. Of course, that's assuming their vampire parent is around.

The words "dhampyr" and "vampire" are closely related. When the Serbo-Croatian word vampir entered the German language, it became "vampire." It then entered English, nearly unchanged from its root. In Albanian, however, "vampir" underwent a larger change and became "dhampyr."

In the original Albanian, dhampir included both vampires and half-vampires and this use continues in some rural areas. In the context of modern pop culture, however, the meaning was modified to aid in distinguishing between full- and half-vampires.

This convention is not universal across languages. In some Slavic languages, for example, vampires and half-vampires alike are referred to with terms such as vampirič (вампирич), vampirovič (вампирович), or vampirdžiâ (вампирджия).

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


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Blood: The Last Vampire: Created by crossbreeding experiments between vampire hunters and captured Chiropterans.
    • In the live-action movie adaptation, Saya is a dhampyr born of the ancient (and apparently East Asian) vampire queen and a Japanese warlord/vampire-hunter, who the queen tricked into marriage and later murdered.
  • 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 a 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.
  • Call of the Night: Nazuna and Yamori go searching for clues as to Nazuna's past, since she can't remember her days of being human. Kabura reveals to her that she was never human: her mother, Haru, fell in love with and was impregnated by a human, before giving birth to Nazuna and disappearing. This should mean that she doesn't have a weakness (an object from a vampire's human days for which they have an especially strong emotional attachment) like most vampires do... until Kiku finds one in the form of her umbilical cord.
  • 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, though the word is not used in the manga. The vampire parent is, of course, the father (nothing is said about the mother).
  • In the hentai Greenhorn Vampiress, dhampyr (or "half-vampires", as they're called) are born naturally, have no trouble with sunlight, and don't need to drink blood...although they enjoy doing so. Provided they don't smile too widely, they can hide among humans quite well.
  • Gunbured × Sisters: Maria and her sister Noelle are both half-human, half-vampire. This means they have vampires' Super-Toughness but can walk in daylight without trouble and, while they do need to drink blood, don't have the overpowering thirst for it that normal vampires do (Maria specifically draws a distinction between bloodthirst and being hungry for food). Maria usually prefers blood bags when she needs it, but if she consumes blood directly from another human—invariably Dorothy—she transforms into a Super Mode of a Stripperiffically-clad female vampire and can wield the Optare. The Church, unfortunately, draws no distinction between dhampyrs and full vampires, meaning Maria would be executed on the spot if anyone but Dorothy and her closest allies ever realized it.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Dio Brando in an unusual variation. He first becomes a full vampire, but later steals his rival Jonathan Joestar's body by replacing Jonathan's head with his. The saga is also noted for having vampires as evolved superhumans rather than unholy demons.
    • The saga later reveals that Dio has four sons with different human women he slept with. Only one of them, Giorno Giovanna, displays distinct vampiric qualities that qualify him as a definite hybrid.
    • In the spin-off Crazy Diamond Demonic Heartbreak, the Big Bad Kazuki Karaiya is the grandson of a vampire. Like Dio's children, he doesn't show any vampiric traits.
  • The Karin manga:
    • Yuriya is 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. Unfortunately, she also has to drink blood, and she doesn't have any vampire powers, either. 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.
  • Youko from My Monster Secret has a vampire father and a human mother. Thus she has all the weakness of a vampire but downplayed for laughs: garlic makes her cry (the way onions do for regular humans), she's afraid of water, gets suntans extremely easily, the sight of a crucifix annoys her, and she can enter houses uninvited but feels really guilty about it. And luckily, she doesn't have her father's humongous size.
  • 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 they have. A dhampyr with a lot of vampire blood has more powerful magic but has to keep to 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.
  • Dhampyr are mentioned in Rosario + Vampire, as a mix between human and vampire parents, but never shown. They're called Dhampires, and because their genetics are not pure, which is a point of pride for Vampires, these individuals are ostracized and shunned by their pure-blooded brethren.
  • Totsugami: Nakiri is a quarter vampire. He has the ability to touch ghosts and he's much stronger than the average human. He doesn't seem to be as weak to sunlight compared to full-blooded vampires but he still hates to be out in the daylight.
  • In The Vampire Dies in No Time, dhampyrs are able to sense vampires, lack certain weaknesses like an aversion to sunlight, and can receive a temporary physical boost by taking blood pills. The most prominent is Handa Tou, the child of a human father and vampire mother, who uses his abilities to exterminate harmful vampires as a member of the Vampire Countermeasure Division.
  • Vampire Knight has a classification for vampires that depends on 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 
  • Felicia Book in American Vampire was conceived from a union between a human mother and a vampire from the American bloodline. While Felicia doesn't display any vampire powers, she exhibits immunity to vampire bites (one vampire recoiled away in disgust when biting her neck) and very slow aging (She is over 50 years old by the 1960s and still looks very young). Other vampires can sense her scent and identify her as one of their own kind, and one Ancient vampire during World War II declares that she is The Chosen One, but the significance of this is still unknown.
  • Blade: The main character Blade is a dhampyr. His mother was turned into a vampire while Blade was in utero — not quite the usual situation, and seems to have given Blade most of the good vampire bits (increased strength and speed, heightened senses, good dark vision, enhanced healing and slowed aging) without most of the bad bits (he's not vulnerable to sunlight, but does get cravings for blood). Later writers changed the definition of what the word means in the Marvel Universe to make him closer to the movie character.
  • In Nancy A. Collins' graphic novel Dhampire Stillborn, the protagonist Nicholas Gaunt is a dhampyr.
  • 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 a drop of blood from a dhamphyr (apparently because of its hybrid nature). Vice versa, also since Harlan is mainly human, he is able to suck blood from the Masters 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, albeit rarely; usually, they try to avoid a war between themselves, but they are very territorial.
  • Raptors: Aznar Akeba is the son of the vampire Drago and a mortal woman from India. He has pretty much all the strength of his father, such as durability and super strength, but at the cost of the occasional Horror Hunger.
  • 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.

    Comic Strips 
  • 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 knifer, 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 are definitely some—Saxon's Game Face has Milky White Eyes instead of the red ones found on true vampires, and his fangs are noticeably smaller.

    Fan Works 
  • In Blood Ties (Fullmetal Alchemist), dhampirs are considered half-vampires. They're humans who died after being infected by vampire blood. They're functionally immortal and have stronger senses than humans. Unlike true vampires, they burn in sunlight and they can be killed. Most dhampirs live as vampire hunters who survive on animal blood. Those who gain a taste for human blood are hunted down by others. Noa is a dhampir and she turns Edward into one to save his life after Envy tries to kill him.
  • Btvs: Seasons Rewrite: At the end of Season 3, the Powers That Be grant Angel half his redemption by making him half-human. According to Doyle, Angel still has the Game Face and fangs and can't go out during the daylight hours, but he should also supplement his blood diet with human food and is no longer immortal.
  • The incomplete Kim Possible fanfic In The Blood has Kim as the half-blood daughter of Drs. Rayne (aka Bloodrayne) and James Possible.
  • 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 shapeshifter.

    Film — Animated 
  • In Hotel Transylvania 2, Mavis (a vampire) and Johnny (a human) end up having a son named Dennis; in the franchise's continuity, it's not known for sure if Dennis will have any of his mom's vampire abilities until he turns five (which, according to Wayne, is the latest possible time on average for a vampire's fangs to come in). The movie's main arc is that Dennis's maternal grandfather, Dracula, desperately wants Dennis to have vampire abilities, largely in the hopes that it will prevent him and his parents from moving to Johnny's old hometown in California. In the end, Dennis is revealed to have inherited his mom's vampire abilities, which results in a Broken Aesop.
  • Dracula's daughter Sibella in Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School is implied to be this, seeing as she has no problems roaming around in daylight (nor does it appear to have any affect on her powers) but presumably remains weak to garlic seeing as it's the one topping the pizza she orders doesn't include.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Blade Trilogy: 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 the fact he doesn't have all the strengths, and is constantly fighting his blood addiction. Though to be fair, the Thirst isn't a "weakness". It boosts his powers exponentially. Blade himself just refuses to feed on people for the most part because it makes him feel less human. A normal vampire doesn't have that moral compass.
  • BloodRayne: Rayne is the product of Kagan, a vampire, raping her human mother. She is shown to lack several vampire weaknesses (e.g. being able to walk in daytime) though not all, but has to feed on blood still, which gives her a strong Healing Factor.
  • Daughter Of Darkness is about the eponymous woman who goes to Romania in search of her father, who is a vampire lord. Her arrival, and her heritage as a half-vampire causes a power struggle among the local bloodsuckers.
  • Dracula 2000: Van Helsing has dedicated himself to guarding Dracula's coffin, and uses Dracula's blood to extend his life. As a result, he passes a psychic connection to Dracula onto his daughter, the protagonist Mary.
  • In Embrace of the Vampire (2013), Charlotte is descended from the human child born of a woman who had been turned into a vampire. This granted the female descendants of this line great powers as Vampire Hunters.
  • 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.
  • The Monster Club: Vampires readily crossbreed with other monsters (werewolves and ghouls) and produce some weird hybrids, though apparently not with humans, who are just lunch.
  • While not born one, Black Hat from 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.
  • Tales of an Ancient Empire: Kara, the child of a human father and vampire mother.
  • 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 beyond an immunity to disease, but does have precognitive abilities.
  • The German film trilogy Die Vampirschwestern ("The Vampire Sisters") has its titular characters, the offspring of a human mom and a vampire dad. The first film centers on them struggling to accept their heritage, with one preferring her human half and the other preferring her vampire half.
  • Vamps: Little Goody at the end is apparently a dhampyr, perhaps because being conceived when her mother was still a vampire left her half one.
  • In Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, Dracula turns the innkeeper Veidt Smith into a "fractional lamia": an undead creature that is only part vampire, able to function in the daytime and having no need to drink blood and a slave of the Draculas.

    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.
  • Ed'Bocaj from Almost Night. It's stated that vampires aren't supposed to be able to breed. But apparently, she is part of a very old prophesy. She exhibits enhanced strength, is as evil as the other vampires, and was mentally mature since birth. She also physically aged rapidly and reached physical maturation in two days.
  • Blindsight:
    • Vampires (which are an extinct Human Subspecies, rather than the 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 the 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. In fact, it is hypothesized in-universe that there used to be a virus that could turn half-vampires into full vampires, similarly to how gene therapy experiments on autistics and sociopaths accidentally revived the species. So a vampire who couldn't find a mate of his own kind (as they are extremely territorial) could breed with a human, hibernate, and find their descendants decades later and bite them.
    • In a more benign instance, deep space travelers are given vampire hibernation genes to save life support and reaction mass on long trips. The crew of the Theseus spends five years "undead", then returns to "life" within hours.
  • Bloodline (2006) has an interesting version — while vampire men can produce children with human women, the babies are born human, and will need to be transformed into vampires later in life. However, they are implied to have better health and strength then normal humans, and it's also indicated that they may possess an innate bloodlust.
  • Cassandra Palmer: Dorina Basarab from Midnight's Daughter is a dhampyr, and as a result is prone to blacking out and going on murderous rampages.
  • The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Vlad Tod is the son of a vampire and a human, though he is referenced as a vampire.
  • Dhampyrs make up a small percentage of the population of Hyperion in Daybreak on Hyperion, descended from the original vampire lords. Most of their powers are sealed from a young age and they don't need to drink blood, but doing so does allow them to maintain a youthful appearance. However, they don't have the same regenerative powers of their vampire ancestors so they have to be selective about who they drink blood from or risk contracting blood-borne diseases.
  • Vandalieu, the protagonist of The Death Mage Who Doesn't Want a Fourth Time is reincarnated as a Dhampir. All Dhampirs share the characteristic of having heterochromia and living three to five times as much as their mortal parent. As the son of a Dark Elf woman and a Vampire, Vandalieu is probably going to live from 3000 to 5000 years of age.
  • Den of Shadows:
    • 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 Disassociative 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.
  • Referenced in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in which 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 novelization for Dracula's Daughter written by "Carl Dreadstone" (actually Ramsay Campbell), set in Universal Horror 'verse strongly implied that the eponymous vampire woman, is a dhampir, as Dracula attacked a pregnant woman, and the baby, a girl, born half human and half vampire.
  • Technically, the White Court of The Dresden Files are Dhampyres, all being the scion of a vampire and a human. They grow up like any other mortal until they get to be near their twenties, at which point their vampiric nature asserts itself. After their first kill, they become full vampires, though they can control their Hunger to varying degrees. There is a way out (for the Raiths, at least) - losing their virginity to someone they share true love with kills their vampiric half.
  • Half-vampires in Elcenia are... problematic. Vampire biology doesn't match up with that of other species at all, so a half-vampire has a malformed semi-random mixture of the two and will be sickly their whole life, if they're even viable enough to avoid miscarriage. Vampires tend to disapprove of mixed relationships as a result — except in the case of dragons, since dragon genetics override all this.
  • Empire of the Vampire: All brothers of the Ordo Argent are palebloods, children born of a vampiric father and mortal mother. The result of such a union, if any, is invariably a boy who inherits some traits of their undead sire, such as a measure of Super-Strength, Super-Speed, Super-Reflexes and a potent Healing Factor, as well as the talents particular to their own bloodline. However, along with these gifts, the palebloods inherit their father's curse as well, feeling the same burning hunger which drives them to consume the blood of the living, and radiating a similar, if more subdued, aura of dark charisma which either draws or repels everyone around them. To atone for the sin of their conception and salvage their own souls from damnation, palebloods are recruited into the Ordo Argent and tasked with ridding the world of their coldblooded progenitors so that no more such as they may be sired in the future.
  • Val from the Extreme Monsters book series is only half-vampire due to having a human mother.
  • Daniel Alfonz, in Family Bites by Lisa Williams. The son of a human father and a vampire mother (who subsequently 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.
  • High School D×D: One of Rias' bishops, Gasper Vladi, is the child of a vampire nobleman and a human woman. He only occasionally needs blood (full-blooded vampires can't consume anything else) and can (but initially refuses to) go out in the sunlight as he pleases.
  • 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.
  • Lost Souls (1992): The character named Nothing is technically a dhampyr (vampire father, human mother). Somewhat recursive as the story implies that a dhampyr is really just a juvenile vampire.
  • Dhampinella from the Mediochre Q Seth Series is one, however the author spells it "Dhampir".
  • In the book Morgan Detective Agency set in the The United States of Monsters universe. The protagonist, Ashley Morgan, is a dhampyr as is her best friend Tracy. Dhampyr are treated as property of their vampire parents and often traded or given as gifts. They have lesser versions of vampire powers and their blood is extra delicious, leading many to be eaten by their own family.
  • Dhampyrs are mentioned in My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister. They can choose to live as either a vampire or a human. If they choose the former, they can use their powers to hunt vampires, but if they are consumed by their power, they will become a full vampire. They can be born from the union of a vampire and human, or created artificially by cursing humans.
  • In The Nekropolis Archives, Devona Kanti is the daughter of a vampire father and a human mother. She isn't as graceful as full vampires, her pallor isn't as white, and she is more emotional. Sunlight doesn't harm her but suppresses her vampire powers. Additionally, while vampires have no reflection at all in mirrors, Devona has a blurred and foggy reflection.
  • Cat, the titular Night Huntress, is the product of a vampire father and her human mother. Bones rates her as weak as the weakest vampire when they meet. After training, she is much stronger than any vampire her age, including her father. At one point Bones calls her a Master vampire, she often gets the best of Masters in straight fights, and she even flies once briefly, which is an ability exclusive to Masters. She has the strength, speed, vision, and hearing of a vampire, and can sense their power when they are nearby. She doesn't heal instantly, her sense of smell is no better, and she can't hypnotize humans unless she drugs them first. Also, Cat is not bothered by silver or sunlight. One other advantage she has is that half-vampires are incredibly rare and she still has a pulse, so vampires think she's a human and underestimate her capabilities. When she becomes fully vampire, her strength increases significantly, she drinks undead blood instead of human (and temporarily absorbs special abilities from it), becomes vulnerable to silver, and gains the healing, olfactory, and hypnotizing abilities. Despite her strength, her aura is that of a young vampire, again causing her to be underestimated.
  • 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.)
  • Though no true dhampyr have been met in "No Need for a Core?", they have been confirmed to exist and Mordecai has incorporated desirable dhampir traits into his avatar.
  • 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.
  • The Pine Deep Trilogy: Mike Sweeney is the offspring of a human woman and an undead werewolf.
  • Malachi, one of the central characters in the second and third books in the Red Moon Rising series by Billie Sue Mosiman.
  • Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Headmistress Esmeralda, full name Esmeralda Catena Draclugh, is revealed in volume 10 to be a human mage with partial vampire ancestry, explaining her ability to devour the souls of mages she defeats in battle, which she drains along with their blood.
  • Vampires reproduce exclusively sexually in the Sabina Kane setting, so a wide variety of these occurs. The title character is half-mage, while one of the villains of the first book is half-demon. There's also a mention early on that any human with red hair has a trace of vampire blood.
  • 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 than 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 abilities 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.
  • 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. Note that the Hendees did their research, as Magiere is introduced running a con game extremely similar to what is described under Real Life prior to finding out that she's actually the genuine article. Her birth was only made possible thanks to an elaborate ritual performed by a powerful necromancer, and she's almost certainly the only one of her kind alive at the time of the books (though the fact that dhampir legends exist in-universe indicates that she's likely not the only one of her kind ever).
  • In The Shadowspawn, all living vampires are technically these, since the racially pure strain has been extinct for thousands of years. The current population has been eugenically bred from human hybrids, and even the purest still have a lot of human genetic material in them; older vampires are perhaps a quarter to half-vampire, while the purebloods are there by 75-80 % or so.
  • Slayer: Alek Knight is a vampire hunter, Anti-Hero, as well as being dhampyr.
  • 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.
  • Sonja Blue, from Nancy A. Collins' Sonja 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 Superpowered Evil Side, so it kinda evens out.
  • The Strain Trilogy: Mr. Quinlan, the "son" of the Master, was conceived during the Roman Empire when his pregnant mother was bitten by the Master (who, using the name "Thrax", was a secret advisor to Emperor Caligua). The Emperor made Thrax regular gifts of young women to feed upon, but Thrax, aware of the possibility of creating a dhampir, insisted that all the women be virgins, but the Emperor's servants messed up. Quinlan's mother escaped the Praetorian Guard and bore her child, which was named Quintus. Quinlan shares the vampires' immortality and enhanced strength, but is not dependent on blood to survive and can withstand sunlight.
  • 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.
  • The Twilight Saga:
    • Breaking Dawn has Renesmee Cullen, the child of Edward and human-at-the-time Bella. She's a half-vampire that shows both human and vampire traits. She is the reason for the main conflict with the Big Bad at the end of the last book, and her birth is the biggest plot element for most of said book.
    • Nahuel is another Dhampyr, and ends up being a major factor in stopping the Big Bad.
  • Unsurprisingly, Vamp! has dhampyrs, most prominently Watt, a gang leader. The dhampyrs are said to be impervious to sunlight, but overall weaker than normal vampires, incapable of ever reaching the same levels of strength.
  • In Vampire Academy, Moroi vampires are able to reproduce, and this produces a dhampir if the other parent is either a human or a dhampir. Two dhampirs cannot reproduce, however. Moroi vampires have Elemental Powers but are physically weak, while the dhampir offspring are fairly close to human, albeit with increased strength and speed. The offspring of a Moroi and dhampir will always be a dhampir, even if 99.9% of their ancestry is Moroi; there is no discernible difference from the offspring of a Moroi and human. In Moroi society, the dhampirs frequently serve as bodyguards for the Moroi against the Strigoi (another kind of vampire that is far more close to the "Hollywood" vampire in that they are Always Chaotic Evil and "reproduce" by turning other beings into them). The main character, Rose Hathaway, is a dhampir, her mother is a dhampir and her father is a Moroi.
  • Vampire Hunter D:
    • "D" is a dhampyr vampire hunter and the main character. The series began in 1983 and there now well over 20 novels, short stories, and spinoffs in Japan. D is the first true dhampyr in popular fiction, being the offspring of human and vampire with all the strengths and none of the weaknesses.
    • A second 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's identical twin brother shows up in a later novel.
  • The main protagonist of Zero Sight and his father. In-Universe the dhampyr are the children of a born (not turned) vampire and a normal human or mage.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Angel:
    • Angel's son Connor appears to be completely human as an infant, and later develops the superhuman strength, speed, fast healing and senses of a dhampyr. His body is not undead, though, so he's not as hard to kill as a vampire (who can recover from, say, being riddled with swords), though he can take a lot of punishment. He was born to two vampires (a predestined event that, until that point, had been thought impossible), which makes him sort of an odd example since his parentage is fully vampire rather than half, and yet not a vampire at all as he has no fangs and doesn't need blood. Like a vampire, he registers as a part-demon to anti-demon protection spells.
    • They get to play around with the implications of a vampire with a human son. Connor is not affected by the usual vampiric weaknesses, and so can go places and do things that Angel can't. In his first episode back from Quor'toth, Angel loses Connor when he can't follow him into the sunlight. On the other hand, Angel later has to shield Connor from gunfire.
  • 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.
  • Eddie Munster from sitcom The Munsters is half-vampire as he is the son of a vampiress mother and a non-vampire technically "human" father (well, made of human parts). He is a werewolf, so the legends that treat vampires and werewolves as the same creature were right in his case.
  • The Strain (TV series): Mr. Quinlan (Rupert Penry-Jones) was conceived during the Roman Empire when his pregnant mother was bitten by the Master. Quinlan shares the vampires' immortality and enhanced strength, but is not dependent on blood to survive and can withstand sunlight.

    Myths & Religion 
  • 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 man who'd move on soon enough.note 

    Tabletop Games 
  • The RPG All Of Their Strengths has this as one of the available race options (understandably, because the name itself is a Shout-Out to Blade).
  • While there are no playable Dhampyr in Bleak World they do appear as a hard difficulty enemy, the only thing more powerful in the vampire slayer category of the enemy list is The Chosen One.
  • 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.
    • 4th Edition introduces the dhampyr races; they're broken into a series of feats instead of being a separate race per se.
    • 4th Edition later brought out the Vryloka. Considered "living vampires", they share some of the benefits (increased lifespan and speed/dexterity), and can choose whether to count as "human" or "undead" for each specific effect against them, but none of the weaknesses. They also gain an ability that gives them a quick boost once an encounter. They can also take "utility" powers at later levels, which are everything from "drink the blood of a slain enemy once a day to not have to eat or drink", to shapeshifting into a wolf or a bat, to "raise a dead ally back to life by feeding it your blood, and if they're human they can become Vryloka". They're still not considered full vampires, though; that's a class instead of a race, and just so happen to have primary/secondary stats in line with the Vryloka's racial bonuses, and were introduced in the same book.
    • Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition would bring Dhampyr back in the "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft" source book, with an expanded set of explanations for how one could become a Dhampyr. While the traditional "one of your parents was a vampire" remains, new ones such as having been a failed attempt to become a real vampire, some form of parasite has made the character one, or that someone is a reincarnation of a vampire, allow the player to chose how to tackle their half-vampire origins. It is treated as simply a Humanoid for gameplay balance though.
    • Ravenloft:
      • The demiplane has them 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.
      • Ravenloft also has a dhampir-like creature called a Vorlog, which is essentially a cursed Vampire Vannabe; they were in the process of being turned into "vampire companions" (uniquely powerful vampire spawn created to be Mindlink Mates with their "sire", resulting in their being commonly known as Brides and Grooms) when the vampire responsible got killed. The result left them technically alive, but with a bevvy of vampiric strengths (Charm Person, fast healing, ability drain and more) and weaknesses (hurt by direct sunlight, avoiding holy symbols), as well as being driven insane with the need for a "companion" to replace their own. But because their vision of their "soulmate" is so idealized, nobody can live up to it, so they inevitably kill their "surrogate" and go looking for a new one.
  • Palladium 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.
    • The Wampyr also have an instinctive knowledge of how to kill the vampires. They're pretty much the evolutionary response to the undead and vampires will trip over themselves trying to kill them.
  • 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.
    • The dhampir race was further expanded on in the Advanced Race Guide, and again, in much more detail, in the Blood of the Night supplement, which also touched on vampires in general. The former introduced two racial class archetypes for dhampirs while the latter introduced four heritages; alternate racial stats that varied depending on which type of vampire the dhampir had for a parent.
    • The second edition of Pathfinder features dhampirs as a versatile heritage, meaning that any race and ancestry can add a bit of half-vampire goodness to their background.
  • Existent (and a valid PC option) but exceptionally rare in Unhallowed Metropolis. There are maybe 100 of them in all of London, and although some of them are human/vampire hybrids, the majority are those who survived the vampiric infection without receiving a complete blood transfusion within a week of being infected. That's the only way for a vampire infectee to become human again — after this point, those who die of the infection become vampires, while those who survive become dhampiri.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade: A dhampir is the result of a Thin-Blood vampire (usually of the 15th or 16th Generation) 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" being one of the main parts.
      • One notable ability that they can have (depending on the storyteller— see the Time of Thin Blood 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. A werewolf who's been Embraced has all the weaknesses of both races, loses almost all werewolf powers, is despised by vampires, who usually won't teach it vampire powers... oh, and is immediately inflicted with a permanent supernatural suicidal depression. The gamemakers got even less subtle with other Changing Breeds 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 yang-aspected chi when they wake up. If a vampire mother ever ran out of that kind of chi in the course of nine months, she would miscarry, while a vampire father need only spend it on the night of conception. Ironically, both parents can be vampires. This is very rare, however.
  • Vampire: The Requiem introduces the dhampyr 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 dhampyr 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.

    Theater 
  • Sera Myu has Bloody Dracul Vampir, daughter of the Vampire Count Dracul and Le Fay, a human woman.
  • SQS's ROMEO in the Darkness features the lingering soul of a half-vampire, Romeo, who just wants to reach out to his human half-brother.

    Video Games 
  • BlazBlue:
    • 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).
    • In the spin-off Visual Novel Bloodedge Experience, Naoto is one too, thanks to Raquel, both clear expies of the above.
  • Jeremy, the hero of Blood Knights went from a 100% human Vampire Hunter to a half-vampire hybrid after having the vampiress, Alyssa, bound on his body in an attempt to save his life. He's not too happy about it, to say the least.
  • BloodRayne: The protagonist Rayne was born to a human woman raped by the vampire king Kagan, and seeks to avenge her existence upon him. 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.
  • In the second Boktai game, Solar Boy Django becomes one after being bitten by his fully vampirized father, since Django's brother Sabata put Django through the Piledriver to purify him before the vampire blood could take hold of Django completely.
  • 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 a notable weakness to water, 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. His mixed heritage would give him much angst as he would be subjected to Fantastic Racism by humans even as a child, and a particularly nasty incident had him snapping and going on a rampage that killed his human mother. Much of his in-game quotes also indicate a burning hatred for Darkstalkers, and seeks to kill them all in hopes that he could purge himself of his "cursed" blood. Alas, he ends up falling to his vampiric side anyway in his ending, and the third game implies that Anita, the young psychic girl he adopted, had to put him out of his misery.
  • In The Elder Scrolls series, there have been known instances of Tamriellic vampires producing offspring with non-vampires. Any traits inherited from the vampire parent are pretty mild, however. One of the most famous instances is Agronak gro-Malog, aka "The Grey Prince", champion of the Imperial City Arena during the time of Oblivion. He takes the news rather poorly.
  • It's pretty clear that the unnamed baby in Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location's Show Within a Show The Immortal and the Restless is one of these: human mother, vampire father. Despite said vampire father ignoring all the signs and claiming the baby isn't his.
  • Nightmare Robin in Infinite Crisis: An incarnation of Damian Wayne from a universe based loosely on the Batman Vampire trilogy, Robin inherited the vampire curse from his mother, Talia, but when he saw what being turned did to his father, he became determined to fight against it.
  • League of Legends: This is one speculated backstory for Evelynn, the sexy blue-skinned assassin, prior to the sweeping lore change that turned her into a succubus.
  • Nocturne (1999): Svetlana Lupescu from the first act of this PC game.
    • Foreign language bonus: 'Lupescu' means 'wolf-like' in Romanian.
  • Retro Mud: Dhampirs have the thirst of vampires, their strength, agility, and senses of vampires without their sunlight vulnerability and are determined undead hunters. They are also incredibly short-lived, with a maximum age of nineteen.
  • Scribblenauts: One of the many summonable creatures and is one of the few things that scares vampires.
  • Vampire Night: You control one of two vampire hunters that are both dhampyr.

    Visual Novels 
  • 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 and speculation that Rin can heal from serious injuries by covering her in grave soil.

    Webcomics 
  • When Jillian in Erfworld finally Pops her royal heir, it has Signamancy mixed with that of the Transylvitan vampires courtesy of Vinny. Her son Albert has purple eyes, which is halfway between his mother's blue and the vampire red as well as grayish skin. He has no fangs, but he can fly like a Transylvitan. The odd thing is that Erfworlders don't actually reproduce sexually so even though he looks like Vinny Doombats his 'father' was not actually necessary for his existence.
  • Paranatural: Near the end of chapter 5 it's revealed that Cody is the son of local vampire and businessman Davy Jones. He's described as being "50% monster" and he and his dad are bound by vampire rules. This is one of the motives Cody had to become president of the student council: makes the school a place that his father cannot take over without his permision.

    Web Videos 
  • The Out Crowd: Roxy after being bitten by a Nosferatu vampire is described as being 30% vampire. An anti-body serum temporarily reduces this to 10%.

    Western Animation 
  • Alucard in Castlevania is the son of Dracula and Lisa just like in the original games. However, he is depicted as superior to most of his kind, being stronger and much faster than other vampires, and keeping their typical powers like shape-shifting and telekinesis. He is also immune to sunlight. He has more human-like traits such as crying normal tears instead of blood, being able to consume garlic, and lacking long claws and pointy ears. Power-wise, Alucard significantly falls behind his father, but that is no small feat considering that Alucard can kill most normal vampires in combat effortlessly. Though with that said, in the Final Battle two of Dracula's Vampires Generals could give Alucard trouble e.g Chō who could No-Sell Alucard's speed with her smoke powers, and Dragoslav was strong enough to punch Alucard out of the air. Without Trevor and Sypha backing him up, Alucard might've been overwhelmed. Also, Trevor, a "normal" human, could still match Alucard in a sword fight (even though Alucard was likely holding back against Trevor). Despite being referred to as a "vampire" by everyone, Alucard leans more towards his human side than his vampire side. Uncommonly compared to many other examples of this trope, his siring was from a pairing of love and affection; he jokes that despite his highly irregular origin, he still had a better upbringing than Trevor Belmont. His rampage fight with his father through Castle Dracula ends in Alucard's childhood bedroom where Dracula realizes in horror what he was intending to do to Alucard, and submits to Alucard staking him.
  • In the final season of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, we learn that the main trio's Black and Nerdy friend, Irwin, is at least one-quarter vampire (due to Count Dracula being his paternal grandfather) in addition to being half-mummy. Irwin's father, Dick, is (technically) a straight example, since his mother (Irwin's paternal grandmother), Tanya, is technically a human and not a vampire. While Irwin's shown to have some vampire abilities (including having a weakness to garlic), Dick's never shown having any of his dad's vampire abilities.

Alternative Title(s): Dhampir, Half Vampire, Dhampire

Top