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The creatures known as a new vampire (or Nouveau Vampire) was a vampire sired after the creation of a new Seed of Wonder. These vampire differed from their normal counterparts in that they possessed newer and greater powers than the latter and even less vulnerabilities. The reason for this was the restoration of magic on Earth paving the way for new universal rules to be formed. Because most humans viewed Dracula as the standard model for vampires, any vampires created following the restoration of magic possessed many of his abilities.

History

After magic was restored to Earth by the new Seed, a red-haired Santa Rosita woman named Vicki awoke as a newly-sired, fully-intelligent vampire with immunity to sunlight and the power to morph into a giant bat. She and a pack of similar vampires formed a temporary alliance with the Slayer Buffy Summers to exterminate the Santa Rosita zompire epidemic. Buffy timed the battle with the hordes of zompires to end at sunrise, hoping to drive Vicki and her friends away so Buffy could regroup before inevitably having to kill Vicki and friends. However, much to Buffy's surprise, Vicki and her friends were unharmed by the sunshine, and began to transform into bats, panthers, and wolves. The witch Willow Rosenberg recognized the similarity of their powers to those of Dracula and Toru who gained them through magic.

Appearance

New vampires were almost physically distinguishable from regular vampires, except their eyes were bright red instead of yellow.

Powers and Abilities

Not only do the new breed of vampires possess new powers, such as shapeshifting and daywalking, but it also turns out that the normal physical powers inherent in a vampire are vastly superior to the old breed.

  • Superior vampire strength: The new breed possess greater physical strength than their ancestors. Vicki, a newborn vampire, was able to push a car to its side easily. Dawn questioned if Spike, a 100+ vampire, could do that, but only got a snarky reply, which Dawn took as a "no".
  • Superior durability: The new vampires are vastly more difficult to stake than the old breed, requiring much more effort for human to stake them; in some cases, even the Slayers have difficulty in staking them. Angel even described their skin as being hard as a rhino hide.
  • Daywalking: New vampires are able to walk in the sun with no ill effects, at least until Buffy considered them too powerful and had Vicki, the leader of the new vampires reluctlantly agree to mute their shapeshifting powers during the day after Harmony Kendall suggested using the same lore as Bram Stoker's Dracula.
  • Shapeshifting: The new breed possessed the same powers as Dracula which allowed them into shift into bats, wolves, panthers, bee swarms and mist, but with the inital advantage of being able to shift during the day. This was changed when Harmony suggested using the same rules that Dracula is forced to abide by. The power of shapeshifting is not actually unique to Dracula or new vampires, because, like Hypnosis, it can be learned by any vampire but requires a high level of willpower. Dracula's "secrets" are actually just rituals to amplify his will.

Weaknesses

With the exception of sunlight, the new Vampires possess the common weaknesses of vampires, such as holy relics and impalement through the heart with a wooden object, though they are much harder to stake, even with Slayers struggling with it.

Known new vampires

Trivia

  • The new vampires' ability to resist staking is actually a more realistic take on staking, because in real life, the rib cage is actually designed to prevent or reduce damage done by impaling; therefore, it would take someone with a considerable amount of strength to run a piece of wood through a human body. It can be theorized that the bodies of the original vampire were simply severely weak to wood, thus allowing anyone to stake them with ease.
    • Nevertheless, the new vampires are harder than humans in this regard. For Slayers, it is not difficult to impale a human with a stake, as Faith demonstrated when she accidentally killed Allan Finch.
  • Three of them were sired by Drusilla. This shows that now probably all vampires will sired the new vampires to be, regardless of whether they are sired by another new vampire, or of an old vampire. The old vampires, however, can no longer be sired.

Appearences

Buffy Season Nine

Buffy Season Ten

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