Editing Vampire Broods (section)

===Broods and Bloodlines===

While some Vampires are solitary predators most tend to cultivate Broods as a means of having loyal retainers and disposable pawns.  These Broods are centered around a Progenitor and their Progeny, but also include other horrors to enact their dark schemes.  With very little effort most Vampires can raise Ghouls: reanimated semi-sentient necrophages that are feral and ravenous but instinctively loyal to their masters.  Vampires will additionally enslave mortals into their service via their strange powers and addictive blood, Thralls to act as agents in human society and daytime guardians of their crypts.  There are other Vampiric creatures, horrors spawned through dreadful powers and alchemical Blood-Pits, but such things appear only in the most advanced stages of a Vampiric infestation and rarely among individual Broods.

Pureblood Vampires hold tyrannical authority over their Broods, enforced by their superhuman willpower and control over the Ichor, while younger and weaker Halfbloods and Thinbloods are subservient to them... for a time.  A competent Pureblood can rule their Brood unchallenged for decades or even centuries, while an incompetent Pureblood that does not control their underlings is doomed to be devoured by the hungry fangs of a usurper.  A wise Vampire recognizes when an underling has grown strong enough and knows it is time to send their Progeny elsewhere to start plans and Broods of their own, propagating their vile race.

If a Brood grows in numbers and influence it will begin to branch off into smaller Broods which in turn create Broods of their own, and so begets a Bloodline.  Bloodlines can be as few as a couple generations of Broods to hundreds of infestations over entire worlds, but all share a common ancestor.  Vampires from the same Bloodline might have radically different traits and mutations, perhaps even open hostilities between Broods, but they can all be united by the Ichor and the will of their elders.