The Culture Column
These vampires are best thought of as machines after a fashion. Blood's a fuel. A vampire will not go mad with hunger if it starves. Vampires know when they need blood and except in the early months never have a problem with wanting to get it. Even the hungriest vampire is still perfectly in control of his mental faculties because this is the best way to ensure that the vampire will keep on living. He needs no encouragement to drink blood and a frenzy would only endanger him.
Because they don't think like people do. A vampire, from the very moment of its Change, no longer considers an intelligent being lacking the vampiric condition to be more than a pig- an intelligent animal perhaps, but still meant for food. Younger vampires may cling to other beliefs for their first few months, out of habit and out of shock, but they shed this quickly as they adjust and many vampires who took the Change willingly, and with reverence and foreknowledge for what it meant, never have to suffer through this period at all.
Because vampires are predators of mankind, and other intelligent creatures as well if they exist. If the vampiric condition was designed, then it would surely not include such flaws as the ability to empathize with the prey and if it were natural then it is not out of the realm of possibility that, through some quirk of chance, one vampire's Change carried with it a change in mindset and that was all the edge it needed to prove fitter than the others. A vampire with no problems about eating humans is going to out-compete all the rest in short order.
The Division Between the Living and the Dead
The living are cattle. Every vampire knows this as firmly as she knows the color of the sky at noontime. There's never any question about it once the vampire has settled into her new existence after the Change. More dependent on tradition than natural instinct is the perception that there is something… wrong with living culture. Vampires do not have any problem with making use of raw knowledge and tools even if they are created by mortals. A hacksaw is a hacksaw is a hacksaw, and a book on chemistry is a book on chemistry whose accuracy and value is not dependent on whether the author is bound by the mortal coil and mortal frailties. Keeping up with the times is actually a major concern for most vampires and it's rare to find an old vampire who doesn't know how to drive a car or use the internet. Probably, that elder dating back to the Crusades knows more about some technology than you. Not being able to keep up with the times is a fast track to death.
What vampires do have an issue with is mortal literature, music, sculptures, and other art forms. A vampire who reads A Brief History of Time will not be regarded any differently by her peers; she will need to hide her copy of Gone with the Wind, however, if she does not want to be seen as having a fetish which is far from acceptable in society. Vampires who dabble in human cultures are informed that they are making a mistake or else ostracized if they are old enough to know better.
It is not proper, vampires say, for predators to share in the works of their prey. The lion must not lie down with the lamb and it must not listen to the lamb's latest musical composition, either, even if that lamb is named Beethoven. They do not lack the same things which drive people to make and enjoy creative works however and in their long history vampires have created their own styles and own works. They have managed to develop a collection of work which is impressive in both size and quality. After matters of survival are taken care of a vampire has little else to do but indulge in whatever hobbies she has, and to continually get better at these activities over decades and centuries. Perhaps they lack Beethoven, but they have music which would have driven that man to envy if only he could hear it (and not all vampire music can be heard even by the most perfect of human ears).
Mind
One of the things which influences vampires the most is the way that their minds work. There is no natural limit on how long a vampire can live, and vampires know this. From the second that the Change fully sets in, a vampire has a complete understanding of the fact that most of the problems she will face from now on can be solved by waiting it out. Because of this vampires most often operate in two different time scales which they usually refer to as “reactive-time” and “meditative-time.” The former refers to snap judgments and reflexive actions made within a couple of seconds (which would actually be slightly long for reactive-time), like moving out of the way of an attack while the latter refers to the majority of actions taken by a vampire, which are made only after much deliberation. Some vampires will take years to come to a decision about something.
And that's just fine, because a vampire still has a potential eternity ahead of him. It pays to take time to deliberate on things before committing to a course of action. A human on the other hand has less than a century to live regardless of his decision. Maybe not even half a century. A human who wants to test his car and make sure that it works well will probably turn it on, drive it down the street and back, test the breaks, flip the lights on and off, and call it a done job. A vampire is more likely to take it apart piece by piece, inspect each part, and then make sure that it's putting everything back together exactly how it needs to go, and then drive it around for a bit in controlled conditions before finally considering it to be in perfect working order. Vampires take less risks and spend more time on things because it pays to play it safe when you don't age.
Puzzle pieces fit together better in a vampire's mind, too. They may take a little bit longer to get to the end than a human does, but that's just typical deliberate slowness. All but the stupidest of vampires would be able to get a mathematics doctorate with barely any difficulty. The equations just seem to assemble themselves once the basic concepts are understood and it's a rare vampire who needs to write any of the problem down on paper.
Vampires have a curious relationship with sensory data and their reactions to it. Like it was said before a vampire doesn't launch into a feeding frenzy if she's hungry. She is simply aware of her ever-increasing need for blood by way of a sensation which is distinctly “hunger” without being unpleasant. To give another example vampires are aware when they are hurt but they are perfectly capable of pushing past their reactive-time actions and continue to subject themselves to that pain. Vampires are not masochistic and only allow themselves to suffer further pain when there's a reason for it. When it comes to baser drives they sometimes don't feel anything at all. For example, vampires are, as a rule, completely asexual (and a significant minority are even aromantic).
Vampire Art, Vampire Senses
First of all, vampires don't have the exact senses that humans do and this has a noticeable effect on their artwork. It's obvious that a vampire would have better night vision than a human. Their sight suffers in bright light, which also causes discomfort in their eyes, and so their visual art is made in dim light (although they can see well enough in dim light, so this doesn't affect things too much). Because they are tetrachromatic (four types of cone cells in the eye instead of three) vampires seen a wider range of color. A piece of vampire artwork might be brilliantly colored to human eyes or it might be quite plain but to other vampires there will be dozens if not hundreds of different shades clearly visible in what the human perceives as being a single color. Stylistically, representations of actual things is seen as the province of sculpture. Paintings and drawings are usually abstract, portraying things which can't be portrayed as easily in sculpture (although vampires have also done some very impressive things in three dimensions too). The nature of the vampire mind lends itself easily to algorithmic art and they've been making it for centuries before humans conceived of it, making it perhaps one of the few art forms which can be said to be truly more vampire than human.
As alluded to earlier vampires have a wider range of hearing which is overall more sensitive. The low end of their range is just slightly below a human's while they can hear a full octave higher and a vampire can pinpoint, within an inch, the location of a sound within ten feet of his position. Vampires are nocturnal after all and while they have better night vision this is far from their most important sense. Their music is usually fast and because so much of it exists in an auditory range normal humans can't access, the common screeching and nonsensical pauses and lengths of silence often turn it into just… noise. Bad noise. Sort of like heavy metal except that this time it's not the musician's fault. While smell is often linked to memory in humans, vampires have a stronger connection between hearing and memory and their increased range and sensitivity has lead to music being the most prized of their art forms. Along with hearing vampires depend strongly on a sense of smell which is comparable to a scent hound's. Their olfactory capability has also lead to vampires developing “scent concerts,” arranging smells in particular sequences both spatially and in when and how they are revealed.
Vampires are not able to truly eat normal food but ingesting blood along with the rest can help them keep it down for a few hours (or for as long as they keep ingesting blood regularly). Food, then, is just as much of an art form with vampires as it is with humans, albeit with shades of Roman indulgence and subsequent vomiting, which is noticeably absent from most human societies today. Vampires experience bitter and salty flavors most intensely of all, with no aversion to either even in strong amounts, and sweet flavors are dulled somewhat. All of their food, as a matter of course, includes blood— a vampire can certainly keep it down for a couple of minutes even without blood but she won't enjoy it as much without at least a subtle touch of that metallic flavor. The blood of intelligent beings, of course, is preferred (not only is it the only nutritious form of blood but it's also the tastiest), and the flavor of adrenaline in that blood is especially savory.
Finally, vampires have a strong literary tradition. Many of their stories are spread orally as often as they are in written form and some are by custom never written down and written versions of these stories are destroyed. Among other mnemonic devices which vampires use, music is composed specifically for that story in order to fix the words in with the beat. In fact many vampire stories might be better described better as songs which happen to last for up to hours. Many of their stories take place either in short periods (there is an entire genre of stories which last exactly fifteen minutes from beginning to end) or over generational lengths of time, and in either case involve only vampire characters. The several hundred thousand word novel called The Golden Children, written in the early Twentieth Century, is still highly scandalous for its inclusion of a human protagonist and in some places is considered to be as bad as or worse than actual human literature.
Traditionally no reference is made to a character's history prior to her Change. “Bad” characters do not move with the times but stay firmly where they are, and indulge in human arts or even interact regularly with mortals. “Good” characters, on the other hand, keep on the right side of the dividing lines between the living and the undead, are virtuosos of one or more styles of art such as watercolors or violin, and adapt so quickly and easily to situations that humans might consider the protagonists of some novels to have no consistency to them. A vampire on the other hand would realize that the character is simply being a proper vampire and is changing as the situation demands.
Vampires have no art forms which rely on their sense of touch, which is actually very faint in comparison to the tactile senses of the living and registers only pain and basic degree of pressure without regard for texture.
Religion and Philosophy
Vampire ethical philosophy seems to have a few traces of legalism in that it teaches that in their society rules need to be clearly stated and that the consequences for breaking those rules must be similarly clear. Authority, too, rests not in individuals but in the positions which they hold. Their society is not highly structured however and this system is followed not by emperors or princes of the undead but by leaders of “gangs” of one to three dozen vampires. These gangs typically carve out specific territories for themselves where they have exclusive hunting rights and access to other resources. Most cities, if there's been a vampiric presence there for long enough, will have two or three gangs more influential than the rest (if indeed there are any others). Individual gangs throwing their weight around usually get mobbed, and whenever all of the gangs try to deal on a mostly-equal level (usually because they just overthrew the previous gangs which were dominating the scene) a few of them will always prove to be powerful enough to kick the others back down.
Whether it's the Buddha on Earth or Pelor in Eberron, it's a religion for the lambs, not the wolves. Vampires typically either have no particular religion (generally leaning more toward agnosticism or else an acceptance that divine powers exist but that vampires neither must nor should worship them) or follow a distinctly vampiric religion called the Uplifting Truth, which is not a truth which is uplifting, but a truth about an uplifting or lifting-up.
At the focus is a nameless goddess, called by titles such as the Redeemer, the Cold, the All-Knowing, and the Glorious. She is the second living thing to have existed (the first is Her father, who She dismembered in order to create the universe from His body) and She created the first vampire.
Upon his death a vampire will be examined by the All-Knowing and will be given a judgment according to his works, noting especially whether or not he obeyed the decree to not touch the culture and ways of his prey but only that of his own people.
Vampires who fall short in Her eyes- most likely by feeding irresponsibly and without regard for others of his kind, taking upon himself the ways of the herd, blaspheming against the Cold, or displaying excessive pride where it is not warranted- will be mauled in spirit and cast into the barren places where they will live a half-life for the rest of eternity. These cursed souls are forced to wander aimlessly and to stay away from civilization, and vampires tell stories of ghosts who prey upon even vampires when the latter venture too far away from where the hunting is good. Vampires who do pass muster, however, become angels of the goddess, sitting at Her right hand until the end of time, ruled only by She Who Is Ruled By None.
A few examples of the sort of algorithmic work that a vampire might make.
