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I have a character who is a vampire and I am wondering if there is any justification for him being able to sleep. He is dead, doesn't need to eat or drink outside feeding off others, and all your other normal vampire things.. But what about sleep?

I thought of making the rules in this universe that vampires need to sleep every so often to recharge their energy, especially since they possess some super human abilities and thus expend more energy...but would that make sense if they are dead? Would their bodies need to recharge? Would they have energy to expend? For that matter would a dead body be able to generate more energy and would they even have any stamina to do anything?

Or do I just need to accept they are supernatural and vampires just do impossible things?

F.N. Keys
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  • A related question is anatomically correct vampires. – JBH Aug 25 '18 at 04:18
  • Also, Welcome to Worldbuilding.SE! We're glad you could join us! When you have a moment, please click here to learn more about our culture and take our [tour]. Please note that we recommend waiting 24 hours before you accept an answer. We have contributors around the world and the nature of people is to skip a closed question. It may not change who you accept, but you could miss out on a lot of useful answers. – JBH Aug 25 '18 at 04:19
  • Those are two questions. So far people have only answered about sleep, so please remove the part about stamina and ask it in another question if you want. – Nobody Aug 25 '18 at 10:52
  • Also when asking about stamina it's important to know whether the vampire is allowed to have a pulse, so when you ask about it in a new question be sure to include that. – Nobody Aug 25 '18 at 10:54

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Clay gave some good suggestions above, I'll mention two other options:

Vampires unlike most other undead don't look obviously undead. Why? Maybe they decay like any other animate corpse, but when they "sleep" they can turn some of their animating energy to repairing the decay.

Vampires sleep as an essentially evolutionary adaption. When vampires are active all the time, they end up killing themselves off either by being more likely to go out in the sun, or trying to engage in extra predatory behavior beyond that needed to survive (just as domestic cats will hunt birds and mice even if they have enough food), which gets them noticed. Over time, the vampires which survived were those whose lineage had a compulsion (either a psychological quirk or an inherited magical flaw) which forced them to sleep.

JoshuaZ
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    Yeah, and drinking blood would mean that is what would be used to repair your body why you sleep, so it makes sense. – WolvesEyes Aug 25 '18 at 03:55
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We sleep so our minds can rest and process information. I assume your vampire does the same.

Except your vampire is mostly the supernatural type so just handwavium it and call it a day.

Possible supernatural reason: He is supposed to be eternally asleep, so he needs X amount of hours a day/week/month.

Or he sleeps only on the new moon or something idk, supernatural it up. If you're going full supernatural really go with it.

Clay Deitas
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