#earlier editions gave you vampiric ilithids drawing energy from the cerebrospinal liquid ! created by the courtesy of another Zarovich ...x

[hikarinokusari]

Many of earlier editions informations have been discarded in 5e to make things simple, so 5e various books are lacking in giving lore or descriptions. Especially with undeads !

You won't have a lot of answers in CoS about vampires and vampirism unfortunately. You may find a little about their psyché in the descriptions from Monster guide (Volo's entry ? I'm not sure if the complete description is in Volo mb).

The "about" of D&D monsters is more described in earlier editions usually - lore and mechanically wise. Though some were changed heavily (for the sake of simplicity 5e is wanting to have).

But ! You have various answers to these questions in Van Richten's Guide to the Vampires from Ad&D2 (esp the digestive part). Imho it's the most complete kind of sources you'll find for Vamps in dnd. It's doesn't go in lenghth as like how the blood keeps being "fresh" or at least liquid inside of them, but there are interesting part of dnd lore about how they work. As in how they organ change and become tiny tiny. How some can eat human food or not, why they can be allergic to a specific food or favor things ...

I can share the VR guide book (english or french) with you via DM if you want to read it :)

VR guide ravenloft (5e) isn't really satisfying in terms of vampirism as well. The book is really good ... but if you want the more recent lore gives little to nothing is very substancial for vampires in there.

i need a guide to d&d vampirism because i have many questions i very badly want answers to

no heartbeat, no pulse presumably? but vampire spawn can be fed from, so what keeps the blood in them... fresh enough and not stagnating/coagulating?

how does consuming blood work, mechanically. do vampires excrete waste. do they somehow derive nutrition from every single aspect of the blood. is it more of a symbolic magical consumption, like being sustained bc it's 'lifeblood' and they gain strength from inducing weakness in others, or is it really truly like any other form of consumption.

i've got a million of these and I Want To Know