Final Death

Final Death is how vampires refer to actual, full, permanent death, as opposed to the state of undeath in which they usually exist. It is not meaningfully different from death for most other beings, except that vampires, as a consequence of being able to survive in several half-alive states, use the phrase to distinguish it from "pseudo-deaths" such as their normal existence or torpor.

It is famously difficult to kill a vampire; even young and inexperienced ones are exceptionally strong and hardy compared to mortals, and most have at least a few supernatural powers up their sleeves to help them survive most dangers. Final Death usually comes in the form of a catastrophic accident such as the collapse of an entire building, or else at the hands of other vampires (or, occasionally, hunters or shapeshifters) themselves.

Beheading

The simplest and easiest way to ensure that a vampire achieves Final Death is simply to decapitate them. Although vampires can repair truly hideous injuries in creative and often stomach-churning ways, they cannot ignore decapitation, and removing (or fully destroying) the head and brain kills them permanently.

Vampire scientists are not completely sure of the theory behind this, given that they were not alive to begin with, but theories range from the brain still being necessary to relay thoughts and impulses throughout the body to the blood lubricating it being the most concentrated in the body to the curse of Caine having mercy upon the descendants of Abel by giving them a fighting chance.

It should be noted that while decapitation is guaranteed to kill almost every vampire in existence, there have been a handful of cases in which it did not do so and the vampire survived. How true these stories are is debatable, as it is just as easy for a vampire to avoid being killed via judicious use of their powers and later lie about cheating death for status and influence, but vampires of advanced age or who possess high levels of the Dominate discipline have demonstrated shocking powers of survivability in the past.

Exsanguination

While exsanguination does not necessarily automatically kill a vampire, it is the most common cause of accidental Final Death. If a vampire is injured to the point of having to use all of their blood to heal their injuries, they typically fall into torpor; however, if the injuries are bad enough to continue bleeding or causing further damage even after this point, the vampire is likely to die in their sleep. This often happens to vampires who have been injured badly enough that they cannot survive, but not so badly that they can't escape and hope to find help.

It should go without saying that exsanguination from diablerie also results in Final Death, although it does so in a particularly heinous and morally reprehensible manner.

Fire and Sunlight

Fire and sunlight are two of few natural ways to fully kill a vampire. Vampires are severely injured by burns, which they must heal almost as slowly as humans and with a great deal of blood supply; this means that any burn injuries that the vampire cannot heal due to starvation or being trapped may end up killing them. Burning a vampire to ash with fire (or via exposure to sunlight, which works the same way) will generally consign them to the Final Death fairly quickly, although there are again a few rumored cases of especially hardy or ancient vampires surviving such treatment.

While fire and sunlight seem like they should be bigger contributors to the vampire death rate, they tend to lag behind the others simply because vampires are utterly and instinctively terrified by them and avoid them at all costs, often entering Frenzy at the mere sight of a candle flame. (They are, however, the preferred tools of Hunters, who have been perfecting how to kill a vampire most efficiently for as long as vampires have been in existence.)

== Catastrophic Injury ==

Finally, there are just some injuries that are so severe that even a vampire's supernatural physical body cannot absorb them. Anything that fully discorporates the body will kill a vampire; being shoved into a woodchipper or submerged in an acid vat might take longer to kill them than it would to kill a mortal, but it'll do the job. Explosions, building collapses, and threshers are other examples of incidents that may kill a vampire even without the traditional methods.

Of course, even when it comes to being diced into tiny pieces, some maintain that elders are not necessarily bound by all the restrictions of lesser vampires and might rise to walk the night again.

Misconceptions

Many of the supposed vehicles of Final Death in pop culture are flat-out inaccurate (an issue that has brought many a new ghoul or hunter to grief). Stakes, holly, crucifixes, silver, holy water, garlic, and other items that are used to ward off or even kill vampires in folklore and in media are at best mildly annoying or upsetting to some vampires, at worst completely ignorable by most of them, and they are in no hurry to advertise this fact, since it gives them the element of surprise when Hunters or other antagonists come after them.