EDIT 2:
New art, old description folks! I figured that the moroii needed a bit of a face lift and so I've done just that.

EDIT!:
These creatures are MY babies! If I catch ANYONE using them without my permission, I'll gouge out your eyes, rip out your tongue, tear apart your rib cage and pull out your disgustingly black innards for all the world to see. : )

But, if you ask nicely and tell me exactly what you're using them for, then I may be inclined to let you borrow them.

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Chiroptian or "Moroii"
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Kingdom: animalia
Phylum: chordata
Class: mammalia
Order: chiroptera
Family: phyllostomidae
Genus: vampyrum
Species: V. hominidae

The chiroptian (V. hominidae), more commonly known as the moroii, is an intriguing sentient creature, capable of living for hundreds of years and possessing legendary shape-shifting abilities. Not to be confused with the strigoii vampires (H. sapien strigoi) or classical vampire, creatures the chiroptians have a natural hatred for and actively kill.

The moroii is descended from an ancient bat species, who would also later become the only other member of the vampyrum family, the spectral bat (V.spectrum), a small, predatory animal found in south america. But, instead of following it's cousins across the ice bridge, the moroii's ancestors flew north.

Bats, being the highly adaptable creature they are, quickly evolved to better deal with their new sub-arctic environment. Their fur grew in full and thick, with a soft, wooly down close to the body and longer, water-proof guard hairs on top. Even their wings have grown a layer of fuzz and has more blood vessels traveling through the membrane to keep them warm during flight, they even furl much more tightly against the body, almost making them disappear. This allows the chiroptians to keep even warmer and it helps them protect their relatively delicate wing membranes during a fight.

The moroii also grew larger, much larger, to better combat the cold. This major increase in size also bring about other adaptations. The most notable is the position of the hind legs.

Ordinarily, a bat's legs bent backwards to facilitate take offs and landings. It was also useful for roosting. However, because of their size, roosting up-side down became inconvenient, so their legs moved under them, bending forward to support their weight on the ground.

This allowed them to stand erect and made them perfectly at ease on terra firma. Thanks to these new, powerful limbs, the moroii became a nimble runner and climber, able to scale sheer rock faces (or skyscapers) with the help of it's formidable fore claws.

Another side-effect of growth was the need for a bigger food supply. The moroii soon began to fly great distances every day for suitable prey animals. Their large size and even larger wings allowed them to soar at higher and higher altitudes, forcing the chiroptian's echolocation to become more powerful. Today, the moroii's echos rival that of military RADAR systems, they can even stun prey at close range, like a dolphin.

Also like the dolphin, the moroii uses it's jaw to direct it's echos, having lost it's nose-leaves for the sake of aerodynamism.

Chiroptians hunt much like their american cousins, carefully stalking prey then dropping upon them from above, crushing the animal's skull in it's mouth. They do this with the help of two long, curved, dagger-like incisors with a serrated back edge, housed in powerful jaws.

moroii are bats and therefore social creatures, but, like the spectral bat, they prefer the company of a small family troop to a colony. The troop usually consists of two mated adults and one to five younger members (usually the offspring of the two adults), much like a pack of wolves.


Despite the adults being the head of the family, the pups are always the center of the troop and both parents participate in the rearing of the young, diligently tending to them with tenderness and love, teaching them everything they will need if or when they decide to strike out on their own. The father is even known to wrap his wings around his mate and offspring while they sleep.

The female moroii, or moroaică, are only capable of giving birth to a single pup every ten years and are only fertile for 5-8 days every decade. Understandably, the reproduction rate among chiroptians is very low and unlike strigoii vampires, they can not "create" more moroii with a bite. The gestation period for a female is about 5 years long and the pup is dependent on it's parents for roughly 20 years after that.

Every so often, larger moroii are born. These chiroptians are taller and more heavily built than the standard moroii, though they are genetically identical. These moroii are called "Dires" and, traditionally, they are the defenders of the troop and most, to this day, still take up that responsibility.

And now we come to the chiroptians most amazing ability.

With the introduction of a new, easily accessible and readily available food source, humans (H. sapien), the early moroii have adapted yet again to take advantage of this rather invasive species. They have developed a way to mimic their prey by consciously changing their shape to look, for all intents and purposes, perfectly human, yet retains all of their strength and abilities.

Now, these transformations are very painful and very costly. All the energy and nutrients burnt in the shift greatly weakens and hungers the bat and he must rest a great deal before doing anything else. Generally, a chiroptian will remain in either shape for a large amount of time, only shifting if needed. But great things came from spending time among the humans, such as speech and access to more information.

All this pretty much boosted the moroii's primitive society to a full-fledged modern civilization. It's rare to see a troop living in the wilds, these days. Most have established homes among the human population (though usually on the outside of town) and have even begun to foster friendships with a few select humans they have grown to like and carefully avoid them while hunting.

Living with humans have posed several problems. The foremost is how to avoid detection. With their numbers already dwindling, discretion became a priority. So they began taking certain measures, like only hunting at night and making sure that at least one member of the troop is in human form at all times (to answer the door, phone, etc...).

It is, however, fairly easy to identify a moroii in human shape, for those who know what to look for. Vampirdzhija, or vampire hunters, are especially apt at this.

A moroii in human shape can be given away by these clues:
-They have slightly longer arms and digits
-They will have slightly shorter legs
-They will have difficulty tasting sweet flavors
-They will have trouble differentiating similar colours
-They will generally have poor eyesight and may sport corrective eyewear
-Their eyes will be extremely reflective
-And naturally, they will have very sensitive hearing. Reacting to dog whistles and such.

Some troops have gone so far as forbidding their members to even law a claw on a single human to prevent detection. Usually these troops raise animals, like cattle, or own a large amount of land for which to hunt in. These families, like any other, defend their territory and the humans in it, but it is not out of love, it is out of fear of discovery.

Recently, the moroii seem to be undergoing yet another minor evolution. Younger moroii's fur, once light in coloration like a wolf's pelt, has become a solid dark brown to black colour, more like an ordinary bat's coat. This helps them hunt at night.

Shifting for the new vampires has become relatively painless (though still exhausting) and they also seem to spend more time in their human shapes. Their fur has been getting shorter, too, because they have been spending more and more time inside buildings and not facing sub-zero temperatures every night.

Another new, and odd, development is the appearance of lycanthropic chiroptians, or vârcolac, V. hominidae lykanthropos. Due to a genetic malformation, these moroii have lost their wings and took on a more lupine shape...