The reason I never mentioned the dilution of the vampiric curse before is that it doesn't really affect modern vampires very much, as the curse is almost identical in all of them. After having been passed down and diluted some dozen times or so the curse reaches the point it has in such as Morgan, where the blood itself is sufficient to contain nearly the entire curse and transmit very close to its full power to the recipient. Vampires infected by those more recently related to the originals have closer to the initial strength of the curse, but lose a little of that power every time because their curse is rooted in their hearts, but their power flows in their blood, and the blood cannot contain the full extent of the curse. The amount of power lost at each transmittance is significantly smaller than the former... when the originals passed down their blood, the result only had about half the power they had; the ones coming after that only had about two thirds of their predecessors, the ones after that three fourths, then four fifths, then five sixths... you get the drift. The power transmission has stabilized over the ages, making the power lost very insignificant, so there will never really a wholly powerless vampire. Still, there are those that devote their lives to trying to find some surviving early ancestors to take their blood and "upgrade" themselves...

"First-stage" vampirism?