Ah, so you've used him before... [I]that's[/I] why the name felt mildly familiar. Hmm... can't say that I remember, exactly, but the name does evoke some kind of response in me, so he must have made an impression.

There isn't really a lot about the history of vampires in the Compendium at the moment, mainly (if we're being honest) because there's still a ton of things I haven't written entries on for there, but also because it's just not very well-known. The original vampires and the first several generations of derivatives suffered from a crazy need for blood, but were also ridiculously powerful... although due to the way the curse dilutes, the power diminished quickly. (The dilution of the vampiric curse, to recap, causes a portion of the power of the curse to fail to transfer equal to one divided by the vampire's generation. The originals had the full power of the curse; the second generation lost 1/2 of the originals power; the third generation lost 1/3 of the [I]second generation's[/I] power; the fourth generation lost 1/4 of the [I]third generation's[/I] power, and so on) The original vampires were [I]insanely[/I] powerful, to the point of near-invincibility. Barely anyone remembers because they've been gone for millennia, but in their time there were those among the original vampires that were worshiped as deities.
It may be worth noting, too, that just because someone belongs to one generation of vampires, one doesn't have to [I]stay[/I] in that generation. Even if one was turned by someone of the twelfth generation and as such become a thirteenth generation vampire, if [I]that[/I] vampire was to obtain the blood of a second generation vampire, they'd become a third generation one instead.
Somewhat more obscurely (and grotesquely), it's possible to avoid the dilution entirely. The dilution happens because the vampiric curse is rooted in the vampire's heart and only a portion of it permeates their blood; thus, eating another vampire's heart would make one the same generation of vampire as the one you ate.