I have Dawnguard but have been ignoring it. Not sure I want to go there. BUT....I have noticed that vampire attacks in towns are killing "friends." Characters I have gotten used to and don't want them to die and even worse the story line haveing to be adjusted to compensate for their deaths. Like the sister to the Riverwood Trader and the female blacksmith (Warmaiden) in Whiterun. In both cases I backtracked to a save prior to the vampire attack.
Is this happening because I have not taken vampire sides or is the game going to continue killing off minorly important characters; ones I have gotten used to and don't want to see killed.
Also, why is the human turning into an ash pile instead of the vampire? I have read a LOT of vampire literature and this is backwards. All literature is not the same and it varies and takes different liberities but it seems to be a constant that If anything at all turns to ash it is the vampire.
Do you get vampire attacks on towns even without having visited the dawnguard castle? You might get vampire random encounters anyway.
The ahs piles is the rest of someone who has been raised from the dead with necromancy. You can do this yourself with necromancy spells.
Guess they use them to avoid you and enemies raising the same body many times.
You probably see that vampires raise each other, as an archer I see this a lot, you shoot one vampire, the other next by is alerted and raise the other one for defense.