Dwarf Vampire

Dwarves count a warrior's death as a just reward and hate the undead for cheating heroes of it, so a dwarf turned vampire seethes with self-loathing that drives it to great evil. It looks as it did alive: short, stocky, heavy-featured, with a long white or silver beard, and usually still wears the gear of its trade, so a former warrior keeps its armor and an axe or hammer close. It speaks the languages it knew, dwarven included.

Brave as ever, it often fights for the sheer love of battle, using favorite weapons for normal damage. Strength 18/76 gives +2 to hit and +4 damage in melee. It keeps the dwarven +1 to hit orcs, goblins, hobgoblins and kin, ogres, trolls and other big foes attack it at -4, and its stone sense works as usual: slopes and new construction on 1-5 on 1d6, shifting walls or rooms on 1-4, stonework traps or depth on 1-3.

Each unarmed hit permanently drains 2 Constitution, changing hit points and related scores at once; a victim at 0 dies. Rather than charm, it can glare at one foe per round, forcing a fear check at -2. It has 60-foot infravision and sees in anything but absolute darkness as if in daylight. It saves at +5 against spells, wands, rods and staffs, but can no longer use magical items.

Only +2 or better weapons hurt it. It regenerates 4 hp per round underground, 1 on the surface. At 0 hp it stonewalks off and has 12 turns to find its coffin, where eight hours of rest restore it; otherwise it melts into the rock and is destroyed. It ignores mind-affecting magic such as sleep, charm and hold, poison and toxins, and cannot drown or suffocate. Cold and electricity do half damage, fire full.

It cannot become a wolf or bat, but calls 10d10 HD of burrowing or underground animals, each vampire having a favorite kind, arriving in 2-12 rounds. At will it stonewalks through any depth of earth or rock, carrying whatever it holds, rising from the floor to ambush or dragging a victim into the ground. Dispel magic stops this for 2d4 rounds unless 0 hp forces it. Its defenses do not change while stonewalking.

Holy water does nothing, but natural spring water burns for 2d4 per round, and reaching 0 hp in a wholly spring-fed pool destroys it. Holy symbols hold it off but never harm it. Sunlight is merely painful glare that stops its regeneration. It cannot cross an unbroken line of powdered metal, even stonewalking, though it may break one indirectly, say by sending rats through. It cannot enter a building lacking any stone or earth, so a log cabin is a refuge where a castle is not. Turned as a normal vampire at first, it grows ever harder to turn, the oldest almost impossible.

Driving a natural stalactite or stalagmite through its heart, or the heart onto one, kills it until the stone is pulled out. To end it, remove the heart, soak it three days in oil and burn it; the vampire ends with the last flame.

The most withdrawn of vampires, it lairs in the deepest darkness, shuns other dwarves out of shame except to make a companion or take slaves, and seeks no power, though hunger keeps drawing it to the living. Age brings more Hit Dice, bigger save bonuses, tougher weapon immunity, a harsher fear penalty and resistance to turning.

Its drain raises only dwarves, and only if the intact body is laid in a stone coffin, entombed underground (a normal dwarven burial counts, a surface crypt does not), and sprinkled with powdered metal by the vampire on the third night. The spawn serves its maker. Knowing the torment, the vampire makes spawn only when it needs help and often slays them after a few months, likely a last trace of love for its people. Free-willed dwarf vampires usually lost their masters before that mercy came.