Eastern Vampire [Yamikaze]

Yamikaze hides his eastern features, samurai armor and strange weapons beneath plain robes. Nearly seven feet tall, smoothly athletic and short-haired, he has eyes black as midnight. He speaks the tongues of his distant eastern homeland and the western lands beyond, plus scraps of the local languages.

A master warrior made nearly unbeatable by undeath, Yamikaze has Strength 19: +3 to hit and +7 damage in melee, so a bare-handed blow deals 8-13 (1d6+7). Touching bare flesh drains two life energy levels when he chooses. He prefers his family's silver heirloom katana, its runes naming it for twilight: a +3 medium weapon (6 lb., speed 4) dealing 1d10 to small or medium foes and 1d12 to large ones one-handed, or 2d6 two-handed, with his Strength bonuses added. Once a day it creates darkness, 15' radius centered on the sword, and its wielder sees normally inside.

His first move in any fight is to turn invisible, which he can do at will, gaining the usual benefits including -4 on attacks against him. He can spider climb and jump as the spells. Only +1 or better weapons hurt him, and he regenerates 3 hp per round. Sleep, charm, hold and other spells relying on biology fail, as do poison and disease, and cold and lightning deal half damage. He cannot charm, summon, shape change or turn to gas at will.

At 0 hp he becomes shimmering fog, as a wraithform spell, immune to weapons and spells and able to slip through any crack. Unless he gets to his resting place within 12 rounds he is destroyed; 8 hours there restore him.

He must stay at least 10 feet from ginger root and from a lawful good holy symbol held by a true believer in its god, and a line of powdered ginger with no gaps stops him cold. A holy symbol touched to his skin burns for 1d6+1, as does each vial of holy water or ginger water. One round of direct sunlight destroys him. Running water, mirrors and closed doors do not hinder him.

He needs no coffin. At dawn he must lair within 100 feet of where he last killed someone; if he cannot both escape daylight and stay inside that radius, he crumbles to dust.

Nearly a century ago he was the youngest child of a noble samurai house, desperate to outshine two gifted sisters. At seventeen he went to a haunted island to save them from a vampire spirit, freed them, then fell into a chasm during an ambush. Believing him dead, they fled home. He climbed out, slew the vampire and died of its drain, waking undead.

Hunger and dark blood convinced him his sisters had betrayed him. Making his way home he slaughtered a camp of monks, then villagers, then his family's entire castle, beheading his weeping father, cutting down his sisters, and killing his mother after shattering her blade in a duel. His last humanity died with her. He swore to roam until a greater warrior gave him an honorable death, then walked out the gate into fog and arrived in the misty dread realm.

Since then he has crossed the heartland domains, slaying werewolves in a gloomy forested domain, mind reavers in a barren, mind reaver-ruled land and the shadow fey, though never a domain's lord. Each victory deepens his weary despair, yet he always fights at full skill. Wandering fortune-tellers pity him as the eternal warrior, citing a prophecy that he will never fall to any man.

Animals sense his aura: horses snort, dogs howl, cats spit. Any human slain by his drain rises a day after burial unless cremated, so he burns every body, with a solemn pyre for an honorable foe and a careless fire for a coward. Each night he seeks a warrior to challenge; failing that, he kills someone in the last hours before sunrise to rest nearby, leaving an easily tracked trail of bodies.