Vampire Overview

No horror in the misty dread realm inspires more fear than the vampire. It can walk unnoticed among the living, and its sudden strikes against the weak and innocent rarely leave a survivor to guide hunters back to it. Several vampires rule domains of their own. The greatest of these, a vampire lord whose land many believe is bound to his very being, a view held by the wandering fortune-tellers and a lich-king of a mist-shrouded realm, outstrips every other vampire lord in might and wickedness.

There are three roads into vampirism, and each ends in a being of immense evil and power. On the road of deadly desire, a person seeks undeath on purpose. The price is more than life: the seeker surrenders part of their spirit to the dark powers of the realm, gaining undead strength but losing the last of their humanity. Over the centuries many find that loss unbearable and arrange their own destruction.

The road of the curse is the sneakiest. The person may not know what is coming until the change begins, perhaps through a curse laid by someone they wronged, or a lovely magic ring found or inherited that will not come off as its wearer slowly changes. Some embrace the new existence and others loathe it, but these vampires tend to be the most passionate and vivid of their kind.

The road of the victim is the most common and the saddest: anyone slain by a vampire rises as one. Such vampires nearly always hate themselves and their maker, few accept their fate, and many lack the will to seek an end.

A vampire makes slaves by killing in a particular way, usually by draining life energy or drinking blood. A victim who dies of the feeding rises enslaved to its maker. Far weaker than its master, the new vampire cannot challenge it, and the master holds a deep charm over it that forbids any act to destroy the master. Slaves may still undermine their master's schemes in small ways, but they must obey direct orders, and unlike an ordinary charm, this control can make them slay those they love or harm themselves without resisting.

Over long years, boredom and time become a vampire's worst enemies, and immortality starts to feel like an endless chain. To ease this, many vampires take a companion, a bond outsiders mistake for something like marriage though it runs much deeper. The vampire usually, though not always, picks someone of the opposite sex who recalls a lost love from its mortal life, and feeds on them again and again until they hover near death. At the final moment it draws out the last of their life and pours its own energy in, a mingling more intimate than any physical union. Both are exhausted and nearly helpless for up to an hour, after which the victim is a vampire.

A companion is as enslaved as any other spawn, but it shares a mystic link with its master. The two can sense through each other's senses at certain times, such as dawn and dusk, or under certain enchantments; for some pairs the link is constant and breaks only when one dies. A companion can often command the master's other slaves, as long as no order pits them directly against their creator.

From then on the two are utterly loyal. A master who spends ordinary minions freely guards its companion like royalty, and the companion will never act against its master and will defend it with everything it has; each would die for the other. If the master is destroyed, the companion keeps command of its slaves as though it had created them.