Vampyre [Casimir Vohl]

Nature keeps predators for every kind of prey: sharks in the sea, great cats in the jungle, and for humankind, the vampyres. Casimir Vohl rules the vampyres of a walled city in a militaristic domain. He looks human, perhaps with a trace of elven ancestry, and with his dark hair, endless eyes and flawless build he is among the most beautiful people any adventurer will meet. He dresses in severe black leather trimmed with silver or platinum chains and a crimson sash at the waist. He goes unarmed, needing only fangs and claws. He speaks his adopted domain's common tongue and a few basic phrases from neighboring domains, always with a sneering, superior tone.

Even other vampyres find his bloodlust extreme. He fights with fierce joy, as happy to tear foes apart swiftly as to leave them in long agony. His nails are hard and keen as razors, and he slashes twice per round for 1d4 each, then bites with fangs as long as any nosferatu's for 1d6.

His saliva carries a toxin that races to the brain. Anyone bitten must save vs. poison or fall under his charm, and since a deeper bite delivers more venom, the save suffers -1 for every 2 points of bite damage. A charmed victim stops resisting him, so he no longer needs attack rolls against them. Other vampyres still face resistance until the victim has failed a save against each one.

Unlike most vampyres of the dread realm, he came from elsewhere: an obscure world where vampyres long ago conquered humanity. There he was a great warlord with a vast stable of human slaves, treated a bit worse than the cruel norm. Under a crimson moon his slaves rose up. He crushed them and found their leaders were humans from another world, far fiercer than his cowed stock. Torture revealed whole worlds unaware his race existed, and he set his sages to find a way there, since the outsiders' magical ship was never found.

Years later the sages opened a shimmering gate onto a human city much like his own. As he gazed hungrily at the crowds, the spell failed; the portal lunged like a mouth and swallowed him and his scholars. He fell through endless fog, blacked out, and woke in that city beside two dead sages, whose bodies he hid. Within a year he learned that the local vampyres were few and lived in hiding among overwhelming human numbers. He found them, and soon led them.

Accepting that home is lost, he dreams of his kind overrunning the city and then the whole domain, though he still does not grasp that he is in a demiplane rather than a true world.

He is proud of his ancient lineage of human-hunters, sees people as livestock, and casts himself as the savior who will restore his race to mastery. His followers share this view and hunt without pity. His plan is not as wild as it sounds: in about ten years the city's vampyres have tripled. More mouths mean more killing, but careful management of 'the herd' has kept the city watch and the domain's warlord from taking serious notice. Much of this relies on feeding houses where captives are kept alive to be fed on daily until they go mad. So foul are these houses that a horror check is required on a first visit.