Vorlog

Making a mortal into its bride or groom costs a vampire so much passion and blood that it lies helpless beside its changing companion for about an hour, as a famous vampire hunter once recorded. Destroy the vampire then and the half-made companion never finishes changing, stranded between life and death. That stranded thing is a vorlog.

It passes for an ordinary human, ashen-skinned, its face locked in aching loss, with small fangs showing when it talks. It casts a shadow, yet a sharp eye may notice that its mirror image looks faintly see-through and that it moves without a sound. It speaks the tongues it knew alive.

A vorlog keeps its maker's strength, an 18/76 Strength worth +2 to hit and +4 to damage, and its fists deal 1d6+4. It cannot drain levels, but each hit siphons spirit instead: the target saves vs. spell or loses 2 points of Wisdom, which return at 1 point per hour. Anyone pushed below Wisdom 3 grows dazed, sees the vorlog as a mighty protector, and longs only to shelter in its arms.

At will it can cast charm person, which works as the usual 1st-level spell except that victims feel pity and sympathy rather than friendship. Also at will, it can touch the minds of animals within 50 feet, and its grief is so crushing that each beast either bolts (50%) or goes berserk against whoever is closest (50%).

Neither alive nor undead, it escapes spells that detect undead or detect life, and clerics cannot turn it. Poison, sleep, charm and hold magic fail against it, and only +1 or better weapons can hurt it. Resting, it regenerates 1 hp each hour, or 1 every round with its surrogate nearby. Garlic and holy water do nothing, though it will not come near a person boldly and sincerely brandishing a lawful good holy symbol. Sunlight does not destroy it but burns for 1d6 each round it stands in direct light.

Brought to 0 hp, it wails and dissolves into a puddle of tears, a form it cannot take by choice. As a puddle it can climb walls and ooze through the tiniest crack, fleeing to any dark refuge, ideally its lair, and taking human shape again after eight hours. If sunlight caused the collapse and no shade is reachable, it dehydrates, perishing in 1d4 hours.

Hunters often spare vorlogs as rescued victims. Everything the creature does flows from grief for the vampire lover it had already given itself to. It seeks anyone who faintly resembles that lover, grows convinced the vampire has returned, and will do anything to possess its new obsession.

It charms or seizes that person, dresses and coaches them to act like the lost lover, and trades a little blood with them on three nights running. The victim becomes its surrogate: automatically charmed, allowed no further saves unless an outsider intervenes, and fed upon so steadily that its Wisdom never tops half normal. A surrogate gains nothing and stays a killable mortal, yet guards its master fiercely, blaming any wrongness on its own unworthiness. The vorlog can sense its surrogate anywhere; comparable magic or the amulet of proof against detection and location hides one.

Slaying the vorlog breaks the bond and leaves the surrogate confused, as the wizard spell, for 1d4 weeks or until blessed; dunking the thrall in holy water also severs it. A vorlog keeps just one surrogate and cannot make vampires or more vorlogs. Within weeks or months the imitation sours, a fresh obsession takes hold, and the vorlog goes back to kill the old surrogate. Three months without one is fatal. Two vorlogs that meet take no comfort in each other: they fight, attack each other's surrogates, or bicker over whose dead master was greater.

Vorlogs arise only from mortals in the final stage of becoming a vampire's bride or groom; other victims simply recover or die. It needs a tenth of its living diet, but a surrogate's psychic nourishment is essential. No cure is known, and death is its only release.