Those carrying holy symbols
displayed them prominently on their
breasts, and those who didn't at least had
polished mirrors hanging on thongs from
their necks. Everyone wore their
strongest armour, even the monk,
Izmishka and Malshazzit the Mage
wearing thick leather neck-guards, so that
no monster would find it easy to pierce
their skins. And everyone carried a mallet
and wooden stake, in case it came to that.
Every care had been taken to ensure the
party's safety and success.
Until two cadaverously pale arms
reached from an unnoticed gap between
buildings, clasping Izmishka briefly on his
robe-shrouded shoulders, and a shrill
voice cried out "Tag, you're it". The monk
crumpled into the muck, Thoren
Silvermist, swashbuckler supreme, turned
to the Dungeon Master and yelled
"That's not how it worked in the books!"
"Or in the movies," added the
lifeless monk at his feet.
Details may vary from source to
source, one saying that they fear garlic,
another claiming rosebushes. One will
assert that they can fly, another will aver
that they can fly only when in the form of
a bat, while a third alleges that they merely
melt into mist and drift on the breeze. But
on one point the sources (except the
AD&D rulebooks) are agreed, the only
thing which they all have in common, and
which makes them the "most dreaded" of
all undead, is that vampires "live" to drain
the life-blood of their victims.
Most other undead despatch their
prey in more direct ways, usually by
draining life-energy levels instead of
blood. The vampire, unfortunately, is too
weakly linked to the Negative Material
Plane to follow this modus operandi. Like
ghouls which are condemned to eat the
flesh of rotting corpses for all time,
vampires are forced to feed on the living
in order to maintain their own existence.
"That's not what that barmaid
called your clothing last night," chuckled
Adanadhel Woodstar in the front ranks.
"Alms for the poor?" called a
piteous voice from the gutters.
"I wish the Prince would do
something about these wretches," hissed
Shade Bravin.
"Yes, but the old gaffer sure had a
taste for fine clothing before he became a
mendicant," Thoren opined as the party
passed the beggar, "I wouldn't have been
ashamed to wear some of that stuff myself
if it was in better condition."
And two cadaverously pale, lace
and brocade-clad arms reached from
behind towards Izmishka... The appearance of a vampire is as
varied as the appearance of the living.
They can be tall or short, coming as they
do from any human or demi-human race,
even passing for living beings under the
right conditions. But to those who study
vampires, certain differences can be used
to discern the quick from the dead such
as a pallor to a vampire's skin (which
disappears temporarily when replaced by
a rosy flush after a feeding), unnaturally
white and perfect teeth (including new-
grown replacements for any teeth lost
during the vampire's mortal life), and a
deceptively youthful and healthy
countenance.
This "ageless vitality" is not a
constant thing, but is a mirror of their
feeding habits. For every day a vampire
goes without fresh blood it will appear to
age as much as five years towards
antiquity. As it grows "older" it also
grows weaker, losing one hit die for each
apparent age class (for the race it was
when alive) above the level of mature
(one-third Base Max age) that it normally
passes for.
Thus, a vampire who had once
been an elf would normally appear to be
115 years old, but for every day without
feeding, it would appear to age 5 years
(the fastest rate), so that 12 days
bloodless would make it appear Middle
Aged (at 175 years), at which point it
would lose one hit die to become 7+3 HD.
"Nah, it couldn't be," asserted
Malshazzit the Mage, "He was at least a
hundred years old and could hardly
shuffle about, let alone run like that guy
there."
"Yeah," Shade Bravin added, "he
may dress like Thoren, but one fop looks
just like the next in a crowd." When a blood-starved vampire
finally does feed, it rapidly regains its
"youth". Even if only a few ounces of
blood cross its lips, the vampire will
immediately shed years at the rate of one
year per minute, so that an ex-hurnan
vampire who took months (at a rate of one
year per day) to reach an age above the
maximum age of 90 years (venerable)
would return to its mature age of 30 years
in 60 minutes plus one minute per year
above 90, regaining the three hit dice it
lost as it crosses each age boundary.
This rapid return of strength to the
vampire also provides part of the
explanation for the belief that they
regenerate wounds given them in combat.
In actual fact, when wounded they bleed
for only a few moments before the
wounds seal themselves, as the vampire's
body can ill-afford
to lose its hard-gained blood. This makes
it appear that the wounds have fully
healed, but the vampire has still suffered a
loss of hit points as a result. As they are
not living creatures and cannot regain
lost points by resting, nor can they draw
on the energy of the Negative Material
Plane to heal, vampires regain lost hit
points in the act of feeding.
For every hit point of blood
drained from a victim, one hit point of
damage previously done to the vampire is
restored. In fact, if badly wounded,
vampires will often attempt to escape and
restore themselves by attacking other,
less hostile, victims.
"No, Izmishka. It's your best
protection against a vampire. He'll have to
bite through the stock to get to the
arteries in your neck and even if the
vampire can pierce the leather, he won't
want to with that garlic on it." This drawing of blood is always
accomplished in one, gruesome, way; by
impaling a victim with the vampire's fang-
like canine teeth to produce two holes in
their flesh, followed by ravenously
sucking on this wound.
The exact location of this wound is
not important to the vampire, but the neck
is a common target because it is often left
poorly protected by armour, because of
the plentitude of blood vessels in that
area, and because the vampire needn't
bend over or assume an awkward posture
to attack the neck.
A successful bite (made at +4 to
hit as an attack on a prone victim if the
victim is charmed, at -4 to hit if the victim
is still struggling) does only a single point
of damage because of the almost needle
sharpness of the teeth, but each round
following the initial attack, if the vampire
maintains its grip (by rolling a successful
to hit roll again), it can drain blood equal
to three hit points from the victim.
From beneath the stone archway a
mysterious figure emerged, adjusting his
robes to cover a strange bruise on his
shoulder that he'd not noticed before.
"Vampire?" the monk responded
with a dazed expression on his pale
face, "What vampire?" While a vampire could use this
attack form during melee, it is unlikely to,
preferring to rely on its phenomenal
strength and other combat capabilities.
Blood draining is usually
performed on helpless victims (often of
the vampire's birth race, but not
exclusively so) as this allows the vampire
to feast uninterrupted. To ensure the
docility of its victims, the vampire uses
its special charming ability.
While a single look at the
vampire's eyes can cause the victim to be
charmed, a vampire concentrating on the
effect can hypnotize a victim into
immobility if the victim fags another save
vs. spell after the initial charming.
If this second saving throw is
failed by more than five, the victim will
even forget the entire incident
afterwards, denying any evidence shown
to him or her, including bite marks left on
their body.
Vampires will only rarely drain a
victim completely of blood for three
reasons: first, it reduces the number of
"cattle" (for this is their view of the
living) available to them; second, it
increases the chance that they will be
hunted down as mysteriously blood-
drained bodies proliferate; and third, it
increases the number of vampires in a
region, all of them competing for the same
food supply.
If a vampire's victim is
successfully hypnotized into forgetting
the attack, a vampire is quite likely to
repeat its attack at intervals as it would
judge the victim to be particularly
susceptible to hypnotism. If these
repeated assaults go on, the victim may
begin to exhibit symptoms similar to
those of the vampire itself.
The victim might avoid direct
sunlight or the sight of mirrors. He or she
will refuse to eat garlic and will begin to
take on the pallor of the undead. Dogs,
horses and other animals sensitive to the
scent of vampires will begin to take a
disliking to the victim while he or she will
slowly adopt a nocturnal lifestyle,
sleeping only fitfully during the day and
living for the onset of night.
Even if a vampire ceases its
attacks on such a victim, there is a chance
that the victim will succumb to other
causes of death in such a weakened state,
in which case, they would still rise to be
reborn a vampire if the proper precautions
are not taken. Thus, it is only a desperate
vampire that win continue its attacks to
this extreme.
"And where'd you hear that?"
jeered Woodstar, "From the same guy
that sold you the "guaranteed genuine"
fireball scroll for 1 gp?" While most fatal victims of undead
attacks become undead themselves,
automatically adopting the morality and
"unlifestyle" of their slayer, this is not the
case with the victims of vampires.
Because of the vampire's weak link to the
Negative Plane, when newly-risen,
vampires aren't rapaciously evil until they
first drink the blood of a living creature.
Upon rising a vampire is
ravenously hungry for blood but a
particularly strongwilled victim may be
able to resist this urge for some time.
Drinking the blood of nonhumanoid
animals being slaughtered for meat can
temporarily stave off their hunger pangs,
but eventually a vampire will either give
in to the blood lust or slowly age into the
dust of final death.
"Okay, I'll just take the time to cast
a small spell to abjure us against his
evil."
"No time for that, Malshazzit, we
must act now if we hope to surprise him. "
And as the door crushed inward,
the young man sitting at the table,
apparently unarmed, turned to face them.
"Hey you guys, get outta here!"
"Not a chance, blood-sucker,"
Shade said, advancing with his long
blade drawn, "we've had more than
enough of your stalking and setting traps
for us."
"But I didn't do that, it was the
vampire. I'm only the Game Master."
"Let me have the first crack at
him," Izmishka said, a strangely wicked
smile on his face. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
As they slowly crept through the
back-alleys of the sprawling city, Thoren Silvermist silently ran through the list of
special precautions taken against their prey.
"The vampire we're hunting was
sighted attacking a tinker last month less
than a mile from here," Thoren reminded
Izmishka and the rest for a third time,
"He's in his mid-thirties, has his hair short
and slicked back, and dresses with a
sartorial flair on par with my own
debonair self."
"Look!" cried Woodstar,
directing their attention to a figure darting
through a nearby alley, "Isn't that the
same old geezer who tried to waylay
Izmishka?"
"Thoren? Can I take off this
collar? I'm not used to wearing one of
these things and it's really itching. And I
think the garlic necklace has gone rancid."
"Izmishka, where have you been?
We sent you into that courtyard to search
for the vampire almost half an hour ago?"
"Y'know," Malshazzit said,
broaching the silence that hung over them all
since Iimishka's latest accident, 'I've heard of
some vampires that aren't evil; good
vampires, that hunt other ones. Maybe we
could get one of those guys to help us."
"We've got 'im cornered," Shade
said quietly. "I blocked off all of the other
exits and sealed the windows shut. The
only way that monster'll get out of that
house is through us."
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