Vampires are murdered individuals that have been risen as undead predators through life-twisting magic. They are cursed to avoid daylight or running water, and must feast on the life force of the living. However, in exchange for their plights they have various supernatural powers helpful in dominating and hunting others.
Due to their predatory nature, vampires tend to have a disdain towards the spread of supernatural knowledge, at least outside of their own circles. The less humans and other prey know about them, the easier the hunt. Ironically, this need for secrecy has also led to many vampires leading the protective forces of various cities; keeping the populace from worrying about what goes bump in the night and manipulating the narrative of any worrying events.
The LARP variation of this legacy can be found HERE
Playstyle
Playing a vampire involves manipulating others and hunting for prey. Vampire players must balance several factors, both mechanically and narratively:
- Vampires must satiate their bloodlust, healing wounds and refueling life force spent on their various abilities. While other characters may rely on esoterics to recover, vampires can recover by feeding on people.
- Vampires need to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves or their personal weaknesses, less they themselves become hunted.
- Vampires often work with other like-minded supernatural to control places of power and make their hunting easier. However, many vampires are ultimately self-serving, and politics can be more dangerous than a supernatural catastrophe or overzealous hunter.
Play a vampire if you want to exercise power over others, through political machination or supernatural strength. Alternatively, you may want to play as a vampire to fill the role of the hunter; for food, to protect, and for the thrill.
References: Vampire: The Masquerade and any related media, Blade, Dracula, The Lost Boys
Visual Identity
The simplest tell of a vampire are their elongated fangs, but with so many fantastical creatures these are no longer as obvious indicators as legend indicates. Many choose to wear darker colors, making it easier to avoid notice while on the hunt, though others dress more ostentatiously, a lure to invite ignorant curiosity. They only true indicator is the brief flash of a blood red iris when a vampire uses their powers.
Signature Ability: Vitae
Food, water, and even air are not required for a vampire to survive. Instead, vampires are defined by the ability to steal the life essence from others. The vampire’s Vitae merit is unique in that its effects still apply even when the entire track is marked. Furthermore, lifesteal gives two unique abilities:
- When a vampire marks another vampire merit to utilize an ability, they may mark this merit instead. Mark 1 box on this merit ever sunrise.
- Lifesteal: When a vampire successfully deals harm to a prey creature in close combat with this merit, they may choose any vampire merit to recover marked 1 box. A vampire can still use lifesteal even if all boxes are marked on this merit.
Several vampire abilities refer to prey creatures. A Prey Creature refers to any living creature that meet’s the vampire’s required needs. Traditionally, this involves a working, human-like circulatory system. Most vampires feed on blood, and specifically the blood of humans and similar creatures, and a vampire’s ability to renew vitality is dependent on that blood. However, other vampiric creatures may feed on other traits, such as emotions, fatigue, memory, or even color.
Embrace
To create a new vampire, Embracing them in the legacy, a vampire must first use their lifesteal to kill a prey creature, marking their final track if applicable. Then the vampire must spend 5 mark’s worth of their vitae before the next sunrise to fill the fledgling vampire with new supernatural life force.
NOTE: Embracing another player character should only be done with that player’s permission. Doing so either adds the vampire legacy if they do not have 2 legacies, or replaces one of their existing legacies (and removing associated merits). If the character has any merits removed in their embrace, they may replace those merits with vampire merits.
Undead
As undead creatures, vampires do not need to eat, breathe, or sleep. Furthermore, most of their organs are unnecessary, allowing a vampire to survive what might be an otherwise lethal wound to a living creature. Despite their undead body, a vampire still feels dulled pain and pleasure.
They feel an instinctual desire to destroy life and consume it. However, as creatures commonly with intelligence and their own free will, vampires are able to resist their destructive desires – most of the time.
Disadvantage: Cursed
Vampires pay a high price for their immortality and supernatural resilience. Cursed for all of the slights of their ancestors and future actions, vampires have 4 distinct weaknesses
- Scourge
Vampires hold one bane above all others, at which even a simple touch causes extreme pain. Simply known as the vampire’s scourge, direct skin contact with this bane inflicts 1 mark of harm every 10 seconds.
Many vampires face the scourge of sunlight, forcing them to travel at night or walk in the shade and covered in thick clothing. However, a few vampires are known to have different scourges, such as running water.
A vampire’s scourge is a debilitating vulnerability, something common and near-constant that alters the character’s lifestyle – whereby they must take active and constant measures to avoid it. - Life Dependency
All vampires’ vitae naturally decays over time, causing 1 mark of harm to themselves every sunrise. When a vampire gains an injury or their vitae merit is marked due to harm or drops to 1 or zero boxes, they gain a frenzy level(see below). - Quirks and Banes
Beyond the fear of their scourge and ever-driving need for more life force, a vampire’s curse can manifest in a wide variety of quirks (behavioral/roleplay limitations) and minor banes (additional vulnerabilities which can harm or disable a vampire). When creating a new vampire, choose 2 additional weaknesses from the following lists. You can pick 2 banes, 2 quirks, or 1 of each.- Quirks
- Obsession
The vampire has a compulsive obsession over a specific subject-matter: be it art, video-games, or a scientific study. When they directly engage with a high-quality representation of the subject, or speak with an expert in the subject, they are unable to pull themselves away from the subject or conversation. This obsession even overrides self-preservation and frenzy. - Temper
The vampire has trouble managing stress, making it difficult to avoid frenzying. Whenever they take harm in the form of stress, it marks their lifesteal merit if possible. Furthermore, whenever they takes harm in the form of stress, they must make a resolve action check to avoid frenzy. - Picky Eater
The vampire has a specific type of target they prefer to feed on, such as wealthy individuals, men, or elderly. Using lifesteal on any creature that doesn’t fit that description sickens the vampire – creating or worsening an injury “sickened” which can be invoked against them. - Haunting Visage
The vampire’s body is grossly deformed with pulsating flesh, exaggerated fangs, and claw-like hands. These features cause many to avoid or even run from them on-sight, and make them immediately recognizable as a vampire when uncovered by clothing.
- Obsession
- Banes
- Garlic
You are not able to touch garlic or garlic-infused foods. You cannot use lifesteal on a prey creature if they have eaten garlic within the past day. If garlic enters your body you become weakened, as from the poison side-effect. - Faith
Take 1 mark of stress when stepping within the threshold of a location with religious worship, OR when touching a symbol of faith which has received daily worship. Commercialized symbols have no effect without the devotion of regular use. - Flammable Flesh
You are vulnerable to flame, worsening any trouble it causes you.
- Garlic
- Quirks
Vampiric Frenzy
Vampires in a frenzy have the goal to fully recover their vitae as fast as possible, ending the frenzy upon fully recovering their vitae. Each repeated frenzy invocation increases their frenzy level and loss of self-control.
Frenzy Levels
- Any actions you take must take you a step closer towards recovering your vitae.
- You are unable to plan more than 2 steps into the future. Any actions must directly recover your vitae or directly lead to you being able to do so.
- You are unable to identify individuals beyond their capacity to fuel your bloodlust, unable to consider or care about your relationship to them.
Separately, as magical creatures, vampires cannot cross a threshold uninvited.
Merits
Merits represent the core characteristics, traits, gear, and companions that a character has at their disposal. Merits Tracks represent a form of character health, merits help make actions easier to perform, and many merits provide unique powers and abilities for a character to take advantage of.
Each legacy has 1 signature merit (underlined below), a powerful and complex merit that provides the core ability characters within that legacy are known for. Signature merits can be further enhanced with the meta merits of the same legacy, up to the number of Meta Slots the signature merit has (see the following list after regular Merits). Vampires may also select supernatural merits, which then count as vampire merits.
| Signature Merit | Effect | Track | Meta Slots |
| Vitae | When a vampire marks another vampire merit to utilize an ability, they may mark this merit instead. Mark 1 box on this merit every sunrise. Lifesteal: When a vampire successfully deals harm to a prey creature in close combat with this merit, they may choose any vampire merit to recover 1 box. A vampire can still use lifesteal even if all boxes are marked on this merit, as long as another merit is active. |
5 | 1 |
| A vampire’s magical essence resides in their fangs and stomach. | |||
| Vampire Merits | Effect | Track |
| Elusive Presence | Burn when leaving a scene to make all participants in the scene forget your involvement | 4 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Hemomancy | Mark to telekinetically manipulate blood that you can see. You can manipulate as much blood as you can physically carry, and condense it to be as strong and sharp as iron. | 3 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Mist Form | Mark to shapeshift yourself and your belongings into a cloud of mist. While a cloud of mist you are immune to piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning harm and can fly, but do not have access to your normal physical merits. You may freely shapeshift back into your normal form, but sunrise will force you to change back. | 2 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Blood Bond | Mark to imbue your blood with a charming effect that makes any prey creature that consumes it more favorable towards you, permanently increasing the effect of any social checks against them (non-stacking). Feeding the same prey creature 5 times with at least 1 day between each occurrence makes them permanently acquire the goal to please you. | 3 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Commanding Voice | Mark to imbue your voice with authority, demanding the attention of whoever can hear it. Alternatively, if you have a creature’s attention for at least 30 seconds, you can mark to give them a 1 word command that they must obey. The command must be something neither you nor the creature considers dangerous to themselves. | 3 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Beguiling Voice | Mark to imbue your voice with charisma, making your words seem favorable and friendly regardless of their content and context. You can use this to ask a prey creature to forgive any past or impending slight against them for the remainder of the scene. | 4 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Prey Sight | Mark to view any nearby prey creatures through any walls, floors, or other obstacles. | 4 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Blood Scent | You can smell blood and identify its direction from up to a mile away. Furthermore, you can distinguish and identify blood from different individuals. | 3 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Obfuscation | Mark to turn invisible. You may remain invisible until you are harmed by another creature, until you harm another creature, or until sunrise. | 4 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Shadow Void | When covered in deep shadow with no direct light shining on you, you can mark to disappear into the shadow, completely erasing your existence. While in the shadow, you may move within the shadow and your senses still work as if you were still standing, but you cannot interact with the environment. You may reappear at any time, but will be forced to at sunrise or if the shadow disappears. | 3 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Passenger Voices | The subconscious thoughts of other vampires worm in and out of your head; rambling and occasionally adding insight on your situations. You can always tell if someone is a vampire. Mark to gain insight on a question if another vampire within the region could provide such insight. | 4 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Forced Understanding | Mark when touching a target to give it one of your quirks or banes for the remainder of the scene. | 5 |
| Description TBD | ||
| Transparent Reflection | You do not cast a reflection or appear in photos or videos. | 4 |
| Description TBD | ||
META Merits
Meta Merits alter or enhance a legacy’s signature merit and automatically extend that merit’s track with their own. Meta merits are unique to their legacy and cannot enhance any merit other than the signature merit of the same legacy.
| Meta Vampire Merits | Effect | Track |
| Life of Magic | When you would mark a vampire merit to use an ability, you may spend an esoteric instead. | – |
| Subtle Nibble | After talking to a non-hostile or defensive prey creature for at least 1 minute, you may use lifesteal on that creature to deal a single mark of harm without it noticing. | – |
| Frenzy Fury | When causing harm while in a frenzy, you inflict 1 additional mark of harm for each level of frenzy you are in. | – |
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Alternative Concepts
The concept of a vampire comes from various myths, legends, and folktales from around the world, each with its own unique variation. Ultimately, the only two conditions that limit what can be defined as a vampire within this game are their weaknesses and life-draining properties.