with the rule of law

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>>65900619
>How do you balance the evil nature of vampires with a responsibility the vampire lords feel for their subjects/cattle?
By creating different kinds of vampires that can range from honorable knights with noble ideals who really only feed as much as their chivalric code allows them to do and vampiric monsters in human form that will bend or break these rules as much as they can. Thus you create conflict in your setting, as well as good to bad characters among the vampires and anything between.
Yes, I too had this idea of vampires being the noblemen in a fantasy setting, with full-on knight aesthetics, ruling over mortal men. Though I transported them into 16th century HRE. They have a vampire kaiser and their assembly was called "Reichsnacht"

>>65900812
>Reichsnacht
Really cool name, kudos for coming up with that.
>By creating different kinds of vampires ... Thus you create conflict in your setting
I had an idea like that, as the centuries pass more vampires of other bloodlines and necromancers flock to the court of the dark king, flouting the rules as much as they can. When the king gets old even for a vampire (400 or so years), he sleeps for extended periods of time, allowing the nobility to do whatever they want. This creates a lot of tension and resentment among the living, and eventually a rebellion gains traction with help from neigbouring dwarves and wood elves.

>>65900619
Vlad von Carstein best von Carstein.
I think that if you're trying to be subversive, then having the vampire's subjects be off-limits would make the most sense. The vampire and his cronies can prey off criminals/foreigners instead, while using their supernatural abilities to watch over their flock like they were an ant farm or something.
If not, then you could have drinking blood take the place of like a church's tithe or a sacrificial requirement to do business/own property/whatever, where it's not exactly forced from the people but is generally acknowledged to be a necessity to anyone who wants to do anything in the land.
Naturally oaths sworn in blood would be held in the highest regard and failure to make good on them would be met with whatever your equivalent of VtM's Diablerie is. Regardless of whether you go the benevolent dictatorship or the reign of terror route, the land's relationship with the outside would be very antagonistic, just coloured by whether you're hunting for food and sport or fending off armies of liberators.
Pedigree would probably have less of a focus on one's family (although maybe commoner vampires would be just as scandalous as commoner counts) and more toward who turned you and the degrees of separation between you and the progenitor-king.

Maybe the undead knights who uphold the code don't actually kill the peasant girls they feed on? A local count/baron/knight just picks one every full or new moon or so (variation of the overhyped prima noctis custom), she dissapears for a few days and finds her way back home, tired but alive and with an odd newfound loyalty to the local noble. Next month someone else gets picked. In a pre-industrial society, peasant families were probably large so they could take it.

Also, do vampires of one gender feed on both men and women in your setting? I read Bram Stoker's Dracula last year and he only seemed to go after women. It seemed to be a founding trope of vampires that they went after young women. Female vampires could do both, but a male vampire feeding on a man seems weird.

How do vampires in your setting feel about the blood of other races? Dwarves, elves, orcs?

>>65900619
Literally griffith

bump

>>65900619
WFRP Blood Dragons.

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>>65901485
This post is how I did it with my game, basically. The vampires felt deified, and that came with all of the good and bad that entails.

Did he achieve that state all by himself and then transformed others, or was there an original cult?
You could differentiate those who decided to join his side once he became a vampire, and those who were already loyal (perhaps comrades) before his ascension.
I quite like the idea of nobles running an evil cult in the background, and performing sacrifices and blood rituals unbeknown to the inhabitants; covering some girls disappearing or passing unfortunate accidents for murders by goblin should be easy when you have money and power on your side.

>>65900619
>A dark code of chivalry in which blood of maidens is seen as the right of the vampiric lord, part of the tax levied on his peasants?
Reminds me of droit du seigneur, which entitled a feudal lord to take the virginities of all newlywed girls in his realm. Of course this supposed right was entirely fictional, but you could equivalently apply it to your black order. Part of the wedding ceremony would involve a certain amount of blood being "donated" to the lord of the realm. Though of course it wouldn't suffice if this only happened on weddings. Perhaps on every special occassion (birthdays, holy days, a double dose on the birthday of the feudal lord himself et cetera).

>>65903648

This apparently never was a thing

>>65903719
>Of course this supposed right was entirely fictional

How much blood do the vampires need? A healthy adult can donate a pint every two months or so (might want a bit more spacing to account for poorer diets). That puts a limit on how many vampire nobles you can have before they their food supply becomes unsustainable. For example, if the vamps need an average of a pint a day, you will want at least 60 adults per vamp, preferably more to cover for the pregnant and ill.

>>65900619
Lawful Evil.

There ya go.

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The difference between a vampiric noble literally subsisting off the blood of his subjects and a human noble metaphorically subsisting off the blood of his subjects is a separation of degree, not kind.

The medieval codes of chivalry revolved around controlling and channeling martial bloodlust into something constructive, typically along the lines of agreed-upon religious truce days and limiting feuding, combined with mutual targets to make sure newly Christianized nobility had their eye on the Saracens and pagans instead of each other's lands. It didn't work out in the end, due to waning Church authority and social norms, but it was an attempt.

If you had to come up with vamp-specific rules, here's what I would go with:

> The Black Pact
> I will not fight, hunt or feed on sacred ground.
> I will not hunt between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.
> I will not slay my cattle through feeding unless they are condemned to die as criminals, and the cattle given due process.
> I will not raise more of my kind without permission from the Black Chapel.

Imagine if feeding the vampire overlords were like a civic duty. Your name gets drawn in a lottery and then you show up, get bled for half an hour and then just go home and relax for a day or two.

>>65905584
>I gave blood

>>65905590
I haven't ever given blood, I'm not good with needles.

>>65905584
>>65905590
Feed the noble and you get to have a snack/meal from the noble's pantry and get to rest for the next day or so.

Sounds fair to me.

>>65900619
You can be a closed-borders protectionist while also being callous and brutal towards your own subjects. Look at any authoritarian regime like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.

>>65905372
The judicial system could be corrupted and there'd suddenly be an influx of more criminals who probably don't even need to be there so there's more feed for the nobility.

>>65905372
>>65905799
Yeah, I'm not sure why "condemned criminals" and "due process" would be anything but words on paper when the people running the system objectively have something to gain from getting as many people on death row as possible.

>>65905850
>>65905799
That's where the lawful aspect of lawful evil comes from. Maybe have some order tied to the Black Chapel that makes sure that the pact between the Vamps and the Cattle is upheld in both letter and spirit. With nobles who violate their end of the deal getting staked for their troubles.

The vampires don't suck blood, they suck the germ out of grain.
They demand their blood tax in bushels of wheat.

>>65906037
Why would the subjects get any say? Who would volunteer for a "pact" with beings who are explicitly predatory and disinterested in your own well-being beyond when they eventually get to kill and eat you? Shit like social contracts and due process barely have any basis in actual feudal societies, much less ones run by vampires and are therefore even more one-sided.

And frankly, by trying to make this "Muh Lawful Honor social contract" shit work you're sandbagging the most interesting part of a vampire feudal state, which is it would be a despotic nightmare.

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>>65905799
>>65905850

> the judicial system could be corrupted

Yes. I mean, again, elites have always profited off of prison and forced labor. That's not me putting on my libertarian cap, that's just a fact. Even liberal societies have economic and political incentives to put the accused behind bars quickly and make use of their labor.

In this one, the elites can put a fig leaf over the real issue, which is that they're literally eating people.

"Olaf was a murderer. Do you like murderers? I've protected the town from a monster, and now you turn your nose up at the method of my justice. Is it because you sincerely care for the welfare of murderers? Or is it because you have something to hide?"

>>65906352

As a peasant, you get the same things you've always gotten out of a feudal system, only more so. You get the protection of a lord who will never be replaced, who has the strength of ten men, eldritch powers and the fury of the grave, who has sworn to protect you against foes who might be infinitely worse.

But really, like normal chivalry, vampiric chivalry is a pact among equals, to make sure power isn't wasted on fights that make everyone at the table weaker. The peasants will serve and obey, as they always have done. Their consent is not necessary to ensure the Pact stays in place.

>>65906352
>>65906823
It might not be realistic, but I sure as shit think it's much more interesting for "the metaphorical vampires that is the nobles in a feudal society are now literal vampires" trope to result in a LE society where the vamps actually tend to stick to the letter and spirit of their deal with their cattle and the adventuring hooks for the PCs tend to be more along the lines of "some asshole is rocking the boat and causing tensions, figure out who and stake their ass"

>>65905799
>>65905850
There is a pretty simple, practical way to avoid things getting too despotic - simply have a limit to how much blood a vampire can eat before it is stuffed full, that is sustainable by the number of peasants each vampire lords over. Afterall, each noble vampire will want plenty of peasants paying normal taxes to maintain the non food parts of its lifestyle. So the vampires make agreements with each other to limit the total number of vampires.

For example, the lowest vampire lords might rule over lands with 500 people. The vampires could want ~5 pints of blood (typical amount of blood in one person) every full moon, plus small snacks here & there inbetween. So between villagers taking turns a pint at a time for the blood tax, and the occasional actual criminal getting drained dry, the vampire has no need to falsely condemn innocents for blood, since he is getting enough to stuff him full already.

Wait odd question but vampires can't fuck or procreate, right

>>65905709
>Peasant's daughter is borrowed by the baron
>Returns a few days after the full moon
>Baron's men give him a fattened pig as recompense
>Also, there's half a dozen skeletons renovating the cottage, tilling the field and painting the fence while she recovers.
>>65904897
I think there's always a difference between how much a vampire needs to survive and how much they want/crave. Holding back their desires should be part of their code, but this isn't universal among the vampiric nobility. Vampires, much like dragons, are sin (lust, gluttony, pride) personified.
>>65905799
>influx of criminals due to corrupted judiciary
While interesting, this would imply a unified legal system that probably doesn't exist yet in a feudal society where lords are judge and jury. Also, if vampires tend to feed on young maidens for the blood quality (TW3 explains this as them having blood less sullied by alcohol/age), criminals wouldn't be a good resource as they're mostly male.

>>65907572
Depends on the setting. Usually they can fuck but the only means of procreation is by infecting another being with Vampirism.

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>>65907572
Depends entirely on the setting/writer.

>>65907584
I would say that for vampires in the society being half-brewed here, the biggest sins would be gluttony, impatience, and greed. For these traits are the ones that most readily cause problems with the system in place.

Also beyond the general "use vampiric gifts to act as a powerful warrior/ruling caste protecting the cattle" things like necromancy and alchemy would be very popular to study alongside general combat and military skills. With the focus being around blood and the cattle it is tithed from. An uncomfortable fact not told to many is that many of the nicer blood restoring and general healing potions came out of vampiric research in the pursuit of improving their stock.

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Stealing all of these ideas for my Warhammer Fantasy rip-off/revival setting, thanks.
Also, vampire girls best girls. Would gladly be ruled over by a QT Countess.

>>65909368
Have you read genevieve anon?

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>>65904897

>>65900619
It's exactly the same as having a normal lord except the blood drive is mandatory and because he's asleep during the day you can fuck off more without him noticing. In short, probably a much better existence than the average Imperial citizen, and definitely better than your typical Brentonian peasant.

>>65911201
That assumes they have to kill anybody, though.

New question. Vampires are generally portrayed as preying on human societies. Are there settings where elves, dwarves or other race have trouble with them? Are there vampiric elves or dwarves? Does the blood of the elder races taste better; dwarven blood more full and hearty with high iron content, elven blood like a sweet magical wine?

>>65911521
My setting has a bloodline of vampires who specifically evolved in the underdark and prey on duergar, drow, and the occasional dwarves. These vampires are usually duergar. The bloodline's leader is a drow kinslayer.

I never really gave too much a shit about what blood tasted like though. I was more interested in changing their strengths and weaknesses. Instead of dying to sunlight, they turn to stone in sunlight and are the progenitors of gargoyle monsters in the setting.

Pure (as in not filthy or desecrated) water is like acid to them, though.

Being ruled by a Vampire isn't much different than being ruled over by any other noble parasite, desu. No memes, peasant life would be the exact same except you might have to give blood once in a while instead of grain.

>>65911700
Evil attracts evil though. Over the decades or after a century, some lesser bestial vampires might be drawn to the presence of a higher one. Wild vampiric beasts squatting in your chapel crypt probably sucks. Wannabe necromancers would also flock to an undead liege lord. The vampire ruler might be mostly stable, tough but 'fair', but his baggage and groupies would kill regular humans by nature.

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>>65907701
Speaking of "improving their stock" - given their long lifespans, some of the vampires might try to selectively breed their peasants; depending on how many generations the vampires have ruled you could get some interesting effects.

For example, a vampire that has some rich mines on his land could want some short workers who aren't stubborn assholes like dwarves are. So he starts 'encouraging' short people to marry each other, and work out deals with other vampires to trade his taller peasants for their manlets, including this one suave manlet with hairy feet. 300 years later and well the vampire has a whole county of short people people who like to live in wholes in the ground, and all have hairy feet.

>>65911803
That's where a Black Pact of protecting the flock comes in. Make the easiest way to Vampirism be the Reischnacht Order; serve as a squire for a Vampiric Knight loyal to the King of the Night. You act as his servant, his shield during the day, and his eyes and hands when dealing with those still bound by mortality. In exchange you're taught the skills of a knight, provided for during your squireship, get a chance to intimately observe the nature of undeath...and if you make a good enough impression, earn a sponsorship to the actual ranks of the Reischnacht. With the Reischnacht themselves having a task to patrol the roads, borders, and wilderness as part of their service.

>"The land is dark, full of horrors, and ruled by monsters in the shape of men that tax blood as well as gold. But a woman could walk from one end of the kingdom to the next with a sack of gold and fear for nothing, for who would break the King's Law and have his monstrous knights hunt you in the dark? You may think their chivalry foolish, but the undead take it deadly serious."

>>65911991
>Make the easiest way to Vampirism be the Reischnacht Order
I like where this is going.

>>65912144
The way I'm seeing it is something like a central King and several Counts of the 'provinces'. Both the Counts and King have vampires in service below them; the King with his Reischnacht (Who answer solely to the King, and at times speak for him) and Viscounts (Loyal to the King, but hold no sway in the affairs of Counts), and the Counts with their Barons.
To prevent an explosion of the vampiric population, how about something like this? To be turned, you require both the sponsorship of one who is already turned, a lack of disapproval by a Count*, and a volunteer from one who does not serve your current lord. From then on your actions reflect not only on your lord but on who turned you; thus their numbers are held in check by political machinations that require a case for vocal disapproval rather than tacit approval. An interconnected web of culpability keeping the peace, while endless border skirmishes with their neighbors and things that go bump in the night providing their ends.
The Reischsnacht are easiest both for their policy of mortal squires, the fact that those nominated almost always hail from the houses of Counts or Barons and thus their sponsor would more often be the one volunteering to turn them, and a loophole of allowing any who have turned to swear oaths to the King and Order and so poaching from the Counts. The flipside of course being that the Reichsnacht have the highest mortality rate of the immortal kin.

*If a Count -or more likely their representative at whatever assembly- disapproves, then you may petition the King to hear your case. If the King approves, then the Counts are polled. If some number don't disapprove, and you can still meet all the requirements, then you're in.

>>65906352
maybe but that is kinda of the exact opposite of what we've been aiming for all thread
you may think vampire brettonia is boring but clearly everyone else seems interested so maybe if you don't want to contribute you could just leave

>>65900619
>>Rules with an iron fist but still protects his living subjects from external foes
That's literally Gashnag

>The Blood Tithe is easily one of the most important facets of life under the Black Pact
>Though nearly everyone gives several times over their lives, there are many rules to protect both parties
>the first is the restriction on who qualifies to be tithed. Nobody who is not yet an adult and nobody who is elderly may not be tithed. The sick and the pregnant are also exempt from the tithe
>the tithed has to right to deny being fed on directly and to choose from which of the major feeding zones they are fed on directly if they allow it
>the tithing is taken slowly as to prevent complications with the loss of blood
>after the tithing, the tithed (and potentially their family is the lord wishes to be generous) is expected to fed richly from the vampire's own larder before being escorted home to rest
>if the tithed has significant labor they are not able to do while resting from being tithed, the vampire is expected to produce someone or something to substitute the tithed in their work.

>>65915221
>There are always rumors of Barons, and even Counts, skirting the rules of the Blood Tithe
>Taking beyond means, perverting the King's Justice and falsely condemning
>Even siring individuals in secret
>It is for this reason that some of the most feared individuals in the land are the eponymous Red Caps, the King's Tax Collectors
>Each dresses all in red, with no inch of skin showing
>Most distinctive of all is the circular hat they wear, with veils hanging from the rim that obscure their face entirely
>They're often in the company of strange and exotic bodyguards, and make no secret of their distaste for the Reischsnacht
>What fearsome creatures hide behind those veils, that even the Undead Lords of their land are cautious about them?

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>>65900619
Given the choice, whether to rule a corrupt and failing empire, or to challenge the fates for another throw, a better throw against one's destiny - what was a king to do? But does one truly have a choice? One can only match, move by move, the machinations of fate, and thus defy the tyrannous stars.

Is there a term for a peasant/commoner who's been fed on by a vampire in this system and survived? 'Meal' sounds a bit generic.
>>65915525
In my setting, the third and fourth generation also flout the rules, and other vampires from differing bloodlines drawn to the kingdom also ignore the pact. This eventually leads to unrest after centuries of contentment.

>>65915673
The flaw of these vampiric lords is that they each of them took power, and those most suited to taking power are those least suited to holding it. The usurper's head is often worse than all but the head it last donned.

>>65915736
Tithed sounds good to me.
>"Y-you can't touch me, I've already Tithed this year. I've paid my dues, I have! The Lord'll have your heart if he hears about this!"

An equally good question is how vampland interacts with its neighbors. The blood court has its own rituals and displays of wealth but who buys vampire grain or vampire wool? How do they convert the peasant's goods into coin or services?

>>65916067
They're probably mountainous and forested, as befits Fantasy Transylvania. Good mining and lumber, but only passable agriculture dependent on a large peasant class. While relatively antagonistic towards their neighbors, they probably aren't picking fights on all sides simultaneously, and most likely have some serious wilderness on one border that they can expand into uninterrupted. So they pick a fight with one side at a time until they're paid off in land or coin, sign for peace, then move on to the next side or settle down for a bit. The big advantage of eternity is the ability to actually wait out a peace treaty.
The middle class is probably small, mostly burgeoned by the fact that they're ruthless but 'fair', don't care about what a lot of the world considers to be unsavory, and have the allure of vampiric immortality (even if it's all but impossible for those not of their Noble or Knightly Caste to attain it, it's still something to draw people in)

OP here, thanks for all the discussion anons! /tg/ is a marvelous place, most of the time.

>>65916067
I think that their exports would largely be stuff like lumber and ore, as well as the personal projects of vampire nobility. The agriculture would largely be for feeding the peasantry and any larger-scale alchemical or magical industries being overseen by the nobles that require farmable materials. Might also be some decent hunting.

>>65916067
vampires probably have an artisan industry that they export limited bespoke products
like this sword has was made by the master Absolon
he spent 200 years learning the art of sword making before he started it and it took him 100 years to make it,
that kind of goods

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>>65912739
Someone said Gashnag?

>>65900619
The knights would need a very strict code of honor and duty that both treats their status as special and elevated above the common folk, yet also instills them with a sense of Noblesse Oblige toward them.

>Vampirism is a gift, granted only to those noble and virtuous enough to handle it.
>The Thirst is a test of your virtue and willpower.
>Those who control their Thirst and master their powers are granted fantastic powers to protect their kingdom and its people.
>Those who give in to it and feed without regard to the code are hunted down by their fellows and destroyed, as they are unworthy of the dark gift.

They'd also want to make their subjects okay with this whole arrangement. I mean, in most vampire fiction, feeding can be pleasurable for the victim, and isn't necessarily fatal. Perhaps "tithing" blood is considered a great honor, and able-bodied, healthy people are rewarded for being able to contribute particularly high-quality blood. You want the people to look up to the knights, and see their blood-tithe as a way that they are contributing to their country - their knights can't fight without their blood, after all.

>>65917951
You're a bit behind on the thread, in all fairness

>>65917506
I feel like this country tries to keep vampirism as an elite status package. So Master Absolon would probably be some Noble Vamp who took up smithing as a hobby or some such.
Although, if we go a Vampiric Usurper as the region's origin, then the original cabal that would turn into the various members of nobility would likely have a very varied background from their days as humans.

>The modern lords and their niceties weren't always so; just look to the observations from their neighbors of their pasts
>The King of the Night and his Court were all once men, like you and I
>Albeit they were hardy and wild men of an age long since gone, some would even describe them as brigands who gained legitimacy
>The King became Arisen first and passed his 'blessing' onto his friends and inner circle, quickly expanding their territory under a shroud of night and monstrous soldiers
>It was completely unsustainable of course
>Crops rotted in the fields with no one left undrained to tend them, monsters roamed and spread corruption and death to many of the few survivors, brothers who once shared a mother's beating heart turned against each other now that their own hearts beat no more
>And then came the final nail in the coffin, the Long Summer, where all the kingdoms suffered
>It was in the aftermath that the Black Pact was formed by those who survived their own hedonistic descent into madness
>These upstart Young Bloods need to take heed of their elders and realize they cling to their codes not out of habit, but out of fear of what happened without it
>And that they'd rather kill their own again than risk all they've painstakingly built

>>65917998
everyone needs a hobby

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>>65918077
Well yeah, I was just imagining that all the 2nd and 3rd Gen Vampires are varying degrees of classical vampire mixed with Arthurian knights, but the actual upper echelons are all Godbrand at heart when not plotting the downfall of their rivals politically or playing up the Vampire Overlord bit to show off to outsiders

Originally rustic folk who had to learn nobility, yknow? When the mask slips for a more modern vampire, it's more about seeing themselves as inherently better than everyone else. When an elder slips, it's more regression into their original habit of casual murder

Wonder how religion would work in this black pact scenario

Think that sun and light gods would be much less prominent or even banned, labeled as evil cults plotting against the king and their knights

>>65918992
the quest for the red grail
the source of infinite blood

>>65918992
Or they do indeed worship the light and especially god as the sun, and worship is a kind of appeasement. They could call the sun the "great destroyer" or something alike. A "holy" is someone that does not need to fear the burning light of the sun.

>>65911863
Why do I want to stick my dick into Bilbo ?

It strikes me that the vampire overlords would generally be interested in a large and generally healthy populace. You'd want a large group of people who wouldn't die off from being drained of a pint of blood regularly.

>>65900619
An undead kingdom could be a utopia where peasants don't have to work. One necromancer could do all the farming for a massive plantation.

One notable thing I can think of as far as minor details go is that it would be extremely rare for any of the peasants, even their kids, to have any fear of the dark. All that goes bump in the night is either their masters or something that serves them.

>>65920850
To further this, anything that goes bump in the dark that isn't their lords or a servant of said lords is guaranteed to meet a swift and painful end. After all, vampires are fairly reliant on a healthy population. I imagine the vampires would be fairly quick to stamp out diseases, can't let the cattle get sick.

>>65911991
>>65912519
>>65915221
>>65915525
Keep going, all of this is gold.

>>65911521
in Warcraft the only actual vampires (other than one guy who's just a joke Castlevania reference) are elves

>>65919170
>red grail
An allegory for the heart of an immortal dragon, still beating and giving blood centuries after getting tear out.

>>65921542
To be fair, Warcraft is nearly as thick with elves as TES is.

>>65900619
Chivalric code was pretty dark if you weren't nobility. It was basically a list of dos and don'ts, that included "menacing the peasantry" so they remember their place.

>>65916067
I don't understand, the king doesn't do commerce himself, his merchants would, and those merchants would be human. Other kingdoms would have no reason to reject them.

Vampires tend to be weak to silver weapons.

Would a vampire lord outlaw the usage of silver?

>>65921952
>Vampireistan invents paper money to justify decirculating silver coins

>>65921858
I think the assumption here is that noblesse oblige is a a big part of the noble culture and the majority of nobles actually take it seriously.
>>65921952
I doubt it. Vamps can get taken out by simple wooden stakes after all. However it would be unlikely for just anyone to have the means to carry silver weapons.

I think that, as mentioned before, there would be a policing force dedicated to handling vampiric misbehavior. These would be the only people in the country guaranteed to be carrying full silver weapons.

>>65922066
Silver weapons aren't the problem, silver trinkets, silver spiked water and silver utensils were common thing in the middle ages.

>>65922146
As I said, I doubt normal levels of silver is all that concerning for the nobles. Again, they can still get staked and that just requires wood.

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>>65920229
Than we get back to Pelor, the Burning Hate scenario

>>65900619
Vampires reserve the right to terrorize their own subjects, and that terror will be scheduled and within specific limits. The peasants don't fear a massacre, they fear the ever-ticking clock that counts down to one of them, any of them, maybe them, being chosen once a month, every full moon.

Vampires do not suffer poaching their pets and livestock. These are their lands to plunder.

>>65911521
I've always assumed that races who are naturally long lived would not be vampires for the same reason they are rarely liches. Becoming an intelligent undead being has its appeal to someone who may live 60 years, likely less if they are doing the kind of adventuring that ends with lichdom. It has less appeal to a creature that, without magical aid, can expect to live 200 or more years. Especially if you can already able to see in the dark, master your natural habitat and would see little benefit compared to the many negative drawbacks unlife brings.

>>65921967
Kek, modern monetary theory thanks to vampires. Maybe they'd want a cashless society in a more sci-fi setting with electronic banking.
>>65921952
Once a rebellion breaks out, the dwarves ally with the good-aligned humans and deliver cartloads of silver ore to manufacture into arrowheads and blades for the living, thus helping their allies and getting rid of excess ore, preventing domestic inflation.
>>65922174
Only from a certain type of tree though. One that happens to be sacred to the Wood Elves, so they get annoyed when vamprie hunters try to cut them down to make stakes and lances.

>>65900619
>A low-born man working as a hand in a noble's house grows infatuated with the daughter of the head of the house
>A devil that has been observing the house's sinful ways for some time sees this as the moment to strike
>The devil uses a false form to convince an envious group of low-born commonfolk to attack the nobles' manor at night
>Devil appears to our hand as the sack is occuring and offers him the power to defeat the raiders
>In his desperation, the hand accepts
>The devil grins and the hand flies into a rage, killing every other living person in the house
>Including his darling
>At this realization the hand begins to go mad and slowly practices his newfound magical gifts, not actually becoming a vampire but becoming vampire-like in his occult power, including an extended life
>Former hand becomes obsessed with discovering the secret to resurrection so he ad his true love can be together at last
>Begins kidnapping townsfolk and creating creatures to kidnap more townsfolk so he can experiment on them in the hopes of finding the key to restoring life
>Townsfolk begin referring to the manor of that old fallen noble house as a forbidden place, suggesting that it's haunted or home to some kind of demon in hushed whispers
>After being discovered and coming to blows with the Party several times, our former hand, now a mad warlock and false lord of a bedeviled house, finally discovers a ritual he believes will work and resurrect his beloved
>What actually happens is the entire noble house he once worked for come back as ghouls
>The rip him apart

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This is a good thread.
>most people that may pay the blood tithe are living in relative proximity to the estate of their vampire lord
>far off villages and cities don't need to pay the blood tithe, but they have to pay an extra taxe in material goods

>>65918992
>>65920229
>>65922514
I see religion going one of three ways.
A) The entire region was originally followers of whatever major religion was in the setting and got excommunicated when they went full Vampire Overlords. They don't care, and instead went Henry VIII with it and went "Okay, our king is now the head of church and state, get bent Fantasy Pope". Some minor changes to the major religion to be more Undead friendly, and they just carry on and stare down anyone who comes into their land and makes a scene about it.
B) If the setting has a usual fantasy pantheon, they just swap on over to whatever dark god is both cool with undead and not super involved in mortal affairs. Outlaw holy symbols of gods who're explicitly anti-Undead as "Intent to Rebel", but don't outlaw their worship in particular until some dumbass crusader convert stabs someone important. And similarly regulating silvered weapons and items fairly heavily.
C) Of their borders, one side is toward wilderness, two towards kingdoms they're in on-again-off-again relationships with when it comes to raiding, but have the fourth border a region that's actively antagonistic towards the rest of the world, in particular the church. Something like a massive region of various demonic kingdoms from some long-ago catastrophe where the hells bled over into reality. Basically play up the Transylvania angle; they're weird assholes, but on the other side of them are the Ottomans and nobody wants them as neighbors.

I'm a fan of A myself, since C seems a bit self-serving and over dramatic. Not necessarily a bad thing for a vampire kingdom, but not exactly necessary either.

>>65903719
As are your reading skills

>>65917880
Gashnag
More like
Nagash

>>65924617
I would go for A as well, but you could also make a difference between the general non-vampiric population and the vampires faith. The people could still worship in a way that is more similar to the previous faith and they care less about the undead faith in general. The vampires could even make their own personal faith a privilege for them in order to deliberately distinguish themselves from the general population.

In regards to a code of chivalry and keeping the vamps from getting out of control with feedings there could be consequences for "overeating"
In some settings vamps that overdo it get more monstrous and grotesque (vargeists in warhammer fantasy) which would require the other vampire knights to hunt down their now monstrous brethren.

>>65925374
I'd say just make blood mildly addictive, like painkillers. If we're in a fantasy setting there's no need for Turbo Vampires of +1 Vampireness when there's plenty of other things that could go bump in the night.

How about this. In their default state, a vampire
needs to drain about 5 liters/1.5 gallons a month to maintain their unlife as a bare minimum, but the act of drinking fresh blood imparts whatever sensations the person they drank from was currently experiencing. Ageless monsters likely suffer from daredevil tendencies as they get more and more jaded, but they can always recapture that spark anew by getting someone else to experience it then draining them.
So you get vampire lords who not only ensure those who come for the tithe are well fed, but that they're well and truly sloshed from the lord's personal cellar. I can't imagine undeath makes it easy to get drunk after all. The implication of course being vampires intentionally inducing the extremes in those they feed from in ways that're openly frowned upon as exactly the sort of thing that led to their civil war to begin with. So tales of a vampire seducing someone are par for the course, but draining them in the process is not just social taboo but might see some of the King's Red Caps coming to investigate to see if you're up to less obvious no-nos.

They're no more monstrous than most magical creatures, but those enraptured with recapturing their humanity often become monsters in the process.

>>65905850
How many do they really need?
Do they really need to corrupt the justice system and get countless death sentences just to feed themselves?

>>65926911
It's probably a balancing act, with different regions and Lords treating it differently. Hell, unless "The Last Drop" has some particular significance it's probably better to drain prisoners till they're almost dead then let them recover a bit. Why kill the cow when the milk is free and you don't eat steak?
Though if the Vampire King collects both blood and gold from the nobles as taxes, there's probably incentive to stockpile blood reserves. Not to mention sieges and such, or stocking up on a particular source they like.
>"Come, let's take this to the drawing room. I'll have a bottle of Lorelei the Younger brought up; drawn when she was 19."
>"My word, and you've been sitting on it all this time? Well, how could I refuse~?"

>>65927058
Going along with the idea of Blood cellars, what if part of getting turned into a vampire involved getting drained completely?
That's more than a gallon of pedigree blood! Certainly the lords of night wouldn't let good shit like that go to waste?

>>65905584
MtG does this with the Legion of Dusk.

Basically, religious vampires who believe that immortality is the destiny of mankind. Revere honour, restraint, courage, charity, etc. Have a empire of human servants who pay tithe through blood, only feed violently upon criminals, heretics, and enemies in war. They believe that one day their prime saint will return with something called the Immortal Sun, which will cure vampires of their need for blood and allow everyone to live forever as vamps without it becoming unsustainable.

>>65900619
Ive written army background stories like this (Joe Kürbisgärtner) and it seems like its fairly plausible. As you said above there would be a blood tithe. In my stories, citizenry that gave blood tithes got tax breaks and the higher quality the blood the more your tax break. Farmers and heavy labor had stronger blood so they were able to save tons on their taxes and in thus had a higher quality of life than other peasants. Soldiers served like regular troopers but elite troops had the choice of going into the "Eternal Elite", which were vampiric shock troops, and were paid in both coin and blood. Whole country ran like a swiss watch and was the envy of multiple countries who then tried to turn religious fanaticism against the country and a small crusade was raised.

1/3rd of the crusaders saw how the farmers lived and left to become citizens.

So the timeline is something like this for this Fantasy Transylvania

>Rustic Noble dabbles in occult/dark places/etc. and becomes a vampire
>Makes a cabal of vampires from those loyal to him
>Usurps control of the region in a bloody coup, declares himself King of the Night
>After the war of usurption, vampire population explodes along with wanton hedonism from those who sacked the lands of the original rulers
>Things get real bad; kingdom splits into infighting city states and such seeking to wipe each other out and claim total control
>Whole lotta dead vampires, even more dead peasant levies, capped off with a several year long drought that affects the entire region and surrounding kingdoms
>Many vampires on the losing sides flee to other lands, spreading vampirism and its myths in their wake
>King of the Night manages to put down the last challengers who remained
>King and Counts settle everything and draw lines on their maps
>The Black Pact is formed and sworn by the surviving lords and king, along with a system to manage the number of vampires and curb infighting
>The Reischsnacht Order is formed out of both those soldiers loyal to the King who didn't want to become Counts/Viscounts...and those rebels who surrendered and were useful enough to keep around
>Time passes, country stabilizes, the people flourish, and the Black Pact is held sacrosanct

>'Descendants' of those vampires who fled begin to make their way to the country, along with necromancers, occultists, and monsters in general
>There're rumors that the first King of the Night was slain or fled during the war, and the Counts raised one of their number up to the throne in secret to keep the peace with the rebels
>Those who believe he fled believe he's coming back to overthrow these upstart usurpers, and bring back the Age of the Vampires, unchecked by the weakness of laws

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>>65900619
If other types of undead exist, anyone who becomes a vampire willingly is an absolute jerk.

Skeletons typically don’t have to feed on anything and hats of disguise are cheap.

>>65927496
If Veganism exists anybody who eats meat willingly is an absolute jerk :V

Plus how often do you hear of any undead except a Vampire or a Lich that's the same Quality of individual? Almost every other undead is deeply broken on some mental or emotional level and usually doesn't even provide you with a body capable of experiencing physical sensations. Not to mention becoming a vampire is usually as simple as "Find a vampire willing to turn you, terms and conditions may apply"

>>65927496
I'm pretty sure there's not humanitarian form of undeath.
If undeath isn't evil it's called deathlessness instead.

>>65927615
There are liches that are neutral. Undeath is not automatically evil.

Ghosts exist.

>>65900619
Undead are creatures of compunction. Turning vampires into Normal People But With Superpowers is a mistake. Your Vampire Lord is the exception, sure, and is different from the other vampires. But any new vampires he sires should be creatures of raw hunger restrained only by their Master's will. There don't even need to be a lot of them. There just need to be enough bought-off nobles to keep a boot on the neck of everyone else. The Vampire Lord certainly won't want challengers for his throne or anyone who's going to buck his will. After a generation or two maybe you get some spawn recruited from the ranks of the corrupt and decadent noblility, raised from birth to obey their liege lord

>>65927559
>Almost every other undead is deeply broken on some mental or emotional level and usually doesn't even provide you with a body capable of experiencing physical sensations

I've found it more common to see vampires and liches in that category as well.
Liches more often than vampires are described as losing all semblance of self due to losing all physical drives/sensations.
Vampires tend to be more split in part because for some reason people insist that vampires are either
1) a race of mary-sues
or 2) absolutely disgusting parasites
with little in between.

>>65927639
>compunction
strong uneasiness caused by a sense of guilt?

>>65927637
Being a ghost almost always sucks ass, and being a Lich usually requires a dark and horrible ritual that requires a fuckton of research, power, and rare materials. Neither gives you a body that you can continue to exist 'normally' in.

>>65927639
>>65927657
What's being talked about in thread is Nobles and a Knightly caste raised up with the intent to turn into vampires that abide by the current rules. A fucked up dystopia of the dead ruling the living, but one that works by self-policing and ruthlessly culling any vamp who steps too far out of line. Like OWoD V:tM but if they were operating out in the open with the same kind of power structures.

Bump

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>>65925374
>In regards to a code of chivalry and keeping the vamps from getting out of control with feedings there could be consequences for "overeating"
>In some settings vamps that overdo it get more monstrous and grotesque (vargeists in warhammer fantasy) which would require the other vampire knights to hunt down their now monstrous brethren.

The head vampire could just pull a Kain.

>>65900619
What is thy bidding, my master?

>>65927699
I don't think it's much of a dystopia honestly. this Black Pact thing isn't all that worse than an actual chivalric code, and as others have stated, vampires would have a vested interest in the good health and prosperity of their subjects.
Plagues? Vampires pour money into finding a cure, can't let the cattle get sick.
War? End that shit quick, every drop of blood spilled on a battlefield is a drop that they don't get.
Banditry? See above, every person brutalized or killed by highwaymen is a person who can't be Tithed.

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am i the only one that is of the belief that not only are communist revolutions a real threat in vampire nations,but a very fitting one as well?
think about it

>be peasant
>live your whole life as slave in all but name,know nothing of the world beyond your small cottage
>somehow manage to get married and have a daughter
>then a more wicked vampire lord comes along and steals your child away,never to see her again
>you become enraged but are powerless to stop it
>some time later a guy comes up with the idea of dismantling the vamp regime
>gets a lot of traction,decide to join in as well
>eventually a revolution occurs with the help of outsiders and all the vampires are purged
>decide to pick a red flag as your symbol due to all the blood shed because of the vampires

>turns out that the original revolutionary was a vampire as well from the start
>he just wanted all the power for himself
>end up switching one crappy regime for another one

I'd rather be a vampire-lich than just a vampire or just a lich.

>>65932382
You forget that
>wicked lord is found out by his peer and is publicly staked for rocking the boat

>>65932455
>wicked lord is found out by his peer and is publicly staked for rocking the boat

well yes,but by that time its too late for the poor peasant girl and her father has already become resentful of the vamps

>>65932488
I've got my doubts on vengefulness unless he's just a jerk who doesn't believe in justice. Man is raised on the idea that there's a social contract and that that both sides are due punishments if they break it. Is he upset about his little girl dying? Absolutely. However he'll be consoled by the fact that justice was done.

>>65932591
>I've got my doubts on vengefulness unless he's just a jerk who doesn't believe in justice
>man loosed daughter to rabid dog
>but the dog was put down in the end,so its ok

you gotta look deeper,why was the dog rabid in the first place?
because of vampires
why do we need vampires,we could defend ourselves?
why dont we just get rid of them,we outnumber them and their walking corpses

because of this hate and anger a powerhungry individual could easily slip through and convince the populace to remove the vamps

>>65932382
Having the vamps kill the people they drain seems rather self-defeating doesn't it.

>>65932230
This Black Pact, like the actual codes of chivalry or bushido or whatever warrior code, is probably something you pay lip service and don't openly flaunt or break. Getting away with it is fine, but get caught and it's a rope they can hang you with if they ever want to. Plus a lot of their problems no doubt stem from the very fact they're an undead hellhole.
Plagues? Good luck getting foreign healers to come to Vampakistan with their holy healing magic.
War? You mean that great way for vampire lords to gain wealth, land, prestige, and prisoners they've no reason not to drain dry, all while sharpening their fangs and swords
Banditry? Probably less of a problem, sure, but there's things that go bump in the night which know of no law but tooth and nail, and less savory things drawn by the darkness of the land that know but don't care

To paraphrase the Chinese, 'The Forests are deep, and the King is far away.'

>>65932382
I think you see potential for communist revolutions wherever you go, my red friend.

>>65932680
>Having the vamps kill the people they drain seems rather self-defeating doesn't it.
well yes,but some of them loose their control and do it anyway
these are peasants we re talking about,they wont think too much about the ramifications of their decision
they just see an outsider that came in and took away one of their own,who never returned
they re gonna be pissed

>>65932656
>why do we need vampires,we could defend ourselves?
Except the vampires are each as strong as ten of us, have all the proper weapons and armor as well as actual training in the art of warfare, making them infinitely better suited to defending the lands and us than we are.
>why don't we just get rid of them,we outnumber them and they're walking corpses
See above. One of them is as strong as ten men, they are far more experienced with warfare and are actually properly equipped, unlike the farmers with torches, pitchforks, and some sharp bits of wood they whittled about an hour ago.

>>65932731
The vampire lords would have to be really strict and really public about taking care of the vampires who break the rules. The vampires needs the system as much as the humans do, after all. There would be some sort of reparation or peace offering to a family that has been slighted, alongside a front row seat to the beheading and subsequent staking of the offending vampire, I think.

>>65932731
>>65932781
>"My lord, the peasants are revolting!"
>"Yes, but what's new?"
>"No my lord, they're raising weapons in rebellion!"
>"Oh. Oh good, I could use the exercise. Fetch me... hmm, fetch me that boar spear hanging in the Great Hall, then saddle my horse, and summon the guard. Minerva says I never use the damn thing, and this is as good a time as any."

>>65932788
>alongside a front row seat to the beheading and subsequent staking of the offending vampire, I think.
You're thinking too small, the punishment for breaking the Black Pact should be something painful and slow, not just a beheading and staking. Something like crucifying the offending vampire and setting him on fire feet first so everyone knows better than to flout the rules.

>>65932781
> One of them is as strong as ten men, they are far more experienced with warfare and are actually properly equipped, unlike the farmers with torches, pitchforks, and some sharp bits of wood they whittled about an hour ago
that was also the case with the russian revolution
it was literally just a bunch of uneducated,untrained farmers fighting against a well prepared force
and they won

>>65932788
>The vampire lords would have to be really strict and really public about taking care of the vampires who break the rules
i suppose,but some resentment would still linger
all it would take is one charismatic individual to incite the mob

>>65932827
read what i said above
it doesnt matter how many weapons or equipment you have or how well trained you are
at the end of the day,30-40 dudes wielding clubs are still gonna fuck up a vampire

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>>65900619
My take would be that they are an aggressive empire that raids it's neighbors in order to feed it's small number of powerful warriors in order to avoid feasting on its own subjects. The peasants don't mind, they get to keep 100% of their crop yield due to the nature of their undead lords and guardians, as well as a complete lack of a church to tithe them. Their taxes are paid with servitude, much like the Egyptians. During the months where farming is not possible, they build monuments and infrastructure. Some commoner children who display the right traits are drafted into becoming vampiric squires, a path that eventually leads to knighthood or death. This is considered an honor to them and their families, who are rewarded with gold for their contribution. Their prosperity isn't consistent though, the foreign policy of their rulers agitates crusades from other nations who try to rape and pillage their way to the capital every few decades or so.

>>65932382
Not all revolutions need to be communist.

>>65932230
I can see the sickness.
But when it comes to death, normal nobles lose money and power when their people die too, and it still happens.

>>65932855
I don't think any of these ideas are self-exclusionary though. This is vampire feudalism we're talking about, some degree of self-governance is expected. And with that you get the wide range of 'Asshole Vampire Overlord who enacts Vampire Prima Noctis because he can get away with it' up to "By my oaths to the Crown and the Black Pact, I will not tolerate to see the law flaunted. HAVE AT YOU, KNAVE!"

The latter is probably more common the closer you get to any political or economic center, with the prior more common out in the boonies or on the frontier. With variance, of course. Point is, there's no reason each and every Vampire is a carbon copy of every other Vampire.

>>65932855
But how are they going to get to the nobles in the first place? Their castles are locked up tighter than a misers money during the day, and even if you do manage to breach the defenses at night, you're 30-40 dudes with clubs going up against a vampire with literal decades of experience with killing and his likely vampiric guards, all of whom are likely not much less experienced than their master, in the very heart of their power. Each of them is worth ten of you in pure strength, they are too fast for you to keep track of, and they wield unnatural powers that you can't begin to imagine. This isn't a bunch of farmers rising up against a bunch of fat nobles, this is a bunch of farmers rising up against creatures who are perfectly designed to hunt and kill humans.

>>65932901
>Not all revolutions need to be communist.
no,but strict hierarchies usually spawn revolutions that seek to get rid of inequality,and those can be either capitalistic or socialistic and peasants are easier to trick into believing ``muh free stuff``

>>65932927
i know what you mean m8,one blood drinker being a cunt wont incite a revolution,but this stuff will build up in time and the people will remember
the russian revolution took hundreds of years to occur,and even that only because of the catastrophe that was the first world war
thing is,nothing lasts forever,not even vampires,and most certainly not their regimes

>>65932965

>what is innovation
eventually new weapons would be created to combat them
maybe its the discovery of their weakness to silver/garlic/sunlight/holy relics or whatever,maybe its just good old fashioned gunpowder,eventually the playing fields will be leveled enough in the favor of the peasants

>>65932855
I suppose that's true. A charismatic enough bloke could lead any sort of revolution.

>>65933011
Quick question, how long do you think feudalism lasted before peasant revolutions started taking off? You're talking about Aragorn's Tax Policy here; it's surely a thing that existed in-setting but it's so non-relevant to the current story as to not even merit a footnote.
That's not the sort of thing you bake into a setting. That's the sort of thing a GM spins off on their own. Because as baller as it is, "The Peasant Revolutionary Movement" is far less interesting and meshes far less well than something like:
>"The Order of the True King"
>A group that believes the true King of the Night was bested during the wars that led to the founding of the Black Pact, and betrayed by a loyal confidant was forced to flee to foreign lands.
>The current King is an imposter, foisted upon us by the Counts to maintain a peace as unnatural as their undeath.
>In his banishment, the true King has worked in the shadows, mustering his followers and gathering support
>Soon, my friends, he will return and strike straight for the heart of this corrupt nation
>And when he does it will be as it was in the old days; any man may rise above his station and grasp a new destiny if he's only the will and strength to see it through.

>>65933131
i wasnt thinking of this in terms of interesting world building,but realistic world building
guess i let my autism take over

>>65933011
>strict hierarchies usually spawn revolutions that seek to get rid of inequality

Not necessarily. The french revolution was more the product of new economics and weapons than inherent social cycles.

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>>65932382
>>65932723
Pic is highly important to this thread. And so is shiki.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs87-_YcKYE

>>65934049
>>>/a/

>>65900619
Most kings would probably qualify as "evil" by most RPG rules. So a vampire king would actually have to change very little from the usual king mold. You got your aristocrats, other vampires, then you got your cattle, the serfs. Vampire protects his cattle, levys little by way of taxes, demands no grains or whatever. But does occasionally eat someone.

Bump

Theres a book for D&D that lists the power of a vampire based on its age. Does anyone remember the name of it?

>>65936885
Libra Mortis from 3.5 maybe?

>>65936885
VanRitchens Guide to Vampires AD&D

>>65918309
>hates pigs blood
why even live?

>>65932704
>a lot of their problems no doubt stem from the very fact they're an undead hellhole.
I see no evidence of this. Just because the place is run by vampires doesn't make it suddenly horrible. If anything, it would probably be better, the common man gets to keep all of his crops and is protected from the things that go bump in the night by more dangerous things, and all he has to do is give up a pint or so of blood every so often to the local bloodsucker. Seems fair to me.
>Good luck getting foreign healers to come to Vampakistan with their holy healing magic.
That just means you need to invest more in mundane medicine and public health codes to compensate, no big deal there.
>You mean that great way for vampire lords to gain wealth, land, prestige, and prisoners they've no reason not to drain dry
Yes, and do so quickly, so as to incur as few losses to what they already had as possible. Vampires would have a vested interest in making wars quick affairs, not avoiding them entirely.
>there's things that go bump in the night which know of no law but tooth and nail
Don't forget the law that says they get burned alive and a portion of their holdings given to those they wronged by their own kind if they ignore the law.
>less savory things drawn by the darkness of the land that know but don't care
They can come, they can also be slaughtered by the things already there. What better way to dispatch some upstart necromancer than to send a vampiric hit squad after his ass in the dark of night?

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>>65939718
Your reasoning as to why vampires would want to avoid people dying is very flimsy.
Normal nobles need living serfs to pay them taxes too, their incentives aren't different at all. Both vampires and humans would still be able to treat human life as a resource for war or personal things. The only difference is that with humans there's a chance they have some ideals about the sanctity of life.

It's a nice setting detail that vampires have some checks and balances in place to keep them from wreaking absolute havoc, but you can't extrapolate that into vampistan being a utopia.
I mean, you can write a vampire utopia if you want, but it's not the natural result of this premise at all.

>>65939828
Nobody is calling it a utopia. It was pretty clear from the beginning that this entire thing was gonna be a LE sort of deal. However what is "natural" to come out of a situation can rightly get fucked when it gets in the way of fun, and the idea of vampires sticking to the codes of chivalry and taking noblesse oblige seriously is fun.

>>65939851
This. Vampires are massively autistic when it comes to given oaths and reputation, the thought of them taking a chivalric code and noblesse oblige deadly serious is fun and seems legit to me.

>>65939718
>>65939851
>>65939885
I don't disagree that there should be vampires whom living under is utopian for the peasantry. I disagree that all vampires should be homogeneous in that regard, for three reasons.
First and foremost, it's less interesting for the setting to have 'Discount Necromantic Utopia #47' that every GM came up with in highschool or college, than it is to have a dystopia of monsters trying to be human who're constantly trying to balance how much they can cheat the system with how much other people actually care about them cheating the system and killing them in response.
Second, it's more interesting for GMs to build and players to encounter situations where everyone is openly following the rules in public but telling them to get bent in private. It gives leverage for weaker PCs to hit someone more powerful than them where it hurts (while fending off defenses/reprisal) and helps bind stronger PCs with social rules.
Lastly, there's the precedent for it. I'm not talking about real-life, but the chivalric fantasies almost always include a dude trying their best until they either fuck up or get screwed over by someone who's gaming the system. The Arthurian Court, the Matter of France, the Three Musketeers (fuck you it counts), and all the others. Without drama and conflict baked into a setting, you have to add it in to create a plot

Bump

>>65941029
Don't bump, extrapolate. If you're interested in the worldbuilding, add on to it. The worst that can happen is someone goes "That's dumb and here's why", which means stuff is still getting added on

>>65941490
I'm not a very creative individual and most everything I can think to add has already been said in some form or another.
If I must take a stab at it though, I'd like to ask how exactly it is decided who gets Tithed for blood donation. Do people get chosen by lottery, is there a schedule of some sort, or do people volunteer for it? If people volunteer, are there any incentives to do so?

>>65940382
Nobody is saying the vampires should be homogeneous, just that they're likely to actually give a fuck about this Black Pact, if only for fear of being burned alive as an object lesson to everyone else. Sure, levels of adherence to it will probably vary depending on a few different things like your exact position and how closely the King and his soldiers are looking at any given moment but you can expect that nobody is going to outright flout it.

>>65941546
The incentive for volunteering should be that the vampire duke will not come to your village and just feed however he wants for not obeying the laws. However there could be the chance that the vampire takes a liking in the person and adds him/her to his/her court. Maybe it could turn out to be a better live or there is even a chance that the person may be granted vampirism as well.

>>65942598
Not him but that doesn't seem like much of an incentive so much as an implied threat. I like what>>65915221 suggested, with the Tithed individual and maybe their family being fed a meal by the lord before being sent on their merry way.

>>65942678
>Not him but that doesn't seem like much of an incentive so much as an implied threat
It's a tax. Of course there is an implied threat.
Taxes are theft

Honestly, is this really that groundbreaking?
Isn't the opressive vampire lord that feeds on the people a lasting cliche?
The exact details of the blood tithe seem like nitpicky details for a world following general tropes to me.

>>65942846
Yeah but if you're working with a system of volunteers for tithing, you need to have a carrot to go along with the stick. Everybody knows that if the lord doesn't get his tithe he'll just come and take it, but that'll just breed resentment and rebellion, you need some kind of reward for tithing to keep everything copacetic.

>>65942957
The reward is fundamentally the same as in any feudal society: protection.

>>65942678
Also that you get to stand face to face with the lord, giving you a chance to tell them all about how brave your son is and how great of a squire he'd make, wink wink.

>>65909368
Will that revival setting ever be released on /tg/ for others to appreciate viciously ridicule and hate

I think we’ve had a thread about this before but I can’t find it.
How much blood would it take to forge a sword out of the iron in the blood? I know it would take an absurd amount, but I want my genocidal vampire bbeg to wield one

>>65932855
the Russian revolution was possible thanks to firearms you nut

>>65944753
According to wikipedia, a well-nourished adult has about 2,5 grams of iron in his blood and 5 liters of blood in his body.
So to get a kilo of iron to work with, you'd need 400 dead people and their 2000 liters of blood.
No idea how much iron you need to create a weapon, though.

>>65946165
You need a little over a kilogram for a regular old arming sword. You'd probably need a bunch more to account for any loss of material or other such things.

>>65946165
That math checks out. Like>>65946496 said though, a kilo will get you a standard arming sword and you're going to want a bit more than a kilo to account for mistakes made during the forging process. That being said, I love the idea of older vampires having swords forged from blood iron as a status symbol if nothing else, with only the highest ranked and most competent of the nobility having one.

>>65903559
KAIN IS DEIFIED
THE CLANS TELL TALES OF HIM

>>65900619
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Red Duke a colossal dickbag to everybody, the people of Mousillon included?

>>65942887
From what I understand, the Black Pact doesn't seem much more oppressive than any real life code of chivalry. Besides, we've all seen the vampire being a tyrannical monster of whom the peasants live in constant fear, it's a little refreshing to see a setting where people just roll with it and the vampires actively enforce a set of checks and balances among themselves, it makes them seem more refined than their bestial hunger would suggest.

>>65941546
The count's men ride down to the village a few days before every new moon (darkest night), and pick a suitable victim their lord would approve of with some ritualized selection, like giving her a flower garland to let everyone know she's been picked. The peasants are expected to comply and leave her at an arranged spot nearby, maybe in a white dress/flower crown. I imagine they'd add a lot of ritual aspects and pagan symbolism to the whole thing, make it a tradition. Some see it as an honour to placate their lord and protector, the people who disapprove keep silent. Since it's been a thing for generations, noone remembers doing things differently. The vampire shows up, and depending on his character he either lets her visit the castle, gives her dinner to make his tithe calm before feeding (happy peasant = better taste) or just drinks from her right there and dumps her unconscious body in the woods. It's seen as a badge of honor to have your children picked for the lord, as it means they're good stock, and vampires can be finicky and demanding when it comes to tithes.

>>65919170
>>65921659
If I remember Warhammer lore right, the founder of the Blood Dragons sated his thirst by drinking from a dragon, freeing him of the need to constantly seek blood.
>Red grail
Black grail sounds better imho. Maybe drinking from it turns you into a vampire? At the very least it's a symbolic part of the induction ritual to join the vampiric aristocrats.

>>65949609
>The Black Grail, as close to a holy relic as anything these vampires have in their history
>Legends say that it was used by the King of the Night to become a vampire independent of any outside force, while some go further and say the Black Grail is the original source of vampirism to begin with
>The Counts and the King certainly aren't talking about it, though I've heard there's a portrait of the King deep within the palace of him holding an ornate stone cup
>In any event, its origins and uses are lost to history and silence
>As is the Grail itself; allegedly it was stolen during the Blackcoat Uprisings by one of the rebelling Lords
>And if you listen to the rumors, the Lord who stole it never made it back to his territory... but when he was found, the Grail was already gone
>I hear if a Reichsnacht really fucks up, they "Go Hunting For The Grail" as penance while things die down. Y'know, wander the roads aimlessly and get to know the land
>Gods forbid the damn thing's ever found. If it could actually make Vampires as strong as the King then we'd be right back in another Blackcoat Uprising, and everything would go to hell in a handbasket.

>Vampires can't see themselves in the mirror due to them being made with silver and glass back in the day
>Vampires are sin personified, vanity comes with the package
>They want to see themselves, commission painters from cities
>Painter's guild makes a lot money painting portraits for the vampires, they always seem to want more in different outfits/poses
>After the dark reign is over, some dukes keep them in the cellar as a reminder of the past like the dragon skulls in GoT beneath the Red Keep, out of sight but still there as a warning to rulers to not grow complacent.

>>65950184
Why not just go the whole nine yards and go with vampires not having any reflection at all, regardless of surface. Every single vampire lord is reliant on their servants for both their appearance and any necessary tweaks it might need. And everyone knows that any stylist worth a damn is a miniature tyrant

>>65950330
I'm imagining that every seamstress and tailor would be constantly competing to create new trends and earn the patronage of the undead lords.

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Hey, hey, what's a vampire's favourite gemstone?
A blood ruby.

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top tier thread

bumb

Vampire king has a very open and honest deal with his people.

I am a vampire. I am a blood-drinking denizen of eternal shadow and scourge to the living. However, I am not stupid, and I don't really want a band of adventurers staking me and cutting off my head and ending my eternal benighted existence. So here's the deal: I am immensely powerful, and command all manner of diabolic sorcery, I can conjure storms and beasts and vermin and I know the secrets that exist beyond the bounds of mortal life. I will put all of this power into use protecting you, ensuring your well being from all manner of threats, including other vampires. You will be afforded all the protection and leadership a king should promise his people, and I also vow to never feed upon my subjects. In return, I get to lead a cushy existence as a king, in this sense, you, and peace our deal will make, will protect me. The sun shall never ravage my unholy flesh and I may sleep in safety. Aside from the regular laws of the land, I have but one stipulation. If you commit a crime and break the peace of my kingdom, you will be my food. If you try to kill me and break the peace of this deal, you will be my food. What constitutes the breakage of a law shall be left to your mortal lawmakers and I will have no part in their creation, as a show of faith that I am not here to refashion your nation into my own personal bloodbank.

>>65954154
I like it, though I think it would be better to change the "never feed on my own subjects" bit to something like, "I also vow to feed only once a month non-lethally upon a single Tithed individual, to be chosen from among the healthy and working age individuals by lottery."

>>65955330
I don't think monthly feedings is enough to sustain a vampire, much less keep one at fighting strength. Plus a lottery just makes it seem like an unlucky occurrence, almost hunger-games or whatever comparison you wanna draw, type shit. A system that ensures that everyone experiences being tithed seems fairer.

>>65955385
>I don't think monthly feedings is enough to sustain a vampire, much less keep one at fighting strength.
Fair enough. Weekly then?
>A system that ensures that everyone experiences being tithed seems fairer.
Okay, how about this. All people between the ages of sixteen and forty in good health are on a list of eligible names for the tithe. Everyone on that list is tithed in alphabetical order. The list is updated every new year.

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>>65955385
If we go off a vamp needing 5 liters/1.5 gallons a month (Blood in a normal human body), and a person can usually lose .5-1 liter/ 1-2 pints of blood without suffering ill effects, then our vamps need to tithe five people a month per vampire. And that's not even getting into stockpiling, or taxes from the vampire's superiors, or possible spoilage and whatnot.

This is all probably mitigated by prisoners and possibly by magical healing and/or blood magics, but that's still a decent amount of blood.

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>>65955624
>*Laughs in Polish*

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Thinking more about this thread, characters like Vlad and Gashnag really do summarize the Vampiric neutrality of it all and how well they can do.

But what other "cursed" individuals can you think of that rule over otherwise normal citizens?
What else would work as well? because I've not really seen much else aside maybe the odd witch.

>"VAMPIRIC RULE"

[laughs in Nekaharan]

>>65955729
Vampires have to sleep during the day, which means they can't exactly tour their lands to make sure that everything is in order for extended periods of time, maybe that's the job of the ghouls? By ghoul I mean the type of ghoul you might meet in V:tM.

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>>65955897
We could probably spin vampires as not needing as much sleep as the living. Maybe make it so direct sunlight is dangerous as hell but indirect or cloudy days is merely uncomfortable, with them being more lethargic when it's daytime in general.
The solution therefore is simple and twofold. Human squires/retinues like in >>65911991
to deal with the lethargy and such, and Pic Related to deal with the sunlight. Full Plate, that is. I can't imagine it'd actually be uncomfortable for a Vampire to wear it for long stretches, or at least nowhere near as much for mortal men.
And non-Knights can just do the generic travel by carriage or shrouded palanquin. I assume the Counts and such have ways to make the areas they live in supernaturally cloudy too.

>>65956393
>I assume the Counts and such have ways to make the areas they live in supernaturally cloudy too.
My liege, the peasants are complaining again. The mayor says they need a certain number of bright sunlight per year or the crops will fail. Shall I tell the necromancers to have a meeting with the farmer's guild and work out a calendar system for weather control?

>>65956457
No, no, just give them the days where the moon is less than half full during the growing seasons. Let the skies be bright when the night is dark; that ought to keep up their morale. Oh, and fetch me the names of those who're complaining; discreetly, mind you. Ensure their houses are tithed next month, to remind them who rules here.

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>>65956393
>heavy plate armor is the product of vampires wanting to protect themselves from sunlight
I love it, it also means that when they "let loose" at night they will forfeit most armor. But how much sunlight weakens or kills vampires is pretty much entirely up to the author. That said, the weaker they are at day, the more vulnerable they are and the more they rely on their human subjects to keep things in order at day. There is however a point where they get too vulnerable and it becomes theoretically too easy for an uprising to just happen at broad daylight.

>>65957741
I'd like to think the armor is most heavily used by vampiric knights fighting whatever border skirmishes they have with their neighbors, the Reichsnacht who're out Questing, and ceremonial/honor guards. After all without some serious firepower it's pretty hard to siege a castle in an afternoon, and the minute the sun's out of sight any uprising now has some pissed off vampires to deal with. Assassins are a threat, but then again most people are vulnerable to someone sneaking up on you while you're asleep and stabbing you in the chest/beheading you.

Speaking of, I'm guessing conflicts with the neighbors go one of two ways. Either vamps crusading to reclaim lands their neighbors gobbled up back when the Vampire Kingdom was collapsing from civil war, or neighbors mustering their own crusade to finally put an end to the monsters that keep raiding across the borders.
Vamp Peasant Levies are probably lower quality than their neighbors, but Mounted Heavy Cavalry Vampires are probably a goddamn nightmare, and trying to duke it out with them during a siege is gonna be even worse, regardless of whether you're sieging or besieged.

>>65957959
>a siege is gonna be even worse, regardless of whether you're sieging or besieged.
How would you even siege a castle full of vampires? Unless you can break them in a single day before nightfall, you're fucked, because the second that sun is gone, you're going to be torn apart.

>>65900619

isn't this just Warhammer Vampire counts ?

>>65958058
Same way you normally run a siege, outnumber the everloving fuck out of them. You probably have to keep an incredibly tight night watch though. The current system of this place doesn't allow for an exorbitant amount of vamps, they're just a hell of a force multiplier that you have to play around or find yourself murdered once the sun sets for trying conventional tactics.

>>65958077

Kind of. Sylvanians still hold Vlad von Carstein to be the lawful count and support is given from the living population. In a white dwarf or something like it, GW had an undead army with some peasant/Empire allies to simulate a household troop of the Carsteins. Can't for the life of me remember where it was.

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>>65958077
Kind of but not entirely. While you got benevolent rulers like some Carsteins or Ushorans empire in which he made it law that a vampire can only feed on prisoners, it didn't really result in some kind of vampire-feudal society with its own kind of chivalric laws and ideals. You get your blood dragons sure, but those are more like an order, not an entire society.

>>65958143
Depending on what these vampires are capable of, it's entirely possible that numbers can't help you.

>>65959665
So far as I can tell, we're in a Fantasy Setting with at least enough magic present for necromancy to be both a thing and detested, along with enough monsters that go bump in the night to justify traveling knights.
If I had to guess or spitball, we're at Witcher levels of magic and civilization. The games though, not the books.

>>65959828
I haven't played or read the Witcher, so that doesn't really tell me anything.

>>65960458
Games: B/X DnD
Novels: 3.5 DnD

Basically magic is either a slow and carefully controlled to create permanent affects without fucking up whatever you're working on, or flashy artillery affects where you're more concerned with the secondary effect of the magic. Fireballs are temporary, lighting someone on fire is forever.

>>65958058
>How would you even siege a castle full of vampires?
I have some ideas, depends on the setting's mythology and their weakness though:
>Perimeter of holy symbols at siege line to keep them in their castle
>Divert a river to have a moat around the castle, if they can't cross running water
>Priests and acolytes/choir patrol the camp at night, singing hymns and swinging incense. This would be great for morale as well.
>Periodically have soldiers drop barrels of rice during the night, to clean them up at sunrise
Maybe dwarf runes could keep away undead? I had an idea for my setting that once the vampires have been driven out, dwarves add rune-enscribed statues by major bridges that prevent lower undead from crossing.

>>65960778
This just came to me, holy water garden sprinklers that turn on at night. Foolproof way to keep out vampires.

>>65960778
Diverting a river to siege an enemy with a moat is some Alexander the Great level bullshit. Impractical as all hell, but I love it. Enchanted Siege Line markers are a good idea too, but I feel like we're straying too far from the fact that sieges are ultimately a diversionary tactic on both sides to force the other to waste resources. Overwhelming force to trap your enemies in a castle when they've no chance at a straight fight, forcing those besieged to waste resources and possibly end up ransomed by the encircling army. Meanwhile the encircling army can't just up and leave without now having to deal with fortified enemies able to harass them from the rear, so they have to waste enough manpower to keep the sieged location suppressed. Most sieges end without a castle breaking, it's only critical locations where the fate of nations are decided that the actual gates get battered down.

The real issue is that vampires are a big force multiplier, as stated. Especially if they get the chance to go on the offensive against more mortal foes under favorable conditions. They're like a SpecOps team against regular soldiers

>>65958077
As other posters have said, some of the better VCs do resemble this. On the other hand there are Von Carsteins and Bloody Dragons who are utterly mad/evil/inhuman. Not to mention the Strigoi, who were once fairly decent rulers but now have a tragic existence as a bloodline almost wholly fallen to the beast within, the og Lahmians who are the HBO series of Bloodlines, and the Necrarch who are as likely to try to reanimate a recently dead face and nail it to a living person for research as they are to incidentally do something good.

That said Vlad is 100% the lad.

Bump

>>65961166
If you're trying to keep a bunch of vampires in their castle, diverting a river to create a moat isn't that bad of an idea.

>>65966732
Yeah but it's not exactly an overnight project y'know? Even moreso because of the sheer amount of labor you need to dedicate to it, which is more mouths to feed. It's a giant middle finger to your opponents of "Fuck you, we're in charge"

>>65966820
Yeah, I hadn't considered that. Can't imagine that a bunch of vampires would sit around while a bunch of mortals tear up their land to trap them in their own castle.
What about the defenses? You can't have all the guards be vampires, so who or what could be trusted enough to protect them while they sleep?

>>65966732
Maybe the moat was already there because the castle was built before the vampires took over. They kept it dry, but never filled it. It'd take some dwarven engineers and an eager workforce to dig a small canal from a river to the moat. The vampire would probably see what they're doing and send his minions to disrupt the work. Made some druidic magic could alter the flow of a river faster?

Total War Warhammer had trebuchet that threw vats of holy water, I thought that was a really cool concept.

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>>65967017
I think that'd only be common in the border regions where land and estates have changed hands one or two times in the past. Moats are probably gonna be rarer the deeper you go into vampire territory, since they probably have natural spooky defenses like cliffs and thick forests.
Speaking of, if they can't cross running water are bridges and thus bridge-makers in high demand? Do they pay enough mined gold to spring for dwarves, or do they have actual Bridge Trolls?

>>65967070
The Castlevania anime has a backstabbing vamp use a zombified priest to bless an entire river, before sabotaging a bridge with a bunch of vampire troops on it. God that show is a gem.

>>65967183
I think they'd spring for dwarves. The vampy aristocracy here seems to largely be the sort to make sure that jobs are done the right way.

>>65967213
When you're going to be around for the foreseeable future, there's no sense in wasting money on a project that's going to need to be replaced any time this century.

>>65967183
As I recall, a vampire can only cross running water when sleeping, covered in the soil of their homeland.

>>65969442
That really depends on the writer; the truly classic weaknesses like garlic and rice have been out of vogue for forever. Even running water is pushing it, so the ultimate question is "Does this make vampires more interesting to have as a weakness?"

Direct sunlight is basically a given, and we've discussed ways to get around that (Full Plate Vampire Knights)
Silver is generic, but helps level the playing field
Running Water is...interesting enough to keep.
Decapitation and Fire are certainly on the table.
For staking, I'm kinda a fan of it putting them into stasis rather than killing them. Maybe make it so destroying the heart incapacitates them long enough to do actual fatal damage, and if you want to go the extra mile require the stake to be carved of hawthorne?
Numerology is a meme, garlic is boring, and requiring an invitation is unnecessary if they're all varying degrees of Noble or Chivalrous.

>>65967017
The problem with that is that I can't see any reason for a vampire to not fill in the moat, it's just such an obvious weakness.

>>65970584
we've had this moat for a thousand years
we're not going to fill it in, its traditional

>>65966985
obviously if this is a chivalrous feudal kind of rule, they would most likely have knights, and if they had knights those knights would have man at arms. you could have your knights all be humans dedicated to protecting their lord or getting burned at the stake when surrendering to the besiegers. obviously you wouldnt want man at arms to be vampires.

>>65969723
>Decapitation and Fire are certainly on the table.
Let's be honest. if cutting its head off and burning the body aren't enough to put the monster down, you're probably about to die.

How would other nations react to a land run by vampires? What would diplomatic relations be like?

>>65973096
Like Eastern Europe, most likely. They hate each other on a national, religious, and social level... but fuck it, their coin's good. A constant series of skirmishes that eventually escalate into a war that ends with a lot of corpses and one side ceding land before it gets too out of hand, only for the exact same conflict to kick up a generation or two down the line.

From what we've got for this specific thread, the vamps have a wealth of natural resources; lumber, mining, and valuable pelts and beasts. On top of that they don't need to tax as much gold because their Nobility is rather inexpensive on that front, and they've great continuity of purpose and goals since their leadership rarely changes.
The flipside is their lower class is turbo-peasantry with very little chance of social mobility, their middle class is mostly foreigners drawn by the esoteric demands of the vampiric upper crust, and the same continuity of the upper class makes changing their relationships with outside parties difficult.

>>65970584
They could let it dry out and fill it with stakes. It still has tactical value in a siege. A vampire might think mortal races are too impatient to redirect a river.
>>65969723
Stakes definitely need to be carved from specific tree(s). On the full plate thing, I'm not sure that'd always work. Maybe they still feel the presence of the sun under all that armour and are slower/weaker because the sun has a divine effect on them? It's more than just rays of light hurting them, otherwise a candle would hurt them as well.
>>65973096
The vampire lords might try to keep their nature hidden and keep diplomats at arm's length. Elves would figure it out quickly and cut off all ties and look to their borders. Dwarves would be suspicious, but as long as the coin's good trade would keep flowing. They'd sharpen a silver axe just in case, though.

>>65973701
> Maybe they still feel the presence of the sun under all that armour and are slower/weaker because the sun has a divine effect on them?
The way it was explained to me was that a vampire would have to be indoors before sunrise because sunlight is representative of God looking at it, and the vampire literally going up in flames due to how evil they are just by existing.

>>65973701
I don't like the idea of needing specific wood for stakes, as staking a vampire requires so little in material that it makes it an appropriate punishment, symbolically speaking, for fucking over the peasants.

Also give their nobility and codes and whatnot, I don't think that the lords will actually attempt to hide their vampiric nature.

>>65974961
>I don't like the idea of needing specific wood for stakes
>staking a vampire requires so little in material
> appropriate punishment, for fucking over the peasants
It's supposed to be hard to kill them, if your bad guys are weak to a very common material they won't last very long. It reminds me of the plothole in the CW Supergirl show where the Daxamites are weak to lead the same way Superman is vulnerable to Kryptonite. If that were the case, you could take them on with 18th century muskets and lead bullets. Killing a vampire is never supposed to be easy, and the higher ones should be fiendishly difficult to kill permanently.

Can a vampire become a lich for added security? Would he still be a vampire if he died and regenerated his body? If it's a new body and vampirism is a curse or disease, it could have interesting results.

>>65905584
Go a step further and offer tax breaks for those who volunteer. And those that don't want to give blood can pay more to have their name put on a "do not touch" list

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>>65900619
Religion. It's not evil if your subjects willingly sacrifice themselves for your vampire hegemony and are also happy about it because they believe in you.

So make blood sacrifice a holy duty that has benefits for the family's of those sacrificed, like divine favor or some other boon that makes actually getting fed on something desirable.

>>65976550
>some other boon that makes actually getting fed on something desirable.
A lot of popular fiction has the act of feeding be a pleasurable thing, with a vampire's saliva acting as an anticoagulant and an addictive narcotic.

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>>65974961
>>65976156
I suppose we need to actually define strengths and weaknesses for these guys before a discussion can get any further.

Strengths
>Stop aging completely
>No longer require normal food or drink
>Able to directly experience emotions and recent sensory inputs of those they feed from
>Only need to sleep once a week
>Strength of ten men
>Capable of incredible bursts of speed
>Regenerate from wounds within seconds to minutes
>Able to see in complete darkness, with similar increases to other senses
>Inherent sorcerous talent (requires decades of training and development to be useful)
>>Naturally talented at shapeshifting, mind control, controlling beasts, and blood-based magics
>>Able to pursue magics of wall-walking, incorporeality, flight, weather control, divination, and necromancy
Weaknesses
>Require 5 liters/1.5 gallons of blood a month or they begin to go mad with thirst/hunger, and cannot regenerate
>Naturally lethargic during the day
>Easily blinded by bright lights like sunlight/ stunned by loud high-pitched noises like bells/ repulsed by overpowering tastes like garlic if not trained to shut things out
>Incredibly difficult to rouse when they sleep once a week
>Silver and 'holy' objects cause physical harm, resulting wounds take longer to heal
>A stake through the heart paralyzes them
>No natural talent with magics outside their sphere of talent
Fatal Weaknesses
>Cut off the head
>Burn the body to ash
>Direct exposure to full sunlight for a minute or so
>Complete submersion in running water for a minute or so

All this being on top of the social benefits and drawbacks of vampirism; Nobility, the Black Pact, and relations with nonvamps outside of the Vampiric Kingdom. Any objections?

>>65976550
>>65978047
If the vampire feeds on someone, they could become in thrall to him, or at worst become sympathetic to his cause without knowing why (low-key passive hypnosis, in a way, like in Stoker's Dracula). Do this for generations and children are raised by parents who see the vampire as their master even before they reach the age when they're tithed to him. Eventually most people in the community see him as their guardian and are oddly positive about him, almost like a cult.

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>>65978297
>tfw you will never be pegged by a giant futa vampire

>>65978331
Olivia art is guaranteed replies from degenerates

>>65978331
The vampires probably wouldn't be interested in conventional intercourse. It must seem rather bothersome when you're dead.

Please don't reply to futafags.

>>65978405
Seduction's an easy way to deal with non-vamps that you're not allowed to intimidate and whatnot, and a useful tool in any form of politics. Plus, hey, if they can dupe recent sensations from people they feed from, that's incentive for seduction right there.

>>65978297
Strengths
>Can transform into a bat, a swarm of bats, a cloud of mist, a black cloud, a black cat, a wolf, monstrous form, ... This depends on the vampire's bloodline or personality
>10/10 charisma and hypnosis, people are drawn to listen to their commands and if he makes eye contact he can bend others to his will. The more monstrous bloodlines have lost this perk, though, or they don't use it in their rage.
Weaknesses
>The sound of consecrated church bells
>Reading from the Gospels, or a sacred text from an in-universe deity (Elven Life Godess, Dwarven ancestor-god of wrath, Human patron deity)
>Need to sleep in earth from their native land, something to do with his aura seeping into the soil, this takes centuries
>Can't cross running water without help, or sacred rivers associated with a deity or one that springs from a sacred Dwarven mountain
Fatal weaknesses
>Just to be sure, the corpse/ashes of the dark king is kept in a tomb inside a vault beneath the great cathedral, bound in silver chains, pierced with stakes, warded with holy symbols, or his ashes are mixed with silver powder, etc. Just in case he's still in there and his corpse could be reactived.

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>>65978608
Your strengths can already be rolled into natural magical talents as presented, and I feel making it something vampires need to work towards rather than "Oh hey welcome to vampirism you can turn into a furry now if you want" is underwhelming. Charisma and such is... honestly, probably something they 'bred' for. They're chivalric nobility without the drawback of inbreeding, they can afford to be vain and picky about who gets Raised up as a vampire. Bloodline dependent stuff is something I could go either way on; on one hand if all the original vamps spring from the same source (The King of the Night or whatever process he used) it forces you into a mindset of vampires degrading over time that's a bit too close to WoD for me, but on the otherhand I'm totally down for different factions putting emphasis on different vampiric abilities and further refining them like in your japanese animes.

Weakness-wise, half that gets roped into 'holy magics'. I'm against traditional needs for sleeping in graves and aversion to water mostly because it makes it hard as hell for them to travel; one of the big 'neat things' for these guys is wandering vampiric knights, and anything that necessitates them using a loophole to be able to patrol the roads would need to be rad as hell to justify it (like Full Plate being a countermeasure against sunlight)

I'm fully against the King being dead. You give up too much wiggle-room for political play, and a bunch of ununified Counts is nowhere near threatening enough to be taken seriously compared to ones with an actual head of state that they can rally behind .

Basically, the Reichsnacht Order and the Black Pact are the core 'interesting' things behind these guys, and weakening them weakens the setting as a whole. The Vamp Population is probably only in the 3-5% range of the Kingdom to begin with, so it's fine to have them powerful when they're already mostly dependent on a bureaucratic system that takes a lot of maintenance.

>>65978937
or maybe the king is just in vampire hibernation

>>65976156
Staking requires an unaware or immobile vampire for an aimed shot requiring both hands.

Hardly a crippling weakness.

>>65976156
I figure Lichdom overrides vampirism, since Vamps are more a half-life and Liches are more a 'You died, but intentionally, so you could cheat the system'. But it's probably a moot point, since Liches traditionally degrade into skeletons, carry over all their magical prowess, and normally have all the relevant strengths of a vampire with none of the baggage.

>>65979007
Any kind of ruler delegating complete or almost complete power to a surrogate ruler is a recipe for disaster. If the King is asleep, it's all too easy to either never wake him or ensure he can never wake. And while the King is away, it's all too easy to completely strip the crown of its power. Either situation basically begs for a coup.
I'm not against the Vampire Top Dogs stepping back and letting their 'heirs' get practical experience while they relax and delegate, even up to just randomly disappearing to see how people react. But Vampiric Hibernation is pretty shit writing and lame worldbuilding desu. "You get to be immortal! But after a certain point, you've gotta sleep for a century and lose all relevance haha gotcha fucker". It's a bias, but I just don't see the benefits of including it as a thing. Complexity has always gotta be worth it IMO

>>65979926
thats fair I like the potential power court intrigue angel but I don't want the king to get macbethed
maybe no one can kill the king because if they do the vampirism goes away and their age catches up to them?

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>>65979963
Why would you need baked in protections? Assassinating a King is hard. Assassinating a vampire is hard. Assassinating a Vampire King who won his throne through martial conquest, kept it through a bloody civil war, has a royal guard of elite vampire knights, has had centuries to reinforce and refine his defences on a personal, political, and structural level, and has likely had to deal with assassins before is hard as all hell.
You don't need to make him inherently immune to assassination when people actually attempting to assassinate him is more interesting. Doubly so since everyone at the top of the current system is likely to go to great lengths to keep that system in place, Dune style, since they all are implied to have lived through both the original rise to power and the survived the civil war that followed.

It basically screams a scene of the assassins doing everything flawlessly, getting to the killing blow, and the King going "7/10, this was fun. Try again later if you survive" and going Dracula Mode.

>>65980216
>You finally make it to the Evil King, only for him to applaud your work and offer you a job
Certainly a trope we need more of

>>65980692
And this is the most prestigious way to join into the Red Caps ranks

>>65980881
kinda like the blood games in 40k?

>>65981057
yes, but the participants wouldn't know that the whole assassination plot and prior hit jobs and missions were tests orquertrated by the king and his court

>>65980881
>>65981057
>>65981215
>The Adventurer sits in the dungeon, wrists shackled above their heads and hands bound in bags full of cloth scraps
>The stone here is weird, sound does not carry as it should
>They are isolated from their compatriots, able to tell time only by the steady and distant sound of dripping water and the one meal of bread and water provided each day
>They haven't been bled, yet, but they've heard the stories. It's only a matter of time
>Never should've taken the Border Lord's gold, no matter how good the information was or how close they got to pulling off the assassination
>Suddenly, sound; the door to the dungeon opening outside of the schedule for meals, several pairs of footsteps, one of the other cells being opened and the occupant dragged away
>The same thing ten minutes later, with no sound of someone being dragged back
>Their turn comes; guards in full armor, different from the mooks they snuck by when infiltrating the keep
>Unshackled, not even strong enough to put up a token resistance, dragged away by the soldiers
>This is it, this is how I die, drained to fill a vampire's larder
>Pulled into a room with a smiling vampire I've never seen, a table with food and drink, and a figure shrouded in red cloth and veils looming in the corner
>"I have to say, I'm impressed, and so are my superiors. It's not every day someone gets as far as you after all."
>"Oh, but where are my manners? Sit down, have a bite; I'm not here to eat you. I'm here to offer you a job. More than a job, really, I'm here to offer you complete employment"

>>65979926
>The Dark King conquers the land, drives back domestic and external evil enemies, establishes his new order
>Things are looking good for him, stability. This goes on for decades
>King gets old, even for a vampire, 400-500 year range
>He starts to hibernate/meditate more and more, trusting his knightly order to keep his edicts enforced
>Court life revolves around 'What would the Dark King do or want?' when he's asleep
>When he wakes up after a decade, he expects a progress report. Heads often roll, every vampire count tries to spin the events of the past years in his own favour
>Some flee to a corner of the realm when they learn he's awake, sometimes he comes after them. The only safe bet is to leave the realm if you've done something to piss him off
>Wakes up one day after a long sleep, finds out third and fourth generation vampires he didn't authorize being turned have messed up royally, the elves and dwarves have joined human rebels and are coming for him

>>65981244
I wonder, which Intelligent Undead get slapped with the hibernation meme and which don't?

Off the top of my head Vampires and Mummies take naps, while Liches and Ghosts just do their own thing. So it seems like a trend of fleshy vs non-fleshy. But does the trend hold true?

>>65981236
welcome to the revenant initiative

>>65981236
this is some good shit right here.

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>>65927332
The Legion of Dusk is one of the best factions to come out of MtG in recent years. Based NotCatholic Spanish vampire lords.

bump

>>65981244
So we're basically going with the usual "top vampire is basically Vlad Tepes" only with the viewpoint being the positive one the Romanians got of him?

>>65989705
It's a pretty solid trope. Vlad Tepes was a scary motherfucker.

>>65981953
I think ghouls hibernate too, but Wights don't.

>>65989705
I can never complain about Vlad the lad being the most powerful vamp around. He always adds a bunch of fun

Bump

Besides the vampires, how would the undead and creatures of the night that usually come hand in hand with them (bats, ghouls, skellies, etc) interact with the existing human society?

>>66001418
Anything that doesn't work for the vamps is in hiding or dead dead in short order.

>>66001418
Usually those creatures work as servants or muscle for the vampire, which I reckon they won't really need when they got loyal humans. Skellingtons and ghouls might be crossing some lines for the rest of the human subjects too. Bats would be abundant, because they eat fruit and are rather nice.

>>65900619
My word is my bond, my bond is my blood, my blood is thicker than water.

>>65902340
this

>>66001418
>>66001450
>>66001713
I'd imagine vamps look down on other undead. Tolerated, but not especially endorsed compared to actually useful Necromancers. Aside from shock-value or experimentation that some nobles might get up to, it's probably better to have human servants compared to undead; if you're already vulnerable to holy magics, no sense having a majority of your troops also vulnerable to something anyone facing you would be using. Plus Undead Agricultural Revolution is both completely overdone, and shifts the focus from Vampire Chivalry to Generic Undead Overlords

>>66001766
I'm guessing vamps are far more into House politics than Familial ones. Considering they can't have kids and all.

>>66002237
I think their houses would more resemble actual families, with the sire/offspring relationship being treated like an actual parent/child relationship and lines of succession and inheritance would follow from that. Though notably I think that there shouldn't be any known vampires who were sired by the Dark King themselves.

>>66002312
>I think that there shouldn't be any known vampires who were sired by the Dark King themselves.
Yeah, that would lead to...complicated situations. What about the major houses/dynasties being created by the Dark King closest friends and advisors? Something like the first Knights of the Round Table, but with more bats and blood drinking?

Also, the Dark King having no heir of his own could become a good introduction for an adventure
>DK falls in love with a simple peasant girl
>spirits her away, decides to give her his blood and make her one of the Children of the Night in the days to come
>all the vampires in the realm are shitting dicks because that means the King has now an heir of his own
>the Dark King asks the party to protect his paramour while he diplomatically reminds the uppity nobles about who has the biggest dick in town
>a princely pay for a few days of babysitting...should be easy enough, right?
and then the girls falls in love wuth the party's paladin

>>66002500
Falling in love seems cliche as all fuck. I'd rather go with something like a descendant of the human family the DK had before they turned.

>>66002312
>>66002500
I dunno. I figure that vamps originally did the whole "Those I sire are my children", and indeed raised the children they had before they turned, and that's part of what led to their whole civil war. Kids who expected to inherit one day realizing that they'd need to speed along the process. Coupled with decadent vampiric hedonism, and you get the kingdom almost self-destructing.
After that comes the Black Pact, which forbids turning others into vamps willy-nilly, and requires the person willing to turn you to not be in service to the same lord as you, as done here >>65912519 An intentional effort to move away from Siring being a surrogate for, well, surrogate families.
As for the King's Heir... I don't think he, or any of the Counts even, have an official permanent Heir. The King is probably a case of originally being a First Among Equals in the style of King Arthur. If he kicks the bucket, the remaining Counts go all the way back to their roots and elect a new High King, with all the politics and backstabbing that entails. If a Count bites it, the same decision falls among the Barons of their House, though mitigated by the Count likely having someone they've trained up and given many of their secrets to as an unofficial heir.

A core conceit for me is that all of the leadership are people who've already survived the major pitfalls of vampiric nobility, and their current politics and lifestyles are intentionally designed to prevent those. They'd rather be inefficient and intractable than have another civil war; efficiency only matters if you've a limited amount of time after all, but dead is dead.