Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Thousand Year Old Vampire: Guillaume d'Orléans
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 8848285" data-attributes="member: 11760"><p><strong>Cologne, 1183</strong></p><p></p><p>Cologne was everything we hoped it would be. It was a cold, gray and dark city, where rain clouds blunted the painful rays of the sun many days and where there always seemed to be a dark shadow where an unwitting visitor to the city, of which there were many, could be pulled into to kill and devour. Bodies could be dropped into the Rhine at the dark of night and no one would know anything other than that a visiting merchant or riverboat sailor had gone missing while on shore, something which happened with or without Julian and myself every day.</p><p></p><p>But we were not alone in recognizing the virtues of Cologne.</p><p></p><p>Within a week of our arrival, a man in a heavy black coat and a large black hat nodded and winked to us on the street one night.</p><p></p><p>Two days later, a mother and daughter whispered and laughed upon spotting Julian and myself walking together, enjoying a private joke we were not in on.</p><p></p><p>And two weeks after that, we awoke at sundown in the hold of our ship to discover we had company.</p><p></p><p>"Guten abend," purred the well-dressed woman, who looked for all the world like a merchant's plump wife. Several other figures lurked in the darkened corners of the room and I could hear a footfall on the deck above. "What did you know of our city before you came here?"</p><p></p><p>"Only what any merchant knows, and that it was a cloudy city full of travelers."</p><p></p><p>The woman nodded and for a moment, I saw a flash of teeth between pursed lips -- fanged, like mine and Julian's.</p><p></p><p>"These things attract many of our kind here. Too many. The Church is powerful here and there are many returning Crusaders who have brought stories about us here."</p><p></p><p>I opened my mouth to ask about why Crusaders would know anything about us, but the woman raised a hand and kept talking.</p><p></p><p>"You have been discreet so far, so you may stay. For now. But this is a city of laws, even among the Nachtvolk. You will learn and obey these laws, which serve to keep us safe and keep the peace, or else. Do you agree?"</p><p></p><p>I nodded and I saw Julian, sitting up in his coffin with bright, curious eyes do the same.</p><p></p><p>"Excellent. By very good luck, we are having a ceremony tonight. You will attend, and see what happens with those who disagree. You will attend at midnight, beneath St. Gereon's on Gereonstraße in Altstadt. Do not worry: It was our place before it belonged to the Church and you will come to no harm there, so long as you do not let them spot you. If you choose not to attend, you should flee the city immediately. I trust you understand."</p><p></p><p>And with that, she left, a blur of motion almost too fast for me to see, faster than I or Julian were then. Her companions were similar blurs of black coats and dresses, gone before we could take in any details of them.</p><p></p><p>At the appointed hour, Julian and I found ourselves standing before a church in the midst of a years-long process of being expanded into something bigger and greater, with wooden frameworks surrounding two black towers pointing up into the clouds.</p><p></p><p>Not sure where we were expected to go, we were struck by the smell of fresh blood. Heading toward it, we found it laid out like a path in the dark, impossible to see in this unlit area of the site, but as good as a beacon for vampires like us. </p><p></p><p>Following the trail led us down to what, from the outside, looked as though it led into a church basement. But as we descended the worn stone stairs, it was clear to us, by the dim light shining from below, that this was a place much older. The carvings on the wall were strange to me, depicting large men, painted with gold leaf, and shown scattering smaller, weaker Roman soldiers with their bare hands and devouring them with sharp white teeth.</p><p></p><p>The chamber at the bottom of the stairs was clearly old, with carved out spaces in the wall that looked to be cavities where bodies were once stored. And there was a stone altar, with soft rounded edges and lines that had been blurred by centuries of use.</p><p></p><p>Now, though, it was where a naked vampire, their mouth wrapped around a thick leather belt strapped around their head, writhed, his hands and feet not just bound, but pierced by spikes driven into heavy beams of wood which I guessed had been taken from the construction site above. Their eyes whipped around the room, full of rage but no fear.</p><p></p><p>The woman who had spoken to us aboard the Mouette Noire stood alongside the altar, dressed in black, holding a long sharp knife of a sort I was unfamiliar with in her hand. She met my eyes and nodded slightly, satisfied that we had appeared as ordered.</p><p></p><p>Two men stood at her elbows, one with a stone basin, the other holding a pair of clay jugs.</p><p></p><p>"This will be instructive," the woman said.</p><p></p><p>Over the course of the next two hours, she removed the vampire's organs one by one, never fully killing him. Before dawn, the shuddering husk of the vampire was carried up to the construction site, where what remains of him would burn away with the sun.</p><p></p><p>I never learned what he had done to violate the rules the Nachtvolk lived under. But I learned a lot about vampire anatomy.</p><p>[spoiler="Character sheet"]Prompt 24 + 5 - 6 = Prompt 23</p><p></p><p><em>You master a strange new science or field of knowledge. How does your vampire nature give you special insight into these studies. Create an appropriate Skill based on a Memory.</em></p><p></p><p><strong>Wilhelm Black</strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>Skills</strong>: </p><p>Skilled at navigating boats (checked);</p><p>Bloodthirsty (checked); </p><p>Knows the secrets of killing vampires (checked);</p><p>I control the beast; </p><p>Skilled merchant; </p><p>Cook Portuguese seafood dishes;</p><p>Knowledgeable of medieval medicine; </p><p>Knowledge of vampiric anatomy; </p><p></p><p><strong>Resources</strong>:</p><p>the Spear of Aeolius, an ancient Roman spear capable of killing vampires</p><p>Diary, written in a medieval Portuguese log book</p><p></p><p><strong>Characters</strong>:</p><p>Juião/Julian Black, a Portuguese orphan turned my servant turned vampire (Immortal); </p><p></p><p><strong>Marks</strong>: My eyes cannot stand bright light and I have to remain in shadows at all times; my touch is fatal to plants; </p><p></p><p><strong>Memories (five, up to three Experiences each)</strong>:</p><p>1: I am Guilliame d'Orléans: The night the other heretics were burned alive, Carnutes fed upon me as I screamed in pitch black darkness; I confront Carnutes about him making me a vampire and he confesses he did it out of loneliness and tells me I will suffer in the same way some day; Carnutes possessed Raum and led the Archbishop of Tours' men to try and killed me -- but I used the Spear of Aeolius and killed Raum and Carnutes instead.</p><p>2: I am Guilliame d'Orléans: I rescue a dark-haired girl from attack and Constansia pledges herself to me, believing me to be a servant of Satan, and we soon wed; Constansia conducts her Satanic rituals and summons a demon, Raum, to serve me in the form of a raven;</p><p>3: I am "the Frenchman": The Portuguese orphan Juião helps me after I am burned by sunlight, unafraid of my supernatural nature, and I take him in as my servant; Juião teaches me to cook with the seafood I catch underwater; at his urging, I prey on battlefield wounded as I tend to them.</p><p>4: I am le Passeur or "The Frenchman": I retreat to the islands off Portugal with my servant, Juião, and sail to the mainland at night, under cover of darkness, looking for prey; I feed on Juião when desperate for blood and accidentally turn him into a vampire; we relocate to Cologne, a city of gray skies and long nights, better suited for those such as ourselves than sunny Portugal.</p><p>5: I am Wilhelm Black: Brought into the society of the Nachtvolk of Cologne, I watched their leader slowly dismember a vampire, leaving him alive for hours, just in agony; </p><p></p><p><strong>Diary (up to four Memories)</strong>:</p><p>1: I am Guilliame d'Orléans, son of Onfroi, a novice scribe born late in the 10th Century of Our Lord; one of the joys of my youth, gardening, slips away as my touch is now fatal to plants.</p><p>2: I am Guilliame d'Orléans: My father, Onfroi, gifts me an engraved inkwell, which he had to save for months to afford; after my father's death, Constansia and I leave Orléans by barge, after setting my house aflame and allowing my sister to believe I was destroyed there; I use my father's name when I later settle in Portugal and set myself up as a merchant and shipbuilder there.</p><p>[/spoiler]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Whizbang Dustyboots, post: 8848285, member: 11760"] [B]Cologne, 1183[/B] Cologne was everything we hoped it would be. It was a cold, gray and dark city, where rain clouds blunted the painful rays of the sun many days and where there always seemed to be a dark shadow where an unwitting visitor to the city, of which there were many, could be pulled into to kill and devour. Bodies could be dropped into the Rhine at the dark of night and no one would know anything other than that a visiting merchant or riverboat sailor had gone missing while on shore, something which happened with or without Julian and myself every day. But we were not alone in recognizing the virtues of Cologne. Within a week of our arrival, a man in a heavy black coat and a large black hat nodded and winked to us on the street one night. Two days later, a mother and daughter whispered and laughed upon spotting Julian and myself walking together, enjoying a private joke we were not in on. And two weeks after that, we awoke at sundown in the hold of our ship to discover we had company. "Guten abend," purred the well-dressed woman, who looked for all the world like a merchant's plump wife. Several other figures lurked in the darkened corners of the room and I could hear a footfall on the deck above. "What did you know of our city before you came here?" "Only what any merchant knows, and that it was a cloudy city full of travelers." The woman nodded and for a moment, I saw a flash of teeth between pursed lips -- fanged, like mine and Julian's. "These things attract many of our kind here. Too many. The Church is powerful here and there are many returning Crusaders who have brought stories about us here." I opened my mouth to ask about why Crusaders would know anything about us, but the woman raised a hand and kept talking. "You have been discreet so far, so you may stay. For now. But this is a city of laws, even among the Nachtvolk. You will learn and obey these laws, which serve to keep us safe and keep the peace, or else. Do you agree?" I nodded and I saw Julian, sitting up in his coffin with bright, curious eyes do the same. "Excellent. By very good luck, we are having a ceremony tonight. You will attend, and see what happens with those who disagree. You will attend at midnight, beneath St. Gereon's on Gereonstraße in Altstadt. Do not worry: It was our place before it belonged to the Church and you will come to no harm there, so long as you do not let them spot you. If you choose not to attend, you should flee the city immediately. I trust you understand." And with that, she left, a blur of motion almost too fast for me to see, faster than I or Julian were then. Her companions were similar blurs of black coats and dresses, gone before we could take in any details of them. At the appointed hour, Julian and I found ourselves standing before a church in the midst of a years-long process of being expanded into something bigger and greater, with wooden frameworks surrounding two black towers pointing up into the clouds. Not sure where we were expected to go, we were struck by the smell of fresh blood. Heading toward it, we found it laid out like a path in the dark, impossible to see in this unlit area of the site, but as good as a beacon for vampires like us. Following the trail led us down to what, from the outside, looked as though it led into a church basement. But as we descended the worn stone stairs, it was clear to us, by the dim light shining from below, that this was a place much older. The carvings on the wall were strange to me, depicting large men, painted with gold leaf, and shown scattering smaller, weaker Roman soldiers with their bare hands and devouring them with sharp white teeth. The chamber at the bottom of the stairs was clearly old, with carved out spaces in the wall that looked to be cavities where bodies were once stored. And there was a stone altar, with soft rounded edges and lines that had been blurred by centuries of use. Now, though, it was where a naked vampire, their mouth wrapped around a thick leather belt strapped around their head, writhed, his hands and feet not just bound, but pierced by spikes driven into heavy beams of wood which I guessed had been taken from the construction site above. Their eyes whipped around the room, full of rage but no fear. The woman who had spoken to us aboard the Mouette Noire stood alongside the altar, dressed in black, holding a long sharp knife of a sort I was unfamiliar with in her hand. She met my eyes and nodded slightly, satisfied that we had appeared as ordered. Two men stood at her elbows, one with a stone basin, the other holding a pair of clay jugs. "This will be instructive," the woman said. Over the course of the next two hours, she removed the vampire's organs one by one, never fully killing him. Before dawn, the shuddering husk of the vampire was carried up to the construction site, where what remains of him would burn away with the sun. I never learned what he had done to violate the rules the Nachtvolk lived under. But I learned a lot about vampire anatomy. [spoiler="Character sheet"]Prompt 24 + 5 - 6 = Prompt 23 [I]You master a strange new science or field of knowledge. How does your vampire nature give you special insight into these studies. Create an appropriate Skill based on a Memory.[/I] [B]Wilhelm Black Skills[/B]: Skilled at navigating boats (checked); Bloodthirsty (checked); Knows the secrets of killing vampires (checked); I control the beast; Skilled merchant; Cook Portuguese seafood dishes; Knowledgeable of medieval medicine; Knowledge of vampiric anatomy; [B]Resources[/B]: the Spear of Aeolius, an ancient Roman spear capable of killing vampires Diary, written in a medieval Portuguese log book [B]Characters[/B]: Juião/Julian Black, a Portuguese orphan turned my servant turned vampire (Immortal); [B]Marks[/B]: My eyes cannot stand bright light and I have to remain in shadows at all times; my touch is fatal to plants; [B]Memories (five, up to three Experiences each)[/B]: 1: I am Guilliame d'Orléans: The night the other heretics were burned alive, Carnutes fed upon me as I screamed in pitch black darkness; I confront Carnutes about him making me a vampire and he confesses he did it out of loneliness and tells me I will suffer in the same way some day; Carnutes possessed Raum and led the Archbishop of Tours' men to try and killed me -- but I used the Spear of Aeolius and killed Raum and Carnutes instead. 2: I am Guilliame d'Orléans: I rescue a dark-haired girl from attack and Constansia pledges herself to me, believing me to be a servant of Satan, and we soon wed; Constansia conducts her Satanic rituals and summons a demon, Raum, to serve me in the form of a raven; 3: I am "the Frenchman": The Portuguese orphan Juião helps me after I am burned by sunlight, unafraid of my supernatural nature, and I take him in as my servant; Juião teaches me to cook with the seafood I catch underwater; at his urging, I prey on battlefield wounded as I tend to them. 4: I am le Passeur or "The Frenchman": I retreat to the islands off Portugal with my servant, Juião, and sail to the mainland at night, under cover of darkness, looking for prey; I feed on Juião when desperate for blood and accidentally turn him into a vampire; we relocate to Cologne, a city of gray skies and long nights, better suited for those such as ourselves than sunny Portugal. 5: I am Wilhelm Black: Brought into the society of the Nachtvolk of Cologne, I watched their leader slowly dismember a vampire, leaving him alive for hours, just in agony; [B]Diary (up to four Memories)[/B]: 1: I am Guilliame d'Orléans, son of Onfroi, a novice scribe born late in the 10th Century of Our Lord; one of the joys of my youth, gardening, slips away as my touch is now fatal to plants. 2: I am Guilliame d'Orléans: My father, Onfroi, gifts me an engraved inkwell, which he had to save for months to afford; after my father's death, Constansia and I leave Orléans by barge, after setting my house aflame and allowing my sister to believe I was destroyed there; I use my father's name when I later settle in Portugal and set myself up as a merchant and shipbuilder there. [/spoiler] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Thousand Year Old Vampire: Guillaume d'Orléans
Top