Undead Civ #1

2

1.
Skeletons

Modern apocalypse.

>1. a supernatural apocalyptic event that has covered the land in darkness and monsters (Think vampire Hunter D).
>(Think vampire Hunter D)
Sold.

Votes have it, I'll be writing now.

Not!Rick Grimes being our BBEG is too cool.

Bump

You awake in your tomb, you are hungry…
The lid of your once fine and decorative marble tomb has been broken open, but thankfully it is night. Through your rotting ears, you can hear two men arguing about which bit of jewelry that you wear is theirs. Though you have been asleep for so long, you have enough power to effect the minds of men, especially wicked people; much like these two apparent grace robbers. You send your influence to tell one of the men to look closer at the jeweled necklace that you wear. The first man does so, leaning closer and closer with a greedy look on his face. Before the mortal knew it, you reach for his throat and quickly slit it open. Blood pouring into your thirsty mouth. The other man is silently screaming on the floor, terrified and prone.

Some of your strength returns to your withered limbs to give you mobility. You rise from your tomb as though lifted by invisible hands, and survey your burial chambers. Most of the fine treasure has been stolen, leaving only moth eaten tapestries and rags about the stone floor. But the most devastating loss is that of your favorite bride; whose tomb had been opened by a wooden beam from the ceiling. You had both agreed to sleep in torpor for a lengthy time, to wait out mortal hunters. But apparently you have sleep for eons.

>(Main choices)
A. Try to improve settlement.
B. Try to improve Weapons and Armor.
C. Try to improve technology.
D. Try to improve magic.
E. Hunt for blood
F. Your Suggestion
G. Search area

>What do you do to the mortal?
1. Drink him dry, you still need to recover your strength
2. Turn him into a thrall
3. Interrogate him

>Population: 1 Elder vampire.
>Blood: Very Hungry.
>Resources: None
>Technology: None
>Weapons/Armor: Dagger
>Magic: Mind control
>Architecture: Ruined Tomb
>Defenses: None
>Government: None.

G and 2. You can interrogate him later.

>G
>Interrogate him
Right now, we have no idea what's around and what's going on. This guy can help us, and afterwards we could drain him of blood. Searching the area for whatever is around is also very important.

G. Search area
2. Turn him into a thrall

Seconded

G and 2. A mortal servant for the daylight hours is essential, and we need to get our bearings. We can drink the other robber dry.

>G.
Gotta know what we have to work with.

>2.
Assuming he maintains his memories so we can get them out of him later.

>G. Search area

3. Interrogate him

Votes are in, writing.

I like your style, New Guy.
This satisfies me.

Thanks!

You quickly launch yourself on the foolish grave robber, half mad with rage at your loss. He smells of blood, fear, and whiskey. You lay your hands on either side of his temple and quickly kill any sort of free will from his mind, he tries to fight you off, but his fists are like that of a baby’s. He passes out, but you know that your influence over him is absolute. You can call on him and use him as you wish once he awakens.

You fling open the doors leading out of the tomb, and ascend a flight of stairs as quick as a shadow. You see now that the robbers had to dig your tomb’s entrance with their crude shovels. What once was a stately graveyard, you now see that most of the tombstones have been weathered away, and some are overgrown with ivy. The sky is a murky and bleak, the smell of rain hitting your powerful sense of smell. You feel as though a powerful darkness has descended upon the land, a lingering evil that invigorates you. Over to the east, past the forest, you can see smoke rising from chimneys. To the south, long and winding road leading towards a valley. West are tall mountains and rough terrain; as far as you remember, no roads could be made along those peaks. And finally, northward towards the ruins of your old castle. Which lays in crumbling pieces along the desolate earth. You still have time before your new thrall awakens, and a nervous energy to spend.

>(Main choices)
A. Try to improve settlement.
B. Try to improve Weapons and Armor.
C. Try to improve technology.
D. Try to improve magic.
E. Hunt for blood
F. Your Suggestion
G. Search area

Population: 1 Elder vampire.
Blood: Very Hungry.
Resources: None
Technology: None
Weapons/Armor: Dagger
Magic: Mind control
Architecture: Ruined Tomb
Defenses: None
Government: None.

E. Drink the other robber dry before we do anything else.

Let's get our weapons improved before heading out. For safety.

F. Get to your old castle.

Hell, may as well go find a couple other mortals and eat them too.

You already have. Sorry.

>B. Try to improve Weapons and Armor.

>D.
Maybe see about channeling some of that energy into raising corpses. There's gotta be a few in the ground here.

Still voting E then. We're hungry and shoudn't think about much else.

Weapons is the only one with more than one vote OP.

>E
We need blood!
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

>B.Try to improve Weapons and Armor.

Votes are in, I'll get started writing right after a quick bathroom break.

Also feel free to put yoshitaka amano art in your posts!

Guys, we haven't done anything yet that's established our character, so is it okay to say that we're not sophisticated Draculas, and more like realistic feral apex predators?

Well we're an elder vampire, so I think we're probably pretty smart.

But we're hungry, so I voted to feed.

Feral apex predators don't have the intelligence and wit to enthrall people and research tech, user.

What about sophisticated apex predators?

>wanting to be some thoughtless, crass monster when you can be an undead master of class and taste
Spotted the plebeian.

No vision. We are an eternal master of the night. Why hunt like a dog when we can extend our rule with legions of undead, and live life basking in luxury, wealth and power?

Hey, even gnolls can build tools and buildings.

Also gonna start namefagging

yeah, we should just become Dracula 2.0, but more suave and dashing.

What good is that when you no longer can recieve joy from a thrilling hunt?

I have no problem with names, but let's wait until we have more than one vampire.

We can always take the field personally against our enemies. In any case, I think we probably got all that out of our system when we were younger. Our tastes could have changed with age

Just makes it easier for a debate. But I'll change it for now.

>tfw our elder vampire becomes Old Man Henderson

You still feel weakened by the eons of sleep, and though you are strong enough to overpower an untrained man, you still feel the need to arm yourself in case of stronger foes. The graveyard is sparse, but you recognize the graves of old military men; back when you hunted the night as a lord of these lands. Your tear into the earth, and reach for the coffin of a captain of the guard; who had been buried with his longsword. Its not a fantastic weapon, but something is better than nothing. Emerging from the grave, you feel the metal presence of your new thrall awaken. It tries to hide from your powerful mental gaze, but cannot escape your influence. You return to the crypt, sword in hand.

“Rise slave, and meet your master!” the thrall quakes at the mere sight of you, knowing how bound he is to you. But does as commanded, rising from the floor with head hung in a respectful stance.

“Ww-what can I do for you, m’lord?”

>What do you want from your thrall?

>(Main choices)
A. Try to improve settlement.
B. Try to improve Weapons and Armor.
C. Try to improve technology.
D. Try to improve magic.
E. Hunt for blood
F. Your Suggestion
G. Search area

Population: 1 Elder vampire.
Blood: Very Hungry.
Resources: None
Technology: None
Weapons/Armor: Dagger, rough longsword.
Magic: Mind control
Architecture: Ruined Tomb
Defenses: None
Government: None.

>Clean up and repair the place
D. Try to improve magic.

Tell us what our thrall is capable of, physically

>G

assess our surroundings.

Have the thrall regale us with what's happened to the world.

>D.
That corpse-raising biz.

Interrogate the thrall, (What year is it, etc.) and then send him to the castle. After that we can hunt.

Interrogate the thrall.

Interrogate thrall m8s

He can carry out a number of complex tasks for you during the day and night. but he still needs to eat and sleep, and he can die a mortal death if you send him to do something dangerous. He's not a learned person so don't ask him to do anything that requires a lot of knowledge, after all he is a grave robber.

>D. lets work on transforming! like can we turn into a bat or a man-bat thing?

>Interrogate the thrall.

How about we set him on a mission to lure an unsuspecting victim after we learn where the hell we are then, shall we?

Are thralls slightly stronger then their normal race? Also, is there a limit to how many thralls we can have?

Lets learn what we can from the thrall, and then do some hunting or else we might lose a thrall to our hunger.

Rolled 5 (1d7)

= 1
= 2
= 3
= 4
= 5
= 6
= 7
Vote here determines the action

Sweet! can't wait to see what happens.

You grill him with questions, asking about the state of the world, what happened to his castle, and about the nearest town

“Well, the world has been in constant gloom and doom ever since the monsters and evils of this world took dominion. Vampires, werewolves, and other abominations are the true rulers of the world now. Their supernatural influence almost wiped humanity off the face of this earth, but we are still the most populous race around. But we now live in terror of leaving the safety of our towns. Even there we can only hope that devils such as yourself do not creep into our homes. Some folk make a living hunting monsters and such, but those damned fools only either get killed or become monsters themselves. A vampire hasn’t been seen in this area for over 400 years, and the mortals of the town owe this to the church and their priests. But the truth is, we are such a small village that powerful vampires simply ignore the morsel in favor of hunting prey in larger towns”

You would never have guessed that the forces of darkness would have finally defeated the mortal menace. But this means that there is competition for power and blood amongst members of your race. Feeling pride inside of yourself, you realize that you could perhaps be the oldest of your race to come in a long while. You ask what year it is, and you receive the answer of 3434. This date staggers you, you have been asleep for over two thousand years. It was any wonder that your tomb hadn’t been robbed sooner.

>Continued
You tell the thrall to return with a suitable meal, and to make it snappy. The thrall bends his back in an anguished bow, and quickly leaves the tomb; glad to be rid of your presence. In this time, you begin flexing your slowly regaining powers. Using some of the blood you took from the first robber, to morph your body into a nightmarish man-bat. Your hearing is increased, but your sight is slightly diminished. Clinging from the ceiling, you wait patently for food to arrive. Food arrives several hours later, and it does so in the form of one of the men’s horses a struggling and bound woman.

“She is a whore from the town m’lord, no one will miss her. And I am not sure if you can, but I also offer my fallen comrade’s horse if you are still hungry.” He hasn’t seen you yet, but he gets a full view when you swoop the woman from the horse, and quickly snap her neck. The sound of flesh being bitten upsets the man, you vomits in the corner. After you drain the woman, you fall on the horse, and drain it as well. While you can drink from animals, it’s not a pleasant taste. Not like humans…
>[You gain the blood status: Full!]

>(Main choices)
A. Try to improve Castle.
B. Try to improve Weapons and Armor.
C. Try to improve technology.
D. Try to improve magic.
E. Hunt for blood
F. Your Suggestion
G. Search area

Population: 1 Elder vampire.
Blood: Full.
Resources: None
Technology: None
Weapons/Armor: Dagger, rough longsword.
Magic: Mind control
Architecture: Ruined Tomb
Defenses: None
Government: None.

D. Try to improve magic

A. We should go to the castle and set up some basic defenses to sleep through the day. Going forward, our priority should be amassing a sizeable force of thralls, and eventually to establish our dominion over the nearby village.

>C

Its been 2000 years, surely technology has improved since then, ask the thrall what advances have been made in the world.

>D. Try to improve magic
Become a cult leader, call your self the Dr.acula.

>D.
Still gotta get into raising corpses.

>D
We should probably see how far transformation goes.

In my opinion we should hold off on raising the graveyard. We don't know what kind of situation we're in yet, and it might be too obvious a move.

I say we work off thralls until we can both arm undead legions with modern weapons and afford to move overtly.

You want us to stroll into a decrepit castle with a single thrall. I'm not listening to you.

I agree that we should hold off on being back the dead, but improve our magic so we can very handsome and get people to join our cult.
Also make out name Dr.Acula

Raising an army without a proper base to work off of is putting the cart before the horse. The sun will be up soon enough and I'd much rather be in our castle than in the tomb.

Besides, it's decrepit. Obviously there's nothing in our weight class in there, or they'd have restored the place. A fully fed elder vampire is probably going to win any fight like that, or at the very least escape.

This.

Don't be silly.

>Obviously there's nothing in our weight class in there
That's the exact kind of reasoning that gets you killed by eldritch horrors.

No one pays a ruined castle any mind.

Rolled 5 (1d8)

= 1
= 2
= 3
= 4
= 5
= 6
= 7
= 8

Damn.

Well, at least we can have backup taking that castle.

well at least we have more minions

While the thrall loses his dinner in the corner of your chambers, you tell him he is to clean this tomb before sunrise. Ascending the stairs again, you head to the tombstones of the graveyard to once again test your might. Drawing on the very powers of evil itself, you cast a rudimentary necromancy spell to give the gift of unlife the corpses. You quickly realize that your powers are still returning to your body, as all the energy that you gained by drinking the horse and whore leave you… and then some. Panicking, you for a moment think that you over did yourself. Laying on the grass, your feel one grave rumble with the sound of a skeleton digging its way to the surface.

>[Blood set to: Very Hungry]

The bones of a carriage driver stands before your prone form, creaking with the sounds of bone rubbing bone. He is dressed in his old uniform, which was probably the nicest thing he had to his name. You call for your thrall, who brings your body back towards your tomb.
>[Skeletons can preform menial labor and simple tasks, but lack the ability to do complex tasks.]

>Besides bringing more food, what do you order your thrall to do during the day? (Select two things for him to do)

>(Main choices: Locked until morning)
A. Try to improve Castle.
B. Try to improve Weapons and Armor.
C. Try to improve technology.
D. Try to improve magic.
E. Hunt for blood
F. Your Suggestion
G. Search area

Population: 1 Elder vampire.
Blood: Very Hungry.
Resources: None
Technology: None
Weapons/Armor: Dagger, rough longsword.
Magic: Mind control
Architecture: Ruined Tomb
Defenses: None
Government: None.

>Start repairing the Tomb and be on the lookout
E. Hunt for blood

Well, judging from the fact we need blood to summon minions, we might want to improve our castle, so we can have a place to sleep and rest during day time.
>A

Can we have some numbers on our undead minions?

Tell the thrall to go set up the beginnings of a proper base of operations in the castle.

I'm thinking when night comes we can go for a hunt ourself and check out the local settlement. Maybe get ourselves another thrall or two there to act as spies.

Have the thrall gather gossip in the local town. Particularly anything about our old castle.

Maybe some books on natural sciences so we can get a better grasp on what's changed in the past 2000 years.

Mr. Skellington can guard our body during the day, give him the rough longsword.

The slave can dig up the graves and arrange the corpses in a pile somewhere out of sight, and then he shall find a way to dissuade people from coming to the graveyard, perhaps with a sign saying something along the lines of "graveyard closed for repairs" or something else cheesy like that.

as for me i will go for
>A.

Lets make this ragged tomb a place more suited for someone of my status, even if it is only for a few more days.

Give him the jewlery that you have, and to use it to buy a carriage (Portable box for us to go from place to place without having to be exposed to light) Then tell him to see if any men need work up at the graveyard for "repairs"; we then turn them into more mortal thralls. (If we cant raise an army right now, we can at least get some muscle for rebuilding the castle).

>F: We go to the town and order a room, we can make plans from the comfort of a nice room instead of a musty old tomb.

D
We gotta git gud so we can just march into the town and declare ourself Nightlord

Rolled 8 (1d8)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Give him the jewelry. Besides, how's he gonna be met in the town? I mean, he's probably not a complete loner. What if someone starts questioning? Like, where did the other guy go? Is he gonna answer something like "Bolivar can't carry a double"?

Rolled 6 (1d7)

Rolling once more, 8 didn't have all the requirements for a full vote.

winning the vote is a good feeling

Crushed under some rubble. RIP Bolivar.

I've been reading Baskets of Guts too much lately, I swear.

This is less of a good feeling. whatd i do wrong?