im running a game set in a gothic horror setting. there are two leaders here, one is a vampire lord who is objectively less evil and one is a lich lord who seeks ultimate power.
i really need a reason for why does the vampire lord have a vendetta and want to kill the lich so bad.
(killing his beloved might seem like too much of a strahd ripoff)
and i guess since I'm pretty new general cool ideas/things you can have because of this
setting info.
Vampire Lord: he has been the ruler the longest, well over 800+ years, he was a general before he became a lord and lead his soldiers to killing the previous emperor. everyone was originally vampire like him.
currently all his resources go to the war against his Lich enemy, he is so focused on fighting the lich that he neglects his own people.
Lich: he came into power not too long ago, roughly 150 fish, he sought power of course, and did literally anything it took to achieve this. now that he has near immortality he's researching a way to basically harvest human souls on a mass scale to enact some sort of super spell.
Currently he's locked away in his necropolis commanding a whole army of undead to capture or kill various citizens, as well as fight the vampire lords army. but with every dead soldier his army grows.
the reason people haven't entirely left his domain even with all the murder is because its unsafe to leave town walls or you might get slaughtered by the armies of undead. its still unsafe within the walls, but at least theres protective wards helping keep the undead away.
any questions?
correction, Everyone from his kingdom originally were vampires. now normie humans have moved in. and the vampires dwindle.
How did the vampires survive without humans? Did humans move in to escape the lich?
Make the lich his son who saught power only to overthrow his father.
I thought vampires were sterile
>he's researching a way to basically harvest human souls on a mass scale to enact some sort of super spell
Human loss and massive destruction super spells are bad for the vamp's business.
Can't have vampire "civilization" if there is no breeding. You can say hes his childer if you want too it doesn't matter. He might hate the vampire lord for making him into a vampire.
hadn't thought about that, i guess they must have conquered and fed off their enemies.
Lich lord is either Vampire lords ex, or at least possessed the body of the vampire lords missus. The whole thing about continuing to inhabit said body, might be a good reason for the vampire lord to be a bit upset with the lich.
yeah but that wouldn't make the vampire hate the lich with a passion, it would likely make him plan for the worst. not swear a vendetta against
Maybe the lich was a vampire hunter while he was still breathing. The dude went lich so he could keep fucking with vampire and the super spell will turn the vampire into a mortal again.
>i really need a reason for why does the vampire lord have a vendetta and want to kill the lich so bad.
Alright, I'll just give you one of my shelved stories:
When the lich was a mortal, millenia ago, he was an acolyte of some god of fire and good. His father was the high priest, so he was expected to inherit the mantle. However, after his beloved died, he attempted a ressurection ritual on her, which was something an acolyte couldn't do alone. When she came back, she had changed, and claimed to have knowledge of the afterlife, and of magic, which she shared with him..
However, during his initiation ritual to becoming a fully-ordained priest, he was supposed to use holy magic to light the brazier containing the sacred flame, but his first few attempts failed. For the final try, instead of using holy magic to complete the ritual, he tried to use the witch's magic. Frost formed over the brazier, and a cold, black flame appeared. From that point on, the holy relic was profaned and none of the priests could light it. The man was exiled, and he fled the land with his witch wife.
The man became an alchemist, obsessed with life and death, spending his life searching for the elixer of immortality, and becoming wealthy by performing transmutations. He would eventually become immortal, but unable to recreate his success. In her jealousy, the witch would murder him and drink his blood, becoming the first vampire. She buried the body beneath the fountain at the heart of their palatial estate. However, the alchemist was not truly dead, and could never die. The fountain would be possessed by the alchemist's eternal, undying ghost, and the water turned to blood. All who drank from it would become immortal vampires.
1/2
Why would vampires not survive without humans?
well, what do you normally destroy something over?
>Lack of understanding
The lich is a new phenomenon to the vampire. Perhaps it is poorly understood, mysterious, and thus very scary to someone who has faced standard enemies for centuries. Approach this as if the vampire is the tip of the iceberg in terms of eldrich abominations, while the lich is much lower.
>Fear of replacement
Its easier to create undead than it is to create a vampire. Vampires know this and want to secure a future for themselves by eliminating the greatest threat to their next generations. If humans are killed to make minions, vampires wont have a way to pass on.
>Taboo practices
The vampire and the lich may share much in common, but the lich does one thing that the vampires have sworn off as inhumane.
>Overstepping bounds
There has been peace between the two for a very long time, but then the lich did something out of order. Perhaps there was a human settlement that the vampire had under his protection, and the lich razed it. Maybe the vampire liked those humans?
The estate fell to ruin after superstitious townsfolk and other monster hunters chased out the lady of the manor and her beautiful and decadent "guests".
Countless ages passed. The empire of flame was now withered, having lost most of their land and power. A feeble fragment of its former self. They sought to bring about a prophesied messiah who would restore the empire to its former glory. Their journeys led them to the manor, and after communing with the spirit beneath the fountain and drinking from it themselves, they determined him to be the messiah they were looking for.
The profaned priests exhumed his remains, nothing more than a broken skull and some bones by now, and brought it to the capital. There, they gathered the ritual implements and performed a ressurection, which failed.
The false messiah told them of the profaned brazier, and the priests went on a quest to find it, eventually bringing it back, and using it to perform the ressurection.
The ritual tore a hole in the boundaries between life and death, and the restless spirits of the underworld returned to the lands of the living, slaughtering the inhabitants of the city, who immediately came back as undead themselves.
The city became a cursed place: the heart of a new undead empire. The alchemist would become the god of this new realm, and they would begin their quest to restore the empire to its former glory, and remake the world into something perfect, everlasting.
>...they sought to bring about a prophesied messiah who would restore the empire to its former glory....
By this I mean, a group of priests and paladins from the empire, on a holy quest
So to link it to OP's story:
The Vampire Lord is married to the vampiress. As the first vampire, she was the one who made him, and as an extension, all other vampires in the realm.
The lich of course has never forgotten the betrayal, and is searching for her.
She generally controls things from behind the shadows. She knows that her first husband is ressurected and that's bad news for her, so she's manipulating lords and kings to fight against him, which isn't hard, because he's leading a genocidal undead army.
>Vampire Lord
So he's a cultureless pleb who forfeited his age category benefits and heritage and threw in his lot with Orcus? Just another Mordoc SeLanmere,
>Newly Made Lich
Unless this guy has massive resources, and at least a Lichspell and Lich Power ritual, he's severely underpowered.
Who? OP vampire appears to be a race that is born and lives as vamps rather than being turned, race instead of disease.
Maybe I'm confused, but don't you need a lich spell to be called a lich? So it's assumed yes. Plus another post said he was capable of controlling a whole army of undead from far away without expending himself
General cool ideas? Did somebody say dracolich!
Could be that they're both creations of the original lich of the setting? That's what I'm doing in my current one.
Vampires were created by the Lich Lord Gravebeckon to serve as his lieutenants and commanders, whilst he also taught a cabal of apprentices the secrets of necromancy. After his death, they both made a grab for his legacy, and came to blows over it.
The God told him to kill the Lich, or else the God will wipe his kingdom off the face of the earth. Vampire belives him, because he saw with his own eyes what had happened when the Elven king told the God to fuck off, and why elves don't exist anymore. Same goes for the Lich. The 3rd party just wants to introduce a little anarchy.
because they drink blood
originally the citizens where humans, the nobles vampires
the vampires tend to seek a balance between humans and them, while the lich wants to kill all humans and such destroying the livelihood of the noble vampires
every citizen between 14 and 40 that lives inside the city wall has to "donate" a half litre blood once a month as tax, but the nobles have to defend him
since lots of humans got slaughtered through the lich there is not enough blood for all vampires anymore and the relationship between humans and vampires gets stressed through this
You need to put a lot more thought into it. Mortals will obviously be the coin of the war these two are fighting. Souls for the Lich. Blood for the Vampire.
Your complete fail at cognitive functions make this setting more and more a child's game.
Idea:
Vamp kingdom is basically like Melnibone. It's geographically isolated; it's people consider themselves superior to humans (their human past is something they collectively left behind), so don't consort with humans but hold them in contempt. Even other vampires from outside their civilization are looked upon as inferior. They regularly go on raids to capture humans to eat/enslave/torture for fun. Or, they used to.
They were once the overlords of all the surrounding kingdoms, but now this empire exists only nominally. The kings may send a pint of blood or something every year as token tribute, but that's it. Most of the common people from these lands haven't even heard of the vampire kingdom.
Since vampires never reproduce, and they don't want to share their immortality with unworthy lesser beings, their numbers dwindled over time due to attrition. Every loss they take is permanent.
The human slaves have been allowed to breed, and are basically outnumbering the vampires now. The vampires released many of them and drove them outside the city, where they have established small rural villages. The vampires don't care even slightly for their wellbeing, but consider them useful, as they provide a renewable food source. They have established a system of blood tax, where each family provides one healthy human sacrifice every 10 years or so. They are also called upon as a levy in times of war and used as canon fodder, fighting alongside undead troops.
Some of the older vampires are chafing at this, and want to just massacre them all and go back to raiding for food, but the leader has decided that, to keep their civilization existant, they need to make compromises.
Securing food source.
Humans are food to vampires, so they are cattle. Now, we don't have to see cattle as we see cattle in industrialized countries, but we can see cattle through the lenses of older civilisations, that would eat the animals once they were old enough/no longer useful.
Until then, they were companions, tools to work the land, to travel, trade, financial possessions that were part of the community and very well taken care of.
Why would a vampire treat its cattle badly? Its better to treat it well, nurture it, that way it works harder, reproduces more, and does not try to murder you. Ofc, this can be an illusion and on the side vampires fuck em up time to time, but thats beside the point.
Also they provide more than food, they provide recruits, cuties to bang, and so forth.
Lich wants to kill all life, or at least all humans for X reason, vampire lord is not necessarily kind, perhaps a ruthless leader, but he defends his cattle and protects it against the lich's plans.
>vampire hate the lich with a passion, it would likely make him plan for the worst. not swear a vendetta against
>plan for the worst.
>worst would be the super spell enslaves all undead (vampires included) to the lich's will. Fuck that lich guy.
>worst would be the super spell kills all life, leaving the vampires (undead) without blood. So they'll starve. Fuck that lich guy
>worst would be the super spell kills all life, animates it as undead and then procedes to enslave all undead (vampires included) to the lich's will. Double fuck that lich guy.
Love this approach. Undead workers just plain better than regular humans. Liches and necromancy in general might work as industrial revolution against ancient noble vampires stuck in centuries old mindset.
"Fuck that guy" is hardly compelling storytelling. There needs to be some actual characterization and background.
Also, how would the vampire guy even know what the lich's goals are?
>how would the vampire guy even know what the lich's goals are?
lichys gona lich
>Going to enslave my kind... and more importantly me isn't compelling storytelling.
>Killing all my cattle to leave my people, and more importantly me to die a slow death of starvation isn't compelling storytelling.
>how would the vampire guy even know what the lich's goals are?
Spys, Divination, Spies using divination, magical residues, sentient undead that betrayed the Lich after realizing they too would be enslaved, Lich is performing the ritual on small scale perfecting it before unleashing it on the entire world. Etc.
Use your imagination.
>gothic horror setting
This doesn't sound at all like gothic horror. It sounds like high fantasy.
Gothic horror is a low magic settting where a typical session might take place in a sleepy village in the middle of nowhere, or the steamy backalleys of an old city. It might feature one monster, but an extremely dangerous one, of mysterious nature, who lurks among ordinary people or hides in the dark of night.
What you have sounds like high fantasy, where you have giant wars between kingdoms of liches and vampires who use armies of undead in their fight, cast powerful world-changing spells, and have ancient grudges.
Gothic horror isn't required to be low fantasy, they can go hand in hand
if its too fantastic it gets belivable - and thus less scary
>Maybe I'm confused, but don't you need a lich spell to be called a lich?
That's not what I was referring to.
In- fact, I- you know what no, your comment alone made me realize your lack of WIS score. Read some more fucking books junior, that shit is embarrassing.
Vampire hunter warlock dude turns lich, spends 150 years researching a mass vampire kill spell, finds out how to turn humans blood into a disease, researches on them and most end up dying.
Or does this sound like a plot from something?
HELLO OP
YOU SEEM TO BE CREATING *LITERALLY FUCKING RAVENLOFT*
I SUGGEST YOU READ SOME GODDAMN BOOKS
You sound so smart, man I hope someday I'm as autist... I mean smart and superior as you,
Getting this triggered, chill friendo.
OP mentions strahd so he knows about it, he likely either stole everything he wanted or doesn't wanna steal
>you haven't read the exact same books as me and that makes you a child
Vampire and lich were originally buttbuddies. When the latter became a lich, his dick and sphincter fell off, while his libido vanished. Vampire wants to destroy the lich so he can resurrect him as a normal human/vampire and get back to booty plundering.
OP here, I'm back. i love a lot of the stuff in here! these are really cool, i kind of wish i had come here when i first began working on my game.
I'm sorry but is there a problem running the game for children? its not like this is some high society elitist game, tabletops can be enjoyed anyone with the want to have fun.
i got into tabletops when i was only 12, kids can enjoy the hobby too
So what, they drink blood? They're undead, they don't need it to live, just like zombies don't actually need to eat human flesh (or brains) to survive.
>How often do these vampires need to feed?
>Is it a civilization of vampires or just the aristocracy?
>Do they have mortal serfs or servants?
>How can they be selective about who they turn when they are at war?
>What determines their power? Age? Lineage?
All of these things and more. WHFB had a very nice way of organizing these things.
-A whole civilization of vampires in unsustainable, only the counts or upper crust are considered to be turned because they have a whole flock of serfs to sustain them.
-They have to protect their mortal population like one would cattle.
-It's impossible to turn someone into a mortal with just a bite, it makes it too easy to reproduce and causes the same problems with a population too large to sustain itself; instead is a hidden special magical ritual called a "blood kiss" to turn and it can only be preformed by powerful wizards (who also happen to be vampires).
- Power is determined by distance from the original blood line with master vampires being the original progenerators of the race.
- Making too many vampires is a problem for their master because they aren't bound to his will and they are all power hungry.
Not who you're responding to, but this guy: To me, vampires represent sort of a cruel, decadent aristocracy. A race of Marquis de Sades.
Going to war to protect your food doesn't sound like something a vampire would do. That's too responsible, too mundane.
Going to war to protect your favorite "red wine", now that's what a vampire would do.
Their human subjects were bred for thousands of years to taste exquisite. That's the only reason why they protect them at all.
Vampire - blood from sentient creature = mindless animal
If the lich wins they will be lost wondering in the wood unaware of the world around them for centuries.
>Vampire - blood from sentient creature = mindless animal
Depends on the setting.
Some undead are diet dependent and will die without food.
Ghouls and Vampires are both in that category. Vampirism is a disease not a divine blessing, any faggot can be bitten by a man-size bat and wonder the earth as a bucktooth lamprey. The Lich literally took years to study to overcome death.
>How often do these vampires need to feed?
They don't need to feed ever. They just like it.
>Is it a civilization of vampires or just the aristocracy?
Civilization of vampires, but they are all aristocratic in nature. There are no "lower class" citizens. All the menial work is done by human slaves. Each vampire has at least half a dozen slaves. High-ranking ones might have hundreds.
>Do they have mortal serfs or servants?
In addition to the slaves, they have "free peasant" tenants, whom they have made arrangements with to provide the vampires with food in exchange for land. They don't simply flee to other lands because they've been slaves for generations and have come to rely on their masters psychologically in a sense. They are also shunned in other lands.
>How can they be selective about who they turn when they are at war?
As you said, the vampires don't just turn whoever they bite, but have a secret ritual they perform, which involves sharing their own blood with the mortal.
>What determines their power? Age? Lineage?
Lineage, the enchanted blood grows weaker with each "generation". So a vampire who was made immortal by the maker is more powerful than one who was made immortal by a vampire who was gifted by a vampire (and so on) who was gifted by the maker. Also, material wealth, and quality (not necessarily quantity) of slaves is a big indicator. The best-tasting slaves are a sought-after commodity.
Sometimes they just become shriveled husks until they taste blood again and sometimes they just starve to death.
Blood is a consequence of their existence no matter the setting. In every work of fiction.
>They don't need to feed ever. They just like it.
Shit setting senpai, write your slash fic elsewhere you sparkly fuck.
Why? It's the truest to the source. Erzebet Bathory didn't need to bathe in virgin blood. She was just a nutjob who did. Vlad Dracule didn't need to impale his enemies, he just wanted to watch them suffer as revenge for invading him and as a warning to others.
A killer who kills because he needs to is typical of your "Woe is me, how tragic am I? A killer with a conscience" type of crap. A killer who throws giant feasts and grades his victims like wines, for no other reason than because he can, and he delights in the sense of superiority he gets by treating humans like cattle, is pretty monstrous.
actually ghouls dont need to eat to survive, see ghoul worms. they starve so much that they eat their own arms and legs and eventually go mad, they go feral but can survive without food.
Didn't see it mentioned, but I only skimmed. The first thing that came to mind was from an old forgotten realms book where the lich was trying to create an undead utopia. The vamp was an early success, but the lich felt that only other liches deserved to be in the ruling class, so the vamp felt slighted and wanted revenge.
>Vlad Dracule didn't need to impale his enemies
Actually he did, if it wasn't for his terror tactics, Wallachia wouldn't have stayed independant for as long as it did.
Pretty sure they were a voivode (basically a duchy) of Hungary
self bump
Why would a vampire be a threat to a Lich?
Magic users > blood drinkers
In what media/stories DON'T vampires need human blood to survive? Or, if not survive, then to keep themselves from either going feral or shriveling up into husks until rejuvenated by blood again.
I don't doubt there are some, but it's rare enough that I can't think of a single example.
I second this. A lich is going to be much more powerful.
Mr. Vamps had 800 years to learn magic.
How old is the lich?
Is the vampire in question an actual magician or just a dabbler?
>age matters
If that were the case, why are humans better than the elves at magic in every D&D setting ever?
It isn't a matter of vendettas, it boils down to resources.
Vampire lord needs blood. Lich needs bodies.
switch those up, it appears the vampire is an accomplished fighter and the litch is the mage.
the litch has been in charge for 150, and I'm gonna guess was around 70 when they turned.
Bump
>D&D