Thousand Year Old Vampire: Session 1
I'm playing Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings. Check out the introduction or character creation. I'm not listing the results of every dice roll but I am including the text of the prompts I land on so you can see how I interpreted them. The prompts you experience are determined by deducting a D6 roll from a D10 roll and moving forward or back that many prompts. Raynar the Vampire will die when he runs out of skills and resources.
Events
Prompt 1 (AD 1066)
In your blood-hunger you destroy someone close to you. Kill a mortal Character. Create a mortal if none are available. Take the skill Bloodthirsty.
“After the fiend Laiesse revived me and told me of my new demonic nature and slithered away into the night, I refused to believe him, returning home to the cottage covered in blood. However upon seeing Gytha with my new pure white eyes, I immediately set upon her and tore open her throat, draining her of blood. Fully realising what I now was, I hid her under some rocks outside and cowered under the bed until the following night.”
(Gytha killed, Bloodthirsty skill gained)
Prompt 4
You are exposed and flee to a neighboring region. Lose any stationary Resources. Check a Skill. A mortal flees with you. What new name do you adopt among these strangers?
“The following evening Aelfred came to the cottage to tell Gytha I was lost on the battlefield, but discovered me waking up from my long sleep. He immediately accused me of sorcery and it took all my storytelling skills to convince him not to gather the men from the village and burn me on a pyre. After listening to me he suggested we flee far from here before the others discover Gytha’s demise, and we set off for the only other place of which we knew, the village of Rye.”
(Storytelling skill checked. Cottage in Croghyrst resource lost)
Prompt 8
You are recognized for what you are by another creature like yourself. Create an immortal Character, lose a Resource and gain a Skill. What did you lose to them?
"On our long moonlit walk to Rye that night, I suddenly felt an odd sense like lightning coursing through my body. We were approaching a crossroads when a man dressed like a Christian priest appeared in front of us in an instant. He taunted me, saying he knew I was like him, then grappled with me.
I drew my seax and hacked at him, but he caught it and bent it in his hands. Somehow I managed to run him through, and after howling in pain he cried “Mar is my name. Be a’feared for when next we meet!”. He disappeared then, in the blink of an eye."
(Mar added, seax sword resource lost, Sense Immortal skill gained)
Prompt 11
How do you find solace from the raging hunger within you? You may lose one checked or unchecked Skill.
"Aelfred and I settled down in Rye. In the weeks that followed our arrival he found work as a dockhand, hauling in the fishermen’s catches while I slept in a long crate in the boarding house we called home.
At night I would go out and feed on drunk fishermen and dock workers staggering home from the alehouse, usually leaving them alive but occasionally killing them by mistake. Aelfred asked not what I did during those nights, which suited me well."
(Storytelling skill lost)
Prompt 9
You develop a system for feeding. What is it? What happens to those who die? Create a Skill that reflects this.
“After several weeks of this, people began falling ill in the village, blaming it on a blood pox, and a dozen people had now died. To let things die down in Rye I began spending the days sleeping in my crate in the undergrowth on the road to the outlying dwellings an hour’s walk from the village, waking at dusk to hide until a lone stranger walked past on the way home, dragging him down into the grass and feeding.
I began to find it harder to stop draining them completely.”
(Ambush skill gained)
Prompt 10 (AD 1171)
The stars pinwheel above you in the night. The seasons are a blur. You are as an automaton, unconscious of the passage of decades. A century passes. Strike out a Memory. Strike out all mortal Characters.
“The nights went on like this, each victim seeming to fuel my bloodlust even more until it was all I thought about. At some point I stopped my nightly visits to the boarding house to speak with Aelfred, stuck in the routine of waking, hiding, hunting and feeding.
I noticed the outlying dwellings had become a whole village now, and when I went into Rye one cold January night the village was awash with rumours that the Archbishop of Canterbury had been assassinated in his cathedral. The Normans were now in full control of England. I realised I could no longer remember my own name, and found Aelfred’s grave in the churchyard. He died in 1078.”
Prompt 14 (AD 1172)
An enemy Character uses a lost Resource to turn your few friends against you. Check three Skills to regain the Resource, or check one Skill to barely survive. Which former friend did you kill? Where do you flee?
“I forced myself to rejoin the world of men, futile as it was, and spent time working nights sweeping one of the village stockhouses. This allowed me to make friends with the other folk who worked at those hours, but soon enough that lightning-feeling spread through my veins and the devil Mar appeared.
It happened in the blink of an eye one night while we were playing at dice. He accused me of being a “vampyr”, and threw down my bent Saxon sword, telling them I had fought at Hastings a century ago. The men, being god-fearing folk, attacked me, throwing a lantern at me and almost setting me aflame. I shoved one, Robert, out of the way and accidentally broke his back (much to Mar’s amusement). My cover blown, I fled then to Canterbury.”
(Sense Immortal skill checked)
Prompt 18
You have fed too long in one place, destroying a community or social group. Who were they? How did the last community member die? Gain a scavenged Resource, lose a Resource.
“I walked many nights then, on the lanes and roads that led to Canterbury, a now bustling city. For a few nights I preyed on a group of pilgrims from Cornwall, catching them up and picking off the stragglers one by one.
The last one, a former man at arms who carried a short sword, reacted quickly enough to draw his weapon and hack at my side, cutting open a deep gash. I was shocked to see a dark reddish-black dry powder fall from the wound. Was this what now sat in my veins? I quickly overpowered him and pulled his head from his neck, but during the scuffle I somehow lost my silver necklace in the mud. It mattered not, I do not know where that trinket came from anyway. For compensation I stole a bag of gold coins from him.”
(Bag of gold coins resource gained, Roman silver necklace resource lost)
Current Character Sheet
Characters
Gytha Harling (Dead)
My wife. Although I am not popular in Croghyrst, Gytha is known as reliable and trustworthy, often helping the other wives in their doings. Killed in my first bloodlust.
Aelfred Goffin (Dead)
Meek farm labourer from Croghyrst. My only friend in the village. Died of natural causes in 1078.
Laiesse (Immortal)
The Norman vampire who turned me. He stowed away on William the Bastard’s fleet and found me bleeding at Hastings the night after the battle. I know little of him other than that he was in life some kind of artisan on the continent.
Mar (Immortal)
A cruel vampire who was in life a Christian priest, now an offensive mockery of one.
Memories
Memory 1
Experience 1
Memory 1
I would often make up funny stories in the alehouse and make Aelfred laugh.
Experience 1
Once Aelfred laughed so much he choked on a crust of bread and almost died.
Experience 2
Aelfred discovered me on my second night as a vampire. He took pity on me and we fled Croghyrst for Rye.
Memory 2
Gytha, my wife, was my main reason for living.
Experience 1
Gytha and I spent several nights camping in the meadow beyond the field the year we were married.
Experience 2
I killed Gytha in a bloodlust on my first night as a vampire, leaving me devastated.
Memory 3
When the Vikings invaded in the year of our lord ten thousand and sixty-six I was conscripted as a fyrdsman into the local lord’s army.
Experience 1
I was in the frontline against the Normans at the battle of Hastings but soon cut down and trampled. That night, bleeding and drifting to the next world, the vampire Laiesse came to me and revived me as a creature of the night.
Experience 2
After fleeing Croghyrst with Aelfred, we lived in a boarding house in Rye.
Memory 4
I spent one hundred years doing nothing but feeding on victims, without thought for anything else.
Experience 1
I found Aelfred’s grave in the churchyard at Rye.
Experience 2
Mar the vampire tracked me down in Rye and blew my cover in front of some fellow storehouse workers. They attacked me and I killed one, and fled.
Experience 3
I preyed on and wiped out a group of pilgrims from Cornwall on the road to Canterbury.
Skills
Sword Fighting ✔
Herbalism
Storytelling ✔
Bloodthirsty
Sense Immortal ✔
Ambush
Resources
Bag of gold coins
Mark
My eyes are pure white, which often makes mortals think me a blind man.
Summary
Wow, that prompt 10 was a killer. A century passed, Raynar forgot his own name, his only friend died of old age and then shortly afterward he lost his silver necklace but wasn't even bothered by it since he couldn't remember where he got it.
This game is quite intense with how brutal it is to the characters you create. Mar was the result of a roll on the UNE tables but he fits right into the world of the story. I wonder if he'll make a third appearance next time, and if Raynar will ever be rid of him. At least he still has three unused skills and a bag of coins to make use of.
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