Thousand Year Old Vampire: Session 3

 

Rooms in the house in Lubeck, or a vampire's decaying memory them. Image by Midjourney.

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.

Content warning: This game necessarily features quite a lot of disturbing stuff, mainly violence.

Events

Prompt 28 (1239)

A long dead mortal Character returns. What do they want from you? How have they survived death? You only recognize them if you still have a related Memory. Check a Skill.

“I had built up a sizeable fortune in Lubeck over the years. Even though the Germans thought me blind due to my pure white eyes I was able to convince people I could read letters and numbers by touch alone; the fools.

I now employed people for the daily running of my business, leaving me with more time to enjoy the mansion I had commissioned with escape tunnels and secret chambers to ensure I would never be surprised at home like I was back in England.

One night I received a letter that had no natural cause to have been written - it was from Gytha, my long dead wife. She had somehow awakened after death as a creature of the Devil like me, and been taken under the horrid wing of the bastard Mar!

They had spent over a century tracking me down until they somehow located me here. She wants to meet, but I suspect she is unwittingly luring me into a trap by Mar.”

(Literacy skill checked. Gytha returns as an immortal.)

Prompt 31 (1339)

You fall into a deep slumber for a hundred years. Strike out any mortal Characters.

“The strangest thing happened a few nights after I received the letter. I went to sleep as normal in my hidden chamber and when I awoke I immediately felt something was wrong. Opening the door I found the house decorated in an odd style, the shutters were open and there was a family eating their evening meal where my library had been. Naturally I killed them immediately, followed by their servants.

I discovered from some documents that they had owned the house for years, and it was now the year 1339. After my disappearance and leaving no heirs, the city auctioned off the house.”

Current Character Sheet

Characters

Gytha Harling (Immortal)

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.

Geoffrey Warren (Dead)

A vampire hunting pilgrim from Canterbury. I poisoned him to quietly be rid of him.

Memories

Memory 1

I am Raynar Harling, an English farm labourer.

Experience 1

My father taught me herbalism and left me a silver necklace passed down through our family since Roman times. I keep it under the bed in the cottage.

Memory 1

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 2

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.

Memory 3

I spent time in Canterbury, working as a night watchman at the Cathedral to begin with.

Experience 1

A pious pilgrim called Geoffrey Warren detected my dark nature. I poisoned him before he could act against me.

Experience 2

I murdered a cruel ratcatcher who I witnessed mistreating his dog.

Experience 3

A Canterbury monk taught me to read and write, and I began my diary.

Memory 4

I fled England for Germany in 1227.

Experience 1

I fled from the Canterbury night watch to Lubeck in Germany and started work as a bookkeeper, taking the name Richard Harcourt.

Experience 2

I slept from 1239 to 1339 and found my house long since repossessed and sold off.

Diary

Diary 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.

Experience 3

In the deep night, a cruel and evil vampire named Mar attacked Aelfred and I on the road. He bent my seax in half and almost overpowered me, but I impaled him on the sword and he fled into the darkness.

Diary 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.

Experience 3

Gytha wrote me a letter while I lived in 13th Century Germany. She is a vampire and a protege of Mar.

Skills

Sword Fighting ✔ Herbalism ✔ Storytelling ✔ Bloodthirsty ✔ Sense Immortal ✔ Ambush Literacy ✔

Resources

Seax (an Anglo-Saxon sword) Cottage in Croghyrst (stationary resource) Roman silver necklace, a family heirloom given by my father

Bag of gold coins

Mark

My eyes are pure white, which often makes mortals think me a blind man.

Summary

The game still continues to surprise me and throw spanners in the works. E.g. Gytha returning to the story and then Raynar immediately falling asleep for a hundred years.

He's actually getting dangerously close to finishing the game as a three hundred year old vampire rather than a thousand year old one - he's run out of resources and only has his ambush skill left to use. If he doesn't gain any new ones then he'll die the next time he's told to use one.

Let me know what you think of his story so far in the comments, or link me to your own playthroughs. They're quite hard to find online.