Thousand Year Old Vampire: Session 4

Raynar and Gytha walk the streets of Lubeck, Germany. 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.

Events

Prompt 28 (Second reading) (1342)

What peril do they pull down upon you? (The returned mortal). Create a new enemy Character, mortal or immortal. Check a Skill or lose a Resource.

“I continued living in the secret chamber for some time as some relatives of the owners inherited it and sold it to another family, that of a local magistrate by the name of Pieter Blaug. I fell back into the old ways of living apart from mortals, leaving through a secret passage to feed each night, wander the streets a bit and return home.

One night I was confronted by Gytha - she had waited a century for my reply to her letter, it went by in the blink of an eye, she said. We walked and talked. She told me what Mar had taught her after taking pity on her when she was newly born to darkness; that mortals should be treated as mere cattle and rival immortals were not to be trusted. Mar had marked me as a fraternizer of mortals when he found me on the road with Aelfred and was determined to hunt me down and kill me. He had killed fourteen others of our kind, she said, and “taken their power”. He would surely come for me soon if I didn’t flee.

It was strange, just as I was no longer… whoever I was in life, she was no longer the mortal woman I once loved, and I felt nothing for her. I told her I had done enough running away around Europe, and that if Mar wanted to kill me he was welcome to try. I turned to face her then but she had melted away into the night.

There was a meeting with Mar just as Gytha promised, but not of the kind he was no doubt hoping for. I was walking past some boats moored on the river, admiring the moonlit water when I saw him hovering high above the water with his back to me further along the river. I know not how he did it - I certainly couldn't fly. He was floating in place and rotating a full three hundred and sixty degrees, presumably scanning the streets for me.

I jumped into one of the boats and hid. Soon enough he descended to the ground and started stalking towards my position, but went past, unaware. I had found a heavy chain coiled on the deck of the boat, grabbed it and sprung up off the deck, landing on his back. He clawed at me frantically but I wrapped the chain around his arms, body and legs, throwing him to the ground.

It was thick and heavy, and try as he might he couldn't bend the metal like he had my sword all those years ago. After a few seconds he stopped struggling and started to speak. I punched him hard in the mouth, collapsing the bone structure in his face with the force of it. He was stunned for a moment but then his face started to reform into his usual grin with a horrible cracking and crunching sound, so I wrapped the chain around his head. I didn't care to listen to anything he had to say.

I knew what to do next. Hauling him up onto my shoulders, I trudged along the river away from the city centre until I found an area with many abandoned shacks near the river's mouth. I dumped him in the mud on the banks, retreated to the shadows inside one of the shacks and watched from the window, waiting for the sun to rise.

He worked his head free of the chain and in the hours that followed hurled all sorts of abuse and blasphemies into the slowly brightening sky. He said he was eight centuries old, knew forbidden knowledge about God and the Devil, had foreseen what was yet to come, visions of future industry blackening the skies and poisoning the seas as the mortal cities grew, whole species of animals dying out, more war in Europe, war everywhere and huge explosions destroying thousands of mortals in an instant. That they deserved us as their masters and that I'd ruined his grand plan.

He continued raving gibberish like that as the sun rose. I forced myself to watch as his face caught fire when its rays hit him, burning through his dry powdered blood and crumbling his bones.

I slept in the corner of the shack. When I awoke the next night the river had risen and fallen again, washing away his ashes leaving only the chain behind.

(Ambush skill checked. Pieter Blaug character added)

The death of Mar. Image by Midjourney.

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 but rose as a vampire.

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 (Dead)

A cruel vampire who was in life a Christian priest, then an offensive mockery of one who hunted me through the ages until I ambushed and killed him in 14th Century Germany.

Geoffrey Warren (Dead)

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

Pieter Blaug (Mortal)

The local magistrate who moved into my mansion with his family during the century I slumbered through.

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.

Experience 3

Mar hunted me down in Lubeck but I ambushed him and killed him once and for all.

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.

Experience 4

Gytha confronted me in Lubeck and warned me that Mar is after me. I told her I was not interested in fleeing my home, and he was welcome to come for me.

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

Mar is finally dealt with! I'm glad Raynar got the chance to do him in after all the taunting over the years. Although he's now in a perilous position since he's checked all his skills and run out of resources, so next time he's told to use either he'll die (again!).