Vampires

You are a vampire lord and rule over a kingdom of humans and lesser undead creatures. The majority of your subjects are mere mortals who fear and adore you, though the most elite are your fellow vampires.

As a vampire you are immortal, your body is eternally young and vigorous. Your strength is 8 times as great as the human maximum and your dexterity is 4 times the human maximum. Your combat ability is also at the human peak. Minor wounds inflicted to your body heal within seconds while major injuries like having a severed limb take minutes to heal - the exception being damage dealt by sunlight or holy items or powers, such injuries take many days or even weeks to recover from. You can continue fighting at almost maximum efficiency unless you are decapitated or your body is thoroughly demolished - you are virtually immune to pain. Even if your body is destroyed, you will quickly heal from those injuries, even recovering from decapitation within an hour or so. There are only two ways to permanently kill you - death by sunlight or being decapitated and then having your head and body burned separately. Sunlight is highly damaging and painful to your, burning your flesh like fire. The sun burns about 10% of your body per minute of direct exposure or 1% per minute of indirect or covered exposure - meaning you permanently die within between 10 and 100 minutes of exposure to the sun. The sunlight also has the added effect of reducing your strength and dexterity down to peak human levels.

As a vampire, you must drink a pint of humanoid blood every week or lose 5% of your physical prowess for each week missed. You also crave the blood of the living and have trouble resisting the urge to kill and drink blood. Among your other weaknesses are that you can't enter holy ground, you take damage from the touch of a good holy symbol, you can be repelled by those with faith or an extremely innocent heart.

On the plus side, you have a number of other powers. You can see perfectly well at night, even in absolute darkness. You have a sense of smell and hearing twice as good as that of a human. Despite being virtually immune to pain, you still have human pleasures and sensations. You can magically sink into the earth to prevent yourself from being exposed to sunlight or attack, doing this takes a full minute of concentration but once completed no amount of digging can reveal your body. You can adhere on any surface like an insect and move at normal speed. In addition, any land where vampires have dwelled for more than 50 years (including the starting homeland of the vampire lord) can be covered with thick black storm clouds at the will of the lord vampire. These clouds will protect vampires from the sun.

Your greatest servants are vampires. Each vampire has the same basic powers as you but is only 6 times as strong as the human peak and 3 times as dexterous. You can have as many vampire servants in your army as 1/500 of the number of human subjects in your kingdom. Vampires who die can be replaced by the lord vampire turning a human subject into a new vampire, this takes only a day.

All vampires have additional personal powers as well. The vampire lord can pick three of the powers below while normal vampires may only pick two :

The vampire can look into a mortal's eyes and make him or her its slave. It merely speaks the words and the mortal must obey. It can only command 10 (100 for a lord or 1 for a fledgling) such mortals at a time, but once it takes control, that mortal remains under control until the vampire releases him or the vampire dies.

The vampire have the power to fly through the air at a speed of 50 (100 for a lord or 25 for a fledgling) mph. It can move quite gracefully or even hover in place.

The vampire can become completely invisible, not because light passes through it but because it clouds the minds of observers. It cannot attack or fight and remain invisible, but if it isn't violent you can sneak past anyone quite effortlessly. Becoming invisible takes about 30 seconds of concentration.

The vampire can animate zombies just as an acolyte necromancer can, controlling up to 1000 zombies at a time as a lord or 100 as a normal vampire or 10 for a fledgling.

The vampire can create a field of necromantic energy around itself that makes it immune from all harm. For normal vampires to do this it must remain perfectly still and take no other action, vampire lords can still walk at a slow pace and maintain the protection. The only thing that can penetrate this protection is the light of the sun. Fledgling cannot take this power.

The vampire has such great speed that it can dodge any attack directed against it, even magical attacks and those it isn't aware of. Vampires have a 50% (75% for a lord or 25% for a fledgling) chance of ignoring any attack directed against them.

The vampire's skin is as hard as iron and cannot be pierced by normal weapon, only magic or enchanted weapons can affect it or damage its flesh. Fire will still damage it though.

The vampire is resistant to the light of the sun, taking damage from sunlight per 10 minute time interval instead of per minute.

The vampire is stronger than most vampires, its strength increases by 4 times the strength of the strongest human or 1 times the strength of the strongest human for a fledgling.

The vampire no longer has as strong a need for human blood, it only needs to drink a pint a month instead of a week. If this power is taken for normal vampires, they each count as half a vampire for the purposes of determining the total number of vampires in the army. If taken for a fledgling, it causes it to count as only 2 servants instead of 5.

The vampire can magically sink into the earth to prevent it from being exposed to sunlight or attack, doing this takes a full minute of concentration but once completed no amount of digging can reveal its body.

The vampire has the power to drain the life from any enemy with but a touch - anything alive dies that the vampire touches and undead creatures are drained of their animating life force and collapse.

The vampire becomes supernaturally attractive and charming, all who see the vampire will be drawn to him or her and feel inclined to obey or serve the vampire, though those charmed will not take actions that are against their nature to appease the vampire.

The vampire can control animals, a certain number of pounds of animals (down to the size of rats or bats) can be controlled at a time. Master vampires can control 1000 lb and normal vampires 100 lb while fledgling can control 50 lb. Any vampire can with this power can control its riding mount, even if it exceeds the weight allowance.

The vampire has a fearsome appearance, striking terror into all who see it. Weak willed individuals flee in terror at the sight of the vampire, while even battle hardened warriors suffer a 25% penalty to their combat reflexes while in close proximity to the vampire.

Each vampire can command up to 50 (500 for the lord) servants*, chosen from the list below. if these servants are killed, they can be replaced with a human servant (for blood slaves), a corpse (for ghouls), or a wolf or dog (for hell hounds) - in each case it takes no more than a week to replace all casualties if the proper materials are available.

The vampire can change its shape into animal or humanoid of its own size or smaller, down to the size of a small bat or mouse. This can include the ability to look like any human, but also allows the vampire to take the shape of flying animal to gain its mode of transportation.

*Blood slaves are humans who are addicted to vampire blood. They are twice as strong as normal humans and are so fanatically loyal to their vampire master that they are immune to fear. They also have advanced healing abilities and are able to recover from wounds in a matter of minutes or hours, depending on the severity of the wound and can even heal back severed arms or legs. These humans tend to have at least one peak ability, such as peak human fighting ability, peak human intelligence, extreme beauty, etc. A blood slave is created by feeding vampire blood to a mortal.

*Ghouls are lesser undead in service to vampires. They are twice as strong as the strongest humans, just as dexterous as humans, and have the same durability as vampires do, though they do not regenerate from their wounds nearly as quickly - it takes them hours or days to recover from injury instead of seconds or minutes. They have intelligence and free will, but are about 20% less intelligent than humans. They appear to be rotted corpses with luminescent eyes, sharp teeth, and claws. They have the same weaknesses as vampires to holy items and ground, though they do not burn in the daylight but merely become 50% weaker. They insatiably crave the flesh of the dead and must eat or lose their strength as vampires do when they do not feed on blood. They have perfect vision in absolute darkness. A ghoul is created by feeding vampire blood to a corpse.

*Hell Hounds are huge ferocious dogs or wolves that have been feed the blood of a vampire. They are twice as large and powerful as a wolf and slowly regenerate at the same rate that blood slaves do. They are totally obedient to their vampire master and have an erie cunning that most canines do not have. They have all of the abilities of canines, including the ability to track by scent. Hell hounds are created by feeding a wolf or large dog the blood of a vampire.

*The vampire can have a swarm of insects, rats, birds, or bats. These creatures occupy about 1000 cubic feet of space. They can generally only inflict minor injuries unless the victims are unable to escape, but are great at causing fear or acting as a distraction.

*The vampire can have a fledgling vampire as a servant. This vampire has the same powers and weaknesses of normal vampires, though they only have 3 times the strength of the human peak and twice the dexterity or the human peak. A fledgling vampire has only 1 vampiric power and it must be one that its master has. A fledgling vampire counts as 5 servants instead of one.

As a vampire lord, you start with 50,000 human subjects which gives you 100 lesser vampires. Each vampire in your army, except the vampire lord which can have 500, can have 50 servants at any one point in time. Meaning that you begin play with 5,500 servants. This means your total undead population is ultimately based on your mortal population. Vampire armies have access to 14th century technology.