Pages

▼

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

A Bunch of Greyhawk Vampires

Happy Halloween, Greyhawk creatures! Today I feel in the mood to highlight some evil undead from the World of Greyhawk setting, specifically vampires. Undead run rampant in Greyhawk. It's full of death knights, liches, animi and so on. What Greyhawk has a surprising lack of is vampires. That is to say named vampires. Of course there are obvious ones from lore such as Drelnza, daughter of Iggwilv from Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth or Kas the Terrible former lieutenant of Vecna. Did they sire lesser vampires or are they loners? Who knows? In popular fiction and other games we are used to seeing numerous vampire clans and how they interact. In Greyhawk for the most part, the vampires who about are indeed loners or servants of more powerful non-vampiric beings. To show you what I mean, here is a selection of canonical Greyhawk vampires you may or may not know. This list is by no means exhaustive and I apologize if any are spoilers. Enjoy.

Belgos (male drow vampire)
Where is he found? Vault of the Drow
Who does he serve? His mistress the succubus Silussa.
What's his job? Master of bats and rats. Bodyguard?
Tloques-popolocas (male human vampire)
Where is he found? Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
Who does he serve? The vampire-god Zotzilaha.
What's his job? Master of Outsiders and sleeping.

Maskaleyne (male human vampire)
Where is he found? Iuz the Evil
Who does he serve? The demigod Iuz.
What's his job? Boneheart member and governor of Grabford.

Prince Ferrenan (male human vampire)
Where is he found? Ivid the Undying
Who does he serve? No one, House Cranden, or at one time, animus Overking Ivid
What's his job? House Cranden ruler of Blacksplinter.

Vlad Tolenkov (male human vampire)
Where is he found? Queen of the Demonweb Pits
Who does he serve? The demon-queen Lolth
What's his job? Aspiring warlord, ruler of Nightworld.

Ctenmiir (male human vampire)
Where is he? White Plume Mountain
Who does he serve? The wizard Keraptis.
What's his job? Cursed to guard treasure.

Nanna, Dannen and Willow (human vampires, two female, one male)
Where are they found? The Doomgrinder
Who do they serve? Two of these former druids serve the third druid. No spoilers.
What's their job? Wandering and druid stuff.

Okay, that last trio is rather different than the standard Dracula trope vampires before them, but being druids they are likely going to remain neutral hermits anyhow. That's all for now. To sum up, yes there are many vampires in Greyhawk, and in positions of great power; just not any kind of organized vampire families or bloodlines of note. Maybe that's a good thing.










at

5 comments:

  1. Rajaat99November 4, 2018 at 4:03 PM

    The only one I knew about was Ctenmiir in White Plume Mountain. Thanks for the list.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike BridgesNovember 4, 2018 at 9:24 PM

    Rajaat: Yeah I really had to do my homework to find these!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 8, 2018 at 6:12 PM

    Prince Thrommel was turned into a vampire in the 3e module Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mike BridgesNovember 9, 2018 at 11:30 AM

    Hahaha, yeah I was avoiding him because *spoilers*. Also, I think it's an awful idea

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousNovember 9, 2018 at 2:13 PM

    I'm probably forgetting something, but I don't remember there being any way for the players to know who he was. Maybe if they thought to make a Knowledge (nobility and royalty) check they could recognize him. But I don't think there were any hints that they should do that, so it would come down to the DM calling for the check. In which case the players will realize, "Hey, this guy must be important!" even if they roll low. And even if they do recognize him for whatever reason, he attacks anyway. You can't afford to mess around when dealing with a vampire, so the party is probably just going to slay him and go on about their business. So yeah, it was a really strange thing to include.

    ReplyDelete