Vlad Dracula Tepes

Allegedly the first vampire, Vlad Dracula Tepes briefly ruled over Romania in the public eye before returning to obscurity until his name and likeness was published in a storybook by a null in 1897. Vlad Dracula Tepes in actuality is oddly tolerated by the Concordance and has secretly cooperated with them on several occasions. Contacting and locating Dracula however, remains nearly impossible and rumor has it that his castle home is capable of moving on a whim.

Despite his infamy very little is actually known about Dracula even to the most prominent vampyric orders as he is characteristically recluse and appears to have no more respect for vampires then he does humans.

## Trivia

* While null depictions of Dracula where largely produced more then a century after he disappeared from the public eye, the arcanist community has several paintings of the vampire produced in his presence with stunning accuracy, one even hangs to the day within the Headmaster's chambers in Scholomance.
* Dracula was once voted the most handsome man to live by The Mystique in 1976 after being written in as an option as a joke given the majority of people did not know what he looks like, students soon discovered and developed imitations of the painting in the headmaster's chambers to circulate in effort to promote Dracula as the desired victor. His likeness has since been removed from public awareness.

## Spoilers

###### *This legend is a collection of rumors and lore telling the speculative tale of the origins of Vlad Dracula Tepes.*

Vlad Dracula Tepes, was once a scholar and an alchemist from a far gone era who lived then under a name long lost to history. Dracula was said to of have even studied alongside Lilith, from whom he learned mastery over both pneumamancy and vivamancy. He would use these powers to attempt to forge the philosopher's stone by absorbing into himself countless souls before at last venturing into the plane of shadows to confront death itself as a final component to the most ambitious of goals. There it is said he met with the arbiter of death and achieved an apotheosis. He would gain infinite access to the powers of the shadow planes and Oblivion beyond, achieve true immortality, and sireship over a new species of creatures that would be born of death.

Those he sired through the gifting of a fragment of his own divine anima would become vampires, a being bound to the darkness of the plane of shadows that cannot withstand the sun, and which would feed forever upon the souls of mortals. Utilizing the anima as nourishment to fuel their infinite lifespan and powers effectively burning the soul away to nothingness not unlike a being of Oblivion. For the price of Dracula's ascension was to eternally become an arbiter himself to the processes of death and obliteration.

Dracula deigned to omit this truth from his children and called upon his dark power over life and death to shape the first of the kindred so that they would bare fangs and a thirst for blood from which they would steal fragments of the soul. He granted them as well the the venom that fills their saliva which intoxicates the victim and heals the flesh broken by the kiss.

Dracula himself has no need to sustain himself in any way, for he is a conduit to the near infinite souls that have fallen to the plane of shadows. Instead he would feast merely to maintain appearances when necessary. In effect Dracula could be considered far more then a mere vampire and has stated as much on several occasions when challenged by vampyric princes.

Dracula's castle natively exists within the penumbra between the prime and shadow planes enabling it to relocate to anywhere on either plane instantaneously.