Vampire

## Introduction

The vampire turns her eternal curse into great power. She tries to satiate her eternal hunger by draining her enemies of their life while empowering herself. She uses strong physical attacks that cause bleeding to drain her enemies of health over time and restore her own. This combination makes her a formidable force against any enemy. The Vampires abilities are easy to master, and she serves as a powerful ally from the beginning.

## Backstory

You can read the full text of the Vampires backstory in pdf format here, or read it in plain text below

The kingdom of Vampiria was once the richest kingdom in the world. Its lands flourished with unceasing bounty and its leaders were wise enough to share this natural wealth with the people. The virtuous cycle led to centuries of peaceful prosperity. Their plentiful resources made them the envy of their neighbors, but there was more to gain in trade and allegiance than there was by armed conflict. Vampiria’s position of strength and reasonable diplomacy ensured a strong local alliance that deterred warfare.

As a monument to his own fabulous wealth and the prosperity of his people, King Graf Orlok built a magnificent and sprawling castle. The castle itself was situated on one of the largest deposits of chaos gemstones in the world, highly valued for their ability to power both spells and magical devices. It was said that for all its glory, the king’s castle was like a glacier – glittering and glistening on top, but with a hidden and even greater construction below the ground. So great was the structure that magical bulwarks were employed to prevent the hollowed-out ground from collapsing under the weight of the soaring towers.

While extending the depths of Orlok’s castle the workers broke through the top of a cavern. Despite their efforts the depth of this new space couldn’t be determined. Early exploration efforts left some of the miners in the throes of madness, raving about screams and whispers in their heads. Those that returned without problems reported an almost instinctual revulsion of continuing on, and that, sometimes, they thought they could hear voices coming from deeper in the cavern. The cavern itself, however, was littered with the richest deposits of chaos gemstones they had ever seen.

The problems were assumed to be from the sheer concentration of chaos energies. King Orlok ordered the continued mining of the caverns but with strict magical protection for the workers. The protections prevented additional problems, but the whispers remained, muted, but always present while anyone stayed in the cavern. Some counselors cautioned against additional exploration and advised sealing the area off, but the massive influx of new chaos gemstones swayed Orlok’s judgement in favor of continued delving.

A new deposit of gemstones was discovered, so pure it was almost entirely crystal the length of the vein. The miners set into it with their tools. After a few hours of work, a crack echoed through the cavern and a vast segment of the crystal crumbled away from the cliffside. The workers saw something dark and massive moving on the other side of the wall.

Darkness erupted from the breach and consumed the miners and their work lights. Magicians and miners higher up reacted to the breach, attempting to seal it off with rock and spells both. The darkness was slowed, but not stopped, and they fled from the flood of energy.

The king and his men constructed a last-ditch effort at the entrance to the underground mines. Fearing both the magic and whatever creature was seen beyond the cavern wall, they filled the underground with mundane and magical traps and erected a powerful barrier at the entrance. But the spread of the darkness could not be contained by conventional means. It destroyed the barrier and washed over the king and his castle. They were transformed into creatures that shared the dark energy’s hunger for life.

The darkness burst forth from the castle’s windows and doors and swept across the capital. An unnatural night fell across the land. The people were changed into beings of that same darkness with a deep hunger that could not be satisfied. They turned on their neighbors and on themselves and stripped their plentiful land barren in their race to satisfy their hunger. The more they consumed the more terrible their dark appetites grew. Every vestige of life was killed or eaten.

Few escaped the spread of the curse. The once-thriving kingdom became shrouded in darkness and the peaceful land became cutthroat and desperate as former friends and family fought for scraps of sustenance. The neighboring kingdoms banded together for their own survival, allying against the transformed people of Vampiria that had become violent monstrosities seemingly overnight. The spread of the dark energy itself seemed to reach some limit, sparing the rest of the world from the same fate, but the vampires could spread their curse to those they hunted.

The land of Vampiria was changed forever, and their people, the vampires, were cursed by their king’s greed. Few dare visit the eternally dark lands of Vampiria; only a fool would brave the hunger of a vampire for too long. King Orlok still lords from his castle but his once-gentle hand of leadership has been replaced by a harder, iron-fisted rulership, driven by dark whispers of his hunger.

Not all hope is lost for Vampiria. Chaos gemstones are still plentiful. The darkness pervading the land gave rise to a new sort of bounty – cursed forms of dark life unappealing to the vampires, many with valuable properties. Enterprising merchants brave the borders of the nation to trade with vampires who have learned to control their hunger long enough to conduct business. A small faction of younger vampires has arisen within the nation, determined to try to reestablish diplomacy and seek a cure for their curse, but there remains a long road ahead for recovery.

She remembered her life before the perpetual hunger. She remembered the sunshine on her farm warming her land, and the equally warm love of her husband. He had left with their harvest taking their goods to a faraway market to sell, a single day before the darkness burst forth from the King's castle forever changing her and her farm. As she felt the darkness overtake her body changing it forever, she held on those warm memories hoping they could prevent this transformation, but it was futile. One week after her transformation her husband returned to their home. Braving the changed and deadly land he came back for her. She was deep in the throes of eternal hunger when he arrived, a strong and vibrant life stoking her hunger to a nearly uncontrollable peak. They had fought, and he had been just strong enough to lock her in their old bedroom. He spoke to her from the other side of the door, but the words were a blur to her as she had been fully consumed by the new hunger. She frequently thought back on this interaction, wishing she could have controlled herself for long enough to hold him one last time. It was from this reflection that she changed the course of her life. Curse or not curse she had to do whatever she could to find him, to reverse this curse, to save her kingdom, and hopefully redeem herself.

Through the in-fighting and desperation of the Vampire world a group of young vampires dreamed of something more, a cure for their land and their ailment that would return their land and its people back to their former glory. Filled with this dream they searched their land for anything that could help them solve the mystery of what happened. However, the more they searched the more two things became clear: First, whatever catastrophe befell their land started in the King’s castle; and Second, they would not be able to do this without great help. So, they set out from their land in search of help...