Dhampirs: The Silver Court

The Silver Court gets their appellation from the rumor of their origin as some corruption of the fey. These vampire’s feed on psychic energies given off by strong emotions, though each feeds from a different one. Their reputation as complete sociopaths is well deserved and they often find themselves attempting to force more and more extreme experiences upon those they feed from in order to season the taste of drinking from their targets. Though threatening, they’re left weakened severely by feeding from those of their antithetical emotional state.

## Racial Traits

### Standard Racial Traits

* **Ability Score Modifiers**: Dhampirs are fast and seductive, but their racial bond to the undead impedes their mortal vigor. They gain +2 Dexterity, +2 Charisma, and –2 Constitution.
* **Size**: Dhampirs are Medium creatures and thus have no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
* **Base Speed**: Dhampir have a base speed of 30 feet.
* **Languages**: Dhampir characters speak Low Elven.

### Other Racial Traits

* **Undead Resistance**: Dhampirs gain a +2 racial bonus on saving throws against disease and mind-affecting effects.
* **Resist Level Drain**: A dhampir takes no penalties from energy drain effects, though he can still be killed if he accrues more negative levels then he has Hit Dice. After 24 hours, any negative levels a dhampir takes are removed without the need for an additional saving throw.
* **Spell-Like Abilities**: A Silver Court dhampir can use any combination of Charm Person and/or Command up to three times per day. Beginning at 11th level, they may also cast Dominate Person up to twice per day. The caster level for these abilities equals the dhampir’s class level. as a spell-like ability
* **Darkvision**: Dhampir see perfectly in the dark up to 60 feet.
* **Low-light Vision**: In addition to their ability to see perfectly in the dark up to 60 ft, dhampir have low-light vision, allowing them to see twice as far as humans in conditions of dim light.
* **Negative Energy Affinity**: Though a living creature, a dhampir reacts to positive and negative energy as if it were undead—positive energy harms it, while negative energy heals it.
* **Psychic Feeding**: Silver Court dhampir become aligned to an emotion from their birth, and gain more benefit from feeding from those experiencing that emotion. Choose an emotion (Be fairly broad with it, such as lust, anger, sadness, or joy) when you use your Psychic Resonance ability on a creature experiencing that emotion, that creature has no idea you used your Psychic Resonance on them, simply experiencing the feeding as lost time. Additionally you gain the following benefits for one hour.
	+ Once during that time you may use your Spell Like Abilities on the target without using one of your daily uses. Regardless of if they fail or pass the save, they are unaware you tried to use a spell on them.
	+ Increase the DC of your Enchantment spells/Mind Sphere effects/and Telepathy Discipline saves by +1.
* **Psychic Resonance**: Silver Court vampires (and thus dhampir) feed on emotions, sucking the life out of their targets. This effect functions like casting Mind Thrust 1 as a spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your level, with the following changes: You may attempt to conceal your casting by making a Bluff skill check opposed by observers Sense Motive skills. This provides enough sustenance to count as 1 day’s food and drink. If you use Psychic Resonance on a creature who has already been affected by this ability, this counts as Mind Thrust 2, if you already affected the creature with Psychic Resonance (Mind Thrust 2) this acts instead as Mind Thrust 3, and so on and so forth.
* **Emotional Rejection**: Choose a different emotion than you chose for Psychic Feeding (Be broad again.) When you use your Psychic Resonance on creatures experiencing that emotion, your psychic resonance fails and you must make a Will Save DC (10+½ your Hit Dice + your Wisdom modifier) or become staggered for 1 round. On a successful save, you become sickened for 1 round instead.

## On Vampires: The Silver Court

When the barrier between worlds was erected by the Black Lord, the realms of faerie were cut off from us, and for millennia there was no contact whatsoever. That changed four lifetimes ago (Four thousand years, give or take) when an explosion wracked the province of Stre’Clainn *(Strur Clen)*, and something cracked a hole between worlds. Within months we had lost control of the region. Traversal of the now ever-shifting landscape and the impossible logic of the realm’s inhabitants made holding it impossible. Luckily for us, the fae require ambient magic to remain a force to be reckoned with, so expansion beyond the province was impossible for them, except by particularly strong or determined individuals.

The Silver Court was born from a few of those particularly determined fae. They rode north from the breach and settled, hidden in the trees and marshes, within what is now known as the Wytchwood. Many are still there, worshiped by the peasants as hag-queens. Those who traveled even further north found themselves among us, and we welcomed them at first.

Before we knew what they were.

When it was realized they were feeding off the emotions of those around them, that many of them were engaging in ever more heinous acts to provoke those specific emotions, we drove them from our cities. The Silver Court are emotional vampires, and a supernatural charisma aids them in their search for the specific emotion they require. Their hypnotic gaze and almost instinctive ability to manipulate memory means they can often feed undetected, and for a time, they’d simply infiltrate our cities and gorge themselves on whatever they required. We simply regarded them as pests. We should not have.

The cataclysm plunged the world into night for nearly a decade. Vampires of all stripes reveled in the freedom and power such a situation afforded them, and when the soothsayers and seers predicted the return of the sun, bloodsuckers of all stripes gathered together in secret to curse the land and prevent the sun’s return. Thus, that blighted land Kovarik was formed, and the participants in the ritual crowned themselves kings and queens.

Of the vampire species, the Silver Court are perhaps the most insidious, and the ones most often found beyond Kovarik. Their specific proclivities mean they can infiltrate a home and set themselves up as lord, or wife, or husband, or whatever they need in order to secure permanent access to a food source, whereupon they visit depravity after depravity upon their target in order to incite whatever emotion they specifically require.

-Illaria The’inn, Blade of Bright Leaves

*As far as I’m aware, your Highness, the fae origins of the Silver Court are highly disputed. They don’t shrink from iron the way most fae do, and they possess the weaknesses that all sentient undead share; sunlight and holy magic. Interestingly, if you can identify the emotion they feed on, they become infinitely easier to take down. It seems emotions of an antithetical sort often inflict a painful and crippling reaction in them. Though for some, even that can be made impossible.*

*I once met a Silver Court woman during my travels. She had taken over a lord’s manse in Etraine, and set herself up a harem of devoted thralls. Her emotion was pleasure, and she kept her victims docile and addicted with silverburgh draught. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t ensnare the lord, who fled instead to an allied house’s castle. I collapsed the roof on her at midday, and watched her burn to ash in the sunlight.*

*I am haunted, occasionally, by the horrified and anguished faces of her enthralled slaves. - S.H.*