Concepts for powerful undead ruling over live subjects

[AlexanderHowl]

Steal Youth is easier and cheaper than Lich. What about a human necromancer who uses illusions to appear undead?

[The Colonel]

How about a really feral one that doesn't so much rule his domain as browse it, living wild in the woods and mountains and hunting his subjects as he desires.

For bonus points, make him the one that tried to resist his nature, clinging to his humanity until he went mad and became a beast. Local legend still has him as a "hero in waiting" who will some day return and deliver them from the monster...

[SolemnGolem]

Here's the first: the closest one I'll do to the "magic-wielding nobleman vampire".

Johann Siberyleus Magnus, The Lucky Herdsman

GURPS Character Sheet page 1
GURPS Character Sheet page 2
GURPS Character Sheet page 3
GURPS Character Sheet page 4

Meta:

Johann Siberyleus Magnus is a more traditional DnD style vampire lord, with the expected weaknesses and strengths of fantasy game builds. Plotwise, he's intended to be a go-between for the king of Darkon (Azalin Rex) and his secret police, enforcing royal edicts downward upon the remaining Kargat heads. Magnus is one of the oldest Kargat vampires in Darkon, with fencing skills, spellcasting ability, and his innate teleportation to support him.

Backstory:

As a live nobleman, Magnus was a reclusive dabbler who struck an alliance with the now-king of Darkon through happenstance. He underwent the Change to become one of Azalin’s first cadre of Kargat vampire leaders. After decades of magical tutelage and dimensional-travel research, Magnus became intimately familiar with countless locations in Darkon by sight alone, able to teleport there with a simple thought.

Appearance:

Magnus looks like a dissipated nobleman, with a mane of unkempt hair, a goatee, and piercing violet eyes under a glowering brow. He is somewhat careless about his appearance, but dresses in high-quality clothing when he remembers to do so. He also dislikes daylight, which starts to cause damage after he spends a few minutes in it, and running water, though his teleportation ability usually delivers him from both threats quickly.

Personality:

Magnus has a wry, cruel cynicism, occasionally tempered by amusement when faced with a true novelty. He keeps up an acerbic third-person narrative, often to unnerve or goad his target.

Telltale signs:

Magnus does not cast a reflection in mirrors, and does not cast a shadow in daylight (not that he can tolerate much direct sunlight anyway).

Invitation:

Magnus cannot enter an inhabited building unless invited in by the owner. Periodically, Azalin Rex performs a ritual by which he "invites" his enforcer into every building in the kingdom of Darkon to counteract this. In practice, newer buildings are often built after the ritual, which do effectively shut out Magnus. This leads to the quirky situation where Magnus has no difficulty infiltrating a solid prison that's been around for decades, but cannot enter a recently-assembled shantytown.

Sustenance:

Magnus must drink living blood in order to heal and to feed his hunger. Under ideal conditions, he derives maximum healing (and enjoyment) when the victim is fully conscious and terrified. He has difficulty controlling his hunger if fresh blood is available.

Sleep:

Magnus must sleep for at least six hours per week in a special coffin with his old family banner and heraldry.

Movement:

As a result of Azalin’s early dimensional-travel projects, Magnus can Warp to any location within 100 miles with which he is visually familiar (or has current line of sight) and which has available mana (in most cases, this means within the Darkonian border). Each use of the Warp requires Magnus to test against his IQ to avoid mishaps, which can be offset by spending some time in preparation. In combat, he can Warp quickly to evade attacks as a Dodge, but with no preparation time this is at a -10 penalty, which he usually offsets with a hefty FP expenditure. He has been known to use this even against airborne foes, once teleporting onto the back of a shadow dragon in mid-swoop during a combat test.

Shapechanging:

Magnus can transform into a bat, wolf, and an insubstantial mist as needed, but all of these options are inferior to his preferred teleportation habits, as he would have to leave possessions behind.

Bite:

Magnus' teeth appear to be normal, but at full extension during a bite attack, they momentarily become monstrously large, like a smilodon's teeth. Through a targeted dimensional phase, he can bypass several inches of material when biting a victim’s neck (divide armor DR by 5).

Spellcasting:

Magnus is a spellcaster mostly specializing in teleportation, mind control, and some combat spells. He also carries an array of spirit-controlling spells in case he needs to discipline unruly incorporeal folk. He also carries a wand, fashioned after a nobleman’s walking cane, with an additional Energy Reserve for spellcasting. Note that Siberyleus Magnus' equipment uses ER to power their abilities; but his own vampiric abilities use Fatigue Points, since they are his innate traits. For magical spells, he may use either ER or FP.

Mind Control:

Magnus can attempt to mentally dominate anybody with whom he makes eye contact, on a Quick Contest of his IQ vs. their Will. Failure to control a target means that target is immune to this power for a full day. This power is at a -5 against undead.

Equipment:

Magnus carries light armor and personal weaponry, heavily enchanted by the king, to back up his spells and words. His cloak and sword can dance to fight independently at range, allowing him to distract and misdirect his enemies while he prepares his own magicks or a melee attack.

The cloak can serve as a small dimensional portal, teleporting objects passing through it away - Magnus sometimes uses the cloak as a fencing shield to catch or trap incoming missiles in his off-hand, and then activates the cloak’s power to gate the caught items harmlessly away (each activation requiring 1 ER per round). For heavier items (e.g. a human sized target), Magnus must wrap the entire cloak around the target and then teleport the cloak away as well (1 ER cost). Magnus himself can teleport freely with a few items (No Encumbrance).

His saber, Nekrosverkos (sometimes called Death’s Nape), is attuned to a dimensional rift. At command, the blade glows with a dark flame and gains the Annihilation imbuement, shaving matter away into a distant location. In game terms, this means that Magnus can deal Corrosive damage to matter by striking it with the sword: even damaging shields, armor, and weapons used to parry. Each usage (i.e. attack) of this also costs him 1 ER and allows him to divide enemy equipment's DR by (5). (See LTC2, pp.22-24.) Magnus usually uses Nekrosverkos to disarm a foe of their weapons and armor before going in for the kill.

If Nekrosverkos is removed from his possession, Magnus can expend 1 ER to Warp it back to a preordained resting spot for him to retrieve later.

His wand is most commonly used as a mana store to allow him to expend extra Energy Reserve to feed his other powers, and to provide the usual bonus to spellcasting. It also has the Ghostly Weapon imbuement (PU1 p.8) to allow Magnus use it against ethereal prey.

Magnus wears an ornate carved breastplate underneath his clothes, made of ancient cured leather featuring a griffon motif with some additional magical DR (5 instead of 2). At a command word and expenditure of 1 ER, Magnus can open a portal in the breastplate to a coalescing void, which swallows small objects pressed against it (assassin’s blades, wooden stakes) or does 1D of dimensional disruption damage (treat as Corrosive) to anything too large to fit.

Combat:

Magnus usually starts with his Mind Control. Should that fail, he will resort to more mundane attempts to negotiate and defuse the situation. If pressed to fight, he has several layers of tactics available to him: he can release cloak and saber to Dance around his enemy while he Warps unseen behind them to grapple their neck. Against heavily-armed or armored opponents, he can invoke Nekrosverkos' corrosive void power to sunder their weapons and armor, or even try to grapple them in the cloak and teleport them away.

If sorely pressed, he can undertake repeated charges of striking quickly, teleporting out, and teleporting back in from a random angle to strike and repeat. Even other high-powered Kargat find this tactic too distracting to effectively counter, making him a dangerous and evasive foe.

On rare occasions, when Azalin needs to secure only the memories of a target, Magnus warps in, makes a targeted strike to the target's neck, and warps out with the severed head in his cloak to return to his king.

Death:

Magnus can be immobilized by a stake through the heart, but in order to truly kill him, his coffin must be destroyed as well. Staking him without destroying the coffin will merely leave him dormant until it is removed. Destroying the coffin without staking him means that he will begin to lose HP after a week or so, but could still rely on other methods of healing (blood drinking, magic) to stay alive while he remains active - perhaps long enough to wreak bloody vengeance on the perpetrators.

For PCs:

This build gives the PCs a more traditional “magic-wielding nobleman vampire” to deal with, with a duellist flavor. Due to his role of keeping other Kargat in line, he's equipped with various items suitable for taking on supernatural foes, and also can press the advantage with warping through hit-and-fade combat.

Because of his somewhat contradictory role (policing the secret police), Magnus could be either a worthy foe at the capstone of a dramatic campaign arc, or even an occasional distant ally to good-aligned PCs. After all, his primary mission is to whip the rest of the Kargat into line - leaving the actual murder, rapine, and oppression of the living populace to others.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Steal Youth is easier and cheaper than Lich. What about a human necromancer who uses illusions to appear undead?

The spell may be cheaper but there are a bucket of advantages of being a Lich.

Strangely the GURPS Fantasy version does not include Unkillable of any level which given the Phylactery is such a staple of the concept that it comes off as weird.

Long before Puella Magi Madoka Magica there was the D&D Lich in GURPS with its "Intact" Lich and my fanfics where the Sailor Senshi of Sailor Moon fame where liches with their star seeds effectively being their phylactery and dependent on their leader invoking her power to bring them back.

Who says a lich has to be a skeleton? Heck, in one of the Dragon articles there was the idea that the classic lich could grab another body if its original one was destroyed. Take that to the next level - Why let the new body decompose?

Two characters I wrote up back in the 1980s, Necron and his wife Thantia, could be liches who have a lot of preservation spells on their bodies.

Thantia is based off of Winnowill of Elfquest fame and was my setting's version of the Drow. Like Windowwill she is a healer who causes little "accidents" among her subjects so her healing services are needed. But unlike Windowwil she is a hard core sadist (6) - her healing spells hurt. She will come off as friendly and cordial but she is always thinking about how she can make you "need" her healing spells.

Ironically Necron, a full blown Necromancer, is the truly friendly one. He cares for his subjects but he is also loves his wife to the point that the best he can do is keep the "accidents" to a minimum. His personally is such that one wants to become free willed undead who could easily pass for living (only detectable by spells).

Originally Posted by khorboth

I've never played Ravenloft, but I hear the mood is bleak as explitive!

A bleak world would be rainbows and sunshine compared to many of the settings in Ravenloft. There is a pair of Tenchi fanfictions (can't find them :-() that captures the tone of the darker Ravenloft settings perfectly.

The first is set in a nightmarish version of the Tenchi setting. The first thing you meet is a twisted creature that begs you to kill it to end the pain. You then come upon a decaying house by a polluted lake. Inside there are two mummies (Ryoko and Ayeka) pulling on a zombie (Tenchi) to the point he might as well be a Stretch Armstrong doll that act as if they are screaming at each other but no sound come from their mouths. Then you are knocked out and wake up on a slab greeted by Washu in her child form so happy she has a new "subject" her clothes spattered with blood. Then the screaming begins...your screaming. Soon there will be another wretched creature roming this domain begging to be put out of its misery.

The second story is how this Ravenlof domain came into being. The royal family of Jurai for some reason attacks Ryoko and kills her, Tenchi, and Ayeka, Washu, who has a mental link to her daughter, looses it and captures Sasami, Ayeka's 8 year old sister, and starts torturing her to find out where the royal family is. Eventually the torture is too much and Sasami dies and Washi becomes the ruler of a new Ravenloft domain.

OF course this was before it was revealed that in the main reality Washu was one of the three goddesses that created the universe (Sasami was host to another of the three, Tsunami) meaning that the Lords of Ravenloft may have bitten off more then even they can handle. After all how do you keep a goddess who created a universe and has gone insane from adding more domains to her own for more "subjects"?

Edit: I found the first fanfic. It was Washu's Nightmare by Paul "BigRed" Shannon on the rec.arts.anime.creative usenet group. Can't find the second which was a kind of prequel.

[SolemnGolem]

Kazandra, the Cosmopolitan Temptress

GURPS Character Sheet page 1
GURPS Character Sheet page 2
GURPS Character Sheet page 3

Meta:

Kazandra has a build that favors stealth and social influence over strength. Given her position in a sophisticated urbane intel front (the Cosmopolis Club), her stats reflect more of a dilettante social butterfly - a charismatic but dangerous potential ally or patron. Her curse reflects a backstory of rags-to-riches insecurity and vanity, while her evasion and combat abilities favor indirect approaches. I also changed her "invitation" mechanic.

Backstory:

Kazandra as a human was born to rural peasant stock, but always dreamed of the city. Ever ambitious, she taught herself urban skills that her family scoffed at: social niceties, city dialects, literacy. Her first foray to the city resulted in a regrettable setback - abandoned in her wedding dress by a dishonest suitor - but her second and third forays resulted in successful businesses, both honest and shadowy. By the time she drew the attention of the Kargat, Kazandra was already an accomplished social chameleon, with a network of contacts and informants working for her.

Appearance:

Kazandra is a beautiful, albeit heavy decorated, woman in her apparent thirties. Later in her career she suffered a burn to her left eye and wears an eyepatch to cover it.

Personality:

An accomplished actress, Kazandra is able to rapidly adapt her conduct and deportment to fit the situation, whether in banquets, boudoirs, or dungeons. She guards her own emotions carefully - even her debauches with her lovers are carefully managed. At her heart, she remains pensive of her role in the Kargat hierarchy, having already betrayed one superior (Tavelia) to ensure her own survival.

Telltale signs:

Kazandra appears more casually human than most vampires, but she doesn't blink unless she remembers to do so.

Invitation:

None needed to enter residences. Instead, she cannot touch a person unless they initiate physical contact first. This also feeds nicely into the seduction theme, with her offering a hand or her neck for a suitor to kiss.

Sustenance:

No blood drinking needed. The vampiric curse took her in a different fashion - she can leech vitality off of lovers and admirers by being in close proximity to them.

Sleep:

She maintains her immortality by entering a trance state before a mirror wearing her bridal garments - this must be done daily for at least 1 full hour. Failure to do so means she begins to rapidly age about 2 standard human years for each hour that passes, resulting in death within 1 to 2 days. This is her equivalent of a coffin and grave earth, since she was never "buried" as part of her Change. The mirror is replaceable, but the bridal garments are not - if they are destroyed then she will be unable to regenerate and will rapidly age until she dies permanently.

Movement:

Kazandra cannot fly and does not have alternative animal forms, but she has a useful shimmershine form below.

Shapechanging:
Unlike the prototypical mist-changing vampire, Kazandra can assume the form of a veil of shimmering light and shadows. This effectively makes her insubstantial as she can crawl under any crack small enough to feature a shadow. She is unable to do this in completely illuminated areas, but indoors these would have to be very brightly lit rooms with no shadows for her to jump to, or outdoors in broad daylight.

Combat:
Physically, Kazandra is not as strong the typical fantasy vampire, although her fighting skill is competent with the smallsword and knife fighting styles. With an appropriate surprise attack, she can usually incapacitate a single foe. GMs who want to make her truly frightening can allow her to carry her smallsword or knife with her in her shimmershine form, and/or consider giving the weapon any number of magical improvements. The GM can also give her natural claws for her hands (updated build below), which do somewhat less damage than her bladed weapons, but which give her some ability to score a lethal strike on an unwary target even when disarmed.

Death:
If she suffers enough damage in combat, Kazandra can assume shimmershine form and attempt to flee to her bridal raiment to regenerate. If she is trapped in this form, or if she cannot reach her healing focus, she ages rapidly and dies within a day.
For PCs:

Behaviorally, Kazandra's role associates more closely to humans (since her leeching only works while she carouses with them) but she cannot allow any of her thralls or lovers to get too close - if her bridal raiments were discovered and destroyed, she would rapidly age to death. She can move about in sunlight, but cannot escape a lethal confrontation when fully illuminated (the shimmershine escape doesn't work in direct sunlight).

On the whole, this build makes Kazandra something of a Mata Hari consummate spy, or a dark patron with some depths, but without making a vampire into an automatic powerhouse.

In Ravenloft canon, Kazandra helped the king neutralize a rebellious Kargat head, Tavelia (later statted below).

[SchmugginsTheDwarve]

Here's some odd ones I've had for a while:

The least Hippocratic physician*: Eternity is a long time, and if you're going to spend it stuck in a body, why not learn as much about that and similar bodies as possible? Learn all the ways it can hurt, it can heal (or be "fixed"), how it can be augmented and improved, or degraded and insulted, be beautified or mutilated, dissected and segmented... or combined with like things. Those whose afflictions might be irreparable by any physician with a sense of ethics (or sanctity of the body) know where to go; whatever limb or organ is broken will certainly "work" by the end of treatment, though maybe not in the way expected, and it might be missing a pulse afterward. Oh, your horse is lame and your hound sick? Well bring them along too, they'll be "running" again within a week.

The central image of this for me is the undead prosthetic and organ transplants in the age of humoral theory and leeching, and long before germ theory... No one need be crippled! As long as we have spare parts.

Bonus concept: The shepherd of the untouchables (I like combining this with the above). The enslaved, the low-caste, the orphans, the deserters, the marked criminals... still human, and everyone hurts, and it's not fair that the unwanted can't have their ills addressed. Everyone is equal in death*, and why not bring some of that funereal equality into the kingdom of this world? The unwanted know where to go, where they'll be fed and cared for... as long as they follow The Rules. You don't even have to work that much! All the truly grimy physical labor is cared for... by the bodies of the people who didn't follow The Rules.

The central image of this is the mostly benevolent cult leader. Mostly. Dignified and smiling, sitting in a big, green, well-attended garden. Happy to serve the needs of his or her community. But sometimes hungry. And a real stickler for The Rules.

*But some people are more equal than others, keep in mind

[AlexanderHowl]

Liches also come with a whole lot of disadvantages by default. You can make different types of Liches though, they only require the spell and the potion. You could make one without any of the disadvantages and quirks, it would just cost 277 energy.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Liches also come with a whole lot of disadvantages by default. You can make different types of Liches though, they only require the spell and the potion. You could make one without any of the disadvantages and quirks, it would just cost 277 energy.

Actually, it all depends on the build for the "default" Lich.

The one in Magic/Fantasy is cheap, only 105 points and 68 of those are for the Skeletal Undead meta-trail which is only 27 point cheaper then the intact undead meta-trail That combined with eliminating the 75 points of additional disadvantages gets you to 207.

The homebrew version I came up with (D&D Lich in GURPS) is far more expensive at 227 to get rid of the disadvantages and the Madoka Magica version clocks in at 211 base.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Steal Youth is easier and cheaper than Lich.

Steal Youth is also a greater long term risk. If you don't die from the process of turning yourself into a lich, you will never need to roll to prolong your life again.

If using Steal Youth you should expect a critical failure about once for every 100 years stolen (for Magery 3-4). This costs 1 IQ and ages the caster by 20 years on top of the usual critical failure shenanigans.

[AlexanderHowl]

As long as you do not cast it ceremonially, that is what Luck and skill 16+ are for. Your odds of rolling a critical failure become 1/216 with skill 16+ and around 1/10,000,000 with Luck. Even if you recover one year at a time, your chances of critically failing are very, very small if you have Luck and Skill 16+.