An island somewhere in the northern hemisphere, in arctic regions.
A recently deserted town.
A baroness or a queen and her court, transformed into vampires.
As for the map of the castle, I had thought of the *vampire lord castle map*
from Heroes of Horror.
No idea if I will end setting this specifically in RL, more likely in my home game,
but when it comes to vampires, this is the place to ask, I guess...
EDIT: Oh, I should add that I would like to make the scenario as different
from the *Killing Strahd* scenario as possible.
This may not be too helpful, but I had a story written about a group of French Legionnaires (spelling?) being sent to help the Romanian army infiltrated a castle in 1918 Transylvania. Evidently, the Germans there were all killed, but not one is found. Just signs of battle, not even blood was seen. The only body recovered was an impaled corpse, stuck on a pole in the central courtyard...
Needless to say, Dracula massacred them all, but made one a vampire himself.
This was based around the Young Indiana Jones episode "Masks of Evil".
Death to the salad eaters!--Verbrekian War cry
I can post almost everything I've written, just PM me!
Well about as far as possible from 'kill Strahd' might be one of the following:
retrieve dirt from the grave of a vampire for some arcane possible or other or in payment of some debt;
escort some personnage, mad individual and/or professor who wants/is invited to meet the vampires;
recruit a vampire or vampires for some mission that they alone could hope to accomplish;
rescue one of the vampires not knowing that he/she is a vampire, rather believing he/she has been brainwashed by cultist of some sort.
This is probabley blatantley non-relevant, however I often get weird inspirations from music videos. Consdiering what you descrbe try putting the following into the search on Youtube:
HIM Funeral of hearts
HIM join me in death
Trust me whoever directed these had some ideas that could be relevant, and ive been toying with the idea of creating a domain based on the Funeral of hearts video for ages (like Vorostokov but more biased towards fey type stuff and folklore).
Also for inspiration try and get hold of the CoC module which I think is "The Fungi form Yuggoth" it starts very similar to how Georg below describes with a lost unit of White Russians and a slightly odd transylvanian count (who isnt a vampire but so could be).
Otherwise in the WFRP universe The Old World vaguely relates to Europe and last time I checked Kislev (or Poland / Baltics area) was being run by a Vampire Tsarina, and they have a sourcebook out (although Ive not seen it).
"I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space..."
I am not at all sure what I am going to do about it, though.
A *search-and-retrieve* plot iowuld be cool, but then again, my characters are used to epic fantasy, so a *find out what became of the lost soldiers* wouldn't be too bad as well.
An island somewhere in the northern hemisphere, in arctic regions.
A recently deserted town.
A baroness or a queen and her court, transformed into vampires.
As for the map of the castle, I had thought of the *vampire lord castle map* from Heroes of Horror.
No idea if I will end setting this specifically in RL, more likely in my home game, but when it comes to vampires, this is the place to ask, I guess...
EDIT: Oh, I should add that I would like to make the scenario as different
from the *Killing Strahd* scenario as possible.
Yours,
Rafael
30 Days of Night as a Ravenloft adventure, eh ? Well, if you want to make it a "no kill the villain" scenario, use "30 Days" premise as well: Survival horror.
In other words, the PCs goal should be to survive the horrors and escape with their asses intact. Killing the villains just shouldn't be a consideration.
So, to do this:
Isolate the PCs
Restrict the locations that PCs may go. (But make it large enough that PCs can escape pursuit and hide for a while.)
Harry the PCs & keep them running. (PCs can't hide forever.)
End the adventure by some pre-determined condition (such as a time limit). If the PCs have survived by the time the condition has occurred, then they've "won." Make sure the PCs are acutely aware of the pre-determined condition as that will be what they focus upon and will attempt to hasten its fruition.
and, of course, provide disposable friendly NPCs that the main villains can eviscerate early on in the adventure. This will show them that killing the villains isn't an option.
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I am indeed looking for a pure fantasy campaign... With a few Gothic elements...
OK, my suggestion then would be to use the "permission villain" -- i.e. a villain with powers that allow the PCs to hurt him only when he allows it . . . or is tricked into it.
A villain that blinks at will, teleports away, phases through walls, goes ethereal, etc. (along with good DR) can't be killed and doesn't necessarily have to be over-powered in terms of offensive abilities.
PCs must find some other way to defeat the "permission villain" because direct confrontation is fruitless.
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The vampire queen might be pretty stereotypical, but maybe one of her sergeants...? Maybe a satyr...?
- I am into satyrs since I read about the satyr bard in Keening...
What if it isn't the vampire queen and her court's fault that the town is now deserted? That is, that there's some third-party nasty out there (and you can get fairly exotic with this, given that you said you wanted the campaign to be more of a "pure fantasy" feel to it) and it's only because the court is made up of vampires that they did survive?
Heck, what if the queen and her court took some sort of desperate, "we'll use the Wishing Imp because our backs are to the wall" action which resulted in them becoming vampires to make them survive the third party action.
And now you have two potential goals to take place in this shadowy, near-Arctic gothic setting:
1) Kill the Evil Out There.
2) Find a way to cure the vampires, who in this scenario aren't evil people and don't deserve the tragic end of "Ah, well, you're undead now, better just lie down and take the stake like a good little bloodsucker."
(Complications exist in that at least some of the court would have succumbed to their undead instincts either because of the shock and horror of the transition to undeath or because of the serious lack of blood supply since the Evil Out There ran off with the people).
If nothing else...it's definitely different from "Kill Strahd."
Because of the mention of "epic fantasy", it made me think, what if the Baroness and her court weren't changed into vampires, but rather had always been vampires? And then I came up with this, still a bit disjointed but edit as you like:
-------
A long long time ago,
When Night and Day were as yet children
And had yet not learned to share,
There was a Lady Baroness.
She and her People were long of tooth
And pale of skin,
As befits those whose compact
Is with Night.
Never did her lands see Sun,
The elder child of Day,
But were instead blessed always
By Night's daughter Moon.
The lands of the Baroness
Marked the edge of Night's territory,
And next was a land
Ruled by Day.
Often would the Baroness walk
The border of her lands,
Amazed by the yellow skins
Of those kissed by Sun.
She oft wondered if her own skin,
White like that of Grandmother Moon,
Wouldst also change to yellow
If she could but walk beneath Sun's gaze.
But alas, in those days Day and Night
Did not speak,
And neither did They allow
Their Peoples to speak to one another's.
Neither so were Their Children
Allowed to walk the lands of the other,
And so the Baroness's curiousity
Grew thick as brambled weeds.
-------
I'll leave it to you to decide what happens next... But my ideas were for the Baroness to fall in love with one of Sun's Grandchildren, break her allegiance to her Liege Lord Night to bind a new Compact with Day as well as her lover does the same, and the two create the first lands where Day and Night pass into each other. Finally the two lovers may walk the same ground and be together.
Unfortunately, one of the Baroness's court, Flashes In The Night, feels the desire for blood build in him, something that none of Moon's Grandchildren had ever felt before, as they'd not been able to interact with the Grandchildren of Sun before. Flashes In The Night makes the first kills, growing stronger and stronger off of stolen blood, and eventually kills the Baroness's lover.
The Baroness and her court then take action and bind Flashes In The Night away, hopefully for good, but the damage is already done. The Baroness learns, as the moral of our story, that one ought to keep to the allegiances that one makes if one is to be a good Ruler and not come to Ruin. Her fatal flaw, breaking the compact with Night to make a joint compact with Day, was what led her to her heart breaking.
Peace has existed for several hundred years now between the Baroness and her court and the small town that exists near her castle. (Baroness as "permission villain" due to mythically old age) However, recently, kills of the Grandchildren of Sun have again begun and the Baroness fears that Flashes In The Night has finally thrown off his bindings...
My name is lost to me
I know not who I am
And I await the crimson fires
That'll wash this world away!
- Wolfbait, "In My Lonely Time Of Dying"
