Freeblood Vampire Lore (EQ2)
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The Freeblood
Each year, the citizens of Norrath celebrate an event known as Nights of the Dead. Originated in the city of Maj'Dul, this festival honors the story of one frightful night when the dead walked the streets of the desert city, only to vanish by the morning's light. Now revelers will trade candies, don frightening masks, and tell ghostly stories all across Norrath in celebration of the event.
Recently, adventurers were given an invitation to travel to the village of Somborn in the Loping Plains. Many thought the invitation to be in the spirit of the holiday - the Loping Pains was, after all, a frightening place in and of itself, and not somewhere to be traveled lightly. Others, however, found the invitation intriguing, and left to pay the mysterious host a visit.
If the story had stopped here, it would have been strange enough by itself. However, it took an even more ominous twist in the weeks that followed the last days of the Nights of the Dead. The graves of the dead, left to their final rest, were disturbed. The sites were dug up, and the bodies exhumed. None could account for the macabre disappearances, and no culprits could be found. Whispers began to point at cults of the dead, using the bodies in terrible rituals, or opportunistic necromancers looking for strong, fresh bodies for their magics. Other rumors, however, said these graves were opened from the inside... and that the dead walked away from their own tombs.
For a while, nothing more happened. Some forgot about the events, simply chalking the stories up to a collective hysteria following the Nights of the Dead. The calm, however, was short lived. Reports soon surfaced of lone travelers being attacked and found with their blood drained, of cattle slaughtered, and of shadowy figures moving in the darkness. Nowhere appeared safe - both the cities of Freeport and Qeynos heard the whispers, and slowly anxiety grew with the citizens. Then as suddenly as they started, the reports stopped.
However, the rumors continued. Vampires were in the cities, or so the stories were told. The stories grew into theories that the governments knew about the vampires, and that they had not only allowed them to roam freely, but had facilitated their integration. Requests for information were denied by the courts, and a collective anger began to stir among the citizens - those in charge knew something, and they weren't talking. The simmer would become a rolling boil...[1]
D'Ryil's Letters, Part 1
Verilos,
Please read what I have enclosed. I have gone through the notes that were brought to me from Mayong's library, and I believe that the sections I have highlighted below are the most pertinent to our experiments. Familiarize yourself with these.
… exactly how these runes might fit together. I believe that these are separate from the runes on the inside of the ring, but their significance isn't immediately apparent.
As an aside, I am still puzzled as to what happened back in the tower. I have pondered the failure, but the reasons to her dramatic transformation elude me. I have turned others of her race, and none have changed the way she did. There is something more to this, something that reacted violently to the gift of vampirism.
Utilizing magic as she does, I wondered at first if she might have entreated herself to a powerful dark force that might have lashed back against anything that could wrest control of its thrall from its grip, since she would become subservient to me. I believe, however, that the possessor would have revealed itself in some manner had this been the case. There was no message of any kind (no changes in voice uttering a warning, no disembodied spirit attempting to threaten me), so I don't believe this to be the case.
I wonder if she might have been under another sort of protection spell. Perhaps she was attempting to protect herself from the vampirism using a weak warding magic. This is plausible, although I did not feel the presence of a ward, and she had drank from the goblet containing my blood without any signs of difficulty. I suspect that if there were a ward, I would have noticed it immediately.
I believe that there is something else at play here…
… to continue the search for the staff. I despise their incompetence, but they are indeed necessary to complete the task I have before me.
Once again, I must make note of my findings regarding Tserrina. After pondering and researching, I believe that something was different about her blood itself. I recall there being a taste to it, something that I did not recognize. I brushed this off at first as some manner of contamination, that perhaps her dabbling in necromantic or demonic arts had tainted her blood. It seems I should have not been so quick to dismiss that fact.
If indeed her blood was impure, or mixed somehow, then whatever it was that she had infused in her blood was likely the cause of the transformation. I have a few theories as to what this could be, but the truth of the matter is that any discovery I make now is largely moot in regards to her. She is locked in the tower now, and will rot with time. She is no longer my concern, although I believe that I can apply the lessons I've learned to a similar experiment. I am interested in how a mixture like this might apply to another stock of blood, such as dragon's blood. The implications of this are quite intriguing.
I will, however, make sure and look for the same sort of tells, should I choose to take up another bride as such. I do not want to waste more time and resources on another failed venture such as that again.
It's clear to me that we must locate the notes of Tserrina Sly'Tor as well. She has the other half of the information that Mayong was missing. If we can recover that, then I believe that we can combine the two pieces of research to accomplish our goal of strengthening our bloodline. Send a thrall into the library, and recover the notes of Tserrina.
Do not fail. [2]
D'Ryil's Letters, Part 2
To the Esteemed Arelin Holst D'Ryil,
I must write to inform you of our current progress.
As you know, our experiments have been going very well. We've been able to extrapolate quite of bit of information from Mayong's research notes, and I believe that your theories on the outcome of his attempted transformation were quite insightful. It was fortunate for us that we had the information he was missing from Tserrina's notes.
Several of our experiments, at this point, have been failures – this was expected. We've destroyed the majority of the failed experiments, as requested. However, we've found that some of the failures have yielded some interesting information as they decay. We're interested to watch this process, and thus have kept these failures alive, partially for analysis, but admittedly there is a fair amount of amusement in their agonized writhing and cries.
Finding the correct mixture of blood is, as you know, the essence to our experiments here. Too much of the mixture resulted in dramatic transformations that the recipients rarely survived. Too little, and they became ineffective, creating rebellious, angry, weakened vampires. Finding the correct balance has been a difficult endeavor.
One particular experiment, a human male, has proven quite promising, however. Initially, we expected a complete failure with him, as his mixture was only slightly varied from experiments we had tried and failed with. As with the others, he writhed through the night, pleasing us with gurgling screams as he transformed. I myself entered his chamber the following night, prepared for either a wide-eyed, stiffened corpse, or a vicious, drooling, mindless beast. Neither was the case. He looked at me and asked the usual questions, "What happened to me?", "What have I become?"… the standard list of disbelieving queries we are all used to from new blood. This was promising.
In spite of all of this, I would hesitate from calling this one a success. He seems to lack many of the benefits of our race – his strength does not appear to be that over others of his original stock, he seems to lack any manner of significant regeneration, and, most fatal of all, he does not appear to be subservient to our house as he should be. This was unexpected, and regardless of all his other flaws, makes him quite useless to us on the whole.
I still want to keep him alive for the time being, as there might be more to be to learn from him still. Once he has outlived his usefulness, I will see him destroyed. I am pleased, though, that we are on the verge of success, and that this recent experiment proves this.
I will inform you of our progress once a significant breakthrough has been made.
For the D'Ryil, Verilos [3]
D'Ryil's Letters, Part 3
Alesandra,
I am writing to discuss a very troubling matter, one that is up the utmost importance to our House and family.
It seems that our brother, Aerlin, has acquired some very interesting notes. He was able to gather a tome of research from none other than Mayong himself, which seemed to detail Mayong's encounter with Tserrina, and notes he took on his attempted, and failed, turning of her. Aerlin then managed to acquire Tserrina's notes on her own experiments of immortality from the library of Neriak.
His work seemed to point toward something he called the “strengthening of the bloodâ€, a mixing of the research of Mayong and Tserrina. According to my informant, these experiments were largely unsuccessful, although their processes were well thought out. They attempted to turn all manner of races, from the brutish ogres, to the hideous iksar, to the insignificant gnomes. It seems that of all the races, the only ones they were able to have any measure of success with were those of human and elven stock – any others simply died in writhing agony.
Although it appears they have not yet achieved their goal, they met a measure of success with a human male they refer to as "Sarkon". While he was not what they were hoping for initially, he did survive his experiments and was able to evidently provide them with a wealth of information. Evidently, they found all they needed to know, and were planning to destroy him. That was, until they entered his chamber to find him missing. Sarkon had escaped.
The troubling piece of information here, is that Sarkon escaped during the daylight. I'll repeat that: Sarkon fled his confinement during full sunlight. While the fools are scrambling to discern how this was possible, the implications of what happened are not to be understated. It appears that Sarkon can walk into the daylight, since no charred remains were found. Whether he had assistance with this act is irrelevant. Sarkon, while D'Ryil, is not subservient to the House as he should be, and could prove to be dangerous to all of the D'Ryil as a whole. He must be found, and ultimately, destroyed.
In the meantime, we must find Aerlin and his laboratory. My informant is not aware of the location of the experiments, but I believe it is of paramount importance to find a way to put a stop to their research before they endanger us any further. We must convene, and contemplate what our next move will be. I will contact you when it is time.
Farewell for now.
- Viktyr D'Ryil [4]
- ^ EQII Players, Dec 8, 2010
- ^ EQ2 Players December 2010
- ^ EQ2 Players December 2010
- ^ EQ2 Players December 2010
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