Monday, December 9, 2013

On Crow Vampires


You may have heard of sludge vampires. You may have heard of sewer vampires. But have you heard of crow vampires?

They are terrible creatures.


Crow vampires are made of vampire crows. When a regular crow feeds on the corpse of a man, it becomes vampiric. They look like regular crows, but if they sink their beak into you they will suck your blood, stealing one point of health. Crows have 1d4 HP (plus whatever they stole), and it takes at least three of them to turn into a crow vampire. They do this by flying into each other and combining their hit points, melding into the shape of a man. They only do this if they're hungry.

Crow vampires look like men, but with their arms and legs replaced by black talons. A swipe with them deals 1d8 damage, but their bite is more feared. Crow vampires love to pin you down with their massive strength and then take a good long drink from your jugular, stealing 1d6 health. When you're sucked dry, they turn back into crows and feed on your corpse. 

Crow vampires are immune to damage: they just turn back into crows. So if you shoot a crow vampire with a gun and deal 3 damage, a crow will fly out of the bullet wound. If you swing an axe, deal 6 damage and chop off an arm, the arm will split into two crows and fly away. Then next turn they'll fly right back and reattach.

This means you need to kill crow vampires twice, once as men, and again as crows. Otherwise they'll just keep reforming. Fire is good: if you set the vampire on fire, when it splits into crows they'll be on fire too. Silver is potent, for wounds dealt with silver spawn no crows. If all else fails, find sunlight. Crow vampires can't keep their man shape in direct light, so they'll split up and fly away. This is why attacks only happen at night or on overcast days.

Crow vampires do not have personalities: they're made of crows. They're just a more powerful hunting form. But if a vampiric crow eats the brain of a wizard, it turns red and becomes intelligent. The more of the brain it eats, the more it remembers of its past life.Whenever this red crow is part of a crow vampire, its personality takes over.  It makes for an odd sort of immortality, being a crow vampire wizard, but some wizards claim it's the only way. The most powerful of these are composed of hundreds of crows and can cast terrifying magic. 

Sometimes multiple red crows fuse into a single crow vampire. The less said of these individuals, the better.




1 comment:

  1. Does that mean that some wizards will actively seek out vampire crows to have them feast upon their brain? Could be a valuable creature to sell to an elderly wizard then. Very interesting premise though definitely going to use this at some point.

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