Monster Mondays began as a series of posts inspired by James Jacobs’ 10 goblin facts written for Pathfinder. Now, I’m creating new lore, encounters, unique NPCs and more for creatures in the Monster Manual. The goal is to provide habits, scene-setting tools, encounter hooks, and more variety, especially for monsters that don’t get quite as much love as dragons, beholders, mind flayers, and liches. For the month of October, I’m focusing my attention on the undead.
This week, I’m playing with vampires. Everybody’s favorite bloodsuckers get a fairly by the books treatment in the Monster Manual. No big surprises. They suck blood, turn into bats, can’t come into your house uninvited. It’s the typical stuff we learned from cartoons and movies way back.
I feel like official D&D products really give us a satisfying array of vampires to play with. The Monster Manual covers the baseline with the vampire and vampire spawn. Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica has the blood drinker and mind drinker vampires, and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden gives us the gnoll vampire and kobold vampire spawn. And between Curse of Strahd and Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, we get a nice boss vampire statblock for Strahd as well as the nosferatu, jiangshi, and vampiric mindflayers, and while they’re not undead, the strigoi also fill a vampire niche.
So, when I set out to build some new vampires, I wasn’t too interested in filling niches. Instead, I decided to draft out some concepts that have been rattling around in my head for awhile. I’m really pleased with them, and I’ll go into their inspirations in the design notes. Most of the statblocks this go round were pretty big so I’m going to suggest heading straight over to GM Binder for the good stuff.
Vampires
Many strains of vampirism exist, legendary curses with sources ancient and obscure. Some forms of vampirism reflect the sins of the vampire in life. Others are born of the vampire’s death and burial.
But among vampires, there are a few unique curses brought into the world by the will of powerful deities and archfey. These curses are passed down through the ages and can be traced back to a single ancient vampire. These vampires, whether by angering such creatures or petitioning them for their dark blessing, became the first of their kind.
Undead Nature. A vampire does not require air.
Aberrant Vampire
Beings of abominable power, aberrant vampires can hide in plain sight but hold the power to bend reality around them at a whim.
Eldritch Origins. Aberrant vampires descend from an ancient noble that sought a pact with an elder god for the power to destroy his enemies. The dark powers granted to him allowed him to bend the minds of his enemies and warp the fabric of time and space.
Revealing Images. At rest in its coffin by day, the aberrant vampire appears as a desiccated corpse. Meanwhile, it always has a reflection, but it can choose whether its reflection shows its uncorrupted face or the face of its desiccated corpse. However, the corpse reflection will always appear in running water and blessed mirrors.
An aberrant vampire’s shadow may be revealing in a number of ways. The shadow may not move with the light or with the vampire. It may take on strange shapes or seem to act on its own.
Servants of the Unknown. Aberrant vampires are often schemers with their own ends in mind, but their origin binds them to the elder beings that cursed their line. An aberrant vampire may be compelled to serve the eldritch powers, even at the expense of its own goals.
Vampire Daywalker
Daywalkers are vampires cursed by the divine. They are shaped into their vampiric form by angering gods. Less powerful than other vampires, their lot is to suffer.
Retribution of the Divine. The first daywalker is said to have been cursed for profaning the temple of a sun god. Daywalkers now are doomed to live a sleepless, dreamless existence. By day, they walk among mortals unnoticed, by night they must seek to sate their dark cravings. In this way, they are forced to wonder, forever lonely and unresting.
Fury of the Night. By night, daywalkers seek to gorge themselves on blood. They are deadly hunters, tracking and slaughtering prey with fiendish delight. Their bloodlust is unquenchable and indiscriminate.
Judgment of the Dawn. In sunlight, a daywalker’s bloodlust is suppressed. While the sun hovers in the sky, a daywalker can hide among the living, but many are overcome with horror and shame at the previous night’s activities.
Spies of the Dead. Those daywalkers who take pleasure in their destruction often fall in as servants to other vampires. By day, they serve as spies on the living and guard over the lairs of other vampires. By night, they are vicious attack dogs.
Vampire of the Spider
Unlike other vampires, the vampire of the spider have no interest or kinship with bats and wolves. Instead, they are marked by the abilities of spiders.
Archfey’s Amusement. Legend has it that the spider from which all this sort of vampire descend was a weaver on the edge of an ancient wood. The weaver’s works were so beautiful that they caught the attention of a powerful archfey of the night. She would visit the weaver often, paying her handsomely for her work.
In time, the weaver grew old, which the archfey found disappointing, and then the weaver died, which the archfey considered unacceptable. The archfey carried the weaver into the woods and into her realm, where she was cocooned in fey silks. The weaver awoke in a week and a day, restored to her youth.
The archfey explained that she was now immortal and eternally young. She was stronger than before and capable of creating the finest silks for weaving, but she could never look upon the sun again. Nor could she leave the archfey’s realm, for each night, she must drink a thimble full of the archfey’s blood lest she turn to dust.
The Price of Immortality. A vampire of the spider must drink the blood of fey to maintain its youth and immortality. The blood of humanoids and other creatures will sustain it but the facade of youth fades. Each day that a vampire of the spider passes without drinking blood causes it to age by decades, crumbling to dust within a week.
Deathly Distractions. Vampires of the spider can be distracted by simple things, a quirk of their fairy curse. They may be compelled to count grains of rice or untie knots that they pass.
Hatred of Fairies. Vampires of the spider have an inborn hatred of all fey. They will go out of their way to inflict suffering on the creatures. The more calculating vampires of the spider take fey thralls for easy access to their blood, but these servants are subjected to all manner of cruel pranks, belittling remarks, and unreasonable demands.
Vampire NPCs
Presented below are details three vampire NPCs to drop into your campaign.
Count Magnus
Aberrant Vampire
The ancient Count Magnus was once a powerful noble and shrewd military commander. The count was promised elevation to a higher station, but his betters passed him over time and time again. Tired of being slighted, the count made a pact with an elder god, becoming the first aberrant vampire.
Rumor. A prophecy claims that Count Magnus will bring about the end of his ancient monarch’s line as final vengeance for his embarrassment.
Lair. The count dwells within his ancestral tomb, still manipulating his family by way of a cult-like group of servants that carry out his will.
Loot. 30,000 gp, 10 gems each worth 1,000 gp, and a sword of answering.
Abbess Gertrude
Vampire Daywalker
The abbess profaned her god’s shrine by killing her lover in a fit of rage. Struck down by the very god she had dedicated her life to, Abbess Gertrude has traveled the world. Sometimes she seeks redemption, while at other times she wallows in the violence and debauchery innate to her cursed form.
Rumor. The abbess’s former lover pursues her as another kind of undead.
Lair. The abbess prefers to hide in churches, temples, and cathedrals.
Loot. 175 gp, 5 art objects each worth 25 gp, and a necklace of prayer beads.
The Spider
Vampire of the Spider
The talented weaver described in the origin of the vampires of the spider, the Spider is a manipulator and schemer. The Spider has long forgotten much of her mortal life, but her woven works are as sought after as she is feared.
Rumor. She may have a coven of hags under her control.
Lair. The Spider’s web is hidden in a cave deep beneath a wild forest.
Loot. 3,000 gp, 5 art objects each worth 25 gp, and a robe of scintillating colors.
Design Notes
First up, the aberrant vampire comes to you direct from a nightmare I had when I was a teenager. A vampire empowered by Lovecraftian horrors beyond mortal imagination just seems like a cool, terrifying bad guy. He definitely was in my dream when he turned a child into his thrall and used her to control a whole community, enacting the ritual that unsealed his tomb.
I wanted aberrant vampires to be villains of the biggest, baddest sort. They’ve got lair actions and an array of tools for controlling the battlefield. The signature NPC takes his name from an M.R. James story that really stuck with me in college and latched onto that nightmare from a few years earlier.
Next up, the daywalker doesn’t have any particular inspiration. I just thought a vampire that wasn’t harmed by the sun would be interesting. As I fleshed out the lore and its abilities, my main line of thinking was “What kind of screwed up vampire would a Greek god create to punish someone?”, and the results were flavorful. A daywalking vampire that suffers a werewolf-style bestial rage at night, causing it to maim or kill innocents and leading to it be ostracized from its community just seemed very “you ate food sacrificed on my alter so now I’m going to ruin your eternity.”
Finally, the Vampire of the Spider has been on my mind for awhile. I explored it a bit in a worldbuilding game on the Monarch’s Factory Discord, but the concept probably ties into some worldbuilding ideas that have intrigued me for five or more years. Spider gods and fairies and vampires tied to different animals besides bats and wolves just seem like a match made in heaven. I really enjoyed writing the lore for this one, and I think it makes for a nice vampire a couple steps down from the core statblock.
Those are my contributions to the realm of vampires. I think they’re my favorite things I’ve built so far this month. I felt like I was able to squeeze a lot of flavor into those statblocks. Check them out on GM Binder. Until next time!
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