5e Character Concept: Ravenloft Lovecraftian Dhampir
So a while back I had an idea for how to put a more lovecraftian spin on the dhampir, because Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft does give you some hunger and backstory options for dhampirs that aren’t your usual ‘bitten by a vampire’ or ‘half-breed child of a vampire’. Things like hungers for cerebral spine fluid and psychic energy, and origins like ‘a parasite lives inside you; you indulge its hunger’, ‘you are a diminished form of an otherworldly being; slaking your hunger hastens your renewal’, and ‘a radical experiment changed your body, making you reliant on others for vital fluids’. So. There’s carte blanche already to go lovecraftian here, and all I want to do is slightly reflavour the vampiric bite to be silvery feeding tendrils that lie along her jaw like scars and unfurl to dive into some poor saps ear canal to feed. You know. For fun.
But. VRGR also has several cosmic horror Domains of Dread, and one of them is Bluetspur. The mind flayer domain, whose Darklord is the God-Brain, an insane and mortal elder brain whose horrific experiments towards apotheosis resulted in its physical form rebelling against itself, giving it a slow, horrific wasting disease that it is desperately trying to fight. Which, fun. Bluetspur is completely inhospitable to human life, you won’t find characters from there. What you will find is characters who were abducted to there, experimented on, and thrown back without their memories if the experiments were unsatisfactory. Amnesiac characters with fragmented dreams of vast mountains under red suns, things moving inside their skin, and pallid tentacles wielding surgical instruments. You know, your standard alien abduction repressed memories.
And. Bluetspur is also the origin of vampiric mind flayers. Feral mind flayers infected with vampirism by the God-Brain, so that they can drain cerebral fluid from victims and return to be dissolved by the God-Brain along with their cargo to stave off its own degeneration and dementia. Hence the additional dhampir origins above. So. With that in mind …
Just while we’re here, I want to kit out a full Ravenloft lovecraftian dhampir, a survivor of the twisted experiments of Bluetspur. And, just because we’re going full Lovecraft here, I do think we’re going to go for Aberrant Sorcerer? Just to go full tentacle. But, also. Dhampir. Experiments that changed your body. Psychic infections from a mad, diseased God-Brain and its desperate servants. Aberrant fits pretty well? Our sorcery was not inborn, it absolutely came from massive physical and psychic trauma.
Do I want to go full partial ceremorphosis? Dhampir has the parasite option, and Aberrant Sorcerer also has ‘infected with mindflayer tadpole but transformation couldn’t complete’ as an origin option. And since I’m going full Ravenloft and giving her a Dark Gift as well, ‘Symbiotic Being’ is an option. But. I think I’d prefer ‘Gathered Whispers’ for the Dark Gift. Granted, that still has ‘an alien intelligence intrudes upon my thoughts’ or ‘a sibling I don’t have shares my body’ as spirit options, so it could still work. But I think …
I think she was an extremely flawed experiment. Instead of infecting a mind flayer with vampirism, or infecting a vampire with ceremorphosis, they were trying to do both at once, short-cut the process by infecting a human with both, and they sort of … cancelled each other out? Fully messed her up, rewrote her body, fucked up her mind to the point that Modify Memory was barely necessary, but she’s neither a mind flayer nor a vampire. There is no surviving tadpole. Instead, she’s a halfway thing, and the spirits of Gathered Whispers are the fragments, or ghosts, of so many unsuccessful experiments of Bluetspur. Some of them are mind flayers. (Maybe one of them is the ghost of the tadpole). Some of them were human. It’s all a mess, and so is she.
And then she was dumped back out into another Domain of Dread, or maybe just tossed into the Mists until she stumbled into whatever one was closest.
If I was playing her, obviously this would be whatever Domain the campaign is in. For this thought experiment, though, I think it would be really fun if she was spat back out into Lamordia? You know, the gothic, industrial, mad science, Frankenstein Domain? With all her fragmented memories of experimentation and bodily transformation, to land in a domain dominated by mutation, radiation, and bodily experimentation. Just to fully traumatise her, and also maybe to confuse her memories? Given that they’re so fragmentary, maybe she thinks her memories are of Lamordian experimentation, and it takes a good long while for her to realise that they’re from somewhere much further and more alien.
So. To pull all that pile of trauma together. Picture a tall, rangy, slightly wild-eyed woman, with a rather dark, healthy-looking complexion. Not vampiric pale. Tangled brown hair streaked with gray. Long, bony hands that shake slightly. Two thin, silvery scars, one on each side of her face, running along her jawbone. And if an enemy ever gets too close, well. Those scars unfurl. Twin tendrils, thin, silvery feeding tendrils, that dive into that enemy’s ears.
Is she Lamordian? Originally, I mean. Was she stolen from there? Do we want to give her a Germanic sort of name? Irma might be fun. It means whole, which is nicely cruel. Irma Hafner. Hafner means potter, from hafan, or vessel. Whole vessel. Or whole/great maker of vessels. Maybe the mind flayer who stole her way back when had a dark sense of humour. Heh.
I’m not sure on the background. Well, no. I do kind of want to take the Ruined background from The Book of Many Things again, mostly because it lets her take Tough at first level, which will be very handy since she’s built around Cha/Con for spells and her bite, and she’s a sorcerer and therefore has no hit points. It also gives her stealth and survival, which seem quite fitting for a wild amnesiac who wandered out of the mists with nothing but broken memories of being tortured. So, yes, her mechanical background is Ruined. As, well, she was. But I meant more … what’s her profession? What does she do? How is she trying to make her living right now. Is she just a wild beggar woman wandering around? (Has she met Elise?) Actually, that might not be a bad idea. Sorcerers don’t need much in the way of equipment. She’ll be using her bite and cantrips instead of weapons, and after that we can say she scrounged the makings of a component pouch and an explorer’s pack.
Sidenote: Bluetspur and Lamordia really do have a lot in common. Darklord Viktra’s desperation to defeat death and cure Elise’s wasting disease, the God-Brain’s desperation to defeat death and its own wasting disease. I bet Viktra would find the God-Brain fascinating. And it might, maybe, think her … useful. Heh.
But, yes. Mechanically. Irma is a Dhampir, and Aberrant Sorcerer, and Ruined. She has a dark gift, Gathered Whispers, which means she’s haunted by spirits, whispering voices, which will give her the Message cantrip, a reaction to add her proficiency to her AC for 1 attack if the opponent isn’t deaf, and some fun consequences whenever she rolls a 1. She’ll have 16 each in Charisma and Constitution, with probably Dexterity and Wisdom as her next highest, and Intelligence and Strength taking up the rear. Her vampiric bite has been reflavoured to feeding tendrils along her jaw, and she feeds on cerebral fluid. She’ll start out with a respectable 11 hit points, which is not bad on a sorcerer. Starting cantrips are Mind Sliver, Message, Mage Hand, Chill Touch, Prestidigitation and Minor Illusion. Starting spells are Arms of Hadar, Dissonant Whispers, Mage Armour and Sleep. She’s a beggar and a wild woman, and she has dark dreams and fractured memories of a strange red sun, and things pulling her apart to put her back together. And not much in the way of other memories, or at least not whole ones.
She is trying very hard to pretend to be sane and sort-of-normal. She is not succeeding very well. But, you know. She’d like some food, and some money, and she has this nagging impression that the worst has already happened to her, so she’s willing to brave a few terrors in pursuit of them. Just. Labs, laboratories, might be tricky for her. Medical procedures. Tentacles. Things like that. Heh.
Irma Hafner. A survivor of Bluetspur, a Ravenloft lovecraftian dhampir.
