INTRO
[ José Ramón Barreto, cis male, bisexual, twenty-eight/five hundred and thirty four, he/him ] in novigrad, names have a way of reaching the wrong ears, and DAMIAN VAN ŁOWCA is one spoken more often than most. the HIGHER VAMPIRE has lingered in the city for TWO WEEKS, as a COUNT. depending on who you ask they’re either CLEVER or MANIPULATIVE. the eternal fire has yet to decide which. their presence is steeped in TAR BLACK BLOOD, WOLF-RULED FORESTS, and BLUE FLAMES, the kind that draws attention… and not always the right kind. speak carefully. the pyres are always hungry. // Emma, 23, she/her, GMT -3.
Damian Van Łowca, Count of Zhorvak, was the second son of a bloodline long forgotten by history. His ancestors had once ruled the windswept island county of Zhorvak before the Conjunction of the Spheres shattered the world and twisted countless destinies. In the chaos that followed, the Van Łowca family secured its survival through desperate alliances, the most infamous of which came through marriage into powerful vampire clans. Generation after generation, noble blood diluted into something unnatural. By Damian's birth, the distinction between aristocrat and monster had become little more than a matter of perspective.
For over a century, Damian endured immortality. He watched servants age and die, empires rise and collapse, the sea slowly eat away at the cliffs beneath his ancestral castle. Though feared by mortals and respected by his vampiric kin, he found little purpose in existence beyond maintaining the decaying legacy he had inherited.
Then he met Amala. She arrived in Zhorvak as a student of Aretuza, ambitious and brilliant beyond her years, searching forgotten knowledge hidden beneath the island's ruins. Damian initially viewed her as little more than a curiosity, Amala, however, saw opportunity.
The agreement between them was born from shared greed; Damian desired power that belonged neither to vampires nor men, Amala required protection, influence, and resources to further her forbidden studies. Beneath the castle, in a chamber lined with ancient runes and illuminated by black candles, they sealed a pact in blood.
Amala granted Damian mastery over fire itself. Not simple flames, but true pyrokinesis, living infernos summoned through will alone. In return, Damian surrendered his freedom; through an enchanted ruby suspended from a silver chain around Amala's neck, she gained absolute authority over him. Whenever she called, he came. Whenever she commanded, he obeyed.
However, somewhere between long nights spent studying forbidden texts and journeys across distant kingdoms, affection took root. Affection became devotion. Devotion became love.
For the first time in his long existence, Damian was happy, and for the first time in hers, Amala was not alone.
Empowered by his new abilities, Damian turned against his immortal relatives. The vampire clans of Zhorvak had spent centuries manipulating, feeding upon, and controlling the county. One by one, he hunted them. Their regenerative abilities meant little against fire born from chaos magic. He burned them until nothing remained. Ash could not heal. Ash could not rise.
The castle that had once housed monsters became a home.
Years passed in blissful isolation. Together they ruled from their fortress of black stone overlooking the sea, their subjects spoke of them as strange but benevolent nobles. Damian fulfilled every whim Amala possessed, not because the enchantment demanded it, but because he wished to. The leash around his neck became irrelevant, as he would have followed her willingly.
Then came her expulsion from Aretuza. The academy discovered what she had hidden for years: necromancy. Cast out from the sisterhood of mages and stripped of her future, she returned to Zhorvak embittered and obsessed.
Winter arrived and never left, snow buried the island during summer, crops withered beneath the soil, their roots blackened as though poisoned from beneath, livestock vanished from locked barns, entire families disappeared overnight without signs of struggle, strange lights wandered through the forests after dusk.
The county began to die. Amala descended deeper into forbidden magic, convinced she could uncover secrets denied to her by Aretuza. Every failure sharpened her frustration, every setback fed her obsession, she slept less and ate less, spoke increasingly to things Damian could neither see nor hear.
Damian watched the woman he loved unravel before his eyes and could do nothing to stop it. The ruby still bound him and as her madness worsened, her commands became darker. Desperate to help her regain her former brilliance, Damian obeyed. Each act stained his soul further, villages learned to fear the silhouette stalking through snowstorms, eyes glowing like embers.
The Count of Flames disappeared, in his place emerged a nightmare: The Wolf of Zhorvak, the Heart Eater.
Parents warned their children about him, hunters refused to enter forests after sunset, travelers spoke of finding mutilated bodies arranged around ritual circles carved into frozen earth. Yet every atrocity stemmed from the same source: love.
Damian convinced himself that if Amala succeeded, if her research bore fruit, she would become the woman she once was, the woman who laughed with him on castle balconies, who stole kisses during council meetings, the woman he would have gladly followed to the end of the world.
Instead, she fell further. The final catastrophe came decades later, although no one remembers exactly what sparked it. Some say a ritual failed, others claim Amala attempted to resurrect the dead population of an entire village. Whatever the cause, chaos magic erupted throughout Zhorvak.
Firestorms consumed forests, the sea itself appeared to boil, mountains cracked open, the sky burned red for three days and three nights. Damian and Amala stood at the center of the destruction, by the time the cataclysm ended, Zhorvak no longer existed.
Its towns were ash, its people were gone, its history erased. Only the ancient castle survived, protected by centuries of layered enchantments. Within its deepest crypts, surrounded by the graves of those they had failed, the lovers experienced a final moment of clarity, the horror of what they had become settled upon them.
Together they descended into the darkness beneath the castle. There, amid dust, they sealed the entrances with magic and stone. Amala chose to die beside the man she had destroyed, Damian chose to remain beside the woman he still loved.
Her final act of lucidity, his final act of devotion.
Three hundred years passed, empires changed, kings died, wars were fought and forgotten. The world moved on.
Then Damian awoke.
The crypt was silent, the air was stale, beside him lay Amala's remains, reduced to little more than bits of a skeleton draped in rotted fabric. At first he believed centuries had finally completed their work, maybe he was in the afterlife, then he noticed the chain, or rather, the absence of it.
The ruby necklace was gone, the enchanted gem that bound his soul to Amala had vanished. Someone had entered the crypt and taken the artifact and because the pact remained intact, whoever possessed the ruby now possessed him.
The theft had shattered the enchantment preserving his slumber and dragged him back into a world he no longer recognized.
Somewhere in the world, a thief unknowingly carries the leash of one of the most dangerous beings ever to walk the Continent. Damian hunts them relentlessly because every command spoken through that ruby is absolute, and if the wrong person discovers its true nature, entire cities could burn.
Yet another possibility haunts him, if the gem can be found, perhaps so can a mage powerful enough to break the ancient pact entirely, someone capable of severing the chain that has bound him for centuries. For the first time since meeting Amala, freedom lies within reach, but freedom carries a terrible question:
Without the curse that defined his existence, without the woman he loved, without the duty that guided every choice he ever made, who is Damian Van Łowca?
A grieving widower? A monster? Or merely a man who survived his own fairytale long enough to witness its ending?
Weaknesses
Blood Dependency: Following his pact with Amala, Damian developed an unnatural dependence on blood. He must feed daily to maintain his strength and vitality. Prolonged deprivation causes a steady decline in his physical and magical abilities, eventually leaving him trapped in a deathlike coma from which he cannot awaken on his own.
Vulnerability in Bat Form: Damian’s regenerative abilities make him nearly impossible to kill. Complete incineration is the only known method capable of ending his existence, but his affinity for fire magic renders such a feat virtually impossible. However, while transformed into his bat form, his regenerative powers are greatly diminished. If he is burned to ash in this state, he cannot regenerate and will die permanently.
The Enslavement Necklace: Control over Damian is bound to a magical necklace. Once ownership has passed to another, he cannot reclaim it through force, trickery, or theft alone. To regain control, the current owner must willingly permit him to take the necklace and personally place it around his own neck, surrendering their authority over him. Until this condition is met, Damian remains bound to the necklace’s master.
