As Dracula is often called the "Son of the Dragon" and there is a dragon running around in that part of the world that was released from a jail has anyone played with that plot hook? A horror tainted dragon that feeds off of essence and can shape shift would make one heck of a creature of the night.

That it would. Even scarier, is the idea that if it in any way inspired the dracula myth (and modern Vampires as a side effect of that), is that it would have more political/monetary power then the other dragons, since it would have been awake for the down-cycle...

Like combining IE's and GD's into one super powered, horrific being, and throwing Horror taint on top.

This is probably appropriate in some way.

I like it.

http://youtu.be/T4EV3Bhxe7M

I've already made a Nosferatu build that I refer to as the Blood Lord. Combine him with Bloodmourne from my Ally Spirit thread and you've got what you want. The Blood Lord was the culmination of the ally spirit/inhabitation synergy I discovered, and was going to get immortalization in concept in the magic book that Ancient History stopped writing (he had a new metamagic for NPCs only called Ascention that did the same thing but used Possession instead).

Thinking this over I would say the son of the dragon was not the servant of an evil dragon, but possibly an evil person who studied under a dragon or, considering what manipulative sob's they can be, wasan experiment-let's see what happens to that culture if i take a promising member and twist his little heart..."

Or perhaps a drake.

Count Dracula was supposedly descended from Atilla the Hun and inspired by Vlad III the Impaler. The title-name "Dracula" comes from Vlad's father's rank in the Order of the Dragon.

While all very true, what is being proposed is an alternate history, to use for some "horror"-genre run in SR. All in good fun.

How about a guy who is claiming the name of Dracula while the actual Vlad was simply a disgusting vanilla human? After all, the name is sometimes the most important part of the intimidation (so Dread Pirate Robers has taught us...).

This is true. There could be many ways for it to play out. He could be pretending to be the count, claiming to have knowledge and power far above what he actually has. Or, he could treat it like a title, part of an underground Vampire culture, the (a) street/low society version of the Ordo. It could be anything.

I'm just resistant to the idea of the "actual" Dracula being some dragonborn (Skyrim!) super-vampire-ish blood mage thing. I'm actually starting to get tired of all the "spike baby" stuff that SR has done. Let the vanilla humans have some remarkably nasty things that they did themselves without it all being a spike-this-or-that.

Hey, back in 2nd Ed, could a vampire eat your Essence and take it for himself? Because wouldn't that count as an insta-kill against someone with 1 point of Essence or less?

It does in SR4(A). Personally, I don't know about SR2.

On the topic of Spike Babies, I both agree, and disagree. It's nice to have the option of using spike babies as a reason some things happen, but if you blame everything on them, then mundane Homo sapien sapien becomes kind of worthless.

Yep to both. Essence drain in 2E wasn't temporary for vampires then either, and the description in the Critters section specifically mentions killing through essence drain. Under the attributes description, the book states that "Characters can never have an Essence less than 0. If they do, they die." Note that this was before Cybertechnology introduced cyberzombies.

Technically cyberzombies are unliving.

Technically they are not. They are kept alive through dark magic. They are Still living, but only just.

That's how I read it too. Cyberzombies haven't actually died, but they are kept a hair's breadth away through magic and IMS.

Project: Dracula 3000.
An attempt at creating a vampire (or otherwise infected) cyberzombie, with hopes that the essence drain power can be utilized to offset the psychological problems common with cyberzombies.

As i understood cybermancy- the bosy is dead but the spirit is tricked into not knowing it.

If the body is dead, how does it develop rampant cancer? Dead cells do not become cancerous.

a degree of decay, the regulating systems are checked out , resulting in a loss of that control.
My dad RL had MS and in his case it affected his regulartory systems. Blood pressure and body temp would vary widely and skin cancer came back after being cancer free for 15 years and not being out in the sun much.

On matters vampirellical, I do still have my 320 challenge Vampire sitting around here.

Corporate Secretary who got goaded by her friends into going out and living a little, met a hot guy, threw caution to the wind ... and wound up with HMHV.

And that isn't covered by her health insurance.

Oops!

So, fired after her sick days while transforming, kicked out of her corporate minimalist apartment, account cleaned out from health care costs, the poor thing has no choice but to turn to the shadows, where she's *woefully* underprepared. Good thing she has all those vampire abilities to pull her out of the fire!

(She was written up on a dare, to show that 320 points has a LOT more versitility than expected.)

Wasn't Dracula covered in 1 of the vampire SR novels involving Serrin? Or was it the Terminus Experiment with the stripper turned runner & the vampire who hunted other vampires?

I really like the idea of a Horror-tainted vampiric dragon. He could even be the original source of HMHVV in the world.

Let's say that he was infected at a relatively young age and didn't mature to a Great One as a result of the infection, and it might even be possible to defeat him.

And for Halloween, we send a cyborg with a human brain, a wolf shape-shifter and a possession type spirit in a Pharao's corpse against him

Apologies, but that applies only to LIVING bodies. Dead forms do not continue to generate Cancer. The cells have already died at that point. Cancer requires a living form to continue to propogate.

Just go with the "it's [dark evil twisted semi-necromantic] magic!" explanation, dude.

Yeah, that may be the best course.

The body is living, but trying to commit mass cellular death; the soul is there, but trying to depart; the mind is there, but rejects existence. I'd call that unlife.

Within all those quotes, the fact remains that the body is NOT YET dead. Unnatural though it may be, it is still clinging to life through the dark majesty of the necromantic arts.

Cancer is pretty much life eternal. Immortal cells reproducing like mad.

It just tends to be kinda lethal for the host body.

If you could somehow figure out how to turn on the "immortal" part of the DNA and leave the "uncontrolled rapid cell division" bit off, you would have an ageless human being, immortal except for disease and injury.



-k

I'm not dead yet,
In fact i'm getting better.....

Heh.... Indeed.

So I did unleash an NPC going by the name of "Tepes" on my players. It is an adult dragon that has been infected with the vampire virus as a mechanical explanation for being "Horror" touched". I know that may not be RAW but I liked the idea. Tepes really is not for direct conflict but rather a boss for their opponents who can create vampire minions that the team can fight. The virus does make him more powerful then a traditional adult dragon but still under the great dragon level.

I did give Tepes several flaws dealing with the fact that if the rest of dragonkind found out that he has been infected they may do a bit of pruning to the genetic pool.

Scared the heck out of the team and has got them guessing on what he really is, lol.