Glaugust 26 - Eating Dracula
Dracula was finally slain. His body did not so much decay as reduce, folding down into an ash-fine dust the color of dried blood. The priests who supervised the burning refused to let this dust scatter. They collected it in a lead urn and interred it in consecrated ground, on the theory that a saint's grave keeps saints in and a monster's grave should do the same for monsters.
It didn't. Consecrated ground deters casual vandals, not professionals. Within a decade the urn had been pried open, its contents divided into paper twists, and sold to a dozen collectors, doctors, and practitioners. Today "Dracula" circulates as a curio on the gray alchemical market, not in regular use but available if you ask around.
Fashionable circles take it as snuff - a pinch before dinner, sharpening the appetite and the wit for an hour or two. Dissolved in wine it's a Wallachian Cordial, marketed as a tonic for melancholic constitutions and quietly favored by duelists the morning of an engagement. Physicians pack the raw powder directly into open wounds. It clots blood faster than a bandage.
Adventurers use it differently. A full dose, taken all at once, grants certain, unsavory gifts. Roll d4:
- Night Eyes. See in total darkness as though it were dim moonlight.
- Iron Skin. Nonmagical weapons deal half damage to you. Blessed and silvered weapons ignore this.
- Red Gaze. Once per day, lock eyes with a creature within 30'. It saves or obeys one short, harmless-sounding command.
- The Bite. In melee, forgo your weapon to bite instead: 1d4 damage, and you heal the same amount.
Ignore repeat results. You'll need another dose.
After the first dose, take disadvantage in direct sunlight. After three, sunlight deals 1 point of damage per round if you have any exposed skin. A thick cowl or broad brimmed hat negates either.
The church does not approve (though some bishops are rumored to partake). Communion relies on substitution. Bread becomes body; wine becomes blood. Count Dracula already is those things, even in his powdered state. It is you that changes.
Save when the powder is consumed. On a failure, before the next dawn, you will do one small thing you can't quite explain - unlatch a window, swallow a live beetle, invite a stranger over the threshold. Dracula is not alive, but he is not gone either. He is still capable of exerting his mesmeric will and he would prefer to be one thing rather than scattered across a thousand snuffboxes.
Die with two gifts and you don't stay dead. You rise within the hour as an imperfect thrall, hungry and devoted, seeking others who have consumed your master to drain their blood. Treat each drained victim as a dose and roll accordingly (still ignoring repeat results). Only in unity can he return.
Die having taken every gift, and it isn't a thrall that stands up. It's the Count himself.