Killian sighs, setting down the bowl he had been working with, and turns to lean his hip against the counter and regard you. "You do understand that this can be as dangerous to you as it is beneficial.
"There are actually two kinds of vampire. Most people think they're all the same, but unfortunately for them, they're wrong. The basic myth carries over from the Old World, I think. Certain mortal beings were cursed by the gods to walk the world only in darkness, and have no sustenance but for the blood of the living; to be outcast forever from their fellow men, and never die but for the touch of sunlight or flame. Parts of that apply to each of the true types, but it doesn't apply entirely to either of them."
Reaching up, the alchemist breaks off a twig from a bundle of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, and holds it out for you to see. "This," he says, "is called brightstar. It's a type of thorny bush that grows along the coast on the other side of the Wasteland, and its berries and bark are some of the very few things that can kill a vampire of my ilk." He sets the twig aside on the counter, with a faint smile. "The bark needs to be brewed like tea, or crushed as fine as possible. The berries are generally used to stain the blades of hunters, but chewing them in great enough quantities can make your blood toxic to my variety of vampire for a little while. Any amount of alcohol is fatal to us as well, though we can smell that more easily than brightstar. We're a little more delicate than you might expect, because we're not dead, or undead, or whatever you may think. We are living men and women, and our masters are the parasites within us."
Killian presses his fingertips to the back of his head, at the nape of his neck. "I've cut into my brethren in the past, and I've seen the full change occur. It's a curse, but not a godly one; what it is, is a demon. A larva, if you will. The adults are...beautiful..." He trails off for a moment, red eyes drifting toward a curtained window unseeingly. A shudder runs up his back then, and he snaps out of it and looks back to you, crosing his arms loosely with a faint look of distress. "Wings. Claws. Power that can withstand sunlight, fire, anything that can kill us now without even flinching. That's what they promise us, then they leave us with our little prizes. A larva planted into the bloodstream, that nets itself up in the brain and works its tendrils in throughout the body until we are controlled, and enslaved to its needs."
He smiles thinly, showing the edge of a fang at the right corner of his mouth. No matter how much you squint, you can't see a matching one on the left.
"They're not really hard masters. They don't have minds. They depend on their hosts for survival, but soon enough we depend on them...they integrate themselves with us so completely that we die without them. They can't even be banished; there is no hope for cleansing, once we are infected. Sunlight and intense heat, alcohol, certain chemicals, all will kill them, and they only gain true sustenance from blood. If we try to resist the urge they force on us, eventually they drain away our own for their use; even though that will kill them as well, their only impulse is to survive for one minute longer, in whatever way possible.
"And so we kill. And some of us like it. It even feels good, and it becomes so easy. The parasite is in control of our urges, and in pursuit of what it needs it can alter our impulses. Adrenalin, pain, attraction, it can twist all of those. It's a useful little thing, if you're resigned to its existence.
"That's not the end, though, for the demons weren't lying. The larva grows, slowly, and keeps us alive for the entirety of its gestation, but it grows inside us. I've killed vampires several centuries my elder, and when their guts are spilled you can see that there are no organs in their cavities anymore, just the ropy tendrils of the growing demon. Eventually they grow to the point where the vampire becomes immobilized, thus the reason many of us collect servants or outright cults, or younger vampires: by that point, an easy supply of blood is crucial. Finally the parasite assimilates the host's brain and sheds its body to take its place as an adult demon. So, in truth, we are reborn into power."
Killian smiles thinly, though not particularly pleasantly, and rests a pale hand on his chest. "I've lived a few hundred years. Sometimes, these days, I can feel a tendril tickling at the back of my throat. Nothing below that, yet. But there will be."
The Player whistles a little, and tugs at the pillows to try to get more comfortable. "What about the other kind of vampire?"
"The other kind?" Killian snorts faintly and turns back to his mixing bowls. "Cursed, like that myth says. They're bound to the land, somewhere to the west in the Great Border Forest, I believe. There used to be a kingdom out there, before the Apocalypse, but now it's just millions of acres of twisted black trees. At least, that's what I've heard. They're repelled by god-blessed objects, I know that much, and some of their younger ones can wander. Restless spirits in bodies, basically. I'm not sure if they need blood or just like it, but at this point the newer ones were never truly human."
Reaching up to pluck a few more sprigs off of the hanging herbs, Killian looks back at you. "Don't spread that too far. Both of our groups have ears all over."
Alchemy Nighttown
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