Does anyone know if any vampires have been associated with the demon lord Orcus? I'm adding an NPC vampire to my campaign as a major villain, but I'm also wanting him to be a follower of Orcus. Any ideas or suggestions?
The cult of Orcus was mainly composed of twisted creatures with a morbid fascination with the undead, such as necromancers, as well as creatures deliberately seeking the path to unlife, such as would-be liches and vampires.
Taken directly from Orcus' page in the forgottenrealms wiki under worshipers.
He's the prince of the undead / prince of undeath, seeing as vampires are undead it makes plenty of sense for them to worship him.
Orcus has a cult that inducts its followers into forms of undeath, which I presume includes vampires, liches and death knights. Orcus' cults offer freedom from indifferent gods (which is all of them, according to Orcus), pain, hunger and worry, and insist that all followers that join the cult transition into undeath. The cult kind of glosses over the madness that comes from exposure to Abyssal lords, which tends to make the exposed either obsessed with eternal life via undeath, or hating the living.
There's a bit more information on Orcus and his cult in Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes, if you can get a hold of the first chapter.
One thing to consider, Vampires are LE. It seems in an older edition Orcus was Prince of the Undead, but that was primarily Ghasts & Ghouls. I generally make him the Prince of (CE) Undead.
Your world so you cna totally make a CE Vampire. I was trying to figure out which NE/LE power would have the sphere of their perspective Undead and came across your post. Sorry for the Necro post.
Wish I read this post earlier; Zirithian was a Drow who abandoned Lolth for Orcus; as a reward Zirithian was granted everlasting life and transformed by Orcus to a Vampire; an additional gift from Orcus was the sentient sword Nightbringer...yes as in the demon lord. It is a great BBE if you choose to research it. Zirithian was to be raised to Exarc if he could bring enough souls to Orcus. But as it is within the ever mutable desires of evil his path was thwarted when he was killed (or was he?) by Sarahlia...as she too had received a similar offer for the position of Exarc for Orcus. It is a great betrayal story.
I just ran a section in a campaign where an NPC had managed to kill a vampire, and while dying the vampire called out to Orcus to place a curse on this NPC. The players had to retrieve a key from that NPC that ultimately had the curse on it. The longer the players had the key, the stronger the curse grew (the closer to undeath they became). The party ended up fighting the original vampire's bride in her lair with the equivalent of 3 levels of exhaustion. It was a fantastic session; a difficult fight that the group really had fun with.
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Does anyone know if any vampires have been associated with the demon lord Orcus? I'm adding an NPC vampire to my campaign as a major villain, but I'm also wanting him to be a follower of Orcus. Any ideas or suggestions?
Dungeonmastering since 1992!
The cult of Orcus was mainly composed of twisted creatures with a morbid fascination with the undead, such as necromancers, as well as creatures deliberately seeking the path to unlife, such as would-be liches and vampires.
Taken directly from Orcus' page in the forgottenrealms wiki under worshipers.
He's the prince of the undead / prince of undeath, seeing as vampires are undead it makes plenty of sense for them to worship him.
Orcus has a cult that inducts its followers into forms of undeath, which I presume includes vampires, liches and death knights. Orcus' cults offer freedom from indifferent gods (which is all of them, according to Orcus), pain, hunger and worry, and insist that all followers that join the cult transition into undeath. The cult kind of glosses over the madness that comes from exposure to Abyssal lords, which tends to make the exposed either obsessed with eternal life via undeath, or hating the living.
There's a bit more information on Orcus and his cult in Mordenkeinen's Tome of Foes, if you can get a hold of the first chapter.
Thanks for the info, everybody. I'm actually waiting for my copy of MToF to arrive in the mail. Now I really can't wait for it to get here.
Dungeonmastering since 1992!
One thing to consider, Vampires are LE. It seems in an older edition Orcus was Prince of the Undead, but that was primarily Ghasts & Ghouls. I generally make him the Prince of (CE) Undead.
Your world so you cna totally make a CE Vampire. I was trying to figure out which NE/LE power would have the sphere of their perspective Undead and came across your post. Sorry for the Necro post.
(did yo see what I did there?)
Wish I read this post earlier; Zirithian was a Drow who abandoned Lolth for Orcus; as a reward Zirithian was granted everlasting life and transformed by Orcus to a Vampire; an additional gift from Orcus was the sentient sword Nightbringer...yes as in the demon lord. It is a great BBE if you choose to research it. Zirithian was to be raised to Exarc if he could bring enough souls to Orcus. But as it is within the ever mutable desires of evil his path was thwarted when he was killed (or was he?) by Sarahlia...as she too had received a similar offer for the position of Exarc for Orcus. It is a great betrayal story.
I made my vampires related tô Miska (ex-demon lord), the Wolf-spider, because of the predador vibe.
I just ran a section in a campaign where an NPC had managed to kill a vampire, and while dying the vampire called out to Orcus to place a curse on this NPC. The players had to retrieve a key from that NPC that ultimately had the curse on it. The longer the players had the key, the stronger the curse grew (the closer to undeath they became). The party ended up fighting the original vampire's bride in her lair with the equivalent of 3 levels of exhaustion. It was a fantastic session; a difficult fight that the group really had fun with.