RQG stats for a vampire/DiD sorcerer?

[Yinkin]

Hello everyone!

I wonder if there has been a vampire or dancer in darkness sorcerer statted up for RQG? I have an idea involving one but I am a little confused as to how a sorcerer without POW would work...

[Bill the barbarian]

I am playing RQG rather than running it so I cannot say that I know if one has been statted... but I do know that MPs replace POW for many undead... I believe this is so with vampires.

 

[Oracle]

Stats for both can be found in the new RuneQuest - Glorantha Bestiary.

[Nozbat]

As @Oracle said... Gateway Bestiary and in the Creatures Book of RQ3... and wasn't there one in Griffin Mountain or Borderlands? (I haven't the time or possibly inclination to look it up though)

 

and Mythras Core rule Book has a write up too

Edited April 11, 2023 by Nozbat

[Yinkin]

Yes I know where the stats are. What I am asking for is how they would use sorcery according to RQG. In fact, any example of an experienced sorcerer would be useful.

[Enthar]

When playing undead sorcerers, Tap is your best friend.  Steal Breath is a huge source of MP since you have *no other way to regen MP naturally*.  Of course Vampires and such can drain MP using their special abilities, but a sufficiently powerful Steal Breath is really all you need.

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 hour ago, Yinkin said:

Yes I know where the stats are. What I am asking for is how they would use sorcery according to RQG. In fact, any example of an experienced sorcerer would be useful.

except that they will not be able to inscribe spell (the only action requesting POW if I remember well) they are like other sorcerers.

The point is how to get magic point : with their specific ability or with any matrix, crystal, tap spell etc.. like any one else

In my opinion, a vampiric sorcerer was probably sorcerer before becoming vampire*, so a smart one would anticipate and prepare inscriptions before her no-life.

* I think they are a little bit conservative and would not learn so new different approach like sorcery once vampire but after all why not

[hipsterinspace]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

except that they will not be able to inscribe spell (the only action requesting POW if I remember well) they are like other sorcerers.

In some of the older material (Griffin Mountain if I'm remembering right), some cults with rites that include human sacrifice are said to be able to use the POW of those they sacrifice for things like powering spells or enchantments. I would imagine chaotic creatures and cultists would have no issue with such things, especially if they can be combined with something like tapping. Mastering runes and techniques is another important part of sorcery, I'd imagine similar measures would be required to do so.

Edited April 11, 2023 by hipsterinspace

[Frp]

7 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

except that they will not be able to inscribe spell (the only action requesting POW if I remember well) they are like other sorcerers.

You don't need to use your own POW to make an enchantment. A vampire worth his salt should be able to find someone to provide some. 

[PhilHibbs]

3 hours ago, Frp said:

You don't need to use your own POW to make an enchantment. A vampire worth his salt should be able to find someone to provide some. 

You do need to provide one point, so a sorcerer without POW needs some trick to get around that. And I'm not sure if that rule applies to inscriptions anyway, but I would extend it to cover them.

[Shiningbrow]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

You do need to provide one point, so a sorcerer without POW needs some trick to get around that. And I'm not sure if that rule applies to inscriptions anyway, but I would extend it to cover them.

Given that inscriptions are personal, and only useable by the sorcerer themselves, I'd suggest that only the sorcerer's POW would do for an inscription. (but that's just me)

[Godlearner]

There is a write up for one,  Betrothed of Nysalor in the Ho;iday Dorastor Seven Hills supplement.  

The biggest issue from what I see it are not magic points, since these can be aquired by various means, but rather how to Master  Runes and Techniques. So far the only RAW method seems to be that it would have to have been done before death.

[French Desperate WindChild]

3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Given that inscriptions are personal, and only useable by the sorcerer themselves, I'd suggest that only the sorcerer's POW would do for an inscription. (but that's just me)

you're not alone 😛

I've always understood that inscription is only personal, it is not (from my perspective) an enchantment you can "offer" to others.

[Yinkin]

2 hours ago, Godlearner said:

There is a write up for one,  Betrothed of Nysalor in the Ho;iday Dorastor Seven Hills supplement. 

Thank you! I will give that a looksie.

[davecake]

Vampires can use both normal sorcery, and Vampire magic which is a form of sorcerous ritual that involves draining blood and sacrifice. Vampire magic is all based on Ecstatic Communion - the victims is enthralled and then ritually drained, a method that allows draining the raw POW as well as blood - and the some of the POW thus drained can be used for Vampire magic. They can use this POW to master Runes and Techniques, to perform the magic that the Vivamort cult had access to back in RQ2 (like creating ghouls, zombies, summoning small shades, etc), and some other more unique powers, including some that are known to Delecti and his Dancers In Darkness, but not all vampires. 
Vampires use sorcery as their main non-ritual magic. Though vampires can have Rune Points, they usually can’t regenerate them or gain more. 
I suspect draining rune spells of others, as vampires did in earlier editions, is a Vampire magic ritual known only to certain vampires. 
But you can use the vampire magic idea to make vampires with cool vampire powers that you want to adopt from other sources/games if you want, along with custom sorcery. 

[Peter Hart]

There is a fully detailed Dancer in Darkness, named Urianith, on pages 74-75 of "Bad Day at Duck Rock" https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/373528/Bad-Day-at-Duck-Rock . 

Sorcery Runes/Techniques Mastered: [Elemental Runes] Darkness, [Power Runes] Stasis, Illusion [Form Runes] Spirit, [Techniques] Combine, Command, Summon.

Sorcery Spells Known: Castback 80%, Cloak of Darkness 90%, Identify Otherworld Entity 70%, Summon (shade) 80%. {Cloak of Darkness is similar to Disappear}

She has 18 INT and 21 magic points.

Besides smoke, she is also able to transform into various animal forms such as bats and wolves.

You raise a good question namely how does sorcery work without characteristic POW. David's answer above makes sense - when you drain POW from a victim then some of that may be available to the vampire/DiD to sacrifice to gain runes and techniques and so forth. If you need a mechanism to do that how about saying that when the vampire/DiD makes a touch attack against an opponent then when they are matching magic points against magic points to overcome then a special success takes one point of characteristic POW from the victim and a critical success takes the entire 1D4 points of characteristic POW from the victim. This POW remains in a pool and can be used to sacrifice for runes and techniques and other times when the Vampire/DiD needs characteristic POW such as making enchantments et al.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[davecake]

Personally I find the separation of Vampire and Dancers in Darkness in the Bestiary a bit annoying. DiD are vampires in the Delecti tradition, and subservient to him. But they are a variant subset of vampires, not a separate class of being. 
I think the DiD, essentially vampires whose abilities are restricted to those that Delecti wishes to teach them (whether it is because he wishes to keep them weak relative to himself, or whether he does only teaches them abilities directly useful to his own schemes, or both). This shows us that turning to smoke, Enthrall, magic point draining and blood draining are intrinsic to vampirism, but not perhaps turning to bats or wolves. I’d rewrite these as commonly known vampire magic to gain these additional forms, or at least give a mythic explanation for why those two forms, and give some explanation for how individual vampires can gain other forms. The wolves and bats thing specifically is not a traditional part of vampire lore, but codified in Victorian literature - I’d rather have Gloranthan vampire lore be more variant. 

In any case, I think both should be regarded as stop gaps that would be written differently if the Vivamort cult writeup was available. It mentions cult special Rune Magic, for example, which I don’t think exists in the Vivamort writeup (meaning the benefits of Vivamort initiation beyond not being eaten are more nebulous). Hopefully there will be more info when the Chaos cults book is out. 

I’d note that part of the Guide to Glorantha kickstarter that was never fulfilled, even minimally, was the stretch goal for a monograph on vampires by Mark Rein*Hagen. While I don’t care much about the writer, I regret that a chance to expand vampires beyond the Bela Lugosi clones of Cults of Terror 30+ years ago was missed. 

[davecake]

On 4/17/2023 at 10:03 PM, Peter Hart said:

David's answer above makes sense - when you drain POW from a victim then some of that may be available to the vampire/DiD to sacrifice to gain runes and techniques and so forth. If you need a mechanism to do that how about saying that when the vampire/DiD makes a touch attack against an opponent then when they are matching magic points against magic points to overcome then a special success takes one point of characteristic POW from the victim and a critical success takes the entire 1D4 points of characteristic POW from the victim. This POW remains in a pool and can be used to sacrifice for runes and techniques and other times when the Vampire/DiD needs characteristic POW such as making enchantments et al.

While there is nothing wrong with that as a house rule, the Vivamort cult writeup in the preview suggests draining POW requires the victim to be Entralled, occurs simultaneously with blood drinking, and for it to take place in a ritual context, usually one that results in the full draining and death of the victim, as well as the destruction of their soul via POW drain. And the POW be used at the time (usually resulting in most of it wasted). Casting Create Vampire with the drained POW on the victim for them to rise as a new vampire is a special case.
So that gives a reason for the vampire to capture victims and abduct them, which of course gives opportunity for tense plots as you try and rescue abducted victims before they are consumed and the vampires evil plans succeed (or at least the vampire gets a bit more powerful somehow). 

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Personally I find the separation of Vampire and Dancers in Darkness in the Bestiary a bit annoying. DiD are vampires in the Delecti tradition, and subservient to him. But they are a variant subset of vampires, not a separate class of being. 

One might argue that the DID share the "bound to a location" (the Upland Marsh) that dryads or nymphs have. The all-female appearance is another thing to set them apart.

I have no idea whether Delecti's ability being stolen from Zorak Zoran (in WF15, a release which Jeff has recently declared as a lot less canon-adjacent than many people have made it) makes his tradition a Vivamort tradition or something else.

[davecake]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

One might argue that the DID share the "bound to a location" (the Upland Marsh) that dryads or nymphs have. The all-female appearance is another thing to set them apart.

I’ve never seen anything saying the DiD are bound to the marsh - arguably, one of their important functions for Delecti, expanding the marsh by creating new Blackthorn trees by draining dryads (an example of a Vampire magic only used by a few vampires, Btw), requires them to leave the borders of the Marsh. 
I suspect that both being all female and being mostly found in the Marsh are choices of Delecti, and there may be some reason why he wants only female DiDs - perhaps related to the Blackthorn rites effectively replacing the dryads.  
Though it’s possible that it’s just Delecti’s preference (indicating he cares more about sexuality than previously expected?), or that he reserves male vampires for other, more private, uses, or that he has some other magical reason for it (perhaps related to Nontraya myths - WF15 has them worshipping Delecti as a manifestation of Nontraya, perhaps they are all female as a perversion of Ernalda etc). 
In WF 15 it’s clear that the DiD are able to create other, more conventional, vampires, but do not share their magic with them, rather usually creating them as ‘blunt instruments’ against their enemies. 

 

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

I have no idea whether Delecti's ability being stolen from Zorak Zoran (in WF15, a release which Jeff has recently declared as a lot less canon-adjacent than many people have made it) makes his tradition a Vivamort tradition or something else.

The draft Vivamort cult writeup (which I have no reason to think will dramatically differ from from what will be published) is quite specific about Delecti being a hero of the Vivamort cult, and includes presumed Delecti/DiD specific magic like Blackthorn trees as well as magic for Delecti’s body hopping. 
WF15 suggests only that Delecti’s ability to mass produce zombies is a Heroquest ability derived from ZZ, rather than suggesting the many other powers of Delecti have any connection.