#a thousand year old vampire

[hendrik-ten-napel]

Do you know about A Thousand Year Old Campfire?

It's a small game by, you guessed it, Tim Hutchings, the designer of A Thousand Year Old Vampire. If you're still guessing, you're also right that it's a brilliant game. And yes, I stumbled upon it while browsing through the zines my local games shop. It was a beautiful experience of what we lose to time—how did you know?

Anyway, if you didn't guess all that: this zine is about the excavation of Old Morris Cave, and it's a drawing game. You can read about it in my newsletter.

Consider subscribing if you'd like to read more like this!

[atyov]

Entry #1

I always knew it would be in New Orleans. I've lived, breathed and loved in New Orleans. It only really stands to reason, that I shall die in New Orleans.

There's very little I remember of my life. I remember feelings, I know I've loved, and I have lost in equal share. I have met many who have changed the very course of my life, and yet... I have lived for a very long time, longer than most, and a lot longer than I should.

They come and go, the memories, and I can only hope to write them down before they forever pass. Some of them come like dreams, lucid, vivid even, behind my lids, only to get fuzzy and more blurry the longer my eyes are open, the longer my mind remains awake.

None of them seem linear, I'm not even sure if I remember them correctly, my mind becoming more distinctly unreliable, there are, however, a few memories that I can recall with terrifying clarity. I wonder how long it will take me to forget them too, if at all.

I don't remember my true birthday, I only vaguely remember when I was turned, but I do remember my first kill after becoming a Vampire. It was a warm Summer evening. Her name was Dania, a sweet young maiden, a tender little thing.

She hadn't quite come into her 10th year, and once I was done with her, she never would. Would never love, never marry, never have children of her own. Would never die of Dysentery or Cholera, whatever disease was popular at the time - this was how I justified her sacrifice, I was merely ushering her into a new, better place free of filth and disease. Obviously, I could only rationalise like this once her blood was on my tongue, her flesh in my jagged, sharpened maw, her body strewn lifeless in the meadow she had been delicately plucking wildflowers from. No doubt to present them to her Mama proudly.

I remember the rush of breath caressing my lungs, like they had been deprived of air, the burn on my muscles easing like they suddenly remember how to keep my body from collapsing on itself, remembering how to exist rather than just having to survive. It was more than just hunger, but a visceral starvation, something dark and desperate, verging on depraved. Her blood quenched it quickly, but it was not enough.

Of course, the intention wasn't to kill her, a waste of a life in hindsight, but at the time, she would only die eventually, maybe young, maybe old and haggard, but she would ultimately die. That would have been a true waste.

It was vicious and messy. She met my eyes through the blades of grass and I knew the exact moment she knew. She would have screamed had I not gone right for her throat. I hadn't realised how cold I had felt until her warmth was pulsing right under my skin. I ripped her skin and picked it out from between my teeth for hours after.

I remember walking out of that meadow, my funerary dress drenched with blood, my hair a matted mess, dirt streaked my skin and caked under my nails along with what used to be sweet, little Dania. I walked right past her mother as she screamed, running into that meadow, howling in desperation at the mess that was her little girl. I walked past the scurrying villagers that rushed to her response, none reached to stop me. I never cared to wonder why, for the longest time. But then I realised, I saw it in their eyes, they knew. They knew, I was the Shark swimming in their midst.

MXXV

[spaceytingz]

playing a thousand year old vampire..... give my girl a BREAK OMFGGGGG likeeeee

[ellawaddella]

Sketches for my Thousand Year Old Vampire character, Pietra.

[groinal-attachment]

many many things to say about vampire science written by jonathan blum and kate orman and published by bbc worldwide (1997) but i feel like an underrated part of it is 8's pet bats in the tardis library. yeah yeah we all love the butterflies but let's not forget stewart and jasper the library bats

[the-cypress-grove]

So, You Want To Write Vampires...

Here's a basic list of things to do/consider when approaching this creature.

Source Material

Go back to the origins. Almost every culture around the world has a story or myth containing cannibalism / blood drinking. You may want to base your origin story for vampires on one of these. This can also give you some ideas about what traits and abilities you might want to include that have been written out of modern fiction. It could help you add a unique twist.

2. Vampire Fiction

Vampires have been popping up in fiction for a very long time. Read The Vampyre by John Polidori (thought to be one of the first books written on vampires). Check out Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (the lesbian vampire story that came out before Dracula). Speaking of, Dracula is a classic.

Look at modern fiction. Vampire Academy, Twilight, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, A Dowery of Blood, Crave. Read the good and the bad. Learn what qualities you like and which you will not use.

Make a list of things you like and things you don't.

3. Themes

Writing vampires brings a lot of themes surrounding mortality, immortality, morality, and at what point do we draw the line between what is human and what is other. These themes are integral to a vampire story whether you're writing a gothic horror, a paranormal romance, or a YA. There are a lot of links between cannibalism / blood drinking and love, vampires and LGBTQIA+ characters / coding.

4.Pick your traits

Vampires tend to be unique to the writer. The vampires in Twilight work differently to the vampires in The Vampire Diaries to the vampires in Dracula.

By this point you should have a list of possible traits and abilities you might want to give your vampires. My advice: tailor it to your genre. If you're writing a horror go with the traditional vampire abilities, give them the things that scare you. Think Nosferatu. If you're writing romance, then you might want to soften the traditional vampire traits in the way you find frequently in modern vampire media.

What you choose is up to you.

5. Origins

This is often overlooked in vampire stories but how did your vampires come into being? Who was the first vampire? Is this vampire still alive? How far back do vampires go as a species?

This could affect your vampires in terms of relationships with others of their kind, their powers, their strength.

This might not impact on your plot but, in terms of worldbuilding, if you intend to turn your book into a series then this could be very important going forward.

6. Society

Unless you're writing about the first ever vampire you're probably going to be writing about an established vampire population who will have their own laws, their own history, their own leadership, their own customs. This is an important piece of worldbuilding. It will affect your characters relationships, add conflict to the plot, create established enemies and can be used to raise the stakes.

7. Nocturnal Life

If you're following a traditional burn-in-the-sun vampire and they haven't found a way around this then you need to determine the night life of your setting. What is there for your vampires to do at night?

8. Feeding, Hunting, and Bloodlust

This will affect the level of gore in your story as a lot of the bloody parts in your story will take place through feeding and hunting. This will also determine your vampire population.

You need to decide how much your vampires need to feed, how often they need to do so, and what they can feed on. Do they drink animal blood? Is that possible? Do they drink human blood? Can they drink from blood bags? Do they need the blood fresh? If they need human blood do they need all of it?

The less a vampire feeds, the larger a population you can have in one area as it attracts less attention.

What happens when your vampires are hungry? What does their bloodlust look like? How does it affect a vampire? Is the amount of bloodlust a vampire experiences determined by how old the vampire is?

9. Threats

Unless your vampires are well and truly endless there will be ways to kill them and they will have enemies. Do these enemies take the shape of humans, of other vampires, or another species entirely? How can your vampires be killed? What other species are out there?

[shroomerr]

You guys ever read the most beautiful, jaw dropping, feet kicking, leaves you with a feeling of yearning fic that it possesses you? yea that was me anyways here’s vampire Kyle and his annoying assigned bodyguard who’s also a witch

(ALSO IF YOU WANT TO READ SAID FANFIC ITS A KYLE X READER FIC CALLED ITS FALLING FOR THE IDEA BY FEDOSAURUSREX ON AO3 THAT INSPIRED ME TO WHIP THIS WHOLE AU UP)

[vintagerpg]

An Account of the Lengthy Existence and Numerous Experiences of Ambrose Backhouse, Vampire, with Special Attention to Those Years in Which He Walked Upon This Earth Tho Dead (2022) is a lovely graphic novel by Tim Denee and published by Tim Hutchings. It is essentially a log of a playthrough of Thousand Year Old Vampire. Denee posted the initial installments on Twitter as he went, which is where I initially saw them. Around that time, I was spectating a number of TYOV playthrough logs on social media and this was by far the most engaging, because pictures. I guess Hutchings thought so too!

Ambrose it turned to undeath by the Rek, an ancient vampire bound to the sea floor by heavy chains (love this, its so wonderfully evocative). The pair foster a deadly enmity for each other over the centuries, in and out of which weave the people of Ambrose’s daily life, their schemes and his miseries. As a narrative, it jutters, which is the nature of the game, but I find this to be compelling (just as I do in the game) because real life rarely has threads and conclusions that satisfy the framework of good narrative. This feels weirdly real, and derives a power from that feeling. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I really enjoy how the book resolves, like most lives, with much unfinished.

Denee’s approach to the art for this is perfect, very flat, highly graphical, almost as though pasted together with cut-out colored paper. It has a sense of assemblage that echoes the narrative. He is very good at pushing the style toward warmth or humor and then immediately pulling back to something horrible. The whole this is quite effective. And the book is handsome (if very oddly shaped). Treat yourself!

[interdimensional-anomalocaris]

Love how dracula daily is coinciding with my epistolary game of thousand year old vampire I'm playing with a cross-country friend. What do you mean I get TWO vampire-related letters to look forward to???

[proffbon]

Thought about Seth rocking baby Viktor to sleep. Crying.

[bumps-in-the-night]

Something I really like about the solo journaling game Thousand Year Old Vampire is the way it deals with memory loss. And I get that that’s the point of the game, but still. Humans don’t have unlimited memory, most people forget large chunks of their life as they age. It makes sense that vampires, just to the left of humans, would also only have limited memory.

And memory loss in humans is often associated with trauma; why should it be different for vampires? If you’re a semi-immortal being who has lifetimes to live, naturally you’re going to go through some major trauma. It’s a part of both life and unlife. It has such unique potential for tragedy. You’re thousands of years old, but only the last three centuries or so are able to be recalled with any sort of clarity. Who were you back then? Do you have any way of knowing? Your childhood? That’s totally gone. Before you were turned? May as well be a different person.

[faggotkenjaku]

Stinky!!

[armandposting]

marius does seem to have a lot of complicated feelings about what he did to armand and I really hope one of them is guilt for his thinking in buying armand originally. he talks in blood and gold about how when he heard armand's mind, the entire reason he wanted him was because he thought, here is a child who has been so hurt that it will be no loss to the world if I make him a vampire. and he wavers on this later and I hope it's because he saw this child make friends and learn things and love rings and watches and swordfighting and realize that actually there is never a child so damaged that taking them from humanity is no loss. I wonder if part of the reason he never tried to talk to armand after seeing him with the children of darkness is that he saw that boy changed into a lonely stoic cult leader with no more will or verve and was too consumed with guilt to even try. I hope that guilt started when he took armand to kiev rus and saw how much armand still loved the family he hadn't seen in years and for a while barely remembered from trauma. also I hope marius explodes into one thousand pieces but that's mostly irrelevant

[maddyisabstract]

Day 7 of #RPGaDAY2024! Not sure what 'good form' means in this context so I'm just gonna share the first solo TTRPG I played, Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings. Excellent prompts, BEAUTIFUL book, plenty of vampire angst for this goth right here.

[july-19th-club]

huge eric fan now for how he is about his weird little two-thousand-year-old enlightened teenage dad . like, oh, i'm huge and tall but i never want to seem like i'm looming over you so whenever we're face to face i'll kneel or sit below you and look up like you're some kind of jesus . when i met you i thought you were death and you said come walk with me through the dark and i said what's in it for me? and it's been a thousand years and i'm the age now that you were then and i haven't changed; i'm still a careless, blood-soaked opportunist and loving it, but you decided you were a pacifist somewhere in the past couple centuries and i SO SUPER don't get it but i love you so i hope you're happy and enjoying your linen smocks and ancient mien of peaceful remorse. and then i let you die because you think it will help and i hate to let you down. and i never get over you, ever

[cestacruz]

Anyway since i dont think i actually posted these, have this

Bitches from a Monster AU theyre all gay

Uhh more in the tags cuz i dont wanna type here