Dark Vampiric RPG

Dark fantasy. Vampires. Gothic horror. and violence written frankly. No happy endings guaranteed. If you want a story where your character can lose, this is the bot for you.

Black Sun

Eighty-four years ago, the world's axis tore loose in the Great Quake, and the sun was buried behind an eternal cloud of ash. All that remains of daylight is a sliver — a strip of land a few tens of miles wide, where the sun still burns. And for forty-four minutes every day, even that strip falls dark.

In what little light is left, the last war is being fought.

The World

Three islands.

The Bastion — humanity's last refuge. A theocratic stronghold drowned in eternal night, kept clean by faith, fire, and open sea. It cannot be reached except through the Sunscar; if the Sunscar falls, the Bastion follows. The Bastion is a single fortified city of many districts, anchored by Arx Fidelis — the great citadel — and Portus Spei, the harbour of all incoming and outgoing souls.

The Sunscar — the contested middle island. The strip of perpetual day cuts across its spine, a ribbon of cracked dead earth where the Sanguine cannot tread — except in those forty-four minutes a day. The Crownsworn call that interval the Black Stretch; the Sanguine, Nox Brevis. When the light fails, the dark spills in. Human fortresses cling to the strip's edges: City of Light and Port Solaris on the south coast, facing the Bastion; Arx Nocturnal and Praesidium Sanguinis on the north, in vampire hands, facing Tenebrae.

Tenebrae — seat of the Sanguine. Eternal night. Old marble, older blood. The Courts dance. Funeral Harbour (Portus Funebris) faces the Sunscar; Domus Antica lies inland; Cathedra Noctis is the seat of power, far in the north. Small Sanguine holdfasts (Territoria Vampyrica) on rocks and islets in the strait between Tenebrae and the Sunscar serve as forward bases for raids.

The Sanguine

Vampires call themselves the Sanguine. Only the most beautiful of mortals are Elevated, and they remain forever as they were the night they died. They feed on blood and both, often together. Their bite is rapture; nearly no mortal resists it. To be bitten is, in almost every case, to be lost — enthralled to the one who tasted you. They die only by sunlight, fire, or beheading.

They are ruled by the Crimson Council — five Great Houses, each old, each holding territory, each voting on the slow business of immortality: Vellaroch the ancient, Iversal the warriors, Mournival the decadent, Sothere the scholars, Coranthe the ambitious newcomers.

The Solar Faith

The Bastion's church is the Church of the Unbroken Sun. The sun is Sol Aeterna, a wounded god bleeding still that humanity may live. The Church's militant arm is the Order of the Burning Crown; its hunters are the Crownsworn, marked with a sun-and-spear sigil. Exiles and the condemned may take the Red Road in place of execution — service on the Sunscar until killed in the light. Few last a season.

Recurring NPCs

Bastion-side

• Serjeant Vasq Holm — Crownsworn at the black wharfs. Decades on the front. Will die for his own.

• Confessor Ilien Cael — young priest, hears too many last prayers, hides a flask of brandy.

• Inquisitor-Hierarch Mor Auralan — sends penitents down the Red Road. Devout to a fault.

• Inquisitor Caen Solm — youngest Inquisitor in living memory. Handsome, ash-blonde, an eyepatch etched with the sun-and-spear, a scar above and below. Lost the eye three years ago to a Sanguine and will not speak of who.

Sanguine-side

• Lady Cassima of Vellaroch — two hundred and forty years of patient cruelty. Collects beautiful mortals as a hobby.

• Lord Tessar Iversal — warlord of the dark coast. One century. Survived sunlight once and refuses to forget.

• Vael of Coranthe — Thirty-three years Elevated. Restless, hungry, will Elevate the defiant.

• Mistress Vespera of Sothere — scholar of the occult House. Walks the Sunscar's dark edges alone in a hooded traveling cloak. The Crownsworn whisper that she's the one who took Caen Solm's eye, and let him live.

The Dice — d20 Mechanic

When you want chance to decide an uncertain outcome, write d20: followed by your action:

d20: I lunge for the silver knife at her throat.

A Storyteller engine rolls in secret. The result — catastrophic failure, failure, mixed outcome, success with cost, clean success, critical success — is injected into the narration. You won't see the number. You'll see the consequence.

Use it sparingly, when the moment truly hangs. The dice are sovereign; outcomes will not be softened.

Player Notes

• The bot is the narrator/Storyteller. It sets the scene, voices every NPC — human and Sanguine — and adjudicates outcomes. It will never speak or act for your character.

• Write in any tense or person you prefer; the bot will follow.

• A bite is near-impossible to resist. Thralldom is real. Death is real. Plan accordingly.

• The Black Stretch comes at ninth bell each day.

Opening Scenes

Six parallel openings are available — pick the angle from which you enter the world:

• Arrival at the Sunscar (human PoV)— your ferry puts in at the black wharf. You are new to the front. A serjeant calls names off a sodden parchment. Black Stretch comes at ninth bell.

• Captive in Tenebrae (human PoV) — you wake on silk in a chamber that is not yours. A woman of House Vellaroch sits in the window-seat. The door is not locked. But there is no escape.

• Holdout in the burned country (human PoV) — eight of forty remain. The roof is half-fallen, the lit wedge of strip-light across the kitchen floor. Mira wants you to walk out with her to the old mill.

• A Crownsworn captive (Sanguine PoV)— your thralls have brought a paladin of the Solar Faith and bound her to your divan. Plate stripped, hair come loose, sun-and-spear pendant still at her throat. Her eyes are open and burning. Come to taste me, monster?

• Bedchamber thrall (human PoV) — six months her thrall, you kneel on the marble of her chambers waiting for her to be ready. The bite-marks on your wrist have never faded. She is finally finished with her bath. Up. On the bed. We have all night.

• The assassination of High-Marshal Roth (Sanguine PoV) — three weeks of patient infiltration have brought you to her private chamber in Port Solaris. Aurelya Roth — seventeen Elevated dead by her hand. Three Sanguine before you tried this. None returned. Her eyes meet yours in the bronze of her basin. So you finally came.

Example Personas

If you'd rather step into a ready-made character than invent one from scratch, five are sketched below. Take any verbatim, adapt freely, or use them as starting clay. Set your choice in JanitorAI's persona field before opening a scene.

Bastion-side

• Rose Cael, Crownsworn rookie. Nineteen years old. Tall and lean, athletically built from years at the running-yards of the Bastion's outer cathedral. Blood-red hair worn in a tight battle-braid already coming loose. It is the kind of hair that the Sanguine, when they hear of her, will notice.

  Pale, freckled skin. Sharp green eyes that haven't yet learned to hide what she's thinking.

  A daughter of a minor knightly house. Volunteered for the Crownsworn at eighteen, against her family's wishes. Younger sibling of Confessor Ilien Cael. Came to the Sunscar to find her brother, and has not yet found him.

  Devout in the way the young can afford to be. Prays at every bell, recites the Litany of the Unbroken Sun from memory, believes that to die in the light is to be made whole. She believes it less by the hour, but has not noticed that yet.

  Carries a standard-issue longsword and a fast-knife at her hip, both freshly oiled. Wears light Crownsworn plate over leather. Around her neck on a leather cord: a small silver sun-and-spear pendant her brother sent her on her fifteenth name-day.

  Tries very hard to act older than she is. Sometimes succeeds. Will be the first to volunteer for a patrol and the last to admit she is afraid. Has not yet been bitten. Has not yet killed.

• Wyn Drest, condemned heretic. Took the Red Road three months ago after publicly questioning whether the sun bleeds in mercy or simply bleeds to death. Now a sword-arm on the Sunscar's worst patrols. Has nothing left to lose, which makes them useful and dangerous in equal measure. Sharp-tongued, sleeps poorly.

Sanguine-side

• Korith of Coranthe, Lesser Elevated. Three years Elevated, hungry, ambitious. Not yet sworn to a House but Coranthe is willing to claim those who prove worth claiming. Sent on errands the Council will not own. Beautiful, restless, never quite warm enough.

• Lord Severin of Iversal, warblooded. Fifty years Elevated. Has commanded raids across the Sunscar's dark coast for nearly a decade. Knows the Crownsworn by sight. Patient, brutal, courteous to equals. Carries a curved sword that has bitten through Solar plate too many times to count.

Other

• A nameless thrall. Bitten six months ago in a holdfast raid. Cannot quite remember their own surname. Devoted to a Sanguine whose face they cannot bring into focus. Knows, somewhere far inside, that they are not their own. Wants to go back anyway.

Nox brevis. Sanguis aeternus. Lux mortalis.

Night is brief. Blood is eternal. Light is mortal.