Vampire royal

V vampire royal File:Vampire royal.png
Difficulty	18
Attacks	Claw 2d6, Bite 1d10 drain life

V vampire royal File:Vampire royal.png
Difficulty	18
Attacks	Claw 2d6, Bite 1d10 drain life
Base level	16
Base experience	490
Speed	18
Base AC	-2
Base MR	50
Alignment	-9 (chaotic)
Frequency (by normal means)	1 (Very rare)
Genocidable	Yes
Weight	1450
Nutritional value	400
Size	Medium
Resistances	sleep,poison,level drain
Resistances conveyed	None
A vampire royal: can fly. does not breathe. has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso. regenerates HP quickly. is poisonous to eat. does not eat. (*) is an overlord to its kind. is normally generated hostile. can follow you to other levels. is nasty. is strong. can be seen through infravision. never leaves a corpse.
Reference	EvilHack - monst.c, line 2507

A vampire royal, V, is a type of monster that appears in EvilHack and Hack'EM. Male vampire royals are vampire kings, while female vampire royals are vampire queens.

Like other vampires, they are intelligent human undead that are breathless and possess flight and regeneration, and will follow you to other levels if they are adjacent. A vampire royal has a claw attack and a life-draining bite attack, and possesses sleep resistance, poison resistance and a vulnerability to fire.

Vampire royals are shapeshifters and can polymorph at will into vampire bats, wargs or fog clouds - they often disguise themselves as the former two when outside of the player's sight, shift into the latter to flow under locked or inaccessible doors, and revert to vampire form if killed in any of these forms. Standing on any altar scares vampire lords, similar to standing on Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster.

Players in the form of a vampire royal are warned of any human or elf, and will turn into vampire bats if they polymorph again or use the #monster extended command - they can decline to do so if they have polymorph control.

Generation

In addition to random generation, vampire lords are a somewhat rare occurrence in graveyards. All normally-generated vampire lords are hostile. A vampire noble can grow up into a vampire royal.

Five vampire royals are generated in Kas's chamber on the second level of Vecna's Domain at level creation. Vampire lords may appear among the servants of Vlad the Impaler resting within the chests at the top of his tower. One of the Fake Wizard's Tower maps has a ¹⁄₂ chance of placing a vampire royal in its tower.

Strategy

Among non-unique vampires, vampire royals have the highest base speed at 18 and are second in power to vampire mages, who are slightly slower but can cast haste self among various other spells. Characters capable of handling vampire nobles with little to no trouble should be able to deal carefully with vampire royals.

As with vampire lords in NetHack, tame vampire royals make excellent pets - in EvilHack and Hack'EM, they will not shapeshift into their other forms, as with other tamed vampires.

Encyclopedia entry

He can transform himself to wolf, as we gather from the ship
arrival in Whitby, when he tear open the dog; he can be as
bat, as Madam Mina saw him on the window at Whitby, and as
friend John saw him fly from this so near house, and as my
friend Quincey saw him at the window of Miss Lucy. He can come
in mist which he create--that noble ship's captain proved him
of this; but, from what we know, the distance he can make this
mist is limited, and it can only be round himself. He come on
moonlight rays as elemental dust--as again Jonathan saw those
sisters in the castle of Dracula. He become so small--we
ourselves saw Miss Lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a
hairbreadth space at the tomb door.
[ Dracula, by Bram Stoker ]

The Oxford English Dictionary is quite unequivocal:
_vampire_ - "a preternatural being of a malignant nature (in
the original and usual form of the belief, a reanimated
corpse), supposed to seek nourishment, or do harm, by sucking
the blood of sleeping persons. ..."
[]