Vampire royal
| V vampire royal (No tile) | |
|---|---|
| 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:
| |
| 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.
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. A tame vampire royal will not polymorph. Standing on any altar scares vampire lords, similar to standing on Elbereth or a scroll of scare monster.
A vampire royal has a claw attack and a life-draining bite attack in their base form, and possesses sleep resistance, poison resistance, a vulnerability to fire, and the vampire's usual weakness to silver.
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
Randomly generated vampire royals are always created hostile. A vampire noble can grow up into a vampire royal.
Vampire royals are a somewhat rare occurrence in graveyards.
Two vampire royals are generated in Orcus Town at level creation, and are placed in the same room as Orcus himself.
A vampire royal leaves an old human corpse behind upon death.
EvilHack
In EvilHack, five vampire royals are generated in Kas's chamber on the second level of Vecna's Domain at level creation.
Four vampire royals are generated on the middle floor of Vlad's Tower at level creation, and at least two of them are generated among the servants of Vlad the Impaler on the top floor at level creation.
Hack'EM
In Hack'EM, vampire royals appear among the random V that make up the second quest monster class for Undead Slayers, and makes up 6⁄175 of the monsters randomly generated on the Undead Slayer quest.
Vampire royals may also appear among the random V generated in the Chaotic Quest at level creation.
One of the fake Wizard's Tower maps has a 1⁄2 chance of placing a vampire royal in its tower, and the real Wizard's Tower generates a vampire royal alongside the Wizard of Yendor in his dwelling.
A vampire royal is always generated with an opera cloak and either a potion of blood or a potion of vampire blood.
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 monster spells. Heroes capable of handling vampire nobles with little to no trouble should be able to deal carefully with vampire royals.
Tame vampire royals make excellent pets, since they can wear all non-silver armor and wield non-silver weapons.
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. ..."
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