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Vlad III Țepeș
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Vlad III Țepeș
by Vlad III Țepeș Tue May 07, 2013 9:52 am
DOSSIER: DEMON
”For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?”
–Matthew 16:26
BASIC DETAILS
”For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?”
–Matthew 16:26
BASIC DETAILS
NAME:
Vlad III Drăcula Țepeș
ALIASES:
Drăcula; Kazıklı Bei; Vlad the Impaler; Prince of Impalement; Vampire King; Vampire Lord; The Count; Warlord of Wallachia; The Dragon; Son of the Devil; Demon Prince of Romania; Lord of Shadows
AGE:
535, on the dot.
APPARENT GENDER:
Male.
HOMESPHERE:
The Spirelands; he tends to roam around, though.
PICTURE: DEMON:
- Spoiler:
PICTURE: MORTAL:
- Spoiler:
*********
PERSONAL DETAILS
DEMON DESCRIPTION:
Drăcula’s form is something that has both fascinated and haunted the minds of mortal men for well over five centuries; it is an exaggerated result of the human imagination’s attempts to give fear itself a vessel with which it can properly comprehend. Over the recent stretch of several hundred centuries has the Count determined the strengths and weaknesses of his previous incarnation; by weighing those pros and cons against each other, he had concluded that his old body was impractical in battle and inadequate in its ability to instill terror into his victims. After a duel with Lucifer, Vlad was granted the highest privilege of tasting the Overlord’s very blood, a literal taste of power which ultimately had the effect of aging the Count’s body backwards by several centuries.
Drăcula’s newest guise places a heavy, utilitarian emphasis on mobility while successfully preserving its opulent ambience. His long, white hair is fuller than it was previously and now bears the slightest tinge of light blue, flowing with silk-like consistency to his middle back, and is matched by a neatly trimmed, same-colored circular beard. Tasting Lucifer’s immense power has permanently stained the Count’s cold, emotionless eyes from bloody red to a sinister electric yellow, still fixed in a condescending gaze that can cause lesser beings to tremble ceaselessly and cower before their combined, unholy presences. Significantly less of a target now but still an imposing sight to behold, his height has been changed so that it now rests at six feet and two inches. And, like any classical depiction of a vampire, Drăcula still bears elongated canines, sharpened to a fine point.
The vampire’s extravagant apparel has been rightfully discarded in favor of clothes that assist his ability to move about freely while still retaining some semblance of his status as the Lord of the Nosferatu. In startling, albeit apt contrast to his deathly white complexion, his garments are as black as darkness itself, sewn from a mixture of ultra fine silks and velvets. He wears a frock-like turtleneck garment, decorated with silver markings at the abdomen, underneath a double-layered overcoat trimmed in gold and given a fur fringe on the cuffs of the sleeves. Extra layers of cloth hang freely around his legs, bestowing a sort of vampiric flair to his outfit. Drăcula’s footwear consists of a pair of black leather, knee-high boots. A solid gold decoration of unknown design and purpose hugs his left leg. Always the minimalist when it comes to jewelry, he limits his accessories to a pair of silver stud earrings and an oddly designed brooch pinned to the breast of his shirt.
MORTAL DESCRIPTION:
Vlad Țepeș could easily have been marked as the human incarnation of terror itself during his reign in the 15th century, given his outstanding reputation for inflicting torturous cruelties against those he saw as enemies of his kingdom coupled with his merciless nature as a soldier and as a leader. His “sealed” state, as Drăcula calls it, is only assumed when communicating with petty humans and halfwit Ritualists that think themselves courageous enough to stand in the face of fear, as a foreboding reminder as to who exactly they’re dealing with. If he cannot frighten them as “Drăcula”, then perhaps the man that resulted in the legend's conception can.
When assuming his mortal disguise, the Vampire King bears a startling correspondence to what he looked like during his second term as Voivode of Wallachia. Bedraggled hair as black as black can get hangs from his head and reaches down as far as his lower back in length. His facial hair is sparse in this form, creating the deceptive illusion that he’s far younger than what his actual age would indicate. Drăcula’s eyes retain their blood red pigmentation during transition between forms, however they project an alarming amount of malevolence from them when compared to the eyes of his true form; in layman’s terms, they are far better tools for striking fear into the hearts of men.
Drăcula abandons his aristocratic trousseau in favor of a large, bulky suit of medieval European armor that is, inexplicably, both ornamental in its design and functional by its very nature, able to withstand mighty blows in melee combat. Each piece is wrought from an extremely durable metal alloy native to Inferis and ranges on the dark end of the monochromatic scale, varying from lighter shades of black to smoky gray tones. Certain pieces of this metal ensemble do little to devalue Drăcula’s title as the legendary Vampire King—they further augment this role, honestly—but it successfully publicizes his rich, gruesome history as a feared tyrant and a powerful conqueror nonetheless. With the entire suit on, he appears a couple of inches thicker at the waist.
Completing Drăcula’s transformation into his mortal shape is the addition of a large, billowing, collared cloak that’s kept fastened to the pauldrons protecting his broad shoulders. It is as black as his hair, whereas the inside of it is dyed the same color as his eyes. For the express purpose of intimidation, the cape has been tattered and frayed near the base of his feet so that when it waves about in the wind, it tricks onlookers into thinking that the garment can fluidly morph into the wings of a bat on command, feeding further into his storybook legends.
PERSONALITY:
Many historians and experts have failed to accurately illustrate the psyche of a man that no longer thought on a level that could even be remotely considered human. There are many words that have described this monster, this fiend, who was once known as “Vlad III Țepeș” while he was alive. Ambitious. Cunning. An intelligent and unfeeling ruler. A true savage of a warrior on the battlefield. Not even his stalwart loyalism for all the people of Wallachia could fully conceal his psychopathic appetite to inflict suffering and pain on those he viewed as adversaries to his cause. To call him anything less than simply what he was, and still is—a heartless monster—would be a gross understatement to the spine-tingling legacy he left behind.
Drăcula is a schemer and an architect to his very core, a trait that ultimately served to define the content of his character during the seven years he ruled his country. With harrowing diligence, he is able to analyze an overarching problem and chart out an intricate web of plots and strategies that not only serve to further his odds of achieving total conquest, but also cripples his adversaries’ chances of succeeding in the process. And he’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done without the slightest shred of hesitation holding him back. Drăcula’s endless ambition to reach the greater goal allows him to make sacrifices that most people aren’t willing to go through with themselves, a distinction that sets him apart him from many of mankind’s greatest and most terrible leaders and conquerors.
His Machiavellian nature is masked only by his excessive authoritarian practices, which in turn is severely outclassed by his severe penchant for brutality, which he exercises against his foes with inhuman gusto. He is utterly ruthless toward any he views as an opponent to his grand designs, and is not above personally butchering his enemies and everyone close to them if he feels they exhibit even the remotest threat to his carefully formulated machinations. Drăcula takes this to disturbing extremes when a particularly powerful or dangerous enemy rears its ugly head. Not only will he be motivated to kill them outright, he’ll try to do it in a way that’s both horrifyingly painful and humiliating for them. Drăcula treats killing as a macabre form of art, and spends a lot of his spare time thinking of new and clever methods to extinguish the lives of his victims.
Drăcula has seen the worst that mankind had to offer with his own eyes, having devoted the entirety of his rule to driving out a foreign influence he believed was poisonous to his people, only to wind up betrayed and cast away by the very people he swore to uplift for having embraced the ideal that his absolute authority would one day lead to Wallachia’s prosperity. To the Vampire King, humans are weak, wretched creatures steeped in selfishness and greed, and are worth less than the dirt they smother and stain with their filth. If anything, they are merely sustenance or expendable pawns for his schemes, which he has no qualms with discarding carelessly when they are of no, further use to him. He speaks lowly of any and all humans he comes across, the odds of convincing him to think of them as anything other than common trash is slim to zero.
His hatred for humanity stems from the grudge he holds against God. There was once a time where Drăcula ardently believed that He would descend and cast out the Ottomans from Wallachia, and that his actions as Voivode would serve as the catalyst for His divine retribution against enemies of the faith. During his time spent in prison, Drăcula came to believe that God no longer cared about him or Wallachia, and that He permitted the Ottomans to invade his country as punishment for his zealous desire to personally rid the world of His enemies instead of leaving the task in his Lord's capable hands. Betrayed even by his own ideals, Drăcula was convinced that all of humanity had sided with their apathetic God as well, turning their backs on him and throwing him to the dungeons.
HISTORY:
In a nutshell, Vlad III Țepeș was best known throughout history for being fucking Drăcula.
[ Volume I : The Son of the Dragon ]
- Spoiler:
- The year was 1431, somewhere between late November and early December in Sighișoara, Transylvania. He was born into House Drăculești as the second of three sons to Vlad II Drăcul, a Wallachian military governor appointed by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, and an unidentified woman believed to have either been Princess Cneajna of Moldavia, or one of the many mistresses he may have courted during his marriage to her. It is highly likely that he and his younger brother, Radu III the Handsome, may have been conceived illegitimately, regardless of who the mother was.
Vlad II had also become a member of the Order of the Dragon, a secret sect of chivalric knights fashioned after the military orders of the Crusades. The Order’s creed required the initiated to defend the cross and oppose the enemies of Christianity, most notably the Ottoman Turks, whom were devout believers of the Islamic faith. It is through his induction that he received the surname of “Drăcul,” which aptly translated to “dragon” in the Romanian tongue. His initiation into the Order was purely done out of political motivation, partially to gain the favor of the Catholic Church, as well as to assist in protecting Wallachian territory from the clutches of the Ottoman Empire.
As his son, Vlad III was referred to by the diminutive patronymic form of the surname, “Drăcula”, which naturally translated into “Son of the Dragon.” Interestingly enough, “Drăcul” carried a double meaning with it: ”devil”. Later during Vlad III’s career, this rather unfortunate translation would come full circle, where he eventually became known as the gruesome and terrifying “Son of the Devil.”
He and his younger brother, Radu, spent much of their early childhoods in Sighișoara until their father was appointed the title of Voivode of Wallachia in 1436, by which he then had his family relocated to the capital of Târgoviște to be tutored by Romanian and Greek scholars specially commissioned from Constantinople. From there, Vlad was given combat training and educated in a wide number of subjects appropriate for one about to enter the folds of knighthood, such as geography, mathematics, science, classical arts, and philosophy. He was also educated in the languages of Old Church Slavic, German, and Latin. Vlad himself assumed he was being trained to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Order of the Dragon, something he eagerly looked forward to.
Vlad II’s political clout began to waver immensely within a couple of years, made worse by the recent death of Sigismund, who had founded the Order prior to becoming the Holy Roman Emperor. After retaking the Wallachian throne from Basarab II with the help of Ottoman forces, Vlad Drăcul was forced to create a treaty with the Turks so that he could better protect the interests of his homeland. To ensure that his military and political support would remain reliable, Vlad had sworn to pay the Sultan, Murad II, an annual tribute, in addition to a yearly selection of Wallachian boys to be trained for service in the Turkish armies. As insurance for the arrangement, his sons, Vlad III and Radu the Handsome, were deported to Turkey to act as hostages.
The boys were held captive at a fortress in Egregoz, located in the western portion of Anatolia, for nearly half of their stay before eventually being moved to the Sultan’s personal court at Adrianople. During his time spent as a hostage, Vlad III was forced to study the Q’uran and the Islamic religion, and was severely beaten when he refused to follow their customs. He was also tutored in warfare, equestrianism, logic and classic literature, and learned to speak the Turkish language, which he eventually became fluent in later on.
Vlad suffered immensely during his internment, gradually becoming colder and more bitter as months passed. But Radu did not, for his attractive features won him a place in the personal court of the future Sultan, Mehmed II—something the older boy had never acquired. Overwhelmed with rejection and anger, Vlad’s acidic jealousy for his little brother eventually congealed into pure hatred, leading him to despise Mehmed in the process.
Historians documented that the two were never harmed physically, but in reality, those in charge of writing the books were bribed hefty sums of akçe by Turkish nobles to keep their lofty images from being stained. The torment Vlad was subject to came to a terrible crescendo on a stormy night, where he was violently abused and raped by several Ottoman boyars looking to slake their perverse lust for young flesh. The psychological damage Vlad was inflicted with was unprecedented and largely irreversible, but it served to reveal to him what he believed was true nature of God: He was uncaring to those that did not prove their faith to Him, and that words alone were not enough to attract His attention. Combined with his deep-seated grudge for Radu and his pet-like adoration for the Sultan Mehmed, the future Wallachian voivode eventually swore vengeance on every last person of Turkish blood in the name of the Almighty Father.
The two were eventually released from their incarceration in 1448, placing Vlad III at about seventeen years old and Radu at around thirteen. The latter had chosen to stay behind in Turkey, leaving a spiteful and bitter Vlad to depart for Wallachia. In the winter of the previous year, his father had been assassinated in a coup orchestrated by John Hunyadi, a Hungarian regent and a former ally of Vlad II whom personally felt that the voivode had betrayed both his people and the Order of the Dragon by allying with the Turks. Furthermore, Vlad III’s older brother and heir to the Wallachian throne, Mircea II, had his eyes gouged out by boyars committed to Hunyadi’s cause, and was subsequently buried alive at Târgoviște.
Having learned of everything that had transpired during his imprisonment, the newly-freed Vlad III was driven beyond the point of no return. In his rage, he swore to personally execute the traitors that killed his family and stole that which was rightfully his. But before the Ottomans were able to successfully return the prince to his spot on the throne, Hunyadi’s forces had invaded Wallachia shortly after and drove him into exile, restoring Vladislav II, his ally and a member of the rival House Dănești, to the throne
Vlad spent the next eight years formulating a campaign to take back his homeland by force. During the first three years of this effort, he lived under the protection of his uncle, Bogdan II. His assassination somewhere in October of 1451 forced the prince in exile to flee across the Hungarian borders. Hunyadi contacted Vlad and attempted to reconcile their differences with him, impressed by the prince’s knowledge of the Ottoman Empire’s inner workings and moved by his undying hatred for Sultan Mehmed II. A truce was formed, and Vlad was made Hunyadi’s personal adviser.
Their relations came to an abrupt, if not convenient end in 1456, nearly three years after Constantinople was sacked by the Ottoman Empire. The Turks had threatened to lay siege to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, prompting Hunyadi to lead a massive contingent into Serbian territory in order to intercept their attack, where he later succumbed to the Black Death. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Vlad and his men stormed and reconquered Wallachia at long last, where the prince ultimately encountered and killed Vladislav II in mortal combat.
- Spoiler:
- Upon his return to power in 1456, Vlad III Drăcula found his beloved Wallachia in a wretched state of disrepair he believed was so foul, that the mere sight of it all served to further blacken his considerably withered soul to the point where no amount of prayer to God would ever heal him. He took it upon himself to prove to the Almighty Father that he was the destined master of Wallachia and its people, resorting to the heaviest of extremes to consolidate the principality’s failing economy and military defenses and return it to its former glory, all while striving to boost his own power while weakening the boyars’ influence in the process.
Fervently believing a strong and stable economy would result in the fortification of his country’s power, Vlad III imposed excruciatingly strict trade laws in every village throughout the land, limiting foreign merchant trading to three towns: Târgșor, Câmpulung, and Târgoviște—the place where his older brother Mircea was, coincidentally, buried alive. His armies and personal guard were predominantly composed of either mercenaries, whom were rewarded with a cut of the plunder they gained during village raids, or local peasants that were forced to take up arms during times of war.
But the power-hungry Voivode refused to end his quest for absolute reformation of his kingdom. Crime ran rampant all throughout Wallachia, for which Vlad personally blamed the nobles as being the chief cause of it all due to their selfish struggle for power and wealth, backed by his personal vendetta against them for the murders of his father and older brother. To correct this and further establish his authority, in his earliest known documented case of vengeance against the nobility, he had the boyars in his council executed by impalement and gave their emptied seats of power to foreigners or people of vague origins, ensuring that they would remain loyal to him and him alone. The healthier and younger nobles were arrested with their entire families after a feast on Easter Sunday and condemned to spend the rest of their lives in slavery to the insane warlord, forced to walk fifty miles up a steep hill overlooking the Arges River in order to construct Castle Poenari, his personal fortress. Those that survived its construction were impaled shortly after.
Thus, his six-year reign of blood and terror had begun.
Vlad III adamantly believed that the prosperity of Wallachia ultimately rested within the hearts of his people, and made it clear that those who did not support and contribute to their homeland’s best interests had no place in his society, and that God Himself would only reward those that willingly sacrificed for their country. Disgusted by the abundance of poverty and illness in his land, the tyrant-warlord attempted to tackle the matter personally.
His first order of business was to publicly announce his stance on the issues of nationwide poverty and hunger, which he addressed by inviting the poor and the sick to Târgoviște to attend a banquet, declaring that none of his loyal subjects should ever be forced to go hungry. As the crippled, the ill, and the penniless were rounded up inside the dining hall, they were presented with a feast fit for a king. As the people gorged and drank themselves into contentment, Drăcula asked whether they truly desired to never go hungry or feel the pain of poverty ever again, and was met with thunderous approval. He obliged their pleas, and ordered his men to have the entire banquet hall boarded up and set ablaze. Not a single peasant survived. By killing everyone inside, Vlad was certain that they would no longer be a burden on the economy he strived so hard to establish.
Drăcula’s legendary rampage never ceased there. Out of a catastrophically corrupted sense of moral obligation to preserve the integrity of his country, the Voivode showed zero tolerance to anyone that dared commit a crime in his land, regardless of how trivial the act was. Those that so much as even entertained the possibility of breaking his laws were sentenced to die by impalement or some other, torturous method. To further deter malfeasant behavior, Drăcula had placed a chalice wrought of glittering gold atop a fountain for all the peasants to drink from, under the condition that they returned it to the fountain when they were finished using it. No one even dared to touch this wonderful cup, let alone drink from it, as they greatly feared the possibility of being executed.
The depraved ruler began his true descent into demonhood somewhere during the year 1459, where he learned through intelligence reports that German Saxon traders in the merchant town of Brașov were violating the customs imposed upon them, and were also suspected to have allied themselves with and funded rival claimants to his throne. In retaliation to their atrocious betrayal of their commitment to Wallachia, Drăcula launched a bloody assault on Brașov, and ordered the entire town’s population be captured and impaled on the neighboring Timpa Hill for failing to uphold his laws. The remainder of the village was then ransacked, then burned until nothing but ashes remained.
The Brașov Incident served as a gruesome reminder of the fate that awaited those that dared make an enemy out of the Voivode of Wallachia, but the ordeal had also earned Drăcula a darker, far more sinister reputation throughout Europe. During the midst of the siege, the tyrant-king chose to have a meal while he watched with sadistic delight as his servants ran his victims through with spears and stakes, hoisting them up so that their own weight would slowly drag them down and slowly killed them over a stretch of hours. His depravity towards women and children was especially brutal, as he would torture and kill them in ways he considered were more “creative” than others.
Another horrifying example of his cruelty took place a year later on the dawn of St. Bartholomew’s Day of 1460, where Drăcula and his soldiers scoured the forests and the countryside for peasants suspected of supporting rival claimants. A popular legend associated with the resulting massacre states that Vlad had captured so many German Saxons that he didn’t have enough stakes to impale them all with; he solved this problem by bunching the prisoners together, then simply had his soldiers chop them all into tiny pieces, leaving those unfortunate enough to live beyond the ordeal to be led back to Târgoviște, where they were subsequently impaled to death and mounted on display. The exact number of people he slaughtered that day is unknown, but it is widely believed the death toll may have exceeded 30,000.
Many more rumors circulated about the disturbed Voivode of Wallachia, but one thing was for certain: he truly lived up to his moniker of “Son of the Devil”.
- Spoiler:
- In the year 1459, Pope Pius II urged for a new crusade to be launched against the Ottoman Empire in response to their sacking of Constantinople, the former heart of the Holy Roman Empire at the time. This mission was to be led by Matthias Corvinus, the son of John Hunyadi and the current King of Hungary, who was commissioned by the Pope with a lavish sum of gold coins, which he used to acquire an army of 12,000 soldiers and several warships. Realizing his connection to the Ottomans, Drăculea became allies with Matthias, who was a second cousin of his, in the context that it would help deter the Turks from invading Wallachia.
That same year, Sultan Mehmed II dispatched envoys to the Voivode’s court to persuade him into paying a delayed Jizyah, as the tax on non-Muslims was referred to at the time. Drăcula refused, stating that doing so would imply that Wallachia was still a territory under Ottoman control. He then had the emissaries executed by having their turbans permanently nailed to their skulls, under the false pretense that they had refused to follow the Wallachian custom of removing one’s hats while in the presence of Vlad III. He spent the next two years pillaging and raiding German Saxon villages along the Danube border, which fell under Turkish jurisdiction.
Having become aware of the Voivode’s ties with Matthias Corvinus, Mehmed sent the chieftain of Nicopolis, Hamza Pasha, to stage a diplomatic meeting with Drăcula, but was also given orders to ambush and capture him, and thereafter send him to Constantinople. Having anticipated the deceptive tactic, Vlad staged a counterattack of his own, making use of local terrain and gunpowder weaponry to attack Pasha and the 1,000 cavalrymen following him. Nearly all of the Turkish soldiers were captured after the skirmish, including Pasha, where they would become the paramount instruments in his single-most greatest inhuman atrocity to date. Soon after, Drăcula led an army throughout all of Wallachia and eventually moved into Bulgaria, massacring anyone he believed sympathized with the Turkish cause. Within a span of two weeks, his forces had covered 800 kilometers of land and slaughtered well over 23,000 Turks and Muslim Bulgarians. Many attempts to counter Drăcula’s armies were met with outstanding numbers of Ottoman casualties, with Wallachian forces suffering fewer losses than their Muslim enemies.
Desperate to end Drăcula’s ceaseless slaughtering, Mehmed had used all of his resources to construct an army so large and powerful that it nearly rivaled the force that conquered Constantinople several years prior. On June 4th of 1462, the Sultan’s forces of nearly 100,000 soldiers from all corners of his empire stormed their way into Wallachian territory, forcing Vlad’s forces to retreat, seeing as they couldn’t inhibit their advance. The Voivode employed every known trick in the book to hinder the Turkish armies, ranging from scorched earth tactics and poisoning his own food and water resources, to sending over victims afflicted with the Black Death to intermix with and infect the enemy soldiers. His strategies were widely regarded by historians as equally ghoulish as they were brilliant, which served to cripple or even break the morale of the Sultan’s men.
On June 17th, Drăcula orchestrated an ambush against the Turkish armies that would forever be remembered in Romanian history as the “Night Attack”. With an army consisting of 24,000 soldiers, he infiltrated the Ottoman camps and made several assaults against enemy forces that lasted three hours following sunset until four in the morning. However, not everything had gone according to plan. Vlad had mistakenly attacked the wrong tent under the assumption that the Sultan was inside, and was forced to withdraw his men to make a retreat toward Târgovişte, with the Ottomans in hot pursuit. Although the troops’ morale was low, the Turks attempted to lay siege to the Wallachian capital, only to find the city gates wide open and the city mysteriously deserted. Upon entering the capital, what they witnessed next served to etch Vlad III Drăculea’s blood-stained legacy into eternity.
Stretching over ten kilometers was a field of the impaled corpses of the Turks and the Muslim Bulgarians he kept as prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of men and women were skewered and mounted in various, gruesome ways; not even children and babies weren’t spared from the tyrant’s wrath. All of them were displayed like macabre trophies of his conquest; even the corpse of Hamza Pasha was cast aloft for all to see. They were the final illustration of his psychopathic desires to eject the Ottomans from his homeland. The unbridled stench of death hung in the air. They were no longer dealing with a warlord lost to the throes of insanity—they were attempting to topple a true demon, spawned from the pits of Hell itself.
Mortified and overwhelmed by Drăcula’s evident lack of humanity, Mehmed II immediately withdrew his traumatized and broken forces and frantically returned to Adrianopolis within as little as three weeks. His victory over the Ottomans was widely celebrated throughout nearly all of the known Christian world, and given praise by Corvinus and even the Pope himself. This greatly strengthened his belief that God would soon reward him for his efforts to cleanse the known world of the Ottomans and their heathen ways.
How wrong he was.
- Spoiler:
- The crusade against the Ottomans was far from over. In a final attempt to topple his Romanian opposition, Sultan Mehmed gave full command over his army and the elite Janissary battalions to Drăcula’s younger brother, Radu the Handsome, and tasked him with leading the Empire to victory at all expense. The Voivovde’s bottomless hatred for Radu rekindled, Drăcula resisted his traitorous sibling’s forces with all the power and resources at his disposal. Alas, not even his diabolical image—which had become feared all throughout Europe—could protect him against the full might of the Janissaries, who marched in well-supplied with money and gunpowder to fuel their campaign. Radu eventually cornered Vlad at his lair at Poenari Castle, where the latter suffered devastating loss.
He would have surely died were it not for the local villagers still loyal to the prince’s cause. With their aide, an incensed and defeated Drăcula fled into Transylvanian territory and sought out the help of his cousin, Matthias Corvinus, who had been his ally throughout most of the fighting. To his dismay, he instead found himself arrested on charges of high treason to the Holy Roman Empire, and was thrown into the fortress dungeons at Visegrad, the Hungarian capital, which Radu took advantage of and claimed Wallachia’s throne as a puppet ruler for the Ottomans.
In comparison to his cousin’s bloody reputation, Matthias surely had a cleaner moral slate than Vlad did. Despite this, his expenditure of Papal funds originally meant for the war effort were used for personal damages instead, an act which would have surely landed him in the dungeons. To detract attention away from this illegal spending, Matthias forged letters from Vlad III addressed to the Pope suggesting that he was planning to defect to the Turks and negotiate a peace treaty, thus giving him an alibi to abandon the crusade and return to his capital.
Although Matthias gradually bestowed his cousin with special privileges due to the almost fanatical support he received from Christian leaders in the West, Drăcula spent a majority of his captivity lamenting over his utter failure to drive the Turkish scum from Wallachia. He had done all he could, hoping his actions would draw the attention of God Himself so that all of this ceaseless fighting would finally draw to a close. And yet, the war raged on. The Turks grew stronger with Radu in power, and not once did God intervene. Not a shred of holy retribution was brought down on his enemies, and the prince realized this. He reached an epiphany.
God had abandoned him, and so did his own people.
Driven past the brink of despair, Drăcula let out a roar far more animal than human, defiantly casting away his once-ardent faith in God for having shunned him and ignored the countless sacrifices that were made to appease Him. He spent hours spewing curses and blasphemies at everything the Lord was an all that He had stood for, but even that did not sate his fiery anger. He wanted vengeance against the Almighty for turning a deaf ear to his desire to create a world purged of all evil, ruled by structure and order. Humanity would pay as well, one way or another. He wanted to continue his campaign, even if it led him to the deepest pits of the Underworld itself, and would never stop until every last drop of Turkish blood drenched the soil which he was meant to rule. He wanted to see his mission through to the very end.
He would renew that mission—his life’s ultimate purpose—with the blood of his brother.
Vlad Țepeș, as the prince came to be titled at a later point in history, had become fully consumed with exacting his revenge against the Turk-worshiping Radu. Using sharpened sticks he found in his cell, the insane warlord captured and impaled the dungeon rats in order to spread their blood across the floor like paint, arranging it to form symbols and patterns of a most unholy nature over a span of three days. Upon completing the Satanic array, the prince was contacted by a voice that identified itself only as “Orlok”. In exchange for his soul, Vlad Țepeș pleaded that his younger brother be ruthlessly mutilated by the lower powers, and that he be given the privilege of consuming his essence as payback for betraying Wallachia and allying himself with the Sultan swine he so loved and adored.
As a form of signature for this verbal contract, his neck was punctured by some invisible entity, whom Țepeș likely believed was Orlok himself. Almost as if he had been bitten.
Thus, the deed was done.
In the year 1475, Radu the Handsome had arrived in Visegrad to pay a visit to his deposed older brother when he chose to spend the night in Matthias Corvinus’ castle. The following morning, his body had been discovered by his Janissary bodyguards, grotesquely butchered and mangled beyond recognition. The killer was believed to have been a highly skilled group of assassins, as the bodyguards had failed to hear any commotion from within his chambers. Regardless, the method at which they murdered the puppet ruler was most sinister, almost as if a feral animal had been loosed on him before he had time to defend himself. To avoid drawing the attention of the Sultan, a letter was forged and shipped to Constantinople explaining that he had suddenly died of syphilis.
Vlad Țepeș awakened to the voices of dismay that echoed down into the dungeons, and shortly discovered that the same golden chalice he used to deter would-be thieves in Wallachia was now placed before him, filed to the edge with the blood of who he immediately guessed was Radu. The Impaler merely smiled, and drank from the cup until it was dry.
He was eventually released from captivity sometime in the following months by Stefan Bathory the Great, a relative of Vlad Țepeș and the Voivode of Moldavia, as the Ottoman threat had added more pressure to Wallachian and Hungarian territories. Determined to eradicate the Turks once and for all, the prince resumed his diabolical conquest as he led his diminutive army of 5,000 men through Turkish and Bulgarian land, leaving mountains of corpses in their wake and drenching the soil with Muslim blood.
In what may be the cruelest twist of irony of the 15th century, Vlad Țepeș third and final reign lasted little more than two months after his release from prison. Rumors surrounding his evil and twisted exploits during his campaign against the Ottomans were somehow leaked to the masses and eventually reached the ears of the Pope, who was shocked and mortified that his greatest military asset had degraded into little more than a heartless monster, a true demon. Convinced that Țepeș’ existence would threaten the safety of not only the Christian world, but all of humankind, he commissioned an extremely powerful Demon Hunter to slay the berserker tyrant once and for all:
Abraham Van Helsing.
Historical sources claim that Vlad Țepeș had fiercely resisted the Ottoman armies up until his death end of December, 1476, but this was merely a story fabricated by the Vatican to conceal the true purpose behind the battle that took place between the Impaler and Van Helsing. Their duel raged for hours until the break of dawn, where the Demon Hunter vanquished the blood-crazed warlord by impaling him through the stomach with a blessed stake, directly burning away at his innards as a consequence of Orlok’s unholy influence on Vlad’s body and soul. Moments before his life was extinguished by the Vatican’s lapdog, Țepeș taunted Van Helsing in the form of a challenge to the rest of humanity, speaking his final words as he watched the rays of the morning sun wash over his ruined kingdom:
“The hearts of men are rife with greed and darkness. So long as the smallest drop of evil exists in this wretched world, I will live for eternity. I am Drăcula—my reign will never cease, and all shall come to fear me.”
Thus the mortal life of Vlad III Drăcula came to a close, bringing an end to his seven-year rule over Wallachia and her people. History books are unable to correctly detail the Impaler’s total number of victims and estimate he took merely tens of thousands of lives, although several experts and a few fans of the tyrant’s legacy assume he killed well over hundreds of thousands of people throughout his career, and some are willing to go out of their way to exaggerate that his death toll spanned well into the millions. Regardless of however many people he killed, his chilling and bloody reign of cruelty and terror would undeniably haunt all of human history for centuries to come.
- Spoiler:
- His barbaric escapades against the Turks and the sheer numbers of people he viciously slaughtered in his efforts to eradicate them served to quickly consign the Impaler’s soul to the depths of Hell long before he renounced his faith in God, which only sealed the deal even further. If that hadn’t been enough, his desperate summoning of the demon Orlok in exchange for the opportunity to kill Radu and feast upon his blood hammered in the final nail of his proverbial coffin, resulting in his transformation into a perverted reflection of his mortal self; a man of noble lineage that possessed the heart of the blackest of demons.
Țepeș had become the embodiment of his very name: Drăcula.
The newly-awakened demon prince found himself standing within the Spirelands, a twisted mirror image of the Vatican he once served so piously. Though many of his earliest memories were cleansed during his rebirth into Hell, which was really dubbed “Inferis”, his resentment toward God and all He stood for remained intact, and this mockery of the holy citadel reminded him of this hatred. And it burned within him like the strongest and hottest of fires. But no longer did his anger overwhelm his body, nor did it cloud his better judgment. Just the opposite, actually—it strengthened his resolve. He had been reborn, reincarnated into something far stronger, far better than both the Vatican Church and the Ottoman Empire combined.
But simply knowing this wasn’t enough for the Impaler. He wanted to prove this fact for himself.
For nearly a full century, Drăcula stalked the ten spheres of Inferis and fed off the Soul Energy that permeated the unholy air, surprised to discover that its vitalizing powers reminded him of the taste of his little brother’s blood. But even the copious amounts of this strange energy weren’t enough to satisfy his endless thirst for more power. He truly had become obsessed with getting it, at whatever the cost.
It wouldn’t be long before Drăcula came to encounter the very creature that made him what he is now: Orlok, the progenitor of his kind, the Nosferatu. Driven entirely by instinct the moment eye contact was made, they lunged for each other and engaged in a vicious duel. Orlok hadn’t forgotten the contract that he made with the Impaler, and felt entitled to devour his soul for carrying out the terms of their arrangement. The prideful Impaler had other plans, and felt he owed the demon no such favor, deflecting and returning the creature’s supernatural attacks with his own martial prowess and cunning.
Though outclassed in terms of raw power, Drăcula was able to outsmart Orlok and trap him in a corner. For that brief moment, he allowed his legendary rage to take control of his body as he ripped apart the Nosferatu King limb from limb, liberally showering himself in the blood that sprayed from his corpse like a lawn sprinkler from Hell. It only took but a single taste of Orlok’s blood for the crazed demon prince to experience a dramatic spike in power. He had somehow assimilated the abilities of his fallen adversary, which then revealed to him a far deadlier power that he had exercised to acquire those abilities: by drinking the blood of his foes, he was able to acquire their skills for his own use.
Moments after barbarically mauling Orlok into meaty chunks, Drăcula suddenly found himself surrounded by hordes of grotesque demons that shared his slain adversary’s face and form. But they did not attack the Impaler. Instead, like a pack of wild animals, they recognized his authority and strength over their fallen lord and king, and recognized the victor as their new master. All of them lowered their heads, as if bowing to the undisputed Vampire Lord. Drăcula licked the blood from his fingernails with a dark smile, fully awakened to his new purpose, his eternal destiny.
Even in Hell, he would remain a king.
- Spoiler:
- Centuries of perpetual feeding and plotting later, and it seemed as though the good Count was finally ready to move up the ladder in the realm of Demons. And from what he could gather, he was attracting quite a bit of attention to himself—enough to grab the eyes of the rulers of Inferis themselves, the Archdemons, whom evidently wished to judge his swelling reputation for themselves. The first to beckon the Lord of Vampires was the Queen of Desire, Asmodeus, having extended a personal invitation to the great Viral Stadium to act as a spectator and a guest of honor for one of her savage, gladiatorial football games. Joining the two of them would be none other than the Master of Hell himself, the Fallen Angel on wings of sheer black—Lucifer.
However, Drăcula quickly felt himself to be a fish out of water, exposed to the mighty presences of those far greater and stronger than himself. Irritated with his own weakness, he attempted to leave in haste, but was intercepted by the personifications of both Pride and Lust before, after a bit of a "chewing out" by Satan, as it were, being motivated to return back to the Stadium—but not before the vampire demanded to partake in a gauntlet, where he could prove his strength to the two in a means to show that he, too, could stand above the weak. The Devil himself would test that theory and challenged him to a duel, one the Count accepted without hesitation. Though Lucifer restrained himself to fight on equal footing, Drăcula gave him no quarter, and was able to prevail as the Devil had thrown in the towel—just another part of his elaborate master plan.
What happened next? Only Vlad, and the Devil, truly knows.
The Count's reputation had spread to the Regal Necropolis, even, as the Blood Goddess, Mammon, picked up his presence during a blood shower and, believing him to be ignorant of her identity, attempted to fool him into thinking she was a lesser being; it took a bit of deducing, but the vampire was able to see through her lies, a feat that seemingly impressed the Archdemon enough to extend an offer to hunt at her side. Truly, it was an offer that Drăcula couldn't refuse. Unlike the Wolfmother, whom could freely massacre scores of Demons without budging a finger, the Count stalked and hunted out of the necessity to sate his unholy thirst for blood. He eventually accomplished this with the death of an unwitting Succubus, and while he had hoped for a challenge from the she-demon, his urges were sated nevertheless. After a short exchange of words, the Count was quick to bid farewell to the Blood Goddess and depart back to the Spirelands.
Upon his return, however, Lord Drăcula immediately picked up the scent of a Demon that had formerly fought under Ottoman flags, rekindling the bottomless hatred that festered in his heart for five centuries. For three days, he and his Nosferatu minions scoured the entirety of the Spirelands for the wretch before he came to encounter an oddly-dressed she-demon who went by the moniker "Eris", whom was also looking for the same adversary. As irony would have it, the Demon, a Poacher with two glaives and a broken state of mind, was searching for them the entire time, and the three of them were quick to engage one another in mortal combat, with the shapeshifting Eris and the bloodthirsty Drăcula working as a team to take down a common enemy.
*********
FACTION:
Egomaniacal, and will only ally himself with someone when the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.
SKILLS:
+ [ Lord of Impalement ] Drăcula has perfected all known forms of polearm-based combat, and is especially lethal when wielding a spear in his hands.
+ [ Military Tactics ] He is familiar with medieval warfare and military tactics, and masterfully employs every known strategy in the book to gain an advantage, from scorched earth to guerrilla gambits, to biological and even psychological warfare. Much like any great commander, Drăcula may improvise and adapt to a situation on the fly.
+ [ Physical Superiority ] His vampire body possesses strength and speed far greater than even fully conditioned human beings, and his movements flow into one another with inhuman grace. Nearly four centuries of continuously polishing these abilities gives Drăcula an edge against some varieties of lesser demons. During periods where his sensitivity to blood is heightened, Drăcula's physical prowess increases in proportion to the length he goes without consuming. The hungrier he is, the stronger, faster, and tougher he becomes.
+ [ Enhanced Resistance ] Drăcula is physically tougher and more durable than the average demon due to the military training he received in life, and his vampiric attributes further augment this resilience to damage to superhuman levels. Even bullets pose little threat to the Impaler, and won't be enough to slow down his approach.
+ [ Heightened Senses ] His senses of sight, hearing, and smell rival those of a predator’s, improving his superiority over humans even more. It is quite possible that Drăcula’s senses received a natural boost upon becoming a vampire, which were then further refined through centuries of experience.
+ [ Night Vision ] Drăcula's eyes are able to see in complete darkness with full clarity of perception.
+ [ Misogynist ] He is unfeeling around females or demons that identify themselves in the feminine, given the notoriety he gained in life for his unusually remorseless treatment of women, specifically mothers. As such, womanly charm and persuasion, natural or otherwise, is rendered useless against him.
+ [ Vampire King ] Drăcula holds formidable influence over the Nosferatu after devouring Count Orlok’s soul and adopting the prestigious title of Vampire King. He can summon several of these demons to his side on command, and can utilize them as either foot soldiers or scouts. The Count has uncovered the limits of his ability to call Nosferatu to his side; the closer he is in proximity to the Regal Necropolis, the greater his numbers will be. At the very maximum, he may beckon twenty vampires, and two at minimum.
+ [ Sunlight Immunity ] Laughing in the face of modern vampire myths, direct sunlight will not outright kill or bring harm to Drăcula. He doesn't sparkle, either. Deal with it.
WEAKNESSES:
– [ Blood Craving ] Drăcula suffers an irrepressible thirst for blood, much like a classic vampire. He must sate this craving at least once every three days, regardless of who or what he obtains it from, or else his urge to feed will gradually grow stronger until it, consequently, becomes practically impossible for him to quell.
His growing vampiric instincts have rendered the Count sensitive to the smell and sight of blood, which make resisting his urges a touch more difficult when he approaches his three-day threshold. He may temporarily suppress this sensitivity by consuming blood normally.
– [ Aversion to Silver ] A sure-fire method to counter his impressive list of resistances is to utilize an object, weapon, or ammunition crafted from argentum, more popularly known as silver. While injuries created by silver items will not slay Drăcula instantly, they will take substantially longer to heal over time. He may speed up the recovery process ever-so-slightly by resting for a full day. He is still able to passively touch objects made of silver, though. As Drăcula has grown stronger in recent days, his resistance to silver has slightly improved itself as well. Wounds inflicted by silvered objects will now take eighteen hours to recover from instead of a full twenty-four hours.
– [ Aversion to Cypress ] A more effective material that can be used to offset his resistances is the petrified wood of a cypress tree, as it was the same substance that constituted the stake that ended his mortal life on Earth. Due to this, any wound created by objects or weapons made of petrified cypress will take even longer to recover from than silver-made wounds, forcing Drăcula to rest up to a minimum of three days to fully heal. However, the wood must be petrified, otherwise it will have less of an effect on him. Like silver, he can passively touch objects made of petrified cypress.
– [ Aversion to Faith ] Symbols of religious significance—such as crucifixes, Bibles, and holy water—can be anathema to the him, but the conditions to exploit this weakness are specific and numerous. First: the symbol in question must be affiliated with the religion Drăcula once practiced in life—in this case, anything associated with Christianity will work; objects from other religions, including Judaism, will never work against him. Secondly: the object’s wielder must be a human; anything less than a human (redundant as this may sound), and they hold no influence over him. Lastly, and most importantly: the holder must display true belief in the artifact’s significance for it to have any effect against Drăcula; otherwise, it will do nothing to keep him away. Drăcula can bypass this weakness altogether if he is able to compromise the believer’s faith and make it falter, even for a brief moment.
– [ Decapitation ] Like a vast number of other demons, Drăcula is not immune to the consequences of having his head lopped off unceremoniously. He’s still working to discover a means to circumvent this.
– [ Impalement ] His favorite form of execution is—literally and ironically—the exact method in which Drăcula must be disposed of in order to be killed off for real. Specifically, he must be stabbed through the heart with an item created from silver or petrified cypress for his death to be permanent, otherwise he will be quick to retaliate against his attacker with extreme prejudice.
– [ Egomania ] Arrogance guides his every action, and resonates from him like the pungent stink of garlic. This leads him to frequently underestimate the strength of his opponents, in spite of the fact that he is well capable of adapting to the situation as needed.
– [ Intolerance to Failure ] Drăcula sees failure in any form as the ultimate sign of weakness, and will not put up with its existence. Ever. Should his carefully laid plans be thwarted or even backfire, his full wrath will come to a head. His servants and subordinates are typically the first to get exposed to his fabled anger issues, seeing as they are directly responsible for carrying out his whims and feels it rests on their shoulders to ensure his image remains protected.
– [ Moral Apathy ] He no longer holds the capacity to express positive emotions or feel warmth, having harbored a grudge against God and all of mankind for over five centuries. Underneath his hardened, violent shell lies a bitter and resentful man who was betrayed even by the ideals that fueled his ambitions. Only his hunger for more power keeps him sane enough to continue living.
COLOURS:
Drăcula is a polyglot, having learned a broad variety of languages during his life on Earth. He is able to speak Infernal (rubyred), English (dimgray), Romanian (cobaltblue), Hungarian (bottlegreen), Old Slavic (desert), Latin (deepchampagne), German (vegasgold), and Turkish (byzantium).
TRIVIA:
• Some of his most memorable executions were carried out against women, especially mothers or soon-to-be-mothers. Oddly enough, that doesn’t stop teenaged girls from throwing themselves in his direction.
• When Bram Stoker was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he summoned Drăcula hoping that tales of his exploits would give him inspiration for his next novel. After its publishing, Stoker’s blood was promptly drained because the book didn’t have enough impalings.
• The man that slays his literary counterpart, Abraham Van Helsing, takes his name after the Demon Hunter that killed Drăcula while he was alive. Stoker was forced to take part in equivalent exchange for the right to use his name—the price was his soul, as a man’s identity is just as valuable.
• Openly enjoys his recent depictions in the Castlevania games, and subsequently came to admire Ayami Kojima’s artwork.
• Had nothing to do with the creation of Hellsing, but thought it was a humorous and noble attempt at recreating his life story, which is the reason Kohta Hirano is still alive.
• There are strong implications that he might be homosexual. Whether or not this is true is still up for debate, as he doesn’t confirm any rumors about his gender preferences, but neither does he doesn’t deny them.
• Has theatrical tastes in music, and enjoys reading classic literature.
• Developed a hobby for tasting expensive red wines, and owns a bottle collection that’s still growing.
• Directly responsible for the creation of the Jack the Ripper legend. He took a four-year sabbatical in Whitechapel, and just about every prostitute he came across wanted the “D” in their life. Well, look what happened.
• Currently has plans to have a massive demon castle constructed for him.
*********
USER DETAILS
ALIAS:
Vlad, but some others know me as Marcus. I like Squeaky, too! 8D
OTHER CHARACTERS:
Nope, not yet!
ROLEPLAY HISTORY:
A little over four years. I don’t have a whole lot of experience, admittedly.
FACECLAIM:
- Code:
[b]FATE/APOCRYPHA[/b] :: [b]LANCER OF BLACK[/b]
- Code:
[b]HELLSING ULTIMATE[/b] :: [b]ALUCARD (LEVEL ZERO)[/b]
CUSTOM RANK:
THE LORD OF IMPALEMENT
Last edited by Vlad III Țepeș on Tue Jul 16, 2013 6:10 am; edited 5 times in total
Vlad III Țepeș- SANGUINUS TYRANNUM
(Beastmaster) - Posts : 69
Join date : 2013-05-02
Location : Anywhere I must be.
Case File
Power Level: 2
Character Faction: Hell Princes
Player: Marcus
Re: Vlad III Țepeș
by Belial Tue May 07, 2013 1:09 pm
Throw in another weakness to even them out, and also note that for your strength, Spellbinding Gaze, at least take into account that not all humans should be mesmerized, and it should matter on awareness no? Though there is no issue if it is against NPCs, whereas against PCs, it should derive from their lack of understanding, if they were say not aware of the masquerade or demons, and have a lack of resistance to infernal influences.
Still, this is a well written application, get those issue out of the way and you are en route to an approval.
Still, this is a well written application, get those issue out of the way and you are en route to an approval.
Belial- EMPEROR YOLO
(Admin) - Posts : 52
Join date : 2013-04-18
Case File
Power Level: X
Character Faction: Hell Prince
Player: DOUG
Re: Vlad III Țepeș
by Vlad III Țepeș Tue May 07, 2013 1:49 pm
Got rid of Spellbinding Gaze altogether.
Vlad III Țepeș- SANGUINUS TYRANNUM
(Beastmaster) - Posts : 69
Join date : 2013-05-02
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Power Level: 2
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Player: Marcus
Belial- EMPEROR YOLO
(Admin) - Posts : 52
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Lazarus Carter- RISING CRESCENDO
(Founder) - Posts : 979
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Age : 28
Location : Washington D.C. or London
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Vlad III Țepeș- SANGUINUS TYRANNUM
(Beastmaster) - Posts : 69
Join date : 2013-05-02
Location : Anywhere I must be.
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Alice the Chopper- SIDESHOW HORROR
(Admin) - Posts : 258
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Re: Vlad III Țepeș
by Vlad III Țepeș Tue Jul 16, 2013 6:11 am
Changed Vlad's Demon Form appearance and, by extension, faceclaim. Gonna make the appropriate avatar/signature edits as I go along.
Vlad III Țepeș- SANGUINUS TYRANNUM
(Beastmaster) - Posts : 69
Join date : 2013-05-02
Location : Anywhere I must be.
Case File
Power Level: 2
Character Faction: Hell Princes
Player: Marcus
Alice the Chopper- SIDESHOW HORROR
(Admin) - Posts : 258
Join date : 2013-04-29
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