Did Dracula ever complain about vampirism? He didn’t – and neither will I, after merrily guzzling my way through The Blood of Dawnwalker. In last week’s RPG Club, I kicked off our quest with an impromptu training montage, spending our first days in Vale Sangora learning to fight as a vampire on the game’s hardest difficulty.

Now, it’s time to sink our fangs into the main quest – and a few misadventures. When we last spoke, I was preparing to hike into the mountains with Coen’s friend (and, dare I say, love interest?) Anca, chasing a lead on the Font of Life. With three weeks left before the deadline to save Coen’s family, I’m keen to make a real dent in vampire sire Brencis’ plans – and become the gnarly bloodsucker he dreams of being.

Quest Log

Thirsty work

As part of this month’s RPG Club rules, I have to take every opportunity to make Coen a stronger vampire. In week one, that meant fatally draining a bunch of Brencis’ soldiers – no non-lethal lunches for me – and raising my vampiric corruption to unlock higher-tier perks. But as we scour the mountains, untangling cryptic riddles to locate buried ruins, my carnal commitment is tested.

It takes a full in-game day to find the Font of Life. The ruins are infested by draugr-like undead and appear to be a sacrificial chamber for Vale Sangora’s ancient ancestors, depictions of blood rituals painted on the walls. The process promises to grant the strength of Achilles, which poses a problem: Anca wants to use the Font to heal the glyphs carved into her body, which grant magic at the cost of something from the other side getting a foothold in her mind and spirit. Coen, on the other hand, wants to be as strong as possible to face Brencis – but wouldn’t you know it, there’s only enough in the Font for one.

As much as I want to give Anca the drink, it can’t be. The rules of RPG Club explicitly say to “take every opportunity to make Coen a stronger vampire,” and sipping an ancient brew that promises power falls firmly under that remit. Bottoms up!

Good news first: Anca accepts my choice like a champ, agreeing that Coen’s plight is the more pressing of the two. The bad news is that the reward, while powerful, isn’t exactly fitting for a creature of the night. It’s a unique perk that enables passive health regeneration… during the day, which is as useful as suncream on Dracula. Still, power is power, and with my skill points spent mostly in the vampire tree, the Font should help make fighting in daylight more forgiving.

Leaving the ruins at night, I take the opportunity to further weaken Brencis’ court by striking at their blood-tithing operation. But my last week of vampire vigilantism hasn’t gone unnoticed.

I shadow-step into an outpost ready for a challenge, but behind its wooden palisade, there are only a handful of soldiers still breathing. A message left for Coen directs him to more crucified corpses in a nearby village, where a gruesome invitation is pinned to one of the crosses. Ambrus, the youngest vampire in Brencis’ court, has grown tired of my attacks and challenges me to a duel at night, promising to kill more civilians for as long as the challenge is unanswered.

Before I can respond to Ambrus’ summons, his reluctant servant Lulian stops me. Ambrus drinks blood before a battle, he reveals, and wouldn’t it be a hoot to poison his supper? The ingredients are in a nearby swamp, and so is Lulian’s co-conspirator herbalist – or what’s left of her, having run into an unseen monster. Not connecting the dots, I help gather the ingredients but decline to wait with the scheming servant until dawn in favor of running off for some last-minute preparation.

I wait as close to dawn as possible before meeting at Ambrus’ appointed location and ringing a bell to accept his summons, but when the vampire’s entourage arrives, Lulian is nowhere to be seen. Then it hits me: we never did find that swamp monster, did we?

Instead of fighting Ambrus at his lowest, he’s hydrated (on another servant’s blood) and thriving.

He’s quick, weaving shadow-steps and sword thrusts together at a speed that puts Coen to shame. I see a bit of myself in Ambrus’ vampiric shithousery – so this is what it’s like to fight a teleporting bloodsucker – but not for long. Playing on Duelist difficulty demands needlepoint precision when fighting even the lowliest foes, and the same principle – fight perfectly – works against bosses. Plus, by this point I’ve heavily invested in the vampiric skill tree. Ambrus’ flashy sword techniques aren’t enough for my souped-up claws, and after several minutes of trading lightning-fast parries, the first of Brencis’ spawn falls.

With Ambrus bested, I choose to drink his blood, rightly seeing it as a way to further Coen’s own vampirism. There’s just one catch: when he dies, I’m wracked by visions of Ambrus in another realm, where he begs Coen to invite him in – lest the same mysterious entity that Anca fears consumes his soul. I agree on a whim, and when Coen snaps out of his strange blood trance, Ambrus is a permanent (and chatty) passenger in his mind. I’m left with a nagging concern – for all the powers I’m getting from vampirism, is it going to cost me something?

Two fangs are better than one

Having whipped through several days in the blink of an eye, my next stop is the capital city of Svartrau. Ambrus proves surprisingly helpful, tipping me off to a rogue vampire set against Brencis in the city. After exploring last week’s corrupted convent, I also want to dig around beneath Svartrau’s cathedral to find the sword of Saint Mihai – supposedly a powerful weapon against the undead.

Finding my fellow vampire proves easy. A trail of blood and debris leads me to a safehouse, where Lacra – another of Brencis’ spawn – is interrogating one of Brencis’ lumbering uriashi soldiers. Stepping in to play good cop, I convince the uriashi to tell us where to find his village, where Lacra believes we’ll be able to find Brencis’ own sire. I agree to meet her in the mountains at night, and spend the rest of the day investigating Saint Mihai; questioning cathedral-goers to find the hidden catacombs below.

The search is fruitful, leading me right up to Mihai’s tomb. There’s just one catch: Mihai is a Dawnwalker like Coen, still alive (in the loosest sense of the word) and very pissed. After our clash with Ambrus, Mihai proves simple enough to beat. In his dying breath he points me in the direction of his shattered sword and warns me of the same presence that Ambrus and Anca fear. It’s probably nothing!

It’s nightfall when I leave the musty tomb, so I transform into a dog (I! Love! Vampirism!) and run full-pelt to meet Lacra.

It takes all night, but we find the uriashi village – doing everything in my power to keep short-tempered Lacra from killing them – and as dawn breaks, I agree to head back into the city to find the village elder’s wayward daughter, Ocha. She’s made quite the life for herself with humans – hearing her use the word “besties” gives me whiplash” – and I spend most of the day digging Ocha out of trouble with Svartrau’s criminal underbelly.

It doesn’t quite go to plan as I ultimately kill a crime boss that Ocha wanted to deal with non-lethally, and although we part happily, she decides to adventure instead of going home.

Though I return to her mother empty-handed, she still points me in the direction of Isbrand. Joining Lacra to search a nearby cave where Brencis has imprisoned his sire, we find the vampire chained up; kobolds treating his regenerating flesh as an endless buffet. He’s technically our Vampire Granddad, so after clearing the way of Kobolds, we haul him to nearby ruins where Lanca gets to work healing him. There’s not much more I can do here, so I leave Lancra with pop-pop and head back to the city.

Prodigal son

Ambrus isn’t the only person to notice Coen’s chaos. My reputation with Brencis is now ‘notorious’, which means the rebels I met last week are now open to working with me. It’s not glamorous work: while Coen is a bloodsucking killing machine, the resistance is painfully mortal, and my first task is to find out what happened to a slaughtered unit.

In the slums of Svartrau, largely abandoned after being devastated by the Black Plague, I get my answer: a human baked in clay; now a golem-esque monstrosity of grafted flesh and blades. Even after taking down Ambrus and Mihai, I don’t fancy my chances if these things become commonplace around Vale Sangora, and make investigating their source my priority.

Our search takes us once more below Svartrau, which is unfortunately where we’ll leave this week’s journey. I set my controller down with a heavy heart – this week went by far quicker than the last, and The Blood of Dawnwalker’s story really has its hooks in me. Next week, I plan to get to the source of Svartrau’s clay-monsters, help the Manumit rebels, and hopefully take down at least one more of Brencis’ court.

Frankly, I can’t afford not to: we’re entering the penultimate week, and Brencis still feels untouchable. There’s also the small matter of my spiritual corruption to address – but what’s an otherworldly entity amongst fanged friends? Catch you next week!

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