The quiet village of Planaterra sees little in the way of visitors. The handful of people who live there (fewer than you’d think would be able to support a village, but hey) live their lives without much concern for the wider world.
Until one day a stranger comes.
He is tall and aloof, dressed in a smart suit and a deep, black cape. It seems a little weird, but perhaps those are the fashions out in the world these days, who can say? He stays only for a single day, arriving at dawn just before sunrise and spending the day entirely at the inn. It arouses some curiosity, after all very few people come to Planaterra, but when dusk comes he departs.
That might have been the end of the story, except for the fact the village then receives another visitor at dusk. She wears a heavy rucksack, and a belt jostling with flasks of water and wooden shards carved to sharp points; a knife glints from a ragged holster.
She introduces herself as Jane, and announces that she is a vampire hunter. The visitor who’d passed through not long ago was one a fearsome species of undead, predators that survived by drinking the blood of the living and lurking in the shadows. They are also known to turn others into their foul kind, draining them of their blood before feeding them tainted, vampiric blood in turn.
If the vampire passed through Planaterra, there is a good chance it has turned one of your fair village into a creature of the night. Newborn vampires are different, weaker, but in recompense they will not suffer more than a mild itching even under the midday Sun. In seven days time however they will come into their full power, and though daylight might kill them there would be little hope of the village, small as it is, surviving.
The newborn vampire, however, is not defenceless. Though it may not have much more physical strength than an ordinary human, it is beginning to gain the skills a mature vampire might wield with impunity. In the nighttime hours, when it is strongest, it can hypnotise people or even turn them into more vampires.
They have three weaknesses, and three alone. One, they are still weak and so will only have limited access to their skills. Two, certain tests can be performed to identify even a freshly turned vampire though, complex as they are, these may only be performed once per day. And three, they can still be killed by the same means as any other vampire, and killed more easily while it is weaker. Beheading, fire, and a wooden stake through the heart.
But in seven days, Jane warns, the village will have no hope. Even a seasoned vampire hunter only hunts mature vampires during the day, and even then only when a trap is prepared. Anything else would be foolhardy. In seven days, if the vampiric infection is not defeated, all will die.
Rules
Like werewolf, the game takes place in day/night cycles. Our tale begins at dusk. There are no special roles, beyond the game beginning with a single vampire. There is no psychic, nor any similar abilities, the villagers have nothing but their wits and what weapons they can improvise. A ghost council might form, but they will have no more knowledge than regular players. Major changes underlined.
During the day, all players cast their votes for who to kill, under the assumption that the target is the vampire. They win if all vampires are wiped out. Players cast their votes in square brackets, [I vote to…] with some suitable verb and the name of the person they suspect. Vampires too can cast a vote, believed to be ordinary humans. Whoever has the most votes for them is killed. If there is a tie between two players, both parties are killed. Between three or more, no one is killed.
During the night, players vote for the vampire hunter (the narrator, yours truly) to test another player’s humanity. If there is a tie, the vampire hunter chooses at random. Whoever wins the vote will be subjected to tests to locate a vampire, and the nature of the person scanned will be revealed to the whole village.
The vampire also acts during the night. They have a choice of three actions; the vampire might choose to feed, and kill a villager of their choice. They might choose to mesmerise a villager, making it so none of that villager’s votes will count, something the villager will not be aware of, but they will still be alive to serve as another suspect for the villagers. Or finally, they might choose to turn a villager and transform a villager of their choice into another vampire, at any stage of the game. If a mesmerised villager is turned, they regain the ability to vote.
Vampires win when there are not enough villagers to gain a voting majority against them. For example, there are two vampires and five villagers, but three are hypnotised. Vampires also win should any one survive seven days from when it was turned.
Only the original vampire is capable of turning humans, as it was sired from a mature vampire as opposed to a newborn, and it may do so only once. Out of a desire for subtlety, even when there is more than one vampire only one action may be performed each night.
Dead players may post only during the night. They have no vote.
A world where the living may be no help and have no vote, where any night the villagers’ champion might succumb to evil, where even you might find your allegiance shifting overnight… That is the world you find yourself in.
Good luck. For if you fail in aiding the vampire hunter in seeking out the evil that has come to Planaterra, who knows what harm it will do next?
Night has just fallen.
Residents of Planaterra
Boydster - human. burn baby burn
Crouton - the original vampire
SCG - hypnotised
Bom Tishop
Jura
Stash
NSS
Junker - hypnotised
Colonel Gaydafi - vampire, steaked