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Welcome to The Hunt for Dracula

13:21, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

The Hunt for Dracula

NOTE: This adventure is loosely based on the novel by Bram Stoker and the D&D campaign The Curse of Strahd published by Wizards of the Coast.

In 1893 an Eastern European nobleman traveled from his ancestral home in the Carpathian Mountains determined to make a better life for himself in London, capital city of the British Empire. An immortal undead vampire, Count Dracula hoped to find an unlimited supply of life's blood in the great city that he could live on forever in a realm so large and so busy that no one would notice his nightly deprivations. Had he stuck to his original plan and remained hidden he would certainly have succeeded. Unfortunately he encountered a woman who seemed to him to be the very reincarnation of his his lost love. In attempting to bind her to his himself he aroused the suspicions of the occultist, Professor Van Helsing.

Wise to the tactics and supernatural abilities of the vampire, Van Helsing and others in Mina Harker's circle managed to repulse Dracula's attacks and drive him out of London. Before he fled, however, Count Dracula drank three times of Mina Harker's blood and forced her to drink his own blood in return. She is bound to him and will in time become a vampire herself unless her companions can catch and destroy Dracula.

Van Helsing believes there are certain objects and rituals tied to Dracula's homeland than can be used to unmake him as a vampire and thereby free Mina Harker from her fate. Even now, Van Helsing proposes that he and her friends travel swiftly in pursuit of the vampire and track him down in his ancestral lands, a tiny kingdom called Barovia, high in the Carpathian Mountains.

Count Dracula is too powerful to attack directly, even if his location were known precisely, which it is not. But Van Helsing believes that certain items exist in Barovia that can reveal a way to overcome the vampire's strength and eventually to completely neutralize his powers.

His first goal is to find the Codex of Apollonius -- an ancient hand written manuscript of the Greek Bible in which Van Helsing believes the history of the Dracula line is recorded.

This game re-casts Van Helsing's swift pursuit of Dracula to his home castle as a more meandering quest across the shadowy land of Barovia, as detailed so colorfully in the D&D campaign, The Curse of Strahd. The Players will take on the roles of Mina Harker and her companions, including the sage, Professor Van Helsing. These are human characters with skills and resources and even some small magics and inhuman abilities.

I will be using a D20 rule system based on D20 Past incorporating the Sanity rules from D20 Call of Cthulhu. I expect the first part of play to be a detailed discussion of each character to determine skills and level along with magical abilities and resources. The Character list is restricted to these roles:




Technically Renfield is already dead at this point in the original narrative, but I will entertain an application to take on this very complex character if you wish to submit a write up that would justify the others taking the risk of bringing him along. This is a high barrier.

I am not looking for a character sheet at this point. I want you to tell me which character you want to play and at least a couple of paragraphs about how you would play that character. This is not a first come, first served call for players. I'm hoping to find a team that likes to write and wants to tell a story while exploring the dark lands at the edge of the mists.