And another thing...

[IamLEAM1983]

This one's been kicking around in the back of my head since I started working on a more cohesive document on the vampire races - and that's been a while ago. I'm still tweaking the info as I go along, fixing imbalances as I find them. Anyway.

One of the new races I designed are called the Draugr. They're based on certain Slavic ghost tales and, somewhat partially, on the way Skyrim's handled the concept.

Ollie Gunnarson (possible placeholder name) is the head of Wyvern's Operations division for the Scandinavian countries. He was born in Sweden as a Viking but owing to the peculiar role and purpose of the Draugr in the Hopeverse's version of Sweden, he was more or less drafted into vampirism for his aptitudes as a warrior and a strategist - and as a man of the people.

Like all other Draugr, he's not so much photosensitive as he enters rigor mortis and essentially freezes up if he's exposed to sunlight. The Draugr are probably the most recognizably "dead" of all classically undead vampires, since he's basically a dessicated zombie with fangs that's been shriveled up by near-constant exposure to extreme cold. The difference is the Draugr don't see that as a curse - they see it as a kind of enhanced civil service. You're leaving your life and your loved ones behind to protect your own kinsmen's interests, which typically explains why the turning process requires the "applicant" to die by the sword after being bitten. This means you "apply" to be a Draugr virtually any time you want, and leave the vamps free access to your corpse once you do bite the bucket. There's a few of them that are the result of people dying of old age after a lifetime's worth of agrarian stuff - as Vikings weren't just manlier pirates, after all - but the prominent figures were and are typically warriors by trade.

So Ollie eventually bites the bullet, and seeing how the Draugr used to be pretty tight with the Black Dragons, it doesn't take him long to become involved with the rare dragon that falls more in line with Aldergard's preoccupations than the more classically greedy types. The centuries pass, he does some Awesome Viking Zombie stuff, and eventually makes it pretty clear he's got a head on top of decent dried-out sword arms.

Aldergard founds Wyvern and pretty soon, he reaches out to his old buddy and puts him in charge of the Stockholm-based arm of the company's Operations division. Now the guy is basically the friendliest Norse zombie out there, he probably sounds a bit like Max Von Sydow, and whenever he's not doing usual business-related stuff, he's either lying on his old funeral bier waiting for the sun to go down or being a generally more down-to-Earth version of Aldy's barbarian self. He's been around since way before the Norwegian Harald Bluetooth, and he packs more practical martial knowledge than Aldergard.

Kuhn's a "double-bladed axe or nothing" type. Gunnarson's more partial to double-handed swords - but he wouldn't be out of his loop if you stuck a rifle or a grenade launcher.

He's also possibly the only zombie-esque vampire "alive" who manages to dial down the "creepy moving dead body" effect while wearing a suit.

[TennyoCeres84]

Sounds like he could be interesting. :)