Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Finder’s Archives.
In this column, we take some of the lands from Magic: The Gathering and turn them into something you can use for your fantasy games.
The stats given in each entry assumes that you’re using Pathfinder 2 for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week we delve into the depths of morbidity at the blood crypt.
Blood Crypt
The Blood Crypt was created 20 years ago, by a newly turned vampire – one who was trying to curb his bloodlust, but knowing that he was fighting a losing battle unless something drastic happened. To that end, he hired a number of craftsmen to dig deep into the earth, to where the temperature was constant and had several artificers fill it with various pumps, channels, and tubes – all designed to preserve blood for at as long as possible, while extracting it as efficiently as possible.
Lay of the Land
The Blood Crypts look like a gothic torture hall, because, in many ways, they are just that. Any creature interred into one of the many columns is slowly but efficiently drained of all bodily fluids (not just blood, but cerebral fluids as well), which are then deposited in specially enchanted containers, where the fluid is kept as fresh as the moment it was tapped. At any given moment, more than 20 different creatures of all sizes and shapes can be interred within the columns, though usually it is limited to 2 or 3.
Navigating the Blood Crypt is easy, though it stretches on for over a square mile, all the hoses and channels leading to the “decanting” room. The decanting room has a series of shelves where the jars of body fluids are kept, drip-fed directly from the hoses. The decanting room is also lavishly furnished with sofas, tables, and chairs, and has hosted many clandestine meetings between predatory creatures.
Dangers
The creator and original engineer of the Blood Crypt is a vampire (PF2, PF1, and 5e) named Lord Dragos Marrowdawn. Unlike most vampires, he has managed to not turn to evil (he’s Lawful Neutral), but he knows he is constantly balancing his appetites against the beast within. To that end, he only allows volunteers or criminals to be interred within his crypt (on occasion, he’s had to “liberate” criminals to fill his larder – but usually these are criminals sentenced to death already). He does not have any scruples about who else visits the Blood Crypts, however, and he has played host to other vampires, undead, mind flayers, and even a beholder– though he readily admits that the beholder will not be invited back as he found its manners lacking. Anyone who enters is nominally under Dragos’ protection, but even so, it is best to come in force and fully prepared, as violence has been known to erupt in the Blood Crypt. This is also the only time that Dragos normally loses his self-composure, and truly unleashes the beast within.
Kim Frandsen
Latest posts by Kim Frandsen (see all)
- Finder’s Archive – Crypt of the Eternals - June 2, 2023
