Dracula is perhaps the most prominent figure in all of history.
He lead the Sea Peoples on their campaigns in Egypt.
He cultivated foxtail millet in Jiahu, right near the Yellow River.
He made tender love to Oreopitheci in the hills of the Mediterranean.
Dracula was around before humans became human. And yet he still wanders the Earth, unable to die as no afterlife is willing to take him. Over twelve million years spent wandering has left him completely broken; neurons fried like cassette tape that's been recorded over and over until it's just incomprehensible noise.
The Scenario
Currently: Dracula is out on another one of his usual benders.
Whenever this happens, it's basically an open invitation for the foolhardy to climb in through a castle window and raid the place. Maybe steal some stuff, post about it on social media, whatever.
Just make sure you aren't still hanging around by the time he gets back...
Castle Dracula
Dracula has owned literally thousands of castles over his endless life. This "Castle Dracula" is just the latest in a long line of Castles Dracula.
Built in sunny LA by the local chamber of commerce as a PR move (or potentially to avoid being killed by Dracula) at the turn of the millennium, this Castle Dracula is more or less the modern McMansion version of what you might think of as Dracula's castle.
Whatever sort of building or architectural things you can think of from the year ~2004 or earlier, Castle Dracula has like ten of them stuffed in there somewhere. Home theatres, oubliettes, bagua mirrors, CD libraries, échauguettes, nuclear war bunkers, one of those giant chess boards where you can use people as pieces, whatever pointless crap you can think of Dracula probably has a room for it exclusively.
The Denizens
Every single person you, the reader, have ever disliked or disapproved of is here! How serendipitous. They all have come here at one point or another in order to play sycophant to Dracula, along with all of the usual pimps and politicians you'd expect.
Whatever their motivation, they mill about through the halls of the castle like it's the mandatory birthday party for a coworker you don't particularly know. Each engages in chit chat as they carefully step around the mess accumulating in the halls.
1d12 Messes Accumulating in the Halls
- A corpse, dragged behind a truck until barely recognisable
- A meat smoker, currently jammed open with a half-eaten human body
- The silhouette of a person burnt into the wall, as if disintegrated
- An officer, their neck smashed in as if stomped on with both feet
- A big pot of gumbo, with human bones floating in it
- An open jar of Biscoff, thrown against the wall in rage
- A bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch, thrown against the wall in rage
- An ice cream cake, which was carefully left on a side table, and has since melted
- Four sets of designer jeans, caked in faeces, balled up and placed under a rug
- A pile of broken Hennessy bottles and empty Percocet blister packs
- A mattress, covered in stains
- A thrown away Grubhub order
- a partially eaten tin of pearl salmon roe, which has been used as an ashtray
- Applebee's mozzarella sticks, with the cheese sucked out
- a mostly full package of Newports
- a chopped cheese which smells like its been fished out of a dirty toilet
- a calzone, leaking glowing green slime
- an intact Filet-o-Fish and a half-empty bottle of red wine
Rooms of Note
The Vault
Dracula's entire horde is worth more than the entire world economy, many times over. Even some of the more minor items are essentially priceless historical artefacts. Despite this, they are not guarded whatsoever.
There are three reasons for this:
- The feuds and suffering surrounding most pieces are so potent that most items are literally cursed. (Dracula, as ancient and laden with curses as he is, just doesn't care. He's already suffering an untold number of curses and diseases already.)
- A single truckload making its way out would destabilise the world economy. So, most governments have agreed to quietly take out anyone trying that sort of thing.
- It's Dracula's stuff dude. When he finds out, he will kill you.
1d12 of the First Things You Might See in Dracula's Vault
- Diamonds, which come from the most horrific situations possible
- A watch, so complex it's worth the GDP of Yemen
- Yellow rubies, glistenin' like piss
- The real Magna Carta
- The real Eye of Horus
- A blueprint of the catacombs where Alfred Loewenstein is really buried
- One of Mansa Musa's rings; so heavy, you can't lift your hand
- The last remaining rock from Nibiru
- One of the Seven trumpets, the fourth one
- The skull of a particularly large Australopithecus
- A statuette from Harappa
- The real Elephant's Foot, not the fake one that's there now
The Lab
Dracula has always relied on positively heroic doses of narcotics to cope with the endless eons, however all of that got way worse back in the 1800s with the discovery of morphine. Since then, he's more or less lived from bender-to-bender while constantly consuming enough random bullshit to overdose a bus full of people.
To this end: an entire wing of the Castle has been shoddily converted into the most Willy Wonka-esque drug lab you can imagine- one that embodies every iteration rolled together, including the sad Scottish one. Rivers that crust, powders and rust, spores and leaves and crystals and muck- everything ever to zoot you right up.
2d6 Effects of Consuming Random Substances in Dracula's Lab
The Armoury
Amongst all of this, there are a few more esoteric and dangerous weapons though.
1d10 Esoteric Weapons
- A glock, formerly from the Vatican, loaded up with silver bullets
- A pistol that sounds and moves like a Beyblade
- A megaphone-like device that actually produces the Brown Note
- A picture of a dog with human eyes that allows you to Turn Undead but on anyone who doesn't hate dogs
- A miniature particle collider the size of a room. It can pull apart anything placed inside of it, and turn it into pure data.
- A cloud seeding device that allows you to create a rain made of any kind of fluid sample you place into it
- A rangefinder that lets you call a solar flare down on a specific location
- A staff that lets you erupt any volcano you poke with it
- A Higgs boson based pistol that seems to just completely annihilate a target
- A Luger that will send even a Christian to Hell.
Dracula actually used the Luger from #10 to commit suicide just recently, as evidenced by the big bloody splatter on the wall near it. It'll only be another 3d20 hours until the demons stop him and send him back home to become your problem.
This GLÅUGUST post originally started as an outdated reference to make my wife smile, then building it up with a bit of padding and trying to see how obfuscated I could make any references, before reconsidering and settling somewhere in between to make a big list of random inane things you might find in a modern mad immortals lair.
A silly early start for GLÅUGUST :)
This post by Ro Pham is licensed under CC BY 4.0, and may be used by anyone with proper attribution.
