Vampirocalypse? [3.5E]

[Oko and Qailee]

So, I'm having a small issue. Basically, I'm running a campaign and it's going pretty well. One of the things I try to do is to allow a lot of freedom for players to drive the plot forward. This leads towards a lot of me having to change plans, but it's no big deal.

Anyway, one of the players (a dragon, disguised as a cat who thinks he's a vampire) wants to turn the world into undead, this is exactly what he wants:

"My end goal is a way to turn mass numbers into undead, specifically vampires, all at once, preferably without their consent. I also want a way to give a fixed set of orders to those undead if possible/preferably.

So anything that would move toward those goals is what I'm looking for. Introduction or reference to others who could help develop a spell(s) or ritual(s) to accomplish this, research assistance on such, or her own efforts at developing such would be what I'm hoping for."

To this end he has encountered a powerful hippie lich for information. Now, the lich would probably know how to do this... but I would not because my Int score sucks.

So basically, is there a way for the player to do this? I know wightpocalypsing, but the player is aiming for intelligent undead.

[Nettlekid]

I ran/am running a campaign with a BBEG who has a similar end-goal to this. His strategy is keeping undercover a lot of the time, using proxies in the form of Dominated people or little minions, to spread Necrotic Cysts across the country. Once a living creature has a Cyst, they are free to be Dominated and manipulated as the Mother Cyst-user pleases. Get everyone infected with a Cyst, and then once you're ready for it, switch on the Dominate (as many per day as you can afford spell slots for, maybe get a Belt of the Dread Emperor and some way to heal your battery) to mass march the infected creatures to you. If you want power over all of them then I'd arrange them into groups by HD (or whatever in-game approximation you can make of that) and then turn a couple of strong ones into Vampires under your will, and then order those ones to turn the next few, and so on, until you have a great long chain of Vampires, and then order them all to order all their subordinates to obey you. That should do it, right?

[Oko and Qailee]

That works, but it's too slow I think. Because he would need to cast Necrotic Cyst and Necrotic Domination millions of times.

[Lord_Jord]

The beautiful thing about being a DM is that you arent confined by the rules. PCs wont be able to imitate what youre doing, and in most cases wouldnt want to anyways. Why else would they try to stop your bbeg?
Come up with a ritual, that has to he done on the night of a new moon, where the bbeg uses blood he's collected from local villages through mosquitos, or other method. At the end of the ritual, any one whos blood has been used becomes a vamp.

[Nettlekid]

The beautiful thing about being a DM is that you arent confined by the rules. PCs wont be able to imitate what youre doing, and in most cases wouldnt want to anyways. Why else would they try to stop your bbeg?
Come up with a ritual, that has to he done on the night of a new moon, where the bbeg uses blood he's collected from local villages through mosquitos, or other method. At the end of the ritual, any one whos blood has been used becomes a vamp.

It sounds like it's a player who wants to do this?
By the way, OP, you said the player *thinks* they're a vampire? So if they aren't...how will this work?


That works, but it's too slow I think. Because he would need to cast Necrotic Cyst and Necrotic Domination millions of times.

Necrotic Cyst will indeed need to be cast a LOT. In my campaign I had my BBEG's Dominated minion craft several use-activated items of it, so they can just keep using them and spread out around the world. But that's the setup, it's allowed to take a long time. You're a Vampire after all, you have nothing but time.

The Necrotic Domination aspect can happen all in one day (or maybe a couple of days), with a Belt of the Dread Emperor to refuel a single spell slot being used to cast Necrotic Domination or Necrotic Tumor.