Man_Over_Game
2020-11-29, 11:02 AM
So I'm watching this Vampire Diaries show, since I love my wife and she is very spoiled, and where I originally assumed it was some dramatic, teenie-bopper, vampire gush-fest ala Twilight, I was actually surprised by the incredibly intelligent plotlines and diverse characters.
Consider this, an actual mini-arc that isn't extremely relevant in the story:
First, two things you must know:
The 5 Vampire Hunter leaders (from hundreds of years ago) bless themselves with a failsafe that, if they happened to die from a Vampire, would cause the guilty vampire to be driven insane by the ghost of that hunter, to the point of eventually killing themselves.
-
Additionally, vampires have the ability to "compel" humans to do...whatever it is that the vampire wants (it can even do things like erase memories or cause you to ignore pain).
Combining the two, one super cunning vampire was being hunted by one of these leader slayers and their daughter, and was caught in a bad catch-22, where they couldn't really get rid of their problem. So he compelled the daughter to kill her own father.
The daughter, seeking revenge, sought out assistance from these 8 powerful sages who's village were assaulted by vampires for their magical blood. The sages each sacrificed themselves as part of a ritual, charging a magical sword and linking it to the girl. Each time the girl dies, she instead loses one of her 8 extra lives, and becomes a little bit stronger.
Additionally, the sword is pretty damn powerful, with things like:
If you are cut by the sword, you have are permanently Marked by it.
The girl can always tell where you are if you are Marked.
If she is near you, you will start to bleed from your Mark, revealing your location if you somehow hid yourself through magic.
If she dies after you've been Marked, her spirit will automatically be sacrificed for a spell that breaks open your Mark until you permanently bleed to death.
The sword contains a stone that doesn't kill its victims, but instead sends them into a pocket dimension into the stone. Since it is technically possible to raise people from the dead (rarely, but possible), creating a prison seemed a better solution.
This was all revealed when an old and feared vampire hunter was dying on her deathbed, she acted like she had dementia, asking about snickerdoodles. Her assailants, not sure if this was the correct target, disputed whether or not they should kill the old woman, and she used their dispute to shoot one while they were alone with a crossbow and fled. She later got caught, was burned alive, and so the life of the old woman was lost for the next life in the cycle.
Other plots include:
Witches in a coven were being killed by one of their own, a sociopath who was upset at not being the leader of the coven through the coven's subterfuge. They warped him to a timeless pocket dimension as a prison sentence. Years later, two protagonists accidentally warp themselves into the same pocket dimension through chaotic magic shenanigans. After being tortured by the prisoner, they all eventually escape, until he's able to get all of his powers and kill the coven. Before the coven dies, they manage to save the unborn children of the coven by magically transplanting them into a different woman.
.
A different clan of vampires moves into the town the plot usually takes place in. They want peace, to use people by Compelling them to donate blood regularly at blood banks in exchange for food, and to treat them like cattle. This creates a rift between the main protagonists, as some see this as a better alternative, and others see it as slavery.
.
That super-vampire, the one that makes a daughter kill her own father, gets his own. He surrounded himself with allies for protection, as he knew there was a target on his back. So the protagonists employed a witch to cast a powerful illusion spell. They snuck in, under an Invisibility spell, and then duplicated the spell onto the vampire. Then, they stabbed him right in the middle of his living room, in front of all of his friends who couldn't see or hear him, and left.
If my DM pulled off half the stuff in Vampire Diaries, that'd be a damn good DM. I'm not saying you need to watch it, but looking up the summaries of just some of the smaller plots (pretty much anything past the first half of the first season) will give off some great ideas for aspiring DMs.
Consider this, an actual mini-arc that isn't extremely relevant in the story:
First, two things you must know:
The 5 Vampire Hunter leaders (from hundreds of years ago) bless themselves with a failsafe that, if they happened to die from a Vampire, would cause the guilty vampire to be driven insane by the ghost of that hunter, to the point of eventually killing themselves.
-
Additionally, vampires have the ability to "compel" humans to do...whatever it is that the vampire wants (it can even do things like erase memories or cause you to ignore pain).
Combining the two, one super cunning vampire was being hunted by one of these leader slayers and their daughter, and was caught in a bad catch-22, where they couldn't really get rid of their problem. So he compelled the daughter to kill her own father.
The daughter, seeking revenge, sought out assistance from these 8 powerful sages who's village were assaulted by vampires for their magical blood. The sages each sacrificed themselves as part of a ritual, charging a magical sword and linking it to the girl. Each time the girl dies, she instead loses one of her 8 extra lives, and becomes a little bit stronger.
Additionally, the sword is pretty damn powerful, with things like:
If you are cut by the sword, you have are permanently Marked by it.
The girl can always tell where you are if you are Marked.
If she is near you, you will start to bleed from your Mark, revealing your location if you somehow hid yourself through magic.
If she dies after you've been Marked, her spirit will automatically be sacrificed for a spell that breaks open your Mark until you permanently bleed to death.
The sword contains a stone that doesn't kill its victims, but instead sends them into a pocket dimension into the stone. Since it is technically possible to raise people from the dead (rarely, but possible), creating a prison seemed a better solution.
This was all revealed when an old and feared vampire hunter was dying on her deathbed, she acted like she had dementia, asking about snickerdoodles. Her assailants, not sure if this was the correct target, disputed whether or not they should kill the old woman, and she used their dispute to shoot one while they were alone with a crossbow and fled. She later got caught, was burned alive, and so the life of the old woman was lost for the next life in the cycle.
Other plots include:
Witches in a coven were being killed by one of their own, a sociopath who was upset at not being the leader of the coven through the coven's subterfuge. They warped him to a timeless pocket dimension as a prison sentence. Years later, two protagonists accidentally warp themselves into the same pocket dimension through chaotic magic shenanigans. After being tortured by the prisoner, they all eventually escape, until he's able to get all of his powers and kill the coven. Before the coven dies, they manage to save the unborn children of the coven by magically transplanting them into a different woman.
.
A different clan of vampires moves into the town the plot usually takes place in. They want peace, to use people by Compelling them to donate blood regularly at blood banks in exchange for food, and to treat them like cattle. This creates a rift between the main protagonists, as some see this as a better alternative, and others see it as slavery.
.
That super-vampire, the one that makes a daughter kill her own father, gets his own. He surrounded himself with allies for protection, as he knew there was a target on his back. So the protagonists employed a witch to cast a powerful illusion spell. They snuck in, under an Invisibility spell, and then duplicated the spell onto the vampire. Then, they stabbed him right in the middle of his living room, in front of all of his friends who couldn't see or hear him, and left.
If my DM pulled off half the stuff in Vampire Diaries, that'd be a damn good DM. I'm not saying you need to watch it, but looking up the summaries of just some of the smaller plots (pretty much anything past the first half of the first season) will give off some great ideas for aspiring DMs.