Durkon's Prophecies

[sam79]

There's not necessarily anything in there saying that it hits a reset button and/or that a vampire is a different person entirely.

Well, the vampire template turns you Evil straight away, right? Which is pretty close to reset for a Lawful Good Cleric with the Good domain.

Anyway, Durkon has to die pretty soon because of his prophecy from the Orcale.

[Nitpick] There's no time limit on Durkon's prophesy, unlike Belkar's; he could survive the events of this story, on the condition that the party doesn't go back to Durkon's homeland during the quest. He could even live to a ripe old age and still fulfil the prophesy. Obviously, that's very unlikely.[/Nitpick]

There's an entire RPG world around the question "What happens if you become a Vampire". Some movies/books explore it, in others the vampire is just some evil thing that needs to get killed.

Safe to say that RPG isn't the one OOTS is based on. In my (relatively limited and not that recent) experience of D+D, vampires are very much in the "evil thing that needs killing" category. Obviously, that tells us only a little about what our author might decide to do in his story. But the whole reason why this section is dramatic (at least to me) is the fear that first Belkar and now Durkon may go over to the Dark Side (Darker side, in Belkar's case). If being a vampire means only having to wear a sunhat and make certain dietary adjustments...well, that seems a bit lame to me.