May I first say that the Marsh Issue of Tales of the Reaching Moon was fantastic and I really enjoyed reading the background on delecti and the marsh.
However, that divine illness doubt has surfaced in my head. Now vampires require victims for blood and power. I can't really see that there's enough meat in the area to sustain many vampires. The number of vampires, daughters of darkness can't be in significant numbers (more than dozens less than a hundred) without some sort of "cattle farm" in the area where you could get fed sufficiently. If you did farm a food source in a sustainable way you'd still need a large number of bodies. Perhaps resident broos in the marsh are sapped. But what stops the zombies from forever tracking them down and killing them without protection?
On the outskirts of the marsh, would you hang around in the area if every week you get sapped of blood if you were free? Run off during the day when the vampires are sleeping. I know Gloranthan vampires are different and can survive in the day but that would mean always having a vampire ready and watching. I foresee a sticky end when a stormbull with sense chaos wanders by or even a powerful runelord dude with detect undead. News would soon be reported back.
Covert guards and spys I don't hack it, you'd suss who were the guards were in the end, the ones always popping off on ritual nights to report back and worship. Ask a Priest to perform a divination to tell you who are the vivamort cultists in the village would soon root out cultists. If you had a number of oppressive guards keeping you tied up then questions might be asked when that humakti runelord visited the village and asked why there was a fence around the village keeping all the villagers in. It would only take one peasant shouting "I'm being oppressed".
The runespell estactic communion would keep people happy but would you have enough stock in the area to keep a large number of vampires fed? Again, eventually someone powerful visiting would gather something was wrong. Considering the majority of cults are unfavourable to chaos you could either lay ambush on the vampires visiting or drag everyone off to cut off the vampires food supply. Vampires could travel further distances from the protection of the marsh but would need to return home to coffins. Thereby they are limited in the distance they can travel in a night. How far can a bat fly for half the night and get a good feeding before returning? So all you need to do is move far away. Eventually the vampires have to set up a safe haven away fromm the marsh if they want to commute to dinner. How safe would this be?
So yep, I'd go for a small number of mega powerful vampires in the area, powerful enough to give any "run of the mill" Orlanthi Runelord brown trousers. Yet, given all these wannabe runelords are going on adventures with crosses and water from the river styx the shelf life of a vampire must be quite short. Ah, but then there are all the zombies. That's the biggest problem....
Cheers
Chris
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