Originally posted to Medium.com May 3, 2021
6K’ish words from a vampire’s diary.
Thousand Year Old Vampire is a one-player journaling RPG by Tim Hutchings. I’d describe it as an exercise in prompt-driven creative writing. It’s very very good, and I thought I’d get my very first playthrough up online for others to read, and maybe get an idea of the kind of artefact they’d get out at the other end.
Notes on the final playthrough — this is quite literally an unedited first draft; I figured people reading this to get an idea of what TYOV is like to play would find that more beneficial than an edited, “cleaned” version. Things are quite rough and a bit all over the place — what you see is what you get! This article will consist of the all the individual experiences (as they happened, in order) and how that experience changed the vampire. At the end is a full breakdown of the vampire’s final set of memories (a screenshot from my original working document).
Each experience is indexed by it’s prompt-number from the TYOV rulebook, for easy referencing and “playing along”!
Content warning for violence, gore, memory-loss, personal-loss.
My name is Konrad, son of Georg and Eva. I was born at the cusp of the 18th Century, 1692, near the outskirts of Berlin. I am 17 years old. My father is a farmer and my mother is a seamstress. My older brother, Franz, helps my father. I help my father, too — though I long for a life away from the fields.
My mother teaches me to sew. I think more out of pity and a sense of loving duty than anything else. She made me promise not to let my father know. Franz knows, and scorns me for it.
I spend long hours alone in the barn alone, after working the fields with my father. I have few friends of my own, and Franz does not care to spend time with me. I enjoy spending time with Albert, the son of another farmer across the way. We drink and have fun, when we can.
Robin is my age, and the child of nobles in Berlin. My mother makes clothes for Robin’s parents — skirts, dresses, petticoats and such. Me and Robin love each other, we can never be together. We only get to meet rarely, and I would do anything for them.
After drinking with Albert, I took a walk to sober up so that I would not incur father’s wrath by returning home a drunkard. On the way, stumbling home, I was tackled to the ground. The last thing I see before I pass out from fright is the snarl of The Ghul. I wake up in the early hours, rushing home. My father shouts and hits, my mother cries. Franz smirks. Cleaning myself, I see huge gash marks in my chest. As the days pass, they do not heal — and yet, neither do they hurt.
Weeks and weeks pass since the attack. I tell no one. My skin begins to pale and crack, and the sun stings my eyes as though I were with a fever. One evening, as I spend my time in the barn with Hestia, Franz comes to meet. First he questions, seemingly sincerely. What is a matter with me? Why do I worry mother? But the questions turn to taunts, which turns to attacks. He hits me. He calls me weak. He calls me a burden on father.
No more. I scratch, tear, rip and break. He tries to scream, but I cover his mouth as I smash his skull. He lies before me, a wreck, mutilated. As blood pools from the base of his skull, I am overcome a terrifying and intense hunger. I nourish myself on his blood. Even in my disgust, I completely give in to its warmth. It is beautiful. Once I am satisfied, and night has fallen, I carry the body to the woods and hide it.
Franz is dead. I become Bloodthirsty.
My parents are scared of me, I can tell. I have begun to sleep through the sunlight hours, and every night I grow stronger and more confident of myself. Father doesn’t dare to even speak to anymore, and mother cannot bring herself to look at me.