Luck has never been on my side. The day I was born, the Sun Lands endured the only blizzard they’ve ever seen. When my goal was within my grasp, those I hired for help turned against me. And when I sought a permanent cure in eternal sleep, the gods cursed me with painless insomnia. My name is not synonymous with luck.
My name is Adrian Volish. I was born during the screaming winds of a freak blizzard in the desert. A blizzard in the searing Sun Lands is uncommon enough. To hear such high pitched winds in my home village of Voiceless Wastes, a place where a scream sounds like a whisper, made my coming into the land of Martina especially foreboding. Sometimes I muse that my parents would have been better off leaving me to the beasts that roam the sands rather than accepting exile from the village due to my unnatural condition and the environment of my birth.
They traveled northwest to Datar Bawah, an underground city in the desert that accepts all oddities. I was without question an oddity.
Wherever my parents carried me, clouds would follow. Storms of rain and snow unlike anything the Sun Lands were used to were common with me around. I was also a fairly quiet babe, letting out hums and moans rather than crying for attention. Then there was the defining moment of my childhood where I screamed because the first ray of sunlight I ever touched burned my flesh down to the bone.
I was a vampire born to human parents.
But they loved me. I received an education about the world and myself in the dim caverns of Datar Bawah. Magic piqued my interest the moment I learned of the word. My life became devoted to it for many reasons. I was curious in nature, wanting to know more for the sake of knowing more, but also driven to find specific answers of how I came to be and if there was a way to change what I was. Being a vampire underground in the desert is not a horrific life to live, but my undead condition was unnatural even by typical standards, and the consequences of being what I was were sometimes too much to bear.
I studied endlessly. Sleep was taken at a minimum. Sustenance was purchased for me when necessary by helpful neighbors or travelers in need of coin. My parents provided a home and every necessity to keep me alive. All I had to do was study. And so I did. Until the age of twenty, when I found a cure.
This cure took the form of a curse. The long forgotten and deceased first denizens of Martina’s Mire Woods were druids of varied dispositions. Most worshiped the moon, for there was a time in Martina’s early history when that was the brightest light that shone upon its land. Through convoluted folk tales that hold more truth than any history written about the area, I discovered those druids had brought upon themselves a cursed object from their god.
The object itself was questionable, some texts saying it was a book that had to be read under just the right conditions, others claiming it was an egg shaped orb, and many not getting into specifics at all. But the stories all told of the same curse. Those who misused this object brought upon themselves an eternal day. They could no longer walk beneath the moonlight. Not because it would harm them, but because their bodies would not allow them to physically move. A forced sleep.
In addition, they would be unable to rest during the day. They would be drawn into the sunlight and washed free in its warmth of any midnight spells lingering on them. The curse separated them from every aspect of the night. Which meant, in my long hours of theorizing, I could be freed from my vampirism. If not, I would die a flaming death in the sunlight. Either way my condition would come to an end.
I left home alone in case the worst should happen. My parents were old and didn’t need to see me meet a horrific end. I killed on my journey. Food was harder to come by outside of Datar Bawah and fewer people were willing to accept that I was in control of my condition. Almost none of them were. If they didn’t immediately try to kill me, they ran for their lives in fear that I’d kill them. It was extremely lonely.
After a year of countless days spent grumbling in shadows while the sun took its time to set, stormy days sometimes permitting me to travel faster, I made it to Rosewood. Just beyond the sweet little city stood the Mire Woods, waiting for me to risk its shifting landscape and thick green trails for my desires. In the few days it took me to purchase tools for surviving the swampy forest terrain ahead, I came upon a terrible piece plastered to a city notice board.
There was no picture nor physical description as most bounties will give. Only a few key points that no one but I could tell identified me . It read, “Vampire travels west. Violent, merciless, alone. Will spare no one. Flee upon first sight of anything suspiciously matching such description. Male, might be named Adrian Fish. Generous reward, dead or alive, paid by Northpass.”
I was not offended to be called violent or merciless. To hear the thriving city of Northpass had put a bounty on my head was interesting and I wondered if the bodies I’d drained when passing through had belonged to families of importance. But to see my name slandered, the name Volish given to me by my loving parents deformed into Fish, I was enraged. Rosewood saw an unnecessary amount of bloodshed across its orchards that night.
Into the swamp, bloodied by others and strong on a full stomach, I wandered until the rains washed me clean and I found the village of Bog Swallow. I had not expected to find a settlement of any kind where I was going and was thankful for what seemed like luck. Only two days were spent traveling to and from the ramshackle town and swamp before I found the half sunken temple entrance that was meant to lead me to my freeing curse.
But the forsaken place was heavily scented with decay. My undead nature did not make me immune to the walking corpses and their bile. I had a means of entry, knew which halls to take, and had several ideas of what I was looking for, but no way to get it. It was too dangerous.
Then another stroke of luck seemed to find me when three adventurers meandered into Bog Swallow. Lost, in need of work while they regained their bearings, and just foolish enough to accept a quest from a stranger who never specified payment or dangers ahead, I sent them into the swampy temple to clear it out for me.
That was where my delusions of luck dried up. The three adventurers returned with a heavy book of a language I could not read and an egg the size of a human head. My request had simply been for them to clear the temple of undead. I had no right to take the items they’d scavenged along the way and had not anticipated they would take the exact items I was after. Killing them was the only option.
However, they bested me. Even with the grotesque swamp rats doing my bidding and the clouds swirling into a rage of lightning, the three adventurers nearly decapitated me. My condition allowed me to transform into mist, of which was copious around Bog Swallow, and escape with my cursed life. But not before I heard something else.
“Was that the vampire, Adrian Fish?” The male elf inquired.
“What a stupid name. Adrian Fish.” The female elf laughed.
“I don’t think we got him. We should hunt him down.” The human man proposed. “That is a pretty silly name though.”
These foul adventurer’s have crossed my path several times since. They nearly staked my heart in the city of Sprucethorn. Then they tracked me south to Hillspire. I could not even shake them in the Clay Wastes where the waters flow red and my feeding went unnoticed by the villages I breezed through. I put out bounties on their heads but never heard back from those I hired. And all the while I was forced to see repeated bounty posters for Adrian Fish cropping up wherever I went.
So I write these pages for those three adventurers and any other pest that wishes to pursue me further. I am going home. You will not find me in the sprawling dark of Datar Bawah no matter how you try, and you’ll not hear of slaughters underground in the Sun Lands because it is not necessary there. Leave me alone. I will live out my cursed life until I find another means of ending it myself. And for the sake of all that is undead or holy, my name is not Adrian Fish.
It’s Adrian Volish.