Pinkerton's Bestiary Log 4: The Vrykolakas
The Vrykolakas, the primary Species of Zombie Vampire
Pinkerton’s Bestiary is a supernatural field journal from the Annals of S.O.L.M. universe, documenting monsters, curses, and occult threats encountered by hunter John Pinkerton.
New entries and stories are published weekly.
I spent a great deal of time talking about the Vorvolakos because through them the manifestations of the vampiric virus or curse are most apparent. When it comes to the Vrykolakas, the situation is much simpler. The only anomaly here is the emergence of the Flesh-Wearers, which seem to be a hybrid of the Full-Bat variations and a lower class of zombie vampire. Here, I should probably take a moment to explain why these two variations of vampire developed into the Flesh-Wearer.
Full-Bat variations are categorized into two camps: those with sentience and those without. However, they cannot return to a human state, and the Flesh-Wearer’s true form is bat-like. And the zombie vampire’s rates of decay can vary. So, it’s believed that the Flesh-Wearers developed their ability to grow human skin from a zombie variation. But why do our scholars assume that it must have been a zombie and not one of the lesser Vorvolakos? Because the chief anomaly of the zombie vampire is that they lose their sentience. There have been a handful of times in the past where a zombie vampire has retained or regained their sentience, but this is not typical among that species. What has occurred then is a vampire that grows a suit of flesh, probably reminiscent of a zombie vampire that showed little signs of decay—palish skin and nothing more, perhaps—but mentally they are essentially non-sentient. In the Flesh-Wearer’s case there might be exceptions, but I haven’t heard of them. They perform a kind of mimicry. That is, they can answer questions and interact, but their minds are constantly focused on feeding, and this compulsion is much stronger than the typical hunger, which interacts with the human will to twist the mind into feeding. This hunger is more like an instinct. It’s important to note that the real commonality between the Flesh-Wearer and the zombie vampire is that the true person is dead, gone entirely. If it has access to memories inside the brain, they are fragmentary at best, snapshots they can use to infer a backstory. But both variations are fully animalistic in nature. It’s just that one can form words the same way a computer can pretend to have a conversation, and the other grunts. In short, it is the degradation of the mind that persuades most to believe that the Flesh-Wearers are a combination of the Full-Bat Hybrids and a lower-class zombie vampire, but it is entirely possible that the Flesh-Wearers are the result of a Full-Bat that lost its sentience, and the curse was introduced to another factor. We just have no guess as to what that factor might’ve been.
Now, as to the first and strongest class of zombie vampire, the Vrykolakas, this class, I’m happy to say, is extinct. I have recently heard a troubling rumor about their return, and while I am acting as if the rumor might be true, I desperately hope this rumor is incorrect. The reason being is that currently my strongest allies are Vorvolakos, and they are particularly weak to the Vrykolakas. In the past, they were a sort of opposite force to the Vorvolakos. One might think of it this way: if Vorvolakos were order, the Vrykolakas were chaos. One Vorvolakos in particular claims that her master used to keep them as pets. When the Vorvolakos were pretending to be gods among the ancient, pre-pantheon Greeks, they would release a batch of Vrykolakas to attack a town, then present themselves to the villagers as divine rescuers. I see no reason to doubt her tale, but this would’ve been dangerous work, for a Vrykolakas bite is venomous, not just to humans but to the Vorvolakos.
If a Vorvolakos was bitten by a Vrykolakas, then that wounded vampire would be driven mad, possibly die, and every last person bitten by that Vorvolakos would then transform into a Vrykolakas. Basically, the Vrykolakas curse overrides the Vorvolakos curse. To make the situation even more deadly for the Vorvolakos, all zombie vampires attack as a herd, and the Vorvolakos could hit them a hundred ways before killing them. But if the Vrykolakas inflicted one bite, the Vorvolakos was finished, no matter their age and strength.
As far as the strength of the Vrykolakas goes, it, like the other versions of its curse, was relatively low on the tier list. They could lift a heavy boulder, land safely from tall buildings, things of that sort, but nothing on par with the Vorvolakos variations. Their speed, at most, was akin to a human on adrenaline. Their intellect can range from insectile-like swarms to cunning wolves, but never beyond that. To accomplish more, they’d have to regain their sentience. To my knowledge, they’ve never displayed magical abilities either.
And as I’ve said previously, zombie vampires are easy to spot. They are usually decayed or have very pale skin. Only the lowest-ranking ones would even retain their hair, and those that do would probably be killed and mistaken for a madman. They can eat meat but require blood. In this way, they are often mistaken for ghouls, but ghouls can transform into a particular shape, whereas the zombie vampire cannot. Religious relics cannot affect them because there is no soul to affect. They are purely animalistic in nature.
The real danger with these creatures is being cornered by them. Depending on the zombie class, it may or may not require a wound to the head or heart. Many can be killed by simply spraying bullets at it. To the prepared, they are one of the least dangerous creatures you’ll have to deal with, but that is not to say there is no danger, unless you want to consider a bear non-threatening.
Variants
I must address variants as well because they are a confusing class. Some of them are extremely powerful; others are not. The key component is that they’ve made tradeoffs in their magical abilities. They’ve traded some of their talents in favor of other talents or an advancement of their abilities in a shorter period of time. Some will be decayed and therefore indistinguishable from Dark Vampires. Others will have strange abilities like making sure their victims decay in their vampiric state while they retain their youth. These creatures are true wild cards.
In a previous log, I mentioned an example. Dracula was relatively young but had obtained a variety of powers reserved for Elders. However, he lacked the infamous supernatural speed, and this was his undoing. He was forced to utilize help to transport himself from one location to the next and was killed en route to his castle. That was one way he died, anyway. This was also the time he remained dead for the longest. One of his other talents is his ability to respawn. There are some theories as to how this happens. Here, I’ll mention two. One is that his name is so popular that every vampire cult in existence attempts to summon him first. The other is that he has copied the soul trinket tactic of the wizards and has a variety of objects hidden somewhere with a thread of his silver cord attached to them. Normally, these objects would have to be gathered together and a ceremony done to reform the villain inside a willing human victim, but wizards have found ways around this over the years, and in Dracula’s case, we think he simply returns as a class one Vorvolakos and eventually either indwells a corpse or convinces someone to give up their body. Nobody has actually seen this. This is merely speculation.
Variants are very rare, and I only mention them because challenging these creatures is among the hardest tasks we have to face. The reason being is because there is almost always a very unique way required to kill them. Religious objects are particularly effective, though, and they often mean the difference between life and death. I should also mention that the reason we call the Order in Variant cases is because sometimes, S.O.L.M., a branch of the Coptic Order, will have located a carrier of a mantle. I will discuss the mantles later, but people blessed with such a gift will often be able to discern how to kill the creature. It’s as if the needed information is downloaded into them from on high. These people are particularly helpful when it comes to dealing with Variants. Some creatures are very complicated to kill, advanced zombies for example. I will devote a log to them later, but even in the case of an advanced zombie, we have a general idea how to dispatch them. Variants can require anything, so we often need help.
Hybrids
One group I haven’t mentioned because they are not really a group at all is hybrids. Every once in a while, some mad scientist type will try to splice two species of something together. This can be multiple species of vampires, Gremlin Vampires with Full-Bats, or a Traditional Vampire with a Banshee, whatever, and the result is something in between. The usual methods are normally all it takes to dispatch one of these hybrids, but things can become complicated if the mad scientist tries to combine two different monstrous species, say a vampire and a werewolf, for example. This one is more common than you might think. These two species are the most well-known, so the greatest number of troublemakers tend to go, “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . .” So, yeah. You might have to deal with a vampire-werewolf combo. This can be annoying because the question becomes, “Do I shoot it in the heart or head, or do I just need a silver bullet?” The correct answer is yes to both questions, but it can become taxing if some hunter hacks a hybrid all day without using silver. In that case, the poor soul is just wasting his time. A werewolf can be hit in the heart, head, wherever, but silver is required to kill it. Or the hybrid might go in the other direction, and the hunter ends up dying because he shot it with silver and didn’t finish the job. In some cases, the hybrid can look like a giant wolfman but needs to be shot in the heart or head, or it can look like a vampire with abnormal teeth and require silver.
The easiest way to infer if you’re fighting a hybrid is to look for the scientist, not the monster. If you have a nefarious individual lurking around crime scenes, gawking at the blood, follow that man or woman home and see if you find ritualistic or scientific equipment. If the equipment exists, then grab your silver bullets and shoot the beast in the heart. Then turn the scientist in for the killings. They won’t be able to pin the murders on the cretin, but people like that have usually broken multiple laws, and the scientist will wind up in jail for something—grave robbing if nothing else.