Hey look! A new character!

I saw this guy being worked on a while back and utterly fell in love with him, so when the opportunity came up and he was up for adopt, I had to grab him immediately. Red-on-black is a color aesthetic I'm all for, vampiric overtones are all kinds of yes, and he has a sharp, dark design that I utterly fell in love with and serves as a contrast to all the rest of my bright, colorful cast. Vitaen serves as a character very close to the lawful/neutral-evil scale, content to horribly murder threats, but relatively unconcerned with those who don't cross him.

Below is a short story I wrote framed from Vel's perspective of encountering him. The story below contains a quick snip of oral vore, digestion, and reformation so you've been warned. And mention of blood, violence, and acts of Vamparism (of course).

A bit more will be coming from him too! Including a headshot icon and a detail sheet with a mawshot, NSFW details, and a closer examination of the gem hearts.

Veluren and Vitaen both belong to me.

Art and Zorgoia species is  CorrieZodori

Character Details:

- Is a vampire. Drinks blood nonlethally through his mouth, also causes a "kiss of the vampire" - almost drug-like euphoria in victims. Blood magic allows him to drink just the right amount of blood to fill up without killing civilian prey, and also allows him to drink it from a range as long as a vein is open.

- Stinger no longer delivers venom, but has a hypodermic needle that rapidly drains blood. Uses this for lethal bloodsucking, draining enemies he preys on to a husk in around a minute.

- Mostly devoid of morality and compassion, anything approaching standards or affection is long-term pragmatism, a "catch more flies with honey than vinegar" approach. The "Mostly", of course, is the catch.

- Said pragmatism usually leads him to create a good rapport with mortals in his territories regardless, cultivating a mix of fear and reverence so they won't sell him out, won't retaliate when he feeds, may start to offer themselves willingly, and may even deal with vampire hunters for him. He may even chase out other threats like lesser undead, demons and other vampires to stake his claim over an area, another factor that in-debts civilians to him.

- Physical strengths are exaggerated more than they already are for a normal Zorgoia - he could coil wrap and destroy a tank if he needed to for example. His ability to stretch also goes further than the limits of his spine by doing... uncomfortable things to his muscles, healing the damage from doing such next time he feeds.

- The crystals near his shoulders serve as a repository for excess blood when he overdrinks, and can be pulled off and broken to release what's inside, this is usually the first part of fighting with blood magic, instead of raw physical might. Vampiric regeneration regrows them the next time he feeds or focuses on healing.

- Blood magic strength varies depending on how full he is and is shaped by his imagination. When a bit peckish or thirsty and minding his expendature, he manifests weapons often used to hunt his kind like whips, axes, knives, boomerangs, and bombs that explode into fire. When especially well-fed, he instead manifests traps like spiked ceilings, iron maidens, swinging blades, ect. that create a feedback loop of letting fresh blood for him to drink.

- Sunlight hurts, a LOT, but won't kill him due to his thickish coat. However when forced into daylight he's greatly weakened and can't use blood magic. His muscles also become so weak that a completely ordinary person could fight their way out of his coils unarmed. Emergency feeding can dull these effects, but only bring him to the standards of a normal 'goia.

- Can still swallow whole and digest prey like a normal Zorgoia, but derives no nutrition from anything besides the blood in their bodies. Can also slow or accelerate his digestion to rid his stomach of prey in a matter of seconds, or keep them slowly digesting for days, a fate that's painless but given his diet likely unpleasant and traumatic.

- Instead of a reforming mist, his prey coalesces into a heart-shaped painite crystal he spits up. The souls of prey inside are unconscious but can't reform until the crystal is broken, which makes it happen automatically. Earning "shelf space" requires REALLY ticking him off, so most prey he doesn't kill outright he'll free immediately.

- Prey that's digested and then reformed have a "seed" of his vampiric magic put into them, turning them into sleeper agents. At any time he can activate these seeds to turn them into a loyal thrall that's utterly enslaved to his will. The enthrallment fades if the victim sees the sun, but the seed can remain inactivated in their bodies for an indefinite time.

- Slightly larger than Zorgoia standards at 7ft tall.

- Usually speaks honest, but is blunt, sarcastic, short, and overall rude. Shows his hammy side when dealing with vampire hunters and sanctimonious enemies.

- Lives in run down or abandoned houses in his territories; secretly wishes to own a castle one day.

- Very open and casual about sex, will often claim it's the one mortal pleasure he still derives enjoyment from. Will usually hypnotize people into "agreeing" with this perspective.

---

“My Friend.

I hope this letter finds you well, hopefully targeted teleportation is a bit more reliable with small, inanimate objects than it is with full grown dragons. I'm writing to inform you of a recent oddity in my world that may be of interest to you, I know I found it rather interesting.

Have you ever encountered or heard of a Vampire Zorgoia? Rumors of a strange furry creature that matched Zephyr's description dragging people into the night hit my ears, I thought “There's no way another one's made himself known.” so I went out there to see with my own eyes.

Finding him was surprisingly simple with the casual way the townsfolk talked about his presence. I know a spell called shadow dragon that lets me melt into the shadows around me, so in the dead of night I could become invisible even to a vampire's senses. From the darkness I watched as a Zorgoia, with a red and black coat of fur marked with thorny tattoos, led a hapless woman from a nearby village into the woods, the woman seeming charmed in spite of his appearance screaming his nature. What struck me most were the red crystals all over his body, by all sights I could account for they were natural, which told me he was probably a gemstone subset, though I didn't know what kind.

I saw as the rumors were confirmed more or less instantly as he went in for a kiss only for his teeth to sink down over the woman's neck, drinking her lifeblood and her mana both out of her. Strangely enough though, the woman appeared to be relatively fine afterwards – in a clear daze from having just lost pints of blood and who knows how much quantification of her mana – and fell against the zorgoia, cuddling and cooing his name; “Lord Vitaen” (Pronounced Vi-taen, the Taen rhyming with “pain”), who snorted at her, swept her onto his back and carried her off to deposit back at the town.

Admittedly I should have acted, but I had dealt with vampires of other species before, and I knew saving their victims was usually within the power of the healing I knew, or my potions, if they had been drank dry.

What happened next is where things get interesting and where his nature as a Zorgoia showed itself to me. A youth stepped into the path and pointed a weapon at Vitaen, shouting all sorts of generic heroic phrasing and declarations of saving the woman and slaying the vile beast. The kinda stuff that I hear as a feral dragon by presumptuous idiots that make my eyes roll.

Vitaen laughed and snorted, popping the dazed woman off his back and swallowing her whole – it's worth noting at this point that every vampire I've interacted with can only digest blood, at first I assumed he was simply using his belly to keep her “safe”, but the second she settled, the bulge shrank. Be it his nature as a Zorgoia overwrote one of the more common vampiric traits or he found some way to do it himself, he digested her at an extremely rapid pace even for the natural efficiency of a Zorgoia, taunting the would-be hero all the while.

The youth witnessing this was incensed and charged in a thoroughly wound up rage, only to find a heavy coil crushing him. Vitaen laughed and leaned in close, then brought his tail up threateningly. Vitaen then opened his tailcap and jammed the stinger into the youth's body, and I witnessed a chilling sight – his tail barb had changed nature to be a syringe to pull blood in, instead of pushing venom out and it rapidly drained almost all of the blood out of him, leaving a shriveled but still alive husk that he made a dismissive comment towards, before skulking off into the night and leaving him for dead.

I managed to revive the youth with a potion I brought for dire anemia – though he was going to be very, very sick for a very long time, and went to take him back to the village, still melded into the shadows and now with a guest. I caught up to Vitaen and witnessed him shifting, holding up his paw and spitting out a heart-shaped crystal – identical in color and texture to the ones all over his body – and crushed it, causing a small burst of energy that settled back into the woman's shape, as painless a reformation as any Zorgoia I suppose, though being dependent on the destruction of those heart-shaped stones means he could delay reformation to suit his desires. Still, he had revived his prey and his near-victim was... well, bluntly, self-defense. I've thumped and eaten would-be heroes myself so I couldn't fault him for defending himself and left him alone.

The next night, I opted to make myself known to him. He was on the defensive pretty much immediately, but when I explained myself and that I was learning more about Zorgoia – and he was particularly unique, he was both mildly annoyed but also seemed pretty willing to explain, albeit bluntly.

His speech mannerisms explained his personality to me in one; arrogant and barely concealing a air of disdain for most creatures behind polite words dripping with sarcasm and double-meaning. His air of casualness almost insultingly suggesting he didn't see me as anything close to a threat to him.

By his account, he was a normal Zorgoia, a gem-subtype, of course, who fell afoul of a “Collector”. His Sire was a wolfen vampire who preferred to collect rare species for his thralls. Every half-breed he found, Sergals (the thought of a vampire Sergal is horrifying by the way) and Vitaen as his sole Zorgoia convert. As he so curtly explained, when his Sire eventually bit the wrong neck and found his head separated from his body, many were freed of the curse, but Vitaen's unique biology – or his actually adjusting comfortably to his new life and not wanting to go back to normal, meant that he remained as he was. He also mentioned he used to be a nondescript crystal but the transformation changed everything from his fur color to his outcroppings becoming painite crystals, a far more drastic transformation than what we had both observed in a vampire.

When I asked him about his views on the world he was just as direct. “I'm a monster and I love being a monster, but I also saw firsthand what embracing that monstrosity would grant me, I'm a pragmatist.” He told me, giving examples of the “poor fool” he thought he murdered last night, while also framing to me how he made sure to control his feeding with civilians. He cultivates an almost cult-like respect among the commoners of whatever territory he's living in, to the point many will freely offer themselves to him, and in one case he told me of in the past, a band of vampire hunters were shocked to find themselves being lynched by his current home for threatening to hunt Vitaen.

He then directly called me out for stalking him, having noticed my presence in the shadows last night and thanked me, sarcastically, for not interrupting his feeding in my interest to study him. His attitude kind of irked me, but I saw the chance to ask him about his biology instead, which got a laugh out of him.

He then explained to me that he didn't quite know why his biology changed the way it did when he turned. He told me he can still digest prey but he doesn't get any nutrition – save the blood in their bodies being absorbed as the rest of them just... disappears from his form. His reformation, as I observed, was by compressing their soul into those crystal hearts, which he would regurgitate and usually break immediately to bring them back, though he admits to keeping the ones that annoy him in there and making clear to me they didn't remain conscious in that state.

He also flat out told me this process mind-slaves them, making them utterly and horrendously loyal to his every whim. He chuckled as he mentioned taking advantage of loyal servants from time to time which caused my scales to bristle and showed me some of what he was talking about being a monster and loving it. Though he mentioned that he usually lets them see the morning sun – which breaks the enchantment they're put under. As for his own fledglings, he mentioned he had better things to do than look after fledglings who were more fang than good sense.

Finished entertaining me, he vanished into a cloud of mist and was gone as fast as he had initially appeared. Conversing with the locals the day after returned his opinion, many of the locals were very loyal and sided with him on matters of threats, they even knew he was a vampire and didn't care as he hadn't done them harm, and his presence had kept worse things like demons from claiming the area as their territory.

One last note from an onlooker who witnessed this – Vitaen apparently has extremely strong blood magic. When threatened enough to fight beyond his physical strength, I was told, he'll pull the gem just below his shoulder from his body which is apparently a storage repository for excess blood and break it, creating a grotesque shower of blood that can be shaped, hardened and controlled telekinetically. The incident mentioned ended with a vampire hunter being crushed under a spiked ceiling of blood – which in return Vitaen proceeded to absorb to refresh himself, his vampiric regeneration regrowing the gem.

My conclusion on Vitaen was to leave him alone, he's utterly horrendously violent when it comes to self-defense, but his pragmatic nature seems to keep him from ever crossing a true line. Still, a vampire Zorgioa is a new discovery for me, I'll keep my eye on him from time to time, to study his nature and to make sure he doesn't cross any lines. Rare a specimen as he is, I have a duty to protect others so I'll do what I must, just be careful if you go to see him.

- Your Friend, Vel.”