This is a typewritten version of a playthrough of Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings. In part 2 I will add the journal, but that's an optional part of the game. All the mechanical elements are here. This was an interesting experience that took about two weeks of play to complete.
Characters
Sumitra, my reckless sister, a sorceress.
Babaka, a swordsman and bandit.
Vamadeva, a fellow conscript.
Asadhi (i), a Deva who pitied me.
Lomaharsana, who claimed the fields of my father.
Arik, my ward from Samarqand who followed me to the eastern Khanate.
Baram (i), the mendicant whose hunger made me a vetala.
Soojin (i), a scholar-official who knows the stars well whose being I made as my own.
Nasif, an ecstatic in thrall to my songs who is alive again with a demon in his shadow.
Darma Bansin, a Dutch colonial and descendant of Arik, my former ward.
Satook, a brigand and eunuch.
Absolom Bansin, a grandson of Darma, devoted to my destruction.
Jangye, a decrepit monk and descendant of Lomaharsana.
Roland Ellering, a Brahmin of Massachusetts and collector of antiquities Oriental.
Anaeriel (i), a being from beyond, summoned by Roland Ellering.
Skills
I sing the old songs of the people called Huna. ✓
I dig clay. ✓ I move the earth. ✓
I can grow gram and grind it to a fine flour. ✓
I know by sound the number approaching and their quality. ✓
I can read and write the speech official. ✓
I know what seeking souls desire. ✓
I understand and can perform al-Dafin. ✓
I know the movements of the stars. ✓
I sing in a way that calms busy thought. ✓
I can create and wear the absurd costumery of the people. ✓
Visionary. ✓
I always know the time, but it does not concern me. ✓
Resources
A donkey named Sarantugala (always).
A trowel of iron.
An ancient figure of clay, worn and headless.
A wooden bowl.
An annotated book of hadith.
Diary—A folio of paper with a wrapped-back binding.
A book of tables purporting to contain a method fro calculating the time a mortal will die.
Diary—A raiment of an itinerant monk with lettering stitched into its lining.
Diary—The captain’s log of the ship Osiris, encoded in the sounding measurements and weather observations.
The Burch & Skinner Manufacturing Corporation of Attleboro, Massachusetts (majority).
The Klondike Cannery Company, along with substantial land holdings in the District of Alaska.
Diary—Chauncey Olcott Cigars promotional pocket book.
A Victor VI with a custom horn.
Marks
The last I saw light was in Baram’s cave; I move by sound and touch, a cloth of cotton over my bleeding eyes.
My forehead is burned where the Deva granted a new sight to me.
I transform into a fire marten, usually when I wish it.
My skin is white and hairless.
My throat has a gaping bullet wound—I must always wear a scarf.
Memories
Memory (Diary)
I am Jyayan, in this life made to till the soil of Kosala in the years before Sindhuraga’s army made us theirs.
Rumors of a singing devil force me to reclude further, taking the name Farsad in the style of the sultanate.
Alone I descend from the White Mountains to the city of Samarqand during the Khan’s siege, making there a home in a tea house where I learn to read and write the speech of eastern officials.
Late nights unto the dawn I direct my strange sight to the stars, taking their slow paths into my mind as a great cat recognizes the trails of deer.
Memory (Diary) Memory
When the men come from Dhara it is planting again and I am in the chana field when Sumitra takes to horse with father’s bow.
I find Sumitra in Dhara, widowed and ever defiant, and she helps me find what I need amongst Bhoja’s wanton soldiery.
My sister and I flee to the north where, at the foot of the White Mountains, I take the name Avazzer Avazzer.
Memory (Diary)
I fall in with Vamadeva as we give our labor to Bhoja’s dams, singing in secret while the poets write new songs for this new age.
The mystic Nasif burns with the teachings of my songs and names me a wali, though I do not know his god.
Nasif leaves our band mysteriously, though I suspect Sumitra is behind this.
Nasif arrives in Samarqand trailed by something animate in his shadow, and I am afraid.
Memory
Cutting rock from the quarry in the cool of morning I find the figure of a woman made of clay, worn smooth of many years but retaining visible adornments like jewels.
I meet the Deva, Asadhi at the top of a mountain and trick him into granting me new sight.
The houses of prophets, gods, and buddhas are as granaries to my insatiate being.
My consciousness comes to something like life at the words of a scholar of the Way and so I go with Arik to see Soojin in the eastern khanate.
The ballparks, arcades, and dance halls are warehouses and stockyards for the nutritive vitamins and tonics my body needs.
Memory (Diary) Memory (Diary)
Baram knows my song and tells me of a patron; I am still flattered when he feeds of me.
I flee again into the mountain pass, feasting deeply on those who assailed us, taking Babaka as my thrall.
I bury Arik’s mother in secret, taking him as my ward, assistant, and courier.
Memory
I slaughter the soldiers of the Great Ming who hold Soojin captive and we flee eastward into the steppelands.
The songs of my people are gone and forgotten; perhaps I have no people.
I reassure Jangye of his coming death, and rage indiscriminately amongst the local villages.
Memory (Diary)
When Soojin sees me his horror enrages me and I consume him but cannot bring myself to prevent his becoming like me.
In flight from Dadu, my papers are seized by bandits in the service of a eunuch named Satook.
Soojin finds me in the ruins of Karakorum and, wishing to share his knowledge, gives me a book of his research purporting to be a method for determining the time a given mortal will die.
I take control of a galeón and settle in Manila among the poor people from the country and islands, uneasily growing accustomed to the life terrestrial.
Memory (Diary)
I have forgotten the sound of every one of my names.
I roam woodlands and burrow in the form of a fire marten, seeking silence in the earth.
My clay woman is destroyed in an explosion I caused in the chemic workshop of King Jungjong.
Memory (Diary)
I awaken in an avalanche and I learn the kingdom is ruled by Sukjong after my hunger destroys a small village.
I feed on villages in the northern hills, and the people speak of a burnt devil.
A crew of Dutchmen hunts me across the seas, and I am at the end of things, naked in the deep.
Memory—Nature (Diary)
At the end of the Puktae-Chon I walk into the great water where the sun hides from me.
I recognize the new positions of the stars as I float too long on the sea’s surface; the sun sears me white.
I long for the mountains and ocean, and am compelled to join the speculation in Alaska, acquiring a substantial acreage and a small fish cannery.
Memory
I am Aimar Valladares, captain of the whale ship Osiris, abroad three years from New Bedford, and I know the ways the beasts of the deep move.
The crew of the Osiris redirect their labors toward my purposes, extending its reach with bowed tree limbs, sailcloth, waxes, and baleen.
I meet with the antiquarian “brahmin” Roland Ellering, acquiring as payment for satisfying his curiosity a majority stake in an Attleboro manufacturing concern.
Memory
I confront and capture my pursuer in Sint Eustatius, learning that he is Absalom Bansin, a distant descendant of my long-dead ward Arik and the closest thing on this cursed world to my family.
I am possessed of a motorcar—a small luxury amidst this voracious epoch of terrible wonders.
My fortunes have taken a turn or it would be better to say that Mr. Ellering has turned them: my investments are rendered in paper, worthless, as my aching guts glow with embers of bitter retribution.
Memory
Singing into the listening plates, I think of Baram who made me.
Absalom assaults me on the train to Albany, opening my throat and burning me and I hurl my only kin from a great height at great speed.
I dive after and the sun cannot destroy me: I am a vetala.
Memory
I acquire a fine Victrola with whom I converse and sing at odd hours.
I make preparations to depart these lands as Absalom’s persistent pursuit demands care and caution.
I fear Ellering’s machinations, and order the reborn Osiris north for further tuning, beyond the reach of the Navy.
Memory
With the scent of war in the air, I travel west toward the great mountains, feeding on the younger humans with their sweet and ignorant vitality.
I learn that Ellering has found Soojin, and used his awesome knowledge to evoke the power of a celestial being: Anaeriel.
I am eternity; I am free.
Memory
I find a book written in my own hand in the library of the Ellering estate, and remember when I was called Avazzer.
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