My Dracula Headcanon

I am totally revved up for Halloween already. 
 
So, as my previous post about our untitled Victorian adventure campaign (starring the adventurous archaeologist Lady Atalanta Scarborough!) indicated, our current duet game takes place in a world where Dracula happened.  In keeping with the many, many other authors and gamers who have continued the story of Bram Stoker’s characters, I have my own ideas about what the cast has been up to since the novel ended.
 
DRACULA
Dracula himself is now a globe-trotting supervillain, because of course he is.  Dracula  constantly seeks new information on the origins of vampires and the means to create them, pausing in his relentless hunt only long enough to toy with his dogged foe, Quincey P. Morris (see below).  Why he seeks this knowledge is something of a mystery as yet, as Lady Atalanta didn’t feel much like trading banter with him the only time they met.
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/077/f/d/castlevania_dracula_by_shana990-d5yieyi.jpg

Unlike the rest of the Draculacast, he doesn’t look like the actor from Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Instead, I’ve been describing him as young of face but gray of hair, so I guess that means he looks like Alucard or Dracula from Castlevania.

Weird. I’m a Sega guy and never played Castlevania.
 
JONATHAN

Jonathan assumes his marriage is happy and is living a nice, quiet life as a chartered accountant law.  If he discovers Dracula is alive, it may unhinge him…

Honestly, I always feel sorry for Jonathan, but it’s hard to imagine him becoming an interesting character.  If I had the time and patience for such a thing, I’d love to write a Dracula sequel that’s a simple domestic drama about the Harkers’ repressed recrimination and pain.  But I don’t, so I’m not gonna.

Hmm, maybe Jonathan has a thing for kinky sex that he keeps hidden from Mina, and if they only shared their hidden desires they could enjoy a happy swinger lifestyle?  That would be kind of cool…

I just can’t imagine Jonathan deliberately choosing to become an ongoing vampire hunter action hero, though.  That just doesn’t seem like his thing, no matter how much kukri-wielding action he got into at the end of the novel.


MINA

You know what Dracula being alive means? 

It means Mina was never cured!

 
Mina Harker is still a proto-vampire (a moroaică, or “living vampire” in Romanian terms), hiding her curse from her husband and friends through judicious use of make-up and mesmerism.  The initial signs of vampirism that seemed to disappear when Dracula “died” were in fact just “growth pangs” and vanished because Mina’s body adjusted, not because they were gone.  She controls her bloodlust well, but the physical strength and stamina that come from being moroaică leave her frustrated at the confines of hearth and home.  She’s had a string of lovers on the side; she feels guilty because she still loves Jonathan, but he’s such a putz
 
Mina’s biggest worry is that Dr. van Helsing will discover her secret and kill her in her sleep

VAN HELSING

Van Helsing has pretty much given up medicine to concentrate on killing things.  He lives in a small London house and keeps no servants.  His cousin, the baronet Sir Justin Integrity Wingates-Hellsing, funds Van Helsing’s continued research, but none of the other characters know about that yet.


I do a pretty good impression of Anthony Hopkins’ Van Helsing, but it takes me a while to warm up. 

SEWARD

I haven’t given a single thought as to what he’s up to.  Maybe he emigrated to New York City and founded a new asylum with a partner named Arkham?   

Actually, I just got off the phone with Robin, and her theory is that Seward is Bram Stoker’s self-insertion character.  Van Helsing might be Stoker’s Mary Sue (they share first names and have similar builds; Van Helsing is all gregarious and wise), but Seward is the quietly competent guy who has to put up with all the crap.  He’s the guy who has to deal with “bookings” and arranging things and all that jazz, just like Stoker handling things for Henry Irving.  That makes me think that Seward has probably been quietly researching vampire phenomena and studying new, technological techniques of vampire fighting so that he can ultimately show up both his mentor Van Helsing and the dreaded Count Dracula.

Seward is kind of an unpleasant ass, but you can understand where he’s coming from.
MORRIS

Quincey P. Morris was, until recently, a vampire and had been so since his apparent death at the end of Dracula.  Quincey’s sire, however, was not Dracula himself.

 
The exact circumstances of Morris becoming moroi are a mystery to him.  Back before he met Lucy Westenra, he lived an occasionally dissolute lifestyle, so it’s possible he picked up vampirism at a Mexican bordello just south of the Texas border.  The peculiarly snake-like features of his vampirism certainly suggest a connection with vampire cults of that area.   


Yes, I’ve been watching From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series.  Your point?      

It may have also occurred during his expedition to the Pampas, as recounted in Dracula.  During that adventure, Quincey’s horse was mortally wounded in the night by vampire bats and had to be put down.  It is possible that Morris himself endured an attack he does not remember and was infected at that time.  In any case, Quincey Morris was already a moroi when he battled Dracula and changed into a strigoi (an “immortal” or undead vampire) after he fell in battle. 

Painfully, that means the blood he donated during the series of blood infusions attempted to save her life actually helped to infect Lucy Westenra with vampirism.  He realizes that and may never quite forgive himself.

Lady Atalanta first encountered Quincey during an adventure involving the Lilith Tablet, a Babylonian relic recounting the supposed origin of the world’s first vampire.  Dracula and Atalanta battled for possession of the tablet and the discovered it housed Lilith’s undying spirit.  Quincey aided Atalanta in banishing the spirit, the Count retreated, and the archaeologist and the reluctant vampire became lovers.  As is the sad story of many such people called to adventure, they had to part to pursue their own destinies.

Many months of game time later, Lady Atalanta and Morris were reunited in the Yucatán.  Both sought a mysterious lost Mayan city that had been recently sighted, but not properly explored.  After fighting off a nest of Mayan vampires, Atalanta discovered a gold "Rosetta Stone" Mayan codex.  Lady Atalanta recently translated the mysterious Mayan codex and discovered a rather… unconventional… cure for vampirism (or at least the South American strain).  After helping to cure her on-again/off-again lover of his curse, Lady Atalanta and Quincey parted once more to pursue their own adventures.

GODALMING


 
Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming, was shattered by the tragedies he experienced during the events of Dracula... 
 
 
So he traveled the world, seeking solace in the mystic teachings of the East... 
 
 
And now he fights crime in London as the mysterious vigilante, the Black Pirate!
 
(Because that's how I roll!)
 
 

Comments

  1. Personally, I've always liked the theory that Quincey Morris and Dracula were really the same person. Totally changes the way you'd read the book in that case, doesn't it?

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    1. Nope, can't see it. They're in the same place at once too many times. I can, however, see Morris being Dracula's ally; in my particular version, the alliance is unwitting on Morris' part -- because he's a moroi and doesn't know it, he's susceptible to Dracula's mental commands.

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