With centuries of experience behind them, they are the most cunning, intelligent, and elusive of all adversaries – testing the most skillful and practiced of monster and vampire hunters alike. These creatures are known to establish intricate and widespread networks comprised of numerous vampire minions and human thralls alike; making them nearly impossible to track down and destroy.
Vampire Regents can control the will of humans possessing lesser mental strength than theirs through a form of hypnotic control. This hypnotic control can be conveyed either verbally or telepathically from great distances.
Vampire Regents need only to catch the gaze of their intended victim for a few seconds, for their mesmerism to take effect. Victims bitten by a Vampire Regent would fall under its immediate control; a helpless servant. Such thralls can either be willing or unwilling (hypnotized) servitors charged with the safekeeping of the vampire and its lair during daylight hours. Thralls may be used to procure or otherwise lure victims for their vampire-masters as well. Willing thralls are usually recruited by the promise of immortality in exchange for their unholy service.
Vampire Regents are master shape-changers, able to assume the form of a bat, rat, wolf, or mist while retaining their own intelligence. Many Vampire Regents are able to transform into a bat of human proportions as well. It is also a simple task for them to summon and control hordes of bats, rats, and wolves within a 10-mile radius.
Some Vampire Regents (such as Dracula) are able to summon fog and thunderstorms of substantial furor. Although the mystical concentration is fatiguing, Vampire Regents are normally able to summon such phenomena within a mile radius.
Although common vampires must rest during the daylight hours, Vampire Regents do not require such rest. They only need to avoid direct sunlight.
Over the centuries, Vampire Regents have developed a modicum of resistance from the effects of religious objects. The efficacy of such objects is contingent upon the strength of the wielder’s belief. Only a great deal of belief can make religious objects cogent against Vampire Regents. Insufficient belief on the part of the wielder can turn the power of the object against the object itself (typically resulting in the spontaneous combustion or melting of that object).
