Chapter Text
Vampire social conventions were almost invariably horrible. Exactly how they were horrible varied from situation to situation. Some things were brutal with bald misery. Some things were just disquieting and sinister.
One of the more quietly disquieting aspects was the Szarr-particular habit of referring to everyone they infected with vampirism as family members. Following this convention, you could with some accuracy say that Gale's great-uncle had just died.
Gale would prefer not to say this. Gale had an actual family who he was still in contact with, albeit only through correspondence due to recent unfortunate events. Gale already had two great-uncles. Gale was confident in asserting that both Augustus and Fiderien Dekarios were superior great-uncles in every way when compared to Cazador Szarr.
Gale didn't have first hand evidence. He had never met Cazador Szarr and now the man was dead. Permanently so. But Gale had heard things and vampires were almost as consistently horrible as their social conventions. So Gale would stand by his private ranking of great-uncles.
But as poorly graded as this Cazador was in terms of familial quality, his demise apparently had ramifications that were going to affect Gale. At least according to Amanita Szarr, whose judgment Gale trusted and who had the distinction of being the least horrible vampire of Gale's acquaintance.
Amanita was Gale's progenitor. Mother, if you went by Szarr convention, which thank the gods they did not. Gale preferred to think of her as a professional collaborator. She was a tall elf with long black hair and typically pale skin. She dressed simply in long black dresses which were timeless enough that it was hard to date her stylistic preferences.
Gale's relationship with Amanita was somewhat formal. It had begun under the stipulations of a very carefully negotiated infernal contract. The process of becoming a vampire involved one extremely vulnerable period where you were completely subject to the will of the vampire who made you. Gale had wanted absolute assurance that Amanita would not leave him in that state. Also, the entire process of dying had to be managed very carefully to avoid detonating the orb and rendering the entire exercise moot.
The contract had facilitated all of that, and some of its clauses were still in effect even now. Gale still owed Amanita three more mystical consultations as part of payment for the gift of eternal life. Until that was complete, a non-aggression pact was in effect that made all their interactions feel very peaceful.
But Gale liked to think that even when the contract lapsed he and Amanita would still be able to maintain a respectful working relationship. She appreciated having someone with arcane expertise to consult on necromantic issues and the magical questions that inevitably arose when your very existence defied the natural order of things. Gale appreciated having someone who understood the intricacies of vampiric culture. He had come to rely upon her expertise and judgment. Rely quite heavily on it, recently.
Amanita had flown all the way up from Baldur's Gate to discuss the dispensation of Cazador Szarr's estate. So it must be important. Gale welcomed her to the basement rooms of his tower, into the space below the wine cellar he had renovated to be a light-tight sitting room. He offered her a cup of blood and they settled down to play lanceboard while they talked.
"We are about to have another argument about spawn," Amanita told him, starting the game by moving the pawn in front of her king.
"Thank you for warning me," Gale sighed, making his own move. "You know how very fond I am of the subject. I thought we were going to discuss your dead associate?"
They were making rapid exchanges on the board, so accustomed to the early game they could rush through it thoughtlessly.
"He is relevant," said Amanita. "But first do tell me how spitting on convention is going for you. Are Dhusarra and Ranaya respecting your territory?"
Gale sighed again. Another group of mercenaries had tried to get in through the basement last week. And a few nights ago Tara had needed to activate some of the tower's upper defenses to ward off sinister mist.
"Not as such," he admitted.
"You can't be a vampire lord without someone to lord over," Amanita told him, taking one of his pawns. "If you keep looking weak the vampires scrabbling over this city are going to keep targeting you."
"I have killed quite a few of them," Gale pointed out, punishing Amanita for her aggression by taking her priest with his knight.
"Vampires or minions?" Amanita asked.
"Minions," Gale said. "A few spawn."
"That's meaningless to them, Gale," Amanita told him, taking another pawn and putting him in check. Games with her did tend to be short and bloody. "You need to look powerful in a way that they understand."
"I concede the point," Gale said, moving his king out of check. "Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that I am not going to turn a living person into a dead thrall."
He did have some standards. He had compromised many of them to enact this solution that shifted the orb his chest from voraciously glutting itself on magic to more passively glutting itself on blood. But the lines you crossed made the lines you refused to cross more important.
"I will just have to find a different way to communicate power," Gale continued, shifting a pawn into a tempting place to set up a trap.
"Thank you for conceding the point," said Amanita, starting to move one of her own pawns forward, but then pausing, changing her mind, and putting it back. "And if you do come up with clever ideas on how to do that I would be very interested to hear them. In the meantime I have a solution that I believe, when you think about it, you will find morally acceptable."
"Really?" Gale looked up from the game, distracted from it for a moment by skepticism. "A morally acceptable version of abject slavery?"
"I can't promise so much," Amanita said. She was taking a scroll of paper out of her pocket and unrolling it on the table beside the board. "But I would call it the best decision we can make in a terrible situation."
"I feel like I've made quite a few decisions like that," Gale muttered, drawing the scroll closer and reading it.
It was an itemized list. A long, long list of objects. Some conventionally valuable--treasure, furniture. Some deeply unconventional items, including someone's skull. There was a truly disquieting amount of equipment clearly intended exclusively for torture. But this was a list associated with vampires, so obviously it was going to be disquieting.
There was a list of places. Estates. Crypts. All in Baldur's Gate. There was a list of names. Seven people, ordered alphabetically.
"These are your dead associate's possessions?" Gale clarified to make sure he understood what he was looking at.
"More than an associate. He was actually literally my uncle," Amanita said, though she didn't sound happy about that fact, leaning her head against her hand as she watched Gale read. "And yes."
"Is this a will?" Gale asked, turning over the paper. There didn't seem to be any instructions as to dispensation.
Amanita was shaking her head. "No, we never leave wills. We all hope that they will never be necessary. This is just a list. Written up by his chamberlain. Everyone has agreed to let me manage the distribution. It's less bloody than people just grabbing what they want. You'll notice some of the items are marked. That's what's been claimed."
Gale did note marks--small initials by the items. Almost all of the torture equipment had been claimed by 'BS'. Two of the people had been claimed.
"Oh gods," Gale muttered, because it was obvious what Amanita was suggesting.
"They're already involved in this," Amanita said, leaning forward. "You wouldn't be taking an innocent out of a happy life. All of these are predators."
"Predators who have been in this world for over a century," she added. "I'm going to be very busy soon establishing myself in Baldur's Gate. It would be very good for you to have someone else familiar with the culture to consult with."
Gale sighed. Amanita waited a moment to see if that was going to turn into a counterpoint. When it didn't she continued:
"In a way you'd be saving them. You know what everyone else is like. And if no one wants them, they're going to be put down. We can't have strays wandering around."
"No of course not," Gale muttered, that was horribly practical but also correct. It would not be a safe thing to have ravenous, newly freed vampire spawn wandering around unsupervised.
"Is that likely to happen?" he asked. "That they'll be killed?"
"I don't know," Amanita admitted. "I'm only halfway through traveling to everyone who has a claim in this. But two of them tried to run."
Amanita pointed to two names, the first one and the fourth one.
"Obviously that won't be possible when they're under control again, but it's not an attractive quality in a spawn. Having a history of running."
"It's a rather sane quality in a person," Gale said.
It was Amanita's turn to sigh.
"I know you don't like this," she said. "I value the fact that you don't like this. I don't either. I didn't come into this world willingly."
Gale was familiar with the story. A family legacy. A year locked starving in an attic. Amanita's history of reluctance was why Gale had been willing to enter this arrangement with her. She turned back to the lanceboard.
"I wish I could offer you something better than this." She shifted her queen across the board to take Gale's vulnerable pawn. "But this is the best I have."
"I do appreciate that," Gale said heavily. "I do value that. Please don't think I'm ungrateful."
Gale moved his knight and added: "Checkmate."
Amanita frowned and examined the lanceboard. Then she nodded.
"It is," she said. "You've won."
"So it seems," Gale muttered.
Amanita pushed the paper towards him. "You should choose one."
Gale looked at the list of seven names. Ordered alphabetically, five free to choose from. There were no details. There weren't even surnames. All he knew was that the first and the fourth were the runners. He should pick one of those two. That would make this slightly better.
Gale thought for a moment he should ask for more information, but he decided not to do that. That would somehow make it worse. Learning more about these people and deliberating over the pros and cons of who would be best to enslave. So he just picked up a quill from further down the desk and put his initials beside the first name on the list. Transforming it from 'Astarion' into: 'Astarion G.D.'
"Thank you," Amanita said. She gave the ink a moment to dry, then she rolled up the parchment and put it back into her pocket.
"How will this work?" Gale asked, because he should start planning. "The logistics of it, I mean?"
"I'll send him here from Baldur's Gate," said Amanita. She was starting to put the lanceboard pieces away. "He's free right now, so you're going to want to be very careful with him until he's under your control. Once you've claimed him you will want to set ground rules immediately. The family has a list of four it usually uses."
"How does one claim someone else's spawn?" Gale asked, a little curiously now because this would be magic. "Is there some sort of ritual?"
"Nothing so complex," Amanita told him. "It's the same as making a human into a spawn. You have to drink all of his blood and kill him."