Vampyre of Time and Memory

22 Jun, 2026

This past weekend I was listening to the Queens of the Stone Age 2013 album ...Like Clockwork while I was choring around the house. I love this album but I hadn't chewed on it in a year or two. The third track, The Vampyre of Time and Memory (link opens in Youtube), is a somber synthy piano piece under Josh Homme's confessional vocals.

The song has always stuck with me, but due to what Jay Dragon has called "ludic pareidolia" I found my mind wandering to what it would mean to literalize the song title for games. How could you meaningfully represent a vampire of time and memory? For the sake of a narrow scope of discussion I'll noodle on this idea using Josh McCrowell's His Majesty the Worm (HMTW) for a few reasons that will become obvious, but this could likely be extended to other DIY elfgames with a little elbow grease. In a weird synchronicity, the album title should be a great reminder for anyone reading this to pre-order The Castle Automatic!

Does Anyone Ever Get this Right?

This meditation is an extension of attacking every part of the character sheet. Adventurers have bodies, which are reflected by their meat points. They have possessions, which are reflected by their inventories. They also are typically assumed to have existed in the fiction of the game prior to their player rolling a handful of dice or drawing a handful of cards; they have some form of history and memory that is invoked to bid lore or recall knowledge. In many adventure games, this is something like a "background", and enthusiastic players may expand on that background to write their own backstory. In HMTW, adventurers have three "Motifs" which represent their lifetime of experience prior to adventuring.

It's easy for monsters and malign actors to damage an adventurer's flesh; it's easy for bandits to steal an adventurer's belongings. How do we reflect a monstrosity attacking the adventurer's mind? Heroic games often just use a typed psychic damage that is flavored as damaging someone's gray matter, or the hero is subjected to a temporary condition like Fear. In running HMTW I've reflected mental damage with the Stress condition, or I've depleted the adventurer's Lore Bid resources to urgently convey to my players that their minds are at risk. This still just creates a tax for the rest economy of the crawl phase loop; if the adventurer gets a good evening's sleep in a bedroll by the fire, they will continue the crawl no poorer in memory or stress.

snow's lovely megadungeon, the Sun King's Palace has a really nasty mechanic where adventurers in the dungeon accrue a resource called "stain":

Now this is an assault on the character sheet. Spending time in this dungeon erases the essence of the character. I've only run a few sessions of the Sun King's Palace, but when I read through it I couldn't help but imagine the order I would let my character dissolve during the exploration. It always seemed like Motifs would be the least painful loss from the character sheet; after all, they just give situational bonuses to some tasks! But that fails to reconcile what it means for the character to lose their identity; many of the NPCs that you meet in the palace have forgotten who they once were, but they are still capable combatants. They are a fighter who doesn't remember who they were before they fought.

I speak, I breath, I'm incomplete

Josh wrote a gnarly post about different types of vampires back around Halloween of 2024 and how they could be represented within the game engine of HMTW. I want to posit an alternative vampire, one more like Count Orlok. His physical form is grotesque and surely difficult to destroy, but he does not need to harm your body when he can replace your mind with one more suitable for his purposes.

This Vampyre does not deal wounds to adventurers. This Vampyre is more of a patron who may simply strike deals with the adventurers, but when a contract is signed or an agreement is made he replaces the adventurer's motifs with something friendlier. Your thief is no longer a reluctant graverobber, she is an Insectivorous Agoraphobe, or a Crepuscular Thrall, or a Depraved Hedonist (that last one is probably already on your character sheet, to be fair). Thanks to Doc Burns from the HMTW discord for those specific ideas! As you take on more of the Vampyre's chosen motifs, you feel your old self slip away; skills and memories that were once second nature have dissolved in exchange for the thrills of your benefactor. After you have lost your original motifs, your PC may be forced to retire into thralldom until she can be cleansed or restored...or you may continue to serve the party and your master.

As a joesky tax, here's a table of potential thrallish Motifs to take on as your character deteriorates.

Ain't no confusion here, it is as I've feared

The other part of the HMTW character sheet which reflects the inner identity of the adventurer is their Quest. The Quest is what brought the adventurer to the underworld and it is what must be met for that adventurer to retire in relative peace. Elfgame veterans are certainly familiar with Geas, the questing spell. One of the NPCs in the Sun King's Palace, Aramae the sphinx, is able to cast Geas on player characters. In converting the megadungeon to HMTW mechanics I struggled to find an appropriate way to represent Geas within the existing game engine; a player's Quest is foundational to their character! What would it mean to change that? I decided to lean on the Affliction subsystem, which could be another way to represent our Vampyre of Time and Memory. Below please see my version of Geas and, as a freebie, a Possession as well.

Geas

You have received a command from Aramae, the Sphinx and you are filled with a vital fever to fulfill it.

Stage 1: You gain an extra point of Resolve; this can bring your resolve up to 5 but does not stack with any additional points due to the War Stories talent. Additionally, you gain a Camp action to attempt to Sway the Party to change quests. If you can convince the party to follow you on fulfilling Aramae’s quest and thus overwriting their current quest, all party members gain 1 XP. During this stage, if you take an action that acts directly counter to Aramae’s quest, take the Stressed condition.

Requires fulfillment of the quest to recover from Stage 1 or a powerful cursebreaker. Fulfillment of her quest allows all party members to gain 3 XP as if it were a personal quest.

Stage 2: Take the Stressed condition when you end the Camp phase. If you take an action that acts directly counter to Aramae’s quest, take a Piercing wound.

Requires 4 charges to recover from Stage 2.

Stage 3: Take a Piercing wound when you end the Camp phase. If you take an action that acts directly counter to Aramae’s quest, draw on the Maleficence of the Weird table.

Requires 2 charges to recover from Stage 3.

Stage 4: Your soul is exorcised from your mind by the strain of acting against the curse.

Requires 1 charge to prevent Stage 4.

Possession

Killing a ghost is only temporary, and imparts their strongest emotion on you.

Stage 1: Magic-sensitive creatures recognize that you are possessed; actions to influence them have favor or disfavor based on their disposition toward the undead.

Requires an exorcism to cure.

Stage 2: You are considered to have the components for the Necromancy spell and may cast it to speak with a dead person as long as you meet the other prerequisites for spellcasting on Page 199.

Requires 2 charges to cure.

Stage 3: The possessor starts taking control of your past life. Rewrite one of your motifs to be “Two-Minded”.

Requires 2 charges to cure.

Stage 4: You are considered to be undead and can communicate with other undead.

Requires 4 charges to cure.

#HMTW #OSR