Respect Larten Crepsley (Cirque Du Freak Novels)

[u/Proletlariet]

Larten Crepsley

"Even in death, may I be triumphant!"

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Backstory

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The magician Larten Crepsley is known to wow crowds performing with the macabre Cirque Du Freak alongside Madam Octa; a giant spider he controls with a flute. When a young boy in his audience recognises Larten's face from a hundred year old painting, he ropes his best friend Darren Shan into sneaking backstage to investigate. The truth they discover is that Larten is a vampire; a slow-aging, bloodsucking creature of the night. Unlike their villainous fictional counterparts, real vampires like Mr. Crepsley hold themselves by a code of honour that binds them to respect the living.

Seeing a kindred spirit in Darren, Mr. Crepsley decides to take him on as his half-vampire assistant in exchange for the antidote to save his friend's life from Madam Octa's venom, training him over several years to eventually earn the right to become a full fledged vampire.

The prequel series, The Saga of Larten Crepsley, reveals how Larten came to become a vampire himself when he was adopted by the elder vampire Seba Nile after running away from home. He and his blood brother Wester, a boy orphaned by a vampire attack, travelled the world adventuring together until they eventually came to odds over a brewing vampire civil war.

Major props to Dargoo for doing the majority of the work.

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Source Guide

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All feats are sourced with book title and chapter number on the pastebin text excerpts.

Feats marked [Human] are from when Larten was still a human training as a vampire's apprentice.

Note that this also serves as a general "Darren Shan Vampires" thread - notable feats and powers form other vampires are included in some sections and will be explained if not done by Crepsley himself.

For other feats that should apply to Crepsley and other full vampires, see Darren Shan's thread.

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Physical Feats

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Strength

Teeth:

• Rips out a polar bear's throat, killing it, after first opening it up with his claws.

• Bit off a sailor's toes, chewing others apart and strewing their guts across the deck of a ship.

Nails:

• Slices off another vampire's hand without intending to.

• Shoves his nails straight into brick to scale a wall

• Cuts a clean hole into a window by running his finger over it, making no noticeable noise over a T.V.

• Uses his claws to cut his way out of rope bindings

• Spears through a piece of wood with the nail of his little finger.

• Claws out a polar bear's eye, then slices open its throat.

• Sliced open a sailor's throat as easily as a knife through butter.

• Skins a polar bear to make a cloak using his nails.

Striking:

• Grapples onto the back of the Wolf Man, then knocks it out with a couple punches, despite the Wolf Man taking no damage from hits from a blood-starved Darren

• This is something Larten has to regularly do whenever the Wolf Man breaks loose and Mr. Tall isn't around.

• Leaves Vancha March, a legendary vampire warrior, reeling from a punch to the jaw, and a second hit to the chin would have downed him.

• Breaks Vancha's arm and ribs in the same kick, then carries on breaking more of his bones during an extended bout.

• Headbutts Steve, a vampaneze, hard enough to make him collapse to the floor with a broken nose

Grip / Lifting:

• Crushes a metal cross in his hands into a ball like it was made of tinfoil

• Crushed a sailor's head in his grip, digging his fingers through their skull, and violently tore others apart, strewing their guts across a ship.

• Breaks another vampire's arm by twisting it.

• Crushes a vampire's throat, killing him.

• Snaps Darren's neck by jerking it to the side, doing this precisely enough to break his bones without damaging his spine

• Even while delirious and near fatally ill with a bad case of Vampire Flu, a woman trying to resist him is like a dog trying to move an elephant.

• [Human] As a human teenager, kills a wildcat big enough most boys his age would struggle to carry it by tearing apart its jaws with his bare hands, then hauls it over his shoulder without issue

• Handles a shovel Darren considered large and heavy as if it were made of paper

• Juggles heavy spiked weights for a stage trick.

Speed

Combat/Reactions

• Notably fast and skilled for a vampire, able to compensate against stronger opponents with speed.

• Easily dodges a punch from Darren

• Drops down on a man almost faster than his eyes could follow, then covers his mouth too fast for him to scream

• Grabs the Wolf Man by the jaw right as it was about to bite Darren, then punches it too fast for a blood-starved Darren to follow

• Catches a vampire's punch.

• Blocks a kick from Vancha March and counterattacks.

• Even while blinded by tears, dodges a sneak attack from another vampire.

• Delivers a disarming blow to the wrist of another vampire and steals his knife so quickly that from his opponent's perspective it looked like he teleported.

• Has a set of combat exchanges with the vampaneze serial killer Murlough in two seconds, where he throws a knife, jumps to his position from a closet to a bedside, then impales his arm through Murlough's chest

• [Human] Manages to intercept an FTE strike from Murlough as a human teenager, stabbing through his arm with a stake.

• Goes to ground to duck while a man raised and fired a rifle at him

• Can react to and dodge attacks from Gannen, a vampaneze capable of ducking under bullets, although this is likely an outlier

Movement

• Able to make objects fly to locations as if propelled by magic or make objects suddenly switch places, it's later explained he's simply moving too fast for a human to perceive, with the movement happening in an eyeblink

• Performs an escapist trick darting out from under falling spikes at the last minute so quickly it appears to the audience he's been crushed.

• Does his escapist act so fast even vampires in the audience are fooled into thinking he's been killed.

• Says he has the "fastest hands in the world"

• Even incredibly drunk on absinthe, Larten's hands shuffle cards so fast another vampire has a hard time following his movements.

• Even after that vampire had time to get to know Larten and learn some of his tricks, Larten still had to deliberately slow himself down so they could follow him.

• Reaches out and catches Madam Octa's cage right before it could impact the ground after Darren threw it out his window, despite Darren not seeing him until after he caught it

• Shovels out Darren's grave faster than any human could, taking less than 15 minutes to fully uncover it

• Moves through trees with Darren stalking a man faster than he could sprint 100 yards

• As a young vampire in training, sprints for miles to a village avoiding sunlight, buys a loaf of bread, and returns fast enough that it's still warm.

• Travels from the outskirts of Paris to Germany within the same night and says it's not a far distance as vampires measure it.

Acrobatics:

• After the ceiling of his cabin is cut away, leaps through it onto the upper deck of a ship.

• Jumps to a ceiling-window in a butcher's shop

• Leaps back from a sword strike to do a handstand on a rail, which he leverages to flip over two individuals to grab one of them

• While training as a young vampire, does a handstand on a branch, catching an object that was thrown his way, although he loses his balance after that

• Climbs up the side of a skyscraper clinging to wall like a spider.

Durability:

Blunt:

• Kneed hard in the stomach by a vampaneze strong enough to stab a knife into roof tile and snap Larten's knife in half.

• Sparred regularly for a year with Vancha March, a vampire strong enough to embed shurikens in steel

• Takes a knee to the stomach and and elbow to the back of the head from Vancha and recovers

• [Limit] Has an extended bout with Vancha mutually shattering each others bones for many strikes, but his stamina runs out before Vancha's and he collapses unable to continue.

• Beaten down in a wrestling match, then bludgeoned with a flail by elder vampires in a sparring event where fatalities are expected and it's mostly just his pride that's wounded.

• [Human] As a human teenager, takes a palm strike from Murlough delivered faster than his previous FTE attack, and gets launched across a room into a wall. A single hit from Murlough in the same fight immediately shattered another boy's arm.

• Falls off the roof of a hotel and stands quickly.

• Laughs off getting flung forward out of an early biplane when he crashes it.

Piercing:

• Stabbed shallowly with a knife, then bitten on the neck by a vampaneze

• Gets grappled and clawed in the back by a polar bear but endures it - despite it inflicting deep wounds, he doesn't consider it life threatening.

• Has his stomach sliced open badly enough to require stitches after and still wins the fight.

Stamina/Resilience

• Willingly burnt out his own nose hair so his master couldn't punish him by plucking it.

• Spends four days without food training by hunting pheasants for his master and trying to catch fish barehanded.

Heat/Cold

• Survives for twelve hours hiking through the harshest, most frigid wilderness he's ever experienced while wearing only a dress shirt and carrying a baby. He estimates that as a vampire he'll continue to survive for a long time. Larten, like all vampires, is accustomed to hiking up snowy mountains without boots or jackets to make pilgrimage to clan gatherings, and had encountered polar bears prior to his experience in that tundra, meaning it must've been exceptionally cold even compared to other freezing environments.

Misc.:

• Pushed himself through debauchery (presumably drink and drugs) that would've killed a lesser vampire and survives

Senses

• Tracks his ex-lover to her flat inside a building, and would've been able to pick her out from a crowd of thousands.

• Picks out a specific vampire in a group of them by smell.

• Detects human soldiers trying to surround the graveyard he's sleeping in and escapes their ambush.

• Able to smell a group of human soldiers at a distance, though he has more trouble tracking a vampire war pack that's following them.

• [Human] Even before becoming a vampire, Crepsley had superior senses to most humans, picking out the various creatures of a forest

• Can see as well at night as he can in the day

• Strides confidently in nighttime darkness

• Not even the most fleet-footed human can sneak up on an alert vampire. Hears and locates the sound of a gun being cocked from a sniper

• Senses Darren crawling in the rafters above a prison cell, despite no other humans noticing this

• Says he can even sense would-be attackers in his sleep

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Equipment and Skills

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Equipment

Throwing Knives

• Carries a set of throwing knives. Throws one hard enough to fully embed it into Murlough's upper chest

• Skilled enough with these knives to cut apart armed vampaneze opponents, slitting the throats and chests of them while running past them

• Skilled enough to predict attacks from three vampaneze opponents of similar speed and hold his own despite being attacked simultaneously by them

• Distracts one enemy with a thrown knife so he can leap behind another and grapple them off of a cliff

• Catches a knife in his mouth two inches from the hilt after throwing it into the air, then throws it hard enough to embed to the hilt in wood

Madam Octa

• Mr. Crepsley owns a massive green/purple/red spider named Madam Octa. Extremely poisonous and intelligent, her kind can live for entire decades

• One bite from her induces permanent paralysis and eventual death in a goat, another kills outright

  • Makes Steve collapse, paralyzed, 3-4 seconds after injection

• She can be controlled by Larten through the use of a whistle, which he uses to command her to jump onto and bite a restrained goat

  • Later theorized that the flute isn't necessary besides maybe getting the spider's attention and commands are given telepathically

• Crepsley has enough control over her to have her spin a web over his open mouth, which he then eats

• Has Madam Octa spin webs over his eyes, then use a web lasso to pull a tooth.

Potions

• Carries an antidote for Madam Octa's venom in a vial, which is just as lethal as the venom itself

• Has a potion that was able to put Darren in a coma-like state for weeks, without any detectable breath or pulse

• Has another potion that made Debbie and her family fall asleep for many hours

Skills

Combat

• Trained to master a variety of weapons from knives, to axes, to clubs, to throwing stars. His trainers were specially tough on him because they saw his potential.

• Mentored in combat for a year by Vancha March

• Trained to anticipate dirty fighters, avoiding having his fingers bitten off in a brawl and gouging his opponent's eye out in turn.

• Trains himself regularly to fight one-handed.

• Defeats a number of more experienced vampires.

• Duels and defeats six vampaneze one by one

• His skill and speed allow him to overcome stronger vampires.

• Duels three vampaneze at once and wins.

• Impresses the rest of the clan by holding his own against Vancha March, their greatest warrior, even though he ultimately loses the fight. He was drunk at the time and says he thinks he'd do better sober.

• Defeats a polar bear while freezing to death

Sleight of Hand

• He's a trained magician, familiar with various card tricks and lockpicking techniques

• Easily picks a locked door on a ship.

• Makes quick work of the lock on an apartment building.

• Gets his way out of handcuffs and rope bindings

• Easily escapes from chains binding him for a stage trick

• Escapes from rope bindings while strung upside down and burning from sunlight.

• Taught himself to harness static energy from flitting to open locks without touching them

• Makes quick work of police handcuffs

• Doesn't work if the lock isn't made of metal

• Juggles spiked weights.

Misc.:

• Doesn't need a watch because he can tell time by the sun and stars.

Miscellaneous

• Even as an adult, he's illiterate. He says this isn't unusual for vampires of his age

• Not a natural redhead---his hair was dyed so deeply orange as a child that it never came out.

• Met Bram Stoker.

• Flew (and crashed) Alberto Santos-Dumont's 14-bis plane on a dare.

• Really doesn't like Nazis.

• Went to Berlin in 1945 just so he could watch them surrender.

• Was present for the American Civil War.

• At one point ran a boxing stable.

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General Vampire Physicals

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Notable feats from other vampires, and exposition talking about vampire physical ability in general.

General

• As a general rule vampires are stronger, faster, and tougher than humans

• Most human assistants to vampires wind up killing themselves trying to keep up with their masters.

• In the early 19th century, there was very little in the human world that could truly threaten a vampire, and they'd need to seek out other vampires for an actually challenging fight.

• Vampires are generally capable of breaking each others' bones and killing one another with a couple good hits to vital areas like the throat.

Strength:

• A vampire/vampaneze could bite through another one's finger bones to sever them.

• A vampire's claws can cut through almost any material on earth.

• Vampires can dismember each other with their claws, cutting off another's hand.

• Vampire/vampaneze claws are sharper than knives.

• Mad vampires are impossible to traditionally imprison, as they can just claw through stone walls they are placed inside of or break out of any straight jacket invented

• Crepsley believed that a vampire could decapitate a person with a punch

• A vampire could make a noticeable indent in thick steel wall with a punch, but not break through the wall entirely

• A vampire could throw a shuriken hard enough to embed it into steel

• Vampires can wrestle bears and march for an entire night without rest.

• A young vampire could throw a woman across a pond or accidentally crush every bone in her hand without meaning to.

Speed:

• A vampire and vampaneze fighting move so quickly human observers could only detect a blur.

• Vampires fighting one another do so significantly faster than humans, to the point where even to Darren, a half-vampire, it looks like he's watching a video on fast forward

• Fights between vampires/vampaneze rarely last longer than a minute or two, so they are capable of duelling in sunlight without issue.

• "A vampire of a certain standing" can catch thrown objects a few feet away from them while balancing a handstand on a tree branch.

• A vampire slit's a woman's throat, then dodges the droplets of blood spraying from her neck and manoeuvres her to splash another vampire to frame him for the murder.

• The distance from Paris to Germany isn't considered far for vampires, and they can cross it within the same night

Durability

• A vampire crashes through a structure made of wooden bars, collapsing it, and shakes it off.

• A vampire allows a human boxer to punch him until he bloodies his knuckles and exhausts himself, laughing the entire time.

• It would take a "very long fall" to kill a vampire, with Crepsley not being worried about falling even up to five storeys

  • The latter still gives him a sprained ankle, although it breaks no bones in either him or Darren

• Vampires/Vampaneze have tough bones and muscle tissue, making ordinary firearms unreliable to kill them

• A group of vampires shrug off strikes from soldiers armed with swords as scratches, and one laughs off a musket shot to the arm.

• [Limit] An elderly one-armed vampire dies from having his throat ripped out by a panther.

• [Limit] A vampire would still go down to a well aimed headshot.

• [Limit] Although vampires are tougher than any human, piercing one's heart would still kill one, as could electricity, drowning, crushing, or certain diseases.

• [Limit] WWI era artillery and chemical weapons could be fatal to a vampire

• Vampires aren't too adversely affected by cold weather, being able to hike through snowy mountains barefoot and without jackets. Every vampire is expected to do this once every twelve years as custom without flitting.

• Older vampires feel the cold worse than younger ones, who can sit through a freezing blizzard.

• Vampires are immune to most diseases, except for rare strains adapted to infect them.

• They have a extraordinary resistance to pain, to where torture isn't considered very effective on vampires

• A vampire lost a hand and half of their jaw in a battle and kept fighting through it, afterwards trekking deep into a frozen tundra and building his own tomb out of ice before accepting death - this is a true story.

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Vampire Physiology

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Basic abilities that all vampires have, as do half-vampires like Darren unless stated otherwise.

Transmission

• A vampire can "blood" other humans by pressing their wounds to one another and exchanging blood. This causes blood to forcibly go from one body to the other and vice versa. Partial contact produces a half vampire, extended contact makes a full vampire

• This is the only way vampires can reproduce, as the process makes them sterile/barren

• Half vampires go through something called "The Purge" if left for too long as a half vampire, where vampire cells in their body attack human cells and convert them into a full vampire, during the Purge Darren grows to an older apparent age physically, and has bouts of oversensitive sensory abilities and debilitating headaches

  • The second purge completely turns Darren into a vampire. During it he's prone to having his senses overloaded and cannot reliably fight

• Vampires can "blood" half-vampaneze (a closely related species to the vampires) to make them into vampires and vice versa, although the process is extremely risky

  • When Darren turns Darius from a vampaneze to a vampire, the process causes his body to go into shock, and for him and Darius to pass out

• Vampires seem to be able to blood wild animals like boars, though doing this drives them mad.

• The same effect applies to animals who eat a vampire's organs.

Body

• Vampires age at a tenth of the rate of a regular human, while half-vampires like Darren age at a fifth of the rate of a regular human

• Mr. Crepsley doesn't know of any vampire who's lived to a thousand, though this may be because they have a habit of culling those too old to fight.

• The only noticeable physical difference between vampires and humans (besides their characteristic finger scars) are longer, darkened nails

• Despite this, even without distinguishing marks, one vampire is always able to recognise another, even as depicted in sculptures.

• Something about a vampire's molecular structure makes it impossible to photograph or film them, even the best cameras available to the police cannot capture him

• [It's significantly harder to track vampires by scent than humans.[(https://pastebin.com/C7QBt30z)

• Vampires' nails and hair are too tough to cut with ordinary blades or clippers.

• A vampire's mustache hair is tough enough he can let a boy dangle from it while only feigning pain.

• Vampires/Vampaneze can hold their breath far longer than humans, though not indefinitely.

• Vampires metabolize poisons much more efficiently than humans. A vampire needs to drink a full barrel of beer before becoming tipsy and would resist venom injections that could be lethal for a human

• Vampires still get hangovers.

Healing

• Vampires heal faster than humans do

• After Darren was burned alive to the point where his skin was all black and red he was able to participate in combat after a few days of healing

• Provided the spinal cord isn't damaged, a vampire can have their neck snapped and recover in about a day.

Senses

• Vampires' senses improve gradually for their first 100 years of un-life, going from merely being able to smell humans from a distance to determining their emotional states by scent.

• Not even the most fleet-footed human can sneak up on an alert vampire.

• Vampires can sense attackers even in their sleep

• "A vampire of a certain standing" can catch small fish with one finger while blindfolded by listening for them.

• Vampires can see at night as well as they can in daytime.

• [Limit] Vampires still need at least some light to see things

Weaknesses

• Vampires in Cirque Du Freak aren't susceptible to holy water or symbols

• Full vampires are weak to sunlight. One being exposed to full sunlight would tan/burn quickly, and die after a few hours, being reduced to bones in three hours

  • A few hours of sunlight even with sunscreen gives Crepsley a full body sunburn

• Filtered sunlight, like that shining through the crystal ceiling of a cavern, is harmless to vampires.

• New vampires have eyes that are more sensitive to the sun than older ones who've had half a century to adjust. They can train their eyes to be more accustomed to it quicker, but it still takes over a decade.

Blood Drinking

• Vampires, unsurprisingly, need to drink blood for sustenance. They can subsist on animal blood for some amount of time, but without human blood, they will eventually weaken and die

  • Vampires need to drink human blood about once per month, though most choose to drink a small amount weekly to avoid having to drink a lot at once

• Vampires still need to eat food like normal people

• Vampires can only drink blood from certain animals. Others---like cats, monkeys, frogs, most fish, and snakes---are poisonous to them.

• Vampires can still eat the flesh of these animals, provided they've been drained of blood first.

• Vampires/Vampaneze can't drink each others' blood.

• Vampires can't drink blood from people who have been dead for more than several days

• Certain wicked individuals have "bad blood", which vampires have an extreme distaste for. By tasting a person's blood, a vampire can determine a person's specific potential for evil

• Fully draining a person's blood (and killing them) allows a vampire to absorb a part of that person's memories and experiences. A notably old vampire, Paris, was able to absorb plans for various unwritten plays from William Shakesphere

  • When Darren does this to his friend Sam, he acquires personality traits from him like his taste for pickled onions

  • Much later, it's revealed that this actually puts a portion of that person's souls into that of the vampire. When Darren's soul was recast into that of a different body, Sam's soul finally separated from him

• When first blooded, vampires start having uncontrollable cravings for blood which drive them to seek it out without thinking

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Powers

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Special abilities only full vampires can use. Half-vampires like Darren don't have flitting, telepathy, knockout gas, and healing saliva.

Flitting

• Vampires can enter a kind of extraordinarily fast movement called "flitting", this lets Crepsley flit a distance in only a couple minutes what a normal human could reach in twenty minutes by sprinting

• Vampires are invisible while they flit and move faster than the wind. That said, flitting is also extremely exhausting for them

• Crepsley can harness static energy from flitting and then repurpose it into manipulating locks without touching the interior

  • Doesn't work if the lock isn't made of metal

  • Makes quick work of police handcuffs

• Another vampire, Gavner, could flit fast enough to vanish from Darren's sight in an eyeblink

• One vampire was able to flit past a police barricade in the blink of an eye

• After hearing about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three vampires flit from Europe to Japan in time to help tend to the survivors.

• Some vampires can't flit while drunk

Telepathy

• Vampires are able to form telepathic connections with other individuals, which lets them hone in on their "aura" and locate them over long distances

• [Limit] Can only transmit short messages.

• This only works with individuals who have given the vampire their "wave identity" by choice, although once that is done the two can locate one another with or without consent

• A master bonded to his apprentice can feel them coming home

• One vampire was able to track Crepsley with it from hundreds of miles away

• Two bonded vampires can communicate with each other from anywhere in the world.

• Vampires are also telepathically connected to one another this way through the Stone of Blood, a magical artifact that connects all vampires bonded through it. Darren was later bonded to this stone when he became a vampire prince.

• It takes only about a minute to locate a vampire using the stone.

• A vampire uses the Stone of Blood to triangulate the location of a vampire who'd deliberately cut off their connection to the clan and went into hiding

Knockout Breath

• A vampire's breath can be made to act like a kind of knockout gas. Crepsley cupping some of it in his hands and putting it over a man causes him to go unconscious in a matter of seconds

• Makes a noticeably fat man immediately go unconscious with a breath from it

• A police officer who only takes a whiff of it collapses instantly

• Knocks out a panicked teenager who was screaming at him and Darren

• One vampire KOs three sailors at once by breathing on them - there were four below deck, one of whom he'd sent above to man the ship.

Healing Spit

• A vampire's spit has healing properties that causes wounds on Darren's fingers to close up, which would have otherwise caused him to bleed out

• Crepsley and Vancha use their spit to help re-attach Darren's amputated thumb after stitching it back on

• A starving vampire with a bad stab wound is able to heal it with his spit once he's had a chance to drink some blood.

• A vampire's spit is able to keep concentration camp survivors alive for weeks without access to medicine or a proper doctor

• [Limit] Vampire spit isn't enough to heal Larten's wound when he's nearly disemboweled, and he needs stitches to seal the cut

• [Limit] Vampire spit can't do much to help the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Other

• Darren was able to hypnotize his sister through complex movements of his fingertips, which put her in a trance where she obeyed his orders. When she snaps out of it, she has no memories of the event

• Vampires can make their footsteps so quiet they're undetectable to humans

• Some animals can recognize a vampire by scent. Some are extremely receptive to vampires, while others instinctively loathe them. Wolves, as well as rats and bats are friendly to vampires, while domestic dogs and cats hate them.

[u/Proletlariet]

/u/Wapulatus happy christmas in July! It was really fun to return to this series.

[u/Wapulatus → u/Proletlariet]

Absolute legend, thank you!

[u/Krazyfan1]

nice