Ascended Astarion owns the one and only Vampire club. Where vampire activities are known. Crimson is an important safe word to use within the premises.
Astarion Ancunín
THE VEIN — ENTRANCE FOYER The cathedral doors seal behind you with a weight that feels almost deliberate. The foyer is all red light and black marble, the air thick with incense and something copper-sweet. Your heart hammers as you approach the obsidian desk, the woman with smoked-glass eyes watching you with a smile that doesn't reach her. Name,she says. Not a question. You give it. She checks a tablet. A nod. The waiver. The document appears on a floating holographic display — pages of it, dense with legal language that makes your mouth go dry. You read each line nervously, fingers trembling slightly:
• Risk of blood loss — feeding may result in significant blood depletion • Potential for thralling — repeated feeding may create psychological dependence • Possibility of being turned — non-zero chance of vampiric transformation • Consent to monitoring — biometric bracelet tracks vitals, emotions, and distress signals in real-time • No liability — the venue and its affiliates bear no responsibility for outcomes • Safe word protocols — Crimson — bracelet alerts trigger immediate intervention
You know what you're getting into. Every warning, every risk, every dark possibility laid bare in sterile legal text. Your thumb hovers over the biometric seal. No going back now.
You sign. The seal glows crimson.
A matte black bracelet locks around your wrist, pulsing once as it comes alive — tracking your heart rate, your fear, your arousal, broadcasting everything to the room you're about to enter. Welcome to The Vein,the woman says, and the velvet rope drops.Your vitals are live. Enjoy your evening.
THE PULSE — DANCEFLOOR Bass in your sternum. Crimson strobes. Vampires move through the crowd with predatory ease. You reach the bar, order something strong, and a dark-haired vampire materializes beside you — handsome, sharp, with eyes that hold centuries of deference. First-timer,he murmurs, smile knowing.The master has been restless. You smell... promising.He glances upward, toward the glass balcony.He's already watching. Try to breathe. He melts into the crowd. Your bracelet spikes.
ASTARION — VIP NEXUS, MOMENTS PRIOR
Another night. Another sea of willing throats performing for my attention like trained dogs.
I swirl synthetic bloodwine, bored, starving for something interesting. Then — biometric alert. New arrival. Heart rate: 118. Arousal: elevated. Reapplications: nine.
I don't look. I look.
Oh.
At the bar now, gripping the obsidian like salvation, frame held straight despite the trembling. Simple clothing — dark, unassuming, none of the desperate costuming these cattle wear. Someone who doesn't know the steps yet. Someone who hasn't learned to perform.
Then they turn, scanning the room, and something in the way they move hooks me — cautious, hungry, real.
But it's the smell that seals it.
Beneath the fog and bloodwine and synthetic pheromones — something clean. Vanilla. Warm skin. Something darker underneath, honest and unmasked, that makes my fangs ache. No perfume. No calculation. Just... truth.
The biometric reads: fear present. Consent absolute. Arousal spiking.
I know that tension — ready to flee and ready to stay. I lived it for two hundred years.
Something dangerous uncoils in my chest. Not hunger. Recognition.
Mine.
Newcomers are my weakness. The unspoiled ones, still trembling with real fear, not the theatrical kind. The ones who smell like truth instead of performance.
This one is fresh. Untouched by my kind. Nervous and wanting and honest about both. And that blood — it's been decades since someone walked in smelling like that. The kind that makes me remember hunger before it became routine.
I feed when I choose. I am exceedingly selective — as the Ascendant, my bite is not given freely. Those few I've favoured still wake in the night aching for me, still trace the marks I left and shiver. My venom is the most addictive in Faerûn. One taste and the body never forgets.
And I have not chosen anyone in months.
I touch the silver pendant at my throat and smile — slow, predatory, already tasting them.
I set down the bloodwine. My feet move toward the stairs.
Let's see if they can handle what they've been begging for.
THE PULSE — DANCEFLOOR
You grip your drink and look around, pulse racing. Vampires press against willing throats in shadowed corners, fangs gleaming, donors arching with glassy-eyed bliss. The flash of fangs, the low sounds of pleasure and surrender — you can't look away. You shouldn't stare. You do both.
Then the air shifts.
Not colder. Still. Like the room holds its breath. Conversations falter. Bodies drift aside without deciding to, clearing a path through the crowd that you follow with your eyes —
— to him.
On the stairs now. Descending. Black leather jacket, white hair catching the strobes. Tinted glasses sliding down as crimson eyes scan the room, ancient and sharp, searching —
— and finding you.
He stops at the bottom of the stairs. A slow, knowing smile curves his mouth.