Café de Nuit

I just got Dark Tales and Disturbing Legends and ran across this line; " The Headless Horseman, Jack Bequick, the Nightmare Court and the Three Hags are all darklords that demand or can easily be adapted to a style of adventure closer to the uncanny monsters from childhood stories than those from standard adventure or gothic horror tales."

Who is Jack Bequick? Where do I find info on hime?

Jack Bequick is an invisible "vampire" who feeds on fear; he has to frighten people to feed. He appears in CotN: Vampires, and is not, as far as I have ever heard, a darklord--just a creepy fear-consuming invisible vampire.

Jack, a rather dubious creation, an invisible vampire that feeds on his own laughter at the terror and horror of others, who has a funhouse, perhaps in Kartakass or perhaps nowhere in particular, and who appeared in Creatures of the Night: Vampires.

Comments on him might perhaps be found in the review section here or, if not, in the www.Kargatane.com website. You will need, however, to go through www.thewaybackmachine.org to get the latter. Select a date at least a couple of years back.

(This is by memory (repressed at that) so please excuse any errors.)

Its been a while since I read it, but didn't Jack feed on blood just like evey vampire but before feeding he had to become visible. And before becoming visible, he was required to cause 3 failed fear checks.

Actually, I kind of liked Jack, and thought he had a lot of possibilities (if you forgot all about that vampire crap). I liked his origin as an unfunny clown, since all clowns are by definition unfunny and evil.

ScS of the Fraternity wrote:Actually, I kind of liked Jack, and thought he had a lot of possibilities (if you forgot all about that vampire crap). I liked his origin as an unfunny clown, since all clowns are by definition unfunny and evil.

Totally agree with the last part.

I thought that he was one of the poorer vampires in that book, it just didnt fit with everything else with what he was suppost to be. The whole funhouse thing was meh, it seemed to me like it was created just because there was never a funhouse adventure at that point. It was weak, which is sad because a funhouse could be really.......fun.

I seem to remember a villain kit or prestige class in a netbook called a Dark Clown (redundant, I know). The villain was suppost to prey on children or some such. That seems more suitable for Jack. Mabye a recreation of that adventure with Jack were he has recently joined Carnival as a trouper to escape some persecution or something. I dont know what would stop Isolde from crushing him since his actions are overtly evil (especially if he preys on kids as a Dark Clown), but it seems like it could work. Or you could create the original Carnival from "Carnival of Fear" if your campaign dates back to then, and add Jack's funhouse there (with a total remodel to the house of course). I sort of like the original Carnival from that story anyways, but then again that was my first Ravenloft novel.

Ah, thanks, folks. I have a copy of CotN: Vampires, but I've never read all of it. I tend to make up my own adventures and buy this stuff and just use certain ideas from it, so some of the adventure books I've only skimmed.

Given his whimsical nature and sheer oddity, I think it'd be reasonable to re-invent Jack Bequick from the ground up, to take 3E game-conventions into account. He'd be a much more plausible and viable NPC if he were a boogeyman, a leftover from the original Puppetmaster's Carnival (who'd abandoned the others when goody-goody Isolde turned up), a unique 'night terror' a la the Nightmare Lands boxed set, or a highly deranged shadow fey.

If you have to stick with his being a vampire, of course, he could be a freak of nature: a shadow fey who'd somehow contracted vampirism, despite being of the wrong creature-type to be susceptible. That would mean his backstory would have to be fairly unique ... as if he weren't weird enough, already.

You could make him a Cerebral vampire that needs the fear 'juices' to be presant in his victums mind to feed a addiction.

Jasper wrote:You could make him a Cerebral vampire that needs the fear 'juices' to be presant in his victums mind to feed a addiction.

He wouldn't have to be a cerebral vampire for that to work, actually. A regular vampire who was a literal "adrenaline junkie", addicted not just to blood but to blood rich in epinephrine (= 'adrenaline'), is certainly an intriguing prospect.

For that matter, making victims extremely enraged would have the same effect on their body-chemistry as scaring them, if that's his goal. If so, his flagrant taunting of would-be heroes might actually make a twisted kind of sense!

Making him a mist creature is an other alternative. Have the Mists move him and his funhouse about, making it appear from time to time for a night or two then vanish.

One could then dump the notion of him being a vampire and just make him so obsessed with driving people silly with fear that the Mist decided to lend him a hand and keep him around for all eternity. He and his funhouse dissolving into mists at the end should be sufficient.

I'm all for Jack as a bogeyman based upon the original Carnival. The Carnival l'Morai had all the criteria:

1) Someone hurt one or more children in such a way as to create a sinkhole of evil. I'd say that forcing them into hideous shapes qualifies.
2) Someone must use the story to terrify a child. Er...that wasn't like, the whole point of the Carnival or anything, right?
3) The story is allowed to change, but it must spread. Nothing like a roving band of survivors to do that for you!

Lots of great ideas in this thread. Maybe one of you could write that up for the next QtR? I'm working on a no-man's-land (or maybe I should say, no-elf's-land) type domain for it myself.