YOUR TEETH BELIEVE THAT TEETH ARE FOR TEARING (GLOG CLASS: DRACULA) - Glaugust 2026

(For GLAUGUST -Sequel to blogpost from last year; books as treasure, no spellbooks; dracula; system for legal arguments in a court of law; capsule game; megaclass)

It's been millennia since the death of the last whale. Men have walked among the stars - men who are not you. You are not among the cyber-saqlabi or mecha-zanj of the emirates of cold Titan, nor the undersea shudra of the Europan seafloor plantations or the human guinea pigs of the Veneran aerostats. Instead, you are of the old, small elite of an older, smaller Earth - on a planet of a hundred-billion, only tens of thousands reside in your fiefdom. Like the patch of earth over whose skin you crawl and from whose veins you suckle, you are dying, slowly. Your lifespan has run centuries already, and your body is held from breaking down further only by it's continued replacement - nearly every cell in your body is of external origin, supplemented by powders and pills from alien seas and embedded chips, pumps, and wires, but all of that can hold only so long. Your fief decays as your body does - there is only so much that can be wrung from it in gold and marrow, and your predations take from it so much that what it can give decreases year by year. The only way you can hold off the decay is by expanding your holdings so there is more from which to leech, and the only way to do so is to take from your neighbors... all of whom are in the same plight as you.

(This is a pvp-oriented Capsule game for 3 to idk players, all of whom are the same class (Dracula), in whose templates the entire game is contained (hence the "megaclass" designation))

A: Fief, Fangs, Famine

B: Usury

C: Levy

D: Harvest

Fief - 

You are the landlord of an estate, a mostly self-sufficient set of housing complexes, algae-stills, and light industrial plants. This fief is divided into d6 Parcels, each of which has three stats - Population, measured in thousands of people, Infrastructure, measured in thousands of people supported, and Stress, measured in kilobathories. Your total fief starts with a Population of 3d10 thousand, Infrastructure equal to Population - - (d10-5), divided between parcels as you choose, and each individual Parcel starts with (1d4-3) Stress. At the end of every year, a parcel loses (or gains, in the rare event it has negative Stress) as much Population as it has Stress (which resets). Every Population present in a Parcel beyond its Infrastructure rating automatically incurs two Stress in that Parcel. If a given Parcel has a Population at or below half of its Infrastructure, half of that Stress instead reduces the Infrastructure rating of the Parcel. A Parcel that reaches 0 Population or 0 Infrastructure becomes a wasteland and is permanently lost.

Every Parcel starts every year with 1d4-3 stress. Every Parcel may be taxed to extract Credit up to its Population, incurring 1 Stress for every unit of Credit (measured in millions of Neopesos) taken. Stress in any given Parcel can be reduced by the expenditure of Credit, with 1 Stress lost for every 2 Credit spent, up to a maximum of negative (Population/2). The Infrastructure rating of a given Parcel may be improved by up to 3 a year, with 1 Infrastructure gained for every 3 Credit spent. 

Your ownership of any given Parcel is bound up in your ownership of it's Deed, a physical book demarcating the possession and listing it's owners from it's incorporation to the present day, quantum-entangled with the courthouse supercomputer and bound in such a way that new pages can be added but old pages cannot be removed or modified without causing the entire book to decommission itself with the force of a MOAB. Anyone who steals the deed and adds their name to the page gains ownership of the Parcel. If the Deed is ever destroyed, ownership reverts to the state and the Parcel is permanently seized.

Fangs - 

You have possessions and powers beyond your estate, which you may use in the pursuit of enlarging it. Specifically, you maintain an Army, measured in Upkeep (their annual cost in Credit), which starts at an upkeep of d4 and may be enlarged to up to double it's current size annually by the expansion of Credit, but which cannot be reduced save by severance pay of two Credit for every unit of Upkeep by which it is reduced. 

   

An Army can be used to Raid another of your class - on that occasion, both sides roll d6+[Upkeep]. If the attacker wins, they get (d6):

1. Nothing

2-3. 20% of the defender's annual Credit

4-5. 50% of the defender's annual credit

6. The Deed to one of the defender's Parcels, chosen at random

If the defender wins, the raid is stopped in its tracks. In either case, each Army is reduced in Upkeep equal to the [sum] of the opponent's roll/3, and the Fief of the defender loses Infrastructure (split among parcels at random) equal to the [sum] of both rolls/2. 

Anyone who suffers a Raid may sue their assailant in a court of law. When a lawsuit is launched, each side commissions a legal team, gaining a Firm rating equal to the Credit so expended. When a lawsuit is launched, the plaintiff rolls d10+[Firm] and the defendant rolls d4+[Firm]. The plaintiff's roll - the defendant's roll adds to the lawsuit progress - when the Progress reaches 10, the lawsuit concludes, and the plaintiff is thereby entitled to the return of their lost property + 5 Credit for every point of Infrastructure they lost. If the progress of a lawsuit is not 10, it continues another year, with another roll. If the progress of a lawsuit dips below 0, it is dismissed. 

Famine - 

Your upkeep is a continuous struggle. Every year, you require upkeep in the sum of d20*[Templates] Credit. Unpaid upkeep becomes Decay. At 2 Decay, you advance to level 2 and B-template. At 4 Decay, you advance to Level 3 and C-template. At 8 Decay, you advance to Level 4 and D-template. At 16 Decay, you die. 

Usury - 

Your increasing desperation leads you towards the snare of all who suffer from limited finances... the maw of the banker.You can borrow against your assets, gaining Credit up to the theoretical extractible Credit of your entire Fief, with an interest rate of 20% which must be repaid, in annual installments of at least 1/5th the Principal, or one of your Parcels will be repossessed every year you are delinquent (it's Population counted as 2x Credit for the purposes of repayment). 

Levy - 

As the desperation of your situation increases, so too does your willingness to put every portion of what you have left to your own defense. You can now recruit the Population of your Parcel as soldiers, converting Population into Army upkeep at a 1-1 ratio. If you must, you can even try stiffing your mercenaries their pay - they'll make up the gap themselves, inflicting a point of Infrastructure damage for every Credit you fail to pay them. 

Harvest -

There is nothing more you can do to stop the decay of your holdings, but if your body, at least, can be preserved for a year longer, that will be enough. Instead of paying for your treatments, why not try harvesting them on-site? The cost to your serfs is great - the side effects of the immunosuppressant regime required to allow your replacements to grow inside them are rarely survivable - but you have little alternative. You can stop the further accruement of Decay by buying it off with Population directly, 2 lost for every point of Decay avoided - this cannot not heal what has already been gained, of course.