Act 7

Act 7: Go For The Real Goal

• Accomplish: The hero faces a ticking clock, some deadline to doom.
• Now the hero and the true villain battle it out, each gaining and losing the advantage.
• Favors Repaid/Magic and Divine Intervention/Help From All My Friends. The hero is uncertain but must follow through!
• Eventually, the Hero plays whatever trump card he/she gained in the previous Act (6, Reversal Moment) to
• defeat the True Villain, but it comes at a terrible cost. Maybe even death.
• The True Villain is killed/judged/banished and their evil empire crumbles.

a. Aragorn lays the armies' lives on the line to distract Sauron while Frodo tosses the Ring into Mount Doom. Gandalf defends Helm's Deep then sends the eagles to rescue Frodo. All in parallel, all in real-time. b. Death Star rebel fleet assault, trench run, Millenium Falcon assist, Force-guided torpedoes. Kabewm. All in parallel, all in real-time. In a TV show this is 20 minutes.

Sources

http://www.jordandane.com/writers_9.php http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue%2015/websitereview.htm https://gideonsway.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/the-nine-act-structure-of-screenwriting/ https://killzoneblog.com/2011/05/9-act-screenplay-structure-novel.html http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/wright/9act.html The Nine Act and Three Act Screenplay Structure

The Wedding Ceremony

Wedding Invite Handout

reddit

A Bride (or Groom) Ceremony is a method by which a vampire can turn a mortal into a full-blown vampire--skipping the 'Spawn' stage, not altering their bride's personality, and forging a powerful magical and telepathic bond between the two of them. On the downside, a bride-turned vampire does not acquire the instinctive knowledge of a normally-turned vampire (they don't automatically know the sun will kill them, or that they need blood to survive, or how strong they now are, etc) and doesn't necessarily provide the immediate alignment shift that may be necessary for the bride to do the things they must in order to survive (though Hunger may override Morality eventually). Unlike a created spawn, the creating vampire has no real control over their new spouse...though they may invent lies to make their new bride/groom think they have some power over them. Additionally, if either side of a Bride ceremony is destroyed, it creates a psychic backlash that harms the surviving partner. (Source)

Nurturing a bride is a lot of work...you have to ease them into the idea that they have become a vampire, teach them all about their limits and abilities, hope they don't completely lose their crap at you for what you did to them or collapse into a well of despair at having just murdered someone in a blood-craze, and if it all goes wrong--you get a nasty heap of psychic damage if your 'bride' dies. Or, perhaps worse...now you have an enemy with a psychic bond with you. On top of all of that, a vampire can only ever have one bride at a time. (Source)

Naturally, vampires do NOT do this lightly. Sucks if you put in all that work, then your bride just walks out into the sun to destroy themselves rather than become a monster.(Source)

The way a bride ceremony works is always purely intentional. A vampire cannot start the process by accident. First, the vampire feeds on a mortal, nearly to the point of death, on three separate occasions. Once the vampire is done with the third feeding, they immediately cut themselves open and press their intended's mouth to the bleeding wound so that they drink vampiric blood. In this state, the vampire's blood is intoxicating, and the bride(or groom)-to-be latches onto it with adrenaline-fueled strength (treated as Str 18). The vampire must moderate how much blood they let the bride-to-be consume so that they themselves are not drained dry...and if the bride-to-be drinks too much of the vampire's blood, it shatters their mind and they will die in excruciating pain (and not turn into a vampire) within 24 hours. (Source)

This is complicated by the fact that all of the feedings of a bride ceremony feel extremely good for both partners...and the last feeding (the bride feeding on the vampire) is the best of all. The vampire will need to physically force his bride-to-be to stop drinking, after making an effort of will to overcome the desire to let them continue.(Source)

If the bride-to-be does not get enough blood quickly enough after the third feeding, they die from having been drained--but will not rise as a Spawn.(Source)

If the ceremony works as planned, the bride falls into a coma for anywhere from 20 minutes to 4 hours, then dies. 1-3 hours later they arise as a new vampire. Strahd has lost at least one incarnation of Tatyana because she was staked during this period. Additionally, feeding their bride-to-be inflicts damage on the vampire--they suffer 3d8 unresistable damage that cannot be recovered until the next sunset after the ritual was completed. (Source)