Name: Baron Ulrek Bathory of Felboge
Age: 270, give or take a decade
Powers: Resistance to silver
Bio: Ulrek Bathory is the eldest of the Vampire Princes, the first of the King's sons. He is regarded as hateful and cruel and his visual appearance is equally repulsive as his demeanor. According to rumor, Ulrek was homely even at a young age. Unliked by King's courtiers and visitors, Ulrek withdrew into solitude and reflected the unkindness to which he was subjected. Ulrek shunned social engagements and chose instead to entertain himself with the Castle's extensive library of books and scrolls. Through his readings, Ulrek became self-educated in such a variety of fields and engineering, horticulture, anatomy, history, and diplomacy, learning a number of languages in the process.
As a result of his obsessive reading and disdain for social interaction, Ulrek missed nearly every court dinner or feast unless required to attend by his father, demanding his bloodmeal be delivered to his study instead. Such long studies can make for a terrible appetite. When the castle's servants neglected to deliver supper to the irritable prince - as they sometimes did out of spite - Ulrek was left famished and ravenous. More than once, the castle's stablekeepers would wake to find a valuable steed dead in its stall, bled out the night before from two fang piercings. Costly affairs to be sure, but horses were not so difficult to replace. But once night, when the reclusive vampire prince was starved from several days of seclusion, Ulrek was so famished that he could not help but seek out the first warm body he could find. He stole into the visitor's quarters and fed upon a
human. Worse still, Ulrek happened to have fed upon the blood of a wealthy foreign merchant visiting the castle in order to seek an audience with the King.
Facing a major diplomatic row due to Ulrek's antisocial tendencies, the King could not tolerate his oldest son any longer. Ulrek was ordered to rule over the Great Weald, a large and sparsely populated wilderness of the kingdom's northern fringes. Nearly one hundred leagues away from the capital, it was thought that Ulrek would be too far away to ever cause such trouble again.
Some two hundred years have passed since Ulrek became the Baron of Felboge, the seat of the kingdom's dismal northern wards. Ulrek has proven a surprisingly shrewd ruler. Almost certainly due to his studious readings, Ulrek has managed to build industry and eke out a surprising amount of wealth from this depauperate land. Once teeming with outlaws and brigands, Ulrek's iron-fisted rule has brought order to the Felboge and the Great Weald. Ulrek felt that he had served his father dutifully, that he had shown himself capable of one day ruling the entirety of the kingdom.
When Ulrek's father issued his challenge to his sons - that the first among them to find a loving wife would be granted rule of the kingdom - Ulrek went into a fury. What arbitrary means of inheritance, Baron Ulrek protested, was this? Ulrek was the oldest of the princes, the one with the greatest experience in governing a realm. By rights, by
law, Ulrek was the rightful heir, not whichever son could seduce some strumpet off the street. Who could love someone as absolutely revolting as he? It was clear as day that this was an attempt by the King to deny Ulrek his rightful inheritance. The Baron went to the capital to announce his grievances with his father's challenge, but was hardly surprised when lamentations fell on deaf ears.
Now an infuriated Baron Ulrek returns back to his keep at the Felboge. Knowing that one as unlovable as he could never win at his father's absurd game, he plots now to secure what is rightfully his.
