The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

“Nosferatu” is a word that looks like it ought to mean something but doesn’t seem to actually come from any language, let alone the one to which it’s attributed. Cited in the works of a couple of 19th-century German folklorists, and later made famous by Bram Stoker, the author of the seminal vampire novel Dracula, it can’t be authoritatively traced back to any standard Romanian word of the time. It might be from a nonstandard local dialect, it might be a mistranscription of a word now lost to time, or it might be that some Romanian wag was pulling the Germans’ legs. Etymologists aren’t sure of much when it comes to this word, but one thing they are sure of is that no-sferatu clearly doesn’t mean “un-dead,” the back-formed translation that Stoker proposed for it. But the German silent film director F. W. Murnau latched onto it and made it the title of his loose cinematic adaptation of Dracula, and it’s been synonymous with “vampire” ever since.

The nosferatu in Ezmerelda’s Guide to Ravenloft is a degraded vampire whose compulsion to feed is utterly overpowering. Unlike the standard Monster Manual vampire, it’s too strung out to play the long game. Every night of its existence is a desperate scramble to find warm-blooded prey before daybreak. The nosferatu’s dependence takes its toll on its Intelligence, which is reduced to the level of an ape’s. Intriguingly, however, its Wisdom remains very high—the better to sniff out victims with—and even its Charisma is well above humanoid average.

Its standout abilities, however, are the physical trio, particularly its extraordinary Strength and Constitution. The tough, stringy nosferatu is a dangerous brute, made more so by its proficiencies in Perception and Stealth—the profile of an ambush predator—and the Spider Climb trait, which it shares with other vampires.