de Morieve

Variations: Viscount de Morieve

One of the few members of the French nobility who retained their estate and survived the French Revolution, Viscount de Morieve took it upon himself to enact revenge. Described as a tall man with a tall, thin forehead and protruding teeth, he donned an air of kindness and sophistication around his staff and the peasantry who worked his lands, all the while biding his time. After the revolution ended, he maintained his façade for a while longer, lulling those around him into a sense of false security. Then, one day, the Viscount de Morieve sent for those in his employ one by one. He beheaded each retainer he spoke with in an attempt to enact a type of justice that he imagined was denied to his fellow noblemen. De Morieve was stopped before he slew his entire household staff and was himself beheaded for the crime by his own retainers.

Shortly after the Viscount was placed in his tomb, children in the area started to die, each one of their throats bitten into, the obvious sign of a vampire attack. As many as nine deaths happened in a single week. These attacks continued for the next 72 years until the Viscount's grandson, Young de Morieve, was given the title. It was decided that the new viscount would have to do something about his murderous grandfather, the vampire. A priest was consulted and it was decided to hire a vampire hunter and have de Morieve's tomb opened before witnesses. Every other COFFIN in the tomb showed signs of decay and deterioration except for de Morieve's. When opened, his body showed no signs of decomposition whatsoever; the face was rosy, the skin soft. New growth was visible on his hands and feet, and most telling was that blood was in his heart and chest. A stake of HAWTHORN was driven through the vampire's heart, causing the Viscount to scream out in pain and shock as blood and water gushed from the corpse. As soon as the remains were taken to the seashore and burned to ash, the child deaths ceased.

Subsequent research into the family's lineage proved that the Viscount had always had the curse of the vampire in his blood, as he was in fact born in Persia. There he married an Indian woman, after which they came to France and became naturalized citizens.

Source: Keyworth, Troublesome Corpses, 258; Summer, The Vampire in Lore and Legend, 125­26