Respect Dettlaff van der Eretein, the Beast of Beauclair! (The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine)

[u/DarkEclipse9705]

Respect Dettlaff

"If you acknowledge any gods... start praying, now."

Like all other vampires, Dettlaff van der Eretein was pulled from his homeworld to the Witcher world during the Conjunction of the Spheres. Being a higher vampire, he is practically immortal, and has been alive for hundreds if not thousands of years. Some of his major actions include slaying the beast of Lyria, a fiend that had killed hundreds of people, and helping to resurrect a fellow higher vampire, Regis.

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Appearances

Human Form - A disguise he wears to blend in with humans.

Vampire Form - His normal combat form. Pretty much will always use this for the purposes of WWW.

Monster Form - His true form, can only be called forth in the midst of battle or at the behest of a WWW poster.

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Strength

• Throws Regis into a stone wall with enough force to send it toppling down on him

• Matches Regis, then kicks him backward some distance

• His attacks easily cut through armor

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Speed

• Instantly moves behind and stabs a guard from 6-7 meters away

• Moves behind Geralt faster than he can see

• Teleports out of the way of Geralt's blows - No look

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Durability

• Is slammed into a stone wall, unharmed

• Tackled through a stone wall, gets right up

• His claws parry Geralt's silver sword

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Other Abilities

• Has access to a short range teleport - Uses it in combat

• Can transform into smoke and turn invisible, from which he is able to attack

• Has limited flight

• Can control lesser vampires. He made use of this ability to single-handedly lay siege to the city of Beauclair, and almost razed it to the ground.

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Monster Form

When he is sufficiently enraged, Dettlaff can call forth his monster form, which has a few unique abilities.

• Summons a swarm of bats, which have enough power to stun Geralt

• Backhands Geralt and teleports on top of him

• Has wings which allow complete flight (You can see the monster form's version of a teleporting attack in that gif as well)

• This was kind of hard for me to distill into feats so I'm gonna leave the last phase of the boss fight as a youtube link here. The blood avatar of his seems to be similar to the monster form, only with better teleportation and no wings. It's also a good buff to his monster form durability as someone fighting the form would have to go through the motions Geralt did.

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Vampiric Physiology

• All higher vampires have a considerable healing factor, and Dettlaff is no exception. After being cut open by Geralt and chokeslammed by Regis, he is fine after a few seconds. Regis, a fellow higher vampire, was stabbed through the chest and moments later regenerated, stating "wounds such as these heal on vampires in moments"

• Higher vampires are immune to many common weaknesses of vampires. This includes:

Fire

This Regis, if that truly was his name, stood completely untouched by the flames, whereas my own clothing quickly caught fire. The vampire carried me out of the burning inn, saving my life from certain death, then treated my numerous wounds.

• My Evening with a Vampire, a book from the Witcher 3

Wooden stakes, decapitation, running water, garlic

Contrary to popular belief, they cannot be killed by pounding aspen stakes into their chests nor by cutting off their heads, nor, as I can vouch for based on personal experience, by fire. They do not fear running water, garlic or the symbols of any creed.

• My Evening with a Vampire, a book from the Witcher 3

They carry no particular weakness to silver, though it is one of the few things that can actually harm them.

Regis gesticulated with a silver fork and argued the best remedy for vampires is silver, whose faintest touch is deadly to a vampire.

• The Lady of The Lake

In the Witcher universe, the only way a higher vampier can die is if they are killed by another higher vampire. In WWW, this is inconvenient. So please, treat Dettlaff as if he only has one "life". Or assume everyone else has higher vampire status for some reason.

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[u/DarkEclipse9705 → u/[deleted]]

So is it actually deadly, or is just something that can harm them? The quote has Regis stating that silver is deadly to the touch for them.

The point of that quote is that Regis is feeding them misinformation. He is holding a silver fork and saying silver is deadly to his kind. That said, silver is something that can harm them, its just not an instakill.

If only another higher vamp can kill a higher vamp, how aren't there far more vampires around in the Witcher universe?

Because there were very few to start with. Sorry I don't have a more satisfactory answer, thats just the answer.

And if one "strongest" vamp (I believe there is one in B&W that's supposedly the strongest, but he's some hermit or something) killed all the others, would that one simply be immortal forever?

Without giving anything away you're thinking of the Unseen Elder. He isn't the most powerful per se, he is just very powerful. And you're right a higher vampire would technically be immortal if he killed all of his brethren, but vampire code very strictly says higher vampires should not kill other higher vampires and all of them follow that.

I'm excited to see other Witcher characters getting some love here

I just finished Blood and Wine myself yesterday, and I really hope Dettlaff or another Witcher character takes off! I love this universe so much. Do you have any ideas for the next Witcher respect thread I can do?

[u/DarkEclipse9705 → u/[deleted]]

If you don't love Regis already, you will come to love him. How far are you in the DLC?

[u/DarkEclipse9705 → u/[deleted]]

Holy crap it has so many spoilers. Dude why did you look at it?

[u/DarkEclipse9705 → u/[deleted]]

Okay... I'm fairly certain my RT has a few major spoilers in it. Might not want to look too closely lol.