Book 2: Vamphyri!, ©1988
Book 3: The Source, ©1989
Book 4: Deadspeak, ©1990
Book 5: Deadspawn, ©1991
Published by: Tor Horror
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Synopsis:
Against the backdrop of the cold war, British and Soviet psis engage in their own sorts of battles. This in itself would make an interesting story, but against this backdrop perhaps the most powerful psi ever, Harry Keogh, Necroscope, fights an ongoing battle to rid the world of an evil that most don't even realize exist - vampires.
Role-Playing Inspirations:
- Psionics
Almost all of the main characters and many minor ones have at least some psionic power. While some are only of use in contemporary settings, like the ability to pinpoint nuclear chain reactions around the world thus being able to track naval vessels, quite a few are easily adaptable for any genre. Harry Keogh is a necroscope. He can talk to the dead and in fact, the dead seek him out to talk to him.
- Vampires
A new and unique take on these classic creatures. Lumley's vampires are creatures that can exist independently of the human body but really reach their horrific full potential when they attach themselves to a human host and they become one symbiotic creature.
Gifted with powerful psionic talents, the vampires are presented as amazingly cunning and devious creatures. They'll even align themselves with the forces of good if they think that it can gain them an advantage in some way. But never trust them, for even when they have been but dust buried deep within the ground for centuries they are still quite dangerous.
- Chronomancy
One of the spins that Lumley puts on Harry's psionic powers is the mechanism that he eventually learns and uses to teleport and to even travel through time. Harry learns from the long dead but still amazing mathematician, Möbius, the secrets of the (not so humbly named) Möbius Continuum, which he has spent the last 500 hundred years in the grave working on the calculations for. If you can do the math, you can conjure up a Möbius Door just about anywhere to take you wherever and perhaps even whenever, you want.
There's a lot in TSR's Chronomancer supplement that seems to have been borrowed from this novel. In particular, the whole concept of lifelines - what they look like, how they work and how you can interact with them.
- A strange new world
The third book in the series, The Source, takes the characters through a wormhole to the very planet that the vampires originated on. A strange and dangerous place full of tons of inspirations for new monsters, where vampire lords keep armies of thralls and the few free humans are forced to live as nomads. You could do an entire campaign in this setting.
- Great characters and villains
While I'm not borrowing characters 'as is' from these books due to the different genre, I keep going back to them to borrow either a character's personality or their psionic/vampiric powers. So many of them work so very well in a high fantasy setting. If you use psionics in your campaign, you'll get a double benefit from these books, but even if you don't I guarantee you'll want to adapt some of the vampires to use as major villains. For instance, the antagonist in the first book is a necromancer. He tortures the dead and literally rips the information he wants out of their lifeless bodies - though through his powers their soul still feels every bit of what he does to their bodies. Evil, sheer evil.