Vance (Fallout 3)

Vance is the mysterious leader and guide of the Family. He adopts outcasts with cannibalistic urges from all over the Wasteland into the Family. At the start of Fallout 3, he is trying to train his charges to drink blood as if they were vampires, as opposed to eating human flesh. His followers have described him as having a "sixth sense" about people who are good candidates for the Family. Vance is encountered during the Blood Ties quest.

At the conclusion of Blood Ties, Vance will teach you the Hematophage perk.

Vance has an extremely high amount of health (his durability is slightly less than that of a Joinable NPC Companion and almost on par with a Super Mutant Master), and wields a powerful "flaming sword" melee weapon (Shishkebab) that can kill you in just a few hits. Combat with him can be difficult, if you choose to deal with the Family violently.

Vance also is quite a smooth talker who chooses his words carefully and weighs those of who he is dealing with, so be prepared for tough Speech checks if you want to come to terms with him.


 * He wields a Shishkebab, for which he wears an oven mitt (if the player wields a Shishkebab, they too will be wearing a mitt).
 * Vance is also wearing the unique item, Vance's Longcoat Outfit, but you will have to kill him or reverse-pickpocket better armor into his inventory in order to take it.
 * Vance also owns Vampire's Edge although it's not on his person. It's in a locked (hard)sword cabinet in his room.  Vance has the key to the cabinet on his person, so you can either pickpocket the key to open the cabinet, pick the lock, or use the Mesmetron to have Vance go berserk and get him killed by his own "flock" to loot his corpse if you don't want to gain negative karma.

To gain positive karma and friendship with the family, you can make a deal with Vance. You can have the citizens of Arefu donate the family a periodic supply of bloodpacks to keep them sustaining and to keep them from killing people and brahmin alike.

It is possible, with the correct speech path, for Vance to give you the Shishkebab Schematics. This author collected it by convincing Vance to let Arefu donate blood packs and the Family then protect Arefu.

Vance states clearly and repeatedly throughout the PC's discussions with him that, besides their ability to drink blood, he and the Family have no other relations to Vampires as commonly portrayed. This means that he can't turn into a bat and that he does cast a reflecton in a mirror. Both of those were specifically mentioned by Vance in his talks.

Appearances
Vance appears only in Fallout 3.