Wasted Renaissance Vampire.

Your coffin was made by the absolute best. Finest craftsmanship in all of Italy, they'd said. Granted, they'd also said that while you were threatening to turn them, but that's not what matters. The point is, no night stalker had ever slept in a coffin so fine as this one. Four inches of thick olive wood on all sides, with the most beautiful engravings you'd ever seen. You took one look at it and knew you had to sleep in it that very same day. The next intruder upon your domain would know they were only being taken down by the single most elegant vampire lord in history.

It probably would have been prudent to work out how to open it from the inside.

Sealed away in the dark, you pounded and pounded and pounded for who knows how long, but it was all in vain. The damned craftsman must've put a curse on it, something to keep you trapped for all eternity. All well and good, though - you'd spent enough time accumulating power that you could lay down here for centuries before you needed to try again. As such, you laid your head down and rested, content in the knowledge that the wood would soon rot and the woodworker's descendants would pay for his trickery.

The next thing you knew, the side of your prison dropped off, and you found yourself unceremoniously deposited on the ground. Not exactly the grand exit you'd hoped for, but it'd have to do. Standing up and brushing yourself off, you cast your eyes about the room.

Except there was no room anymore. Instead, you found yourself facing a landscape - a charred, blasted waste of a landscape. The ground appeared cracked and fragile. Buildings of a design you couldn't possibly recognize crumbled in the distance, a hollow wind blowing chunks of masonry off their exposed innards. A sickly cloud hung over the world, blotting out the sunlight to such a great degree you didn't even notice it was daytime. It was as if some terrible god had strode through the land, casting about righteous vengeance left and right before rising up through the clouds.

You turned about and saw your coffin, charred and half rotted from whatever catastrophe had passed. Whatever harm it had done, it'd at least freed you. Now you could go about seeing to your vengeance, using centuries of accumulated power to...

With a groan you fell to your knees and realized just how hungry you were. Revenge could wait, you needed to feed before you withered away. Grunting, you pushed off against the ground, and found yourself not gracefully sailing through the sky as a terrible bat creature, but plummeting to the ground from the remains of whatever building they'd moved you to in the meantime. A cloud of dust rose and slowly fell as you sprawled out across the dirt, several bones broken.

It wouldn't be dignified to die like this. Weak and powerless, defeated by the trickery of a mortal and some disaster you'd missed out on. You clawed for purchase to drag yourself with, but couldn't quite make your fingers work...

Then, against all odds, they appeared. You couldn't tell if they were man or woman, given the state their body was in, but they were definitely mortal, and they definitely still had pumping, flowing, coursing blood in their veins. They stared at you with a grey, sunken face, and reached out with a half-broken arm, groaning something you didn't care to understand. Pathetic.

In an instant you were on them, with the supernatural strength you'd been unable to conjure up just seconds before. Your fangs sank deep into their neck and you began to suck, taking in all the lifeforce you could. Something was wrong with the blood - it tasted stale and bitter, and the energy it gave you felt sluggish - but you took all you could. Beggars and choosers and the like. The corpse of a person, now acting the part, slumped to the ground at your feet as you rose again.

It wasn't much. You'd have to remain in human form and not expend any unnecessary energy on your powers, but it was enough to get you to at least the horizon. With any luck, there were other survivors along the way. Perhaps, if the stars aligned just right, you could make it past the ever-present cloud and figure out what happened while you slept. All that in time, though. For now, you started a slow hobble outwards, leaving behind the cursed prison of these last few centuries, and entering the world of the wastes.