Dracula, Black Magician…Scientist? So, in addition to Dracula’s purported malicious and secretive actions, how further, then, does Van Helsing build the party’s respect and fear of such a cunning villain? For that matter: how does he convince this Party of Light to join him in conducting…magic? In Chapter 18, Van Helsing unveils Dracula’s powers and histories, as researched by his friend in Budapest, Arminius. From Wiki: Details of his early life are obscure, but it seems that Dracula studied the black arts at the academy of Scholomance in the Carpathian Mountains, overlooking the town of Sibiu (also known as Hermannstadt) and became proficient in alchemy and magic.[2] The Scholomance was fabled to be a legendary school of black magic run by the Devil, supposedly located near an unnamed lake in the mountains south of the city of Hermannstadt (now called Sibiu in Romanian) in the Transylvania region of Romania. Emily Gerard, a Scottish author married to a Hungarian cavalryman stati...