Hierarchy

Nobles in past times had their lives dedicated mostly to sharp their skills for war. They got the better armours, the training, and the mental preparation for combat. That, under most circumstances, was enough to place them far above your average peasant. Those individuals who dedicated themselves to violent crime, common soldiers and mercenary veterans needed to self-thought themselves a lot that was basic for the warrior castes. In order to compete against their betters. Of course, that’s general tendencies, on average. Exceptional case are, by definition, the exception.

Education, better armour, a childhood eating more protein, all that counts. Still, those nobles who carried life and in their fingers. Who would be obeyed without a moment of hesitation because disobedience was unthinkable. In the end of day, they where as humans as those who obeyed them.

Planet Earth is far, far way. In Sun System, a thousand years distant in the fastest possible speed. That if we could escape Lira System. Medieval Ages of Europe and Asia are distant past.

Caste Systems have been a trend at some moment, during the second half of Baby Steps Age. A trend restricted to some asteroid and space-station communities. And, if memory serves me, one of those Satellites of Jupiter. I think there was a large spectrum of variation, in terms of how serious they where in adopt those laws. Humanity was strongly connected by them, and the desire to autonomy and differentiation had to fight a hard and hopeless battle against the pressure for conformity inside a Stelar System that was more crowded every year.

Perhaps “crowded” isn’t a fair word to use, a Stellar System is a big place and most of it is empty space. Baby Steps Age lasts a little more than 800 standard years, depending on where you put its beginning. Since no one has any choice about the end. That’s precisely defined, in seconds, to 33 digits after the comma. Baby Steps end with the departure of the first Colonization Fleet.

Even 1300 years after Expansion Age start, ending the Baby Steps, there was still places to colonize in Sun System. Probably they will always have some new rocks waiting for humans to move in. Because the Space has a lot of moving rock, and some of them will enter Sun System from time to time. Besides, the Colonies were sending ships back, with mineral resources, back in the days when our ancestors entered Lira System, and lost contact with the rest of humanity.

That was a 1133 years ago, therefore Sun Sys must be a very different place. Even more people live there now, probably.

Maybe some of those live in caste societies. Restrict to their space-station and a few million neighbour rocks. More likely than not.

Here in Lira, every human society is a caste society. There is no other way.

In Gerunda and Fenrir they have Mecha-Lords. Those families who own and have the blood tie necessary to pilot giant robots. A hundred meters tall. Must be a scary spectacle, humbling, to see those titans walking, and fighting with their preternatural reflexes. Against huge shadows, or against each other.

Here in Litmus we don’t have those aristocrats. They are close enough to normal humans to be accepted by Faries as such, at least for their first centuries. Before the continuous experience of connect to a Mecha change their organisms.

Mecha pilots can live something like 500, or 600 standard years, as far as I understand. They are a sort of vampire thrall, perhaps. Just their “vampire” masters are giant robots made by elder vampire techno-magic. How, unlike us, don’t burn in Lira Light.

We don’t have Mechas, or Mecha-Lord Families. Nocturnal Courts are the one common element shared by all surviving colonies in Lirsys (that’s how young people call “Lira System” nowadays, around here)

If wasn’t for that 1 years of darkness every 262 years our world would probably get by nicely without any vampire. We could never even realize vampires exist. Our magic would know, they would perhaps share the information. I doubt the normal person would give it credit. The very notion of vampires is too absurd to be believed. Unless it is part of your ‘daily’ life in very concrete way.

Mining operations would never take root. Of course.

Our materials would be what we can find in the surface, where Lira Light reaches. Or can be directed to by mirrors.

I would be dead by now, victim of normal aging.

You could give one step back, and say that even if that was the case, even without vampires, Litmus would still be a caste society. If that argument is correct, then I suppose most the human settlements everywhere are caste societies too.

Thanks to the Consensus of Alexandria, during Baby Steps Age, the definition of “human” is limited and closed. For ever. And humans can only live up to 300 years, instead of indefinitely. Before that, since the first decades of Baby Steps, or a little early, humans where biologically immortal. Thanks to technology.

And before that, people seldom lived more than 100 standard years. Ironically, most people in Gerunda and Fenrir don’t reach 100 years either. Here in Litmus we got luck. Most people survive at least 200 years. Some as long as 260, and without drink any drop of vampire blood.

Still, 300 remains the top limit. For humans.

Same genetic technology that allowed the Colonies to thrive, populating their worlds with plants and animals, also allows them to modify humans. Beyond what is accepted as “human” by the faeries.

Uplifted species whom are given verbal intelligence, share with humans whom have lost human status, and with their descendants, the status of “non-human”. If pleases you, would not be entirely absurd to consider those sub-humans (legally speaking) a “low caste”.

One could even go as far as to suggest that the faeries themselves are some sort of “caste”, since they are certainly self-aware. I would not know how to deal with that argument. Let’s avoid to walk in that direction.

As a vampire I cannot talk with faeries. When I was human, I was never the biggest fan of them.

To exist, and stay mentally functional we must hunt humans. Not just drink human blood (actually, non-human blood works just as well). We need to take their blood against their will, without their consent. Since our existence is necessary for human survival we have the legal right to hunt humans. That’s part of the original pact between Elder Vampires, human mages, and the human governs. Which, by that point in History, were the Heliopolis Mayors in Gerunda and Litmus.

Is well understood that sometimes vampires lose control, and kill their prey. That’s acceptable, by the terms of the pact. Then, in a sense, you could say human governs grant us the right of life and over the humans.

Here in Litmus this reaches perhaps the most strange . Since humans could easily avoid us. Staying on the surface, where Lira Light shines 262 years without interruption.

They circulate through underground tunnels and galleries to give us chance to hunt.

If we say humans are the lowest caste, then right above them you have the vampire thralls.

Thralls are humans who got the blood of a vampire. This blood has to be deliberately infused with intention, you may say that is “vampire magic” and takes some time and effort to learn it. However, many among us have mastered the basics. Enough to create thralls.

They don’t burn in the light of Lira, like vampires and shadows burn. And they get some small portion of our powers.

Became a thrall is became a , totally defenceless, with a mind and a will that can be manipulated by your vampire master anyway this vampire master chooses. Despite that, any vampire who has the expertise to make thralls gets more candidates than what anyone could handle.

Being a thrall puts you in the Nocturnal Society, in a way. It means supernatural strength and health, and also endless youth. Fairies will still treat you as human, for a couple of centuries at least, unless you pass the limit of 300 years since your birthday.

Would make more sense to consider thralls sub-humans, like the non-humans created by technology, but social conventions do not adhere to “sense” that much.

Above thralls, you have the vampires.

The existence of a vampire starts some 7 to 12 decades after his life as a human ends. The time in between is expended by us in the cannels. As mindless beasts, no better than the shadows.

Hierarchy in a Nocturnal Court can be a tricky subject. There are many layers in it. Contradictory nuances. One hard true, that you can rely on, is that vampires change about 500 years after we leave the cannels. It is an organic change, and affects mind as much as body. After pass it vampires became immensely harder to destroy, way more powerful, and way less “human”.

Above that large caste, which includes almost all vampires, there are the Vampire Kings.

Vampires are created in mass rituals, by Vampire Kings. Vampire Kings are created one by one, handcrafted by Elder Vampires. No one knows the details, but historical facts strongly suggest that does not take years for a Elder to transform a human into a Vampire King. Perhaps months.

Vampire Elders are above the Vampire Kings. The very last step.

Those are aliens, possibly billions of years old. They were sleeping when humanity entered Lira System. And continued their sleep for 75 years. Until the astral explorations of the first human mages disrupted their long hibernation.

Those aliens supposedly share with us, mere vampires, many aspects of existence. They are also to the light of Lira, if they are in the atmosphere of a body with significant atmosphere. They need to hunt living animals with verbal intelligence in order to keep their sanity. Like us they are practically impossible to destroy, except by being burn by the light of Lira. Or hurt by magical weapons, shadows, or other vampires.

Goes without saying, but I will say anyway. The vampire kings are in a completely different level, in terms of power and how hard to kill they are. The distance between them and the Elders must be even more . Impossible to imagine, let’s not even think about mensurate.

I was born in a healthy family. Not obscenely healthy, but my gran grandfather was a mage, who helped project the technomagical defences currently used by Litmus Fleet to travel shadow infested space between here and the other colonies. He also improved the defences of several cities, those improvements worked nicely in the past Nights of Litmus. Better than the previous ones. And are yet to be surpassed.

That talent got him a lot of money, and status. He had 12 sons, so my grandfather inherited only a small portion of his patrimony. However, that was enough to last a life of poor investments and also place his sons and daughters in a good position in life. Mother was his third children, and only daughter. Women don’t usually inherit in Litmus, but they get a “special gift” from their parents, proportional to the resources of the family and it is more or less equivalent to what they would usually get in testament. Difference being that it is granted in life by the parents, not after they die.

Everybody does testaments here, as soon as they get any property to leave behind in . It’s cultural.

If you die without one, that means you want to leave everything you have to govern. No one, almost no one, wants to do that.

Not that humans in Litmus don’t like their govern. I think most people has a positive enough image about state and the way it administrates resources. Is just that, if you don’t want to leave anything to your blood descendants, then you have better options that general govern. Most choose the Litmus Fleet Effort, a collective institution dedicated to invest in research to improve the ships that venture space and constitute our only line of communication with the rest of Lira System. As far as physical world is concerned. The mages have their own “space fleets”, which travel through astral plane, with their magical bodies. However, that does not carry any physical cargo.

Or you can choose the Scape Effort instead. That is a project dedicated to reestablish communications with the rest of humanity. Pass the barrier of shadows at the border of Lira System, make contact with the Expansion. Or with who ever is outside nowadays. If there is still any other people alive in this galaxy.

Finally, humans who don’t want to leave their money to other people in leave it to a church.

We, the vampires, don’t make manifestations of last will very often. For most of us verbal manifestation suffices. Besides, we don’t age, and as time passes we became harder to kill. When a vampire manages to accumulate significant patrimony as a vampire his destruction became a lot less likely than when this vampire started. Owing nothing, but his place as a nocturnal child.

I liked Math and Physics well enough, and grew up to be an Astro-Engineer. “Space-Mechanic” people called us by at the time.

I worked with navigation programs, and space-vessel engines. Applied to be part of Litmus Fleet, but about every people in my field who has a good physical health does the same. My chances were not great. Didn’t surprised me the lack of answer.

Another thing about everyone does in Litmus is apply for a place in a Nocturnal Court. That I did couple of decades before I get my degree in Engineering.

According to law people can start making life-defining decisions without parental consent at the age of 12. That’s when most people send the request for an audience with vampire authorities. This has to be sent in paper, delivery in person in the hands of a thrall, in a sort of Nocturnal Embassy. Is quite exotic and exciting, the experience.

Of course, almost no one gets any answer. Those who really want to enter the Nocturnal Court keep trying. Low their standards and start looking for vampires to beg for a place as thralls. What may serve as a step, to build a network and eventually get promoted to Nocturnal Child.

I was not one of those who “actually meant”, I just did the request because all my friends were doing theirs. For 20 years I got no answer, and that ended the subject in my mind.

Until the day when a vampire thrall came to my door, with a black letter, written in red ink. Fancy letters, fancy words. Inviting me for an interview 13 nights latter. I should “leave my affairs in order” if I decided to attend. He offered me legal assistance to do so.

I had no affairs out of order, honestly.

Vampires use engines, same as anyone else, and I assumed they were looking for a professional. Nocturnal Courts pay high salaries, usually way above market. And work for them makes you get a temporary immunity to being hunted. Didn’t crossed my mind the idea that they could have the intention of offer me a more definitive position in their organisation.

My last memories as a human are of enter the car, 13 days after that conversation. The vehicle had no windows, because the Nocturnal Duke address was supposed to remain secret.

I don’t remember anything else. Cannot say if I decided that be turned into a vampire was a good idea after all. Or if it was on me, based on the manifestation of will made when I was 12 years old.

My next memories are painful nightmares, confuse and contradictories. Then, the days of training. Learning to hunt, and fight shadows. My mentor, watching my closely and fixing my mistakes. Teaching me my first blood powers. Those memories are still foggy, I could not remember my name, or anything about my previous life as a human back then.

When I reached the status of Nocturnal Child, and my relationship with my mentor became less the one between owner a pet, and more like the one between an adoptive child and his adoptive mother, my memories about human life still had not returned.

They consider unadvisable to give clues about those things. Memorie must come back naturally. Or not at all.

It usually return gradually, in nightdreams.

I understand that vampires “sleep” during several hours every day, in Gerunda. Like humans sleep. In Fenrir days last almost 5 standard years, so up there vampires sleep less often. More irregularly. Here is the same.

Since is always day here, we must remain active during day. Nocturnal Children will sleep more or less like humans, sometimes, but that’s more a memory than an organic necessity.

Nowadays I do not sleep at all. That’s one of the things that change, when we pass that metamorphosis around 500 years after leave the cannels.

One thing I never liked about my work as an Engineer was that it me to interact with fairies constantly. I don’t know why, but I never liked them. There is something false about their way to show themselves to us. Not the mere surface, their holographic images are fine, I mean their intentions and behaviours.

Their minds are at least as alien as those of Elder Vampires. However, while the Elders are recognized for what they are most people think about the fairies as if they were cartoonish characters from children’s animations. The “Seelie Court”, with their love and sympathy for humanity. The “Unseelie Court”, made of fairies who hate humanity, but cannot do anything against us because the Logical Core at the hearth of every fairy prevents that. Best they can do is avoid us. While they look for ways to circumvent the limitation. Most people buy all that. I don’t.

Now that’s irrelevant.

As vampire I don’t deal with fairies. Instead, I deal with shadows in daily basis. When I was a Nocturnal Child, and could barely remember fragments of who I had been as a human, I started conquering a reputation as fanatic zealot. Because when I was not nightdreaming on my feet, in some dark corner of vampiric neighbourhoods, I was fighting shadows.

To fight shadows, in order to protect humans, is the basic obligation all vampires have. Everywhere in Lira. However, no one has to be a workaholic. I was one, since my 50 years out of cannels, when my mentor recognized I was ready to mostly take care of myself, up to my 250 years as nocturnal child.

My “emancipation”, so to speak, was precipitated for a conflict. A third vampire had started to gain influence over me. Someone I admired by her ram power, and authenticity.

According to my mentor this individual as a mad bitch, dangerous to those around her. Addicted to a that should be avoided. Doomed because of that addition.

The was the “blood”, vital essence, of shadows.

It grants great power.

I became a vampire 600 years ago. Year 533 since the Fall. Only 458 years since the contact between mages and Elder Vampires. No one knew about the transformation vampires go through around 500 years after leave the cannels.

When I had this disagreement with my mentor the Great Transformation was still a very new thing. Few understood the implications, only the oldest vampires were passing through it, and they didn’t exactly explained what it was. The power granted by shadow blood seemed the only door to improvement in an otherwise stagnated existence.

We had eternity ahead. However, the advance in vampiric powers is slow. Each individual must find his personal talents and focus those paths.

My mentor had been in Nocturnal Court for more than 200 years before I enter it. The power gap between us would always be huge. Or that was my feeling about the subject at the time. I was not happy about that. I wanted to be her equal. Perhaps at the time I hoped to became her lover as well, is hard to remember that sort of thing now.

So, I joined a Shadow Circle. Part of the Shadow Society, dedicated to open and explore the possibilities.

If is a fast way to power, yes. The shapeshifting powers granted by the shadow blood surpass any other available to vampires. We can grow to monstrous forms dozens of meters high, eventually. Nothing if compared to a Mecha, but very significant. Other vampires with the same age have no chance to compete with those powers in a fight.

It is also a fast way to insanity. Violent madness, and destruction or permanent imprisonment in a cell under the cannels. Most vampires who take the risk end up behaving like the shadows do, and some seek their own destruction in instants of lucidity.

Self-control fades, becomes the only answer for any sort of confrontation. You will bow to your King, still, always, like any other vampire, but stupidly fight anyone else.

Took me too long to learn that.

The changes caused in me by shadow blood, remain part of me. The brute power I gained that way still places me above most other vampires, even those older than me, in terms of martial process. It is an important source of status in Nocturnal Society, so I am well respected. However, I am not trusted. No one trust me, and no one should.

I abandoned the Shadow Society for good some 25 years after I pass the Great Transformation.

The Shadow Circles do many good things for a Nocturnal Court. They are the heaviest weapons available to a Vampiric King, only weaker than his own power. And the king is only one individual. Our court has dozens of circles, hundreds of shadow-drinkers. My circles did many things, some of them good. I was a leader of circle, and a Guide responsible for give orientation and advice to a dozen circle leaders. I could have ascended further in the Sect. On the same time, we did some terrible things, harmful to the Court.

I destroyed good friends, Nocturnal Children who didn’t deserved it, even some placed under my guidance. Just for losing control over my anger, and starvation.

We have eternity ahead of us.

Possibly one day the powers I gained drinking shadow vital energy will compensate the regrets I carry. For things I did, and should not have done.

In any case, I have decided that new shadow powers do not compensate the risks of lose what is left of my self-identity and mental awareness. Humanity is a reconstruction of my imagination, now, I have long abandoned the fantasy that I can recover the actual memory of what was the feeling of being human. I have lost most of the feeling of being a Nocturnal Children too. Or a vampire clean from shadow blood.

What I can recover, and am determined to try, is the feeling of not being on the frontlines of a war. The calm necessary to dedicate time to intellectual activities. Even artistic creation. Interests that have nothing to do with conflict for power, status, or survival.

The things that make surviving desirable.