Knight

I grew up in Austin, capital city of Amaterasu, on Planet Gerunda. My parents were low middle class. Mom stayed home, father was a teacher, so, we didn’t had a luxurious life.

That was why our home was right a street across a Nocturnal Sector. Vampire neighbourhood.

Was less bad than you would imagine, actually. Vampires seldom hunt that close to their lair, if they can avoid. And shadows hardly ever reach that far. Conflicts between vampires what the main danger, and that was the danger of being hit by accident. Accidents happen anywhere.

All children in Gerunda wonder about vampires, and imagine how would be to have that life. We taught about the subject more often than most, in our neighbourhood. That is obvious.

When I was 15, my elder brother was 25, he was invited to join a court.

We had no right to hope to ever see him again, our parents insisted. The transformation if permanent, and is goes against vampiric politics to keep contact with friends and relatives from human life.

To my joy and endless gratitude, my elder brother do came back to visit. 97 years after he left.

His “elder brother” in the Nocturnal Society was accompanying him.

My brother could not speak about the transformation. I promised not ask.

I told him about how our parents had died, about my choices in life, successes and defeats. Then, I left escape a question, from curiosity.

We always talked about how strange is the fixation real vampires show for wear clothes that imitate the style of vampires from fiction. Particularly, the ones from pre-Baby Steps Age Earth.

My brother came wearing black jeans pants, with many holes. A T-shirt, piercings and neon tattoos. Plastic and steal in the belt, spikes in the military boots and bracelets. A picture of some punk or cyberpunk character from illustrations of urban tales originated between 1980 and 2080.

His mentor tranquilised me, when I jumped, afraid of having violated my promise of not ask questions.

Unfortunately, neither of them new why. Vampires constantly ask themselves the same thing. Those things “feel right”, and nothing else does.

Even their Kings have this impulse, is not like their need for the Hunting. Is more subtle. However, despite being able to resist in a larger degree, even the Kings and Queens end up falling in the habit of adhere to the archetypes from distant fiction.

What they told me, that I did not knew, was that vampiric society organizes their fashion accordingly to age and status,

Young vampires, like my brother, dress in pos-Baby Steps styles. Or following Earthling fashion from the XXI and late XX.

The older a vampire becomes, more ancient became the clothes. From century after century. My brother’s “old brother” dresses medieval armour, although somewhat stylized.

Those who belong to the first generations in a given court will present themselves wearing styles from Ancient China, Egypt, Mesopotamia,

It is not law, but a serious matter of social etiquette.

Another thing I suspected, but did not knew, is that vampires seldom keep any cyborg implants. Even when they had those implants most their lives as humans or subhumans.

Their bodies reject those things. Technomagic can help, but even with that cyborg implants do not last for long.

Instead of bother trying to keep the implants, most nocturnal people choose to invest their energy in develop vampiric powers.

Which more than compensate for the lack of cyborg tech.