Vampiric Condition

We call them “Elder Vampires” but they are nothing like other vampires. They are monsters from another age. From another Universe, probably. More similar to trees or fungus than to animals. Aliens in every way, regardless of what they pretend to be. Human based vampires are a product of Elder Vampire mysterious powers, but they have human memories, and human minds. If souls exist, their souls are tainted but are still human.

Most vampires share a bond of common experiences with each other. They left human society to fall into savage madness. After decades of that nightmare, of starvation and bestial existence, their intelligence slowly came back. They rebuild a personality, still locked in the cannels of their Nocturnal Duke. They got a “older brother” of sort, a older vampire trusted to teach them the ways. Their memories slowly came back, as they learned the self-discipline necessary to not succumb to gluttony every chance they have.

They integrated the personality they had been building with the one their memories bring back. While they are learning vampiric powers, finding out which ones they have talent to use.

Every individual is unique, but for most there is a period of a few decades when they share a home with a circle of other vampires. Their human life is 70, 90, sometimes 120 years back. Some are fortunate enough to still have living friends and relatives, that’s specially likely if they used to be from Mecha-Lord families: mecha pilots live hundreds of years longer than the average human. However, even in those cases, the relationships are distant.

Humans and vampires live very separated lives in Gerunda. Less so in Fenrir, but even up there is hard to find common subjects for conversations between the humans and the vampires.

In Litmus things are, strange. There is a night of 1 year in the planet, every 262 years, that’s all. They need vampires, as much as other colonies need them. In daily basis the vampiric blood is essential to build magical defences against the shadows, but the shadows are not present in the surface where the lights of Lira can reach. They only appear in places where the transparent ceilings and the mirrors failed. So, vampire do mining work, but humans could avoid then completely by staying in the surface.

Litmus has laws and taboos preventing that. All humans travel through underground cities and tunnels from time to time. To expose themselves to vampires, where vampires can hunt them.

That way humanity will have vampires to protect them during that 1 year of darkness. And they will have fortresses build during 262 years to shield and hide then from the shadows. Techno-magic preserved by vampiric blood. So, Litmus people have a more ambivalent and complex relation with vampires than any other colony. They open themselves to vampires, on purpose. On the same time, they see vampires as something much more alien.

They have lost less technology than the other colonies. Possibly due to the fact that they are closer to the fringes of Lira System. They have longer lives, on average, reaching 275 years often enough for a few people in every community have the experience to see the preparation and the recovery of 2 Nights. They use **** to block their intelligence for the entire period of darkness, in order to attract less shadows, therefore no human keeps memories of their time during the Nights.

Humans remain the pets of vampires during this period. And their preys. That’s one more element in the strange relation between the two groups.

Whatever the challenges of existence are for vampires, they are shared by the individuals in a strong and reliable community. Every vampire is surrounded by brothers and sisters, has older figures to learn from. Serves as reference for new generations of Nocturnal Subjects. They all share the shame and he horror of their experience in the cannels. Something they only remember in a confuse way, like a nightmare.

The only exceptions for this are the Vampire Kings.

That’s a solitary existence.

Vampire Kings are those human based vampires created one by one. Directly by an Elder Vampire.

They are the ones who rule Nocturnal Society, since the Elders do not bother with that. Remaining as distant deities.

Nocturnal Kings didn’t endure the cannels. They are reshaped as vampires much faster, weeks, days. They are much more powerful than other human based vampires, and are the ones who create those other human based vampires. Turning many hundreds of humans into mindless vampiric beasts in every Creation Ritual. They can feel their “children” anywhere, and control them when they are close enough.

However, even in a large human city. Like Austin, Capital of Amaterasu; where a dozen vampire kings keep their courts, in a tense and complex game of diplomacy, often using **** as punctuation; the Vampire Kings keep their distance from each other.

They can trust only those who came from the same Elder Vampire, or from a close ally of that benefactor. In theory. However, even among those the competition for hunting grounds is so intense that alliances are uncertain. Cooperation is a practical necessity for those who share borders, because the shadows arrive in immense numbers some nights. Keep the humans safe is the absolute priority for all Nocturnal Courts: humans are life, for vampires!

Still, cooperation lasts only until the air is clean and things go back to relative calm.

Nocturnal Kings rule with absolute power, but in loneliness.

They don’t share the harrowing experiences that serve to connect their subjects with each other. They seldom have the opportunity to share the room with one or more of their equals. And is even rarer for those occasions to be pleasant, social encounters, for the sake of enjoy the company of each other.