Job Interview

Good evening Mr Theodore! Your friends call you Ted, I believe? My name is Dario.

I am part of the recruitment team, we are a family business. I think they put me in charge of conversations like that because they think I look intimidating. Let’s face it, I am the largest man most people ever saw, regardless of which part of Earth they are from. And I deliver the impression of a muscular structure. Shaved head, unconventional beauty when it comes to facial structure, bit too much bones I guess. That picture can be constructed as intimidating to most people.

Helps to get people’s attention, allegedly.

So, your neck is broken. That’s why you cannot feel anything bellow your neck. Was not me, in case your memory is fuzzy right now, you did that. Jumping from a building, up there. 14 floor. Must have had your reasons.

I do not care, we don’t care. We would have stopped you, had we reached you in time. For purely selfish reasons.

Ambulance should arrive in a few more minutes. They will manage to save you. Unfortunately, you will never be able to move your body bellow the neck again.

Unless you accept my proposal.

Oh, that’s really not my favourite part of the job! Let’s do it. We are, don’t laugh, I am not joking. We are, vampires. That conspiration theory of all things is real, deadly real. We can do many things that are beyond current human sciences, including regenerate your body. What we would never do for the goodness of our hearths, we don’t run a charity business.

You used to play Vampire the Masquerade, right? The tabletop RPG? Third Edition. I saw the book inside your apartment few days ago. Someone stepped on a picture of a younger you playing with some friends a decade ago.

I do like to play it myself, when I get some free time. What is less often than I would care to admit.

Things are not, exactly, like that. In real life, I mean. That’s why it is fun to play, for me.

So, in reality we do call ourselves “family” but because we actually are. Broadly speaking there are two kinds of vampires. “Nobles”, who are the ones turned by one of the Vampire Families, and mostly descendants of some son or nephew of the head of the family. That’s my case. I am son on one of the lower branches of Seven Stars family. Grew up knowing about vampires, earned my place among them around the time when Anibal was learning how to mount on those elephants of him.

We have people born in normal human families too and recruited due to some special talent. Like can became your case, if you choose to accept my proposal.

There are also the “Low Vampires”, those born outside the structure of civilized society. Most are feral bests. A few are as intelligent as any of us. All are marked to be killed, and killed on sight by any noble vampire who finds them. Matter of logic, our numbers are rigidly controlled. The Nocturnal Courts regulate how many members each family can have, vampire members it is, to keep the total number of our population administrable. In relation to human population, our necessary food source.

Wild vampires are taking the place we want for ourselves. Is as simple as that. We are stronger and much better organized than they are.

Salary is good! The ours suck, we are basically available to our employer 24/7, so to speak. Actual work, depends on the necessities of the company. Which is, in the end of night, a family business. So, all the bad drama that comes along with that. Nepotism and what not. I probably do not need to mention you don’t need to worry about dental plan, or medical for that matter.

As I dropped strategically in casual fashion, I have been around since Ancient Times. We do not age, and for all practical purposes, we do not get sick.

Now is the time when you should ask me something like “why me?”. You have too much blood in your lungs to speak right now, even if you could control your vocal cords properly. So, let’s pretend you asked.

Remember the vampiric powers in the game? Clan Disciplines? Not exactly how it works! In fact, what powers a vampire has depends almost entirely on the potential that was dormant in his or her body as a human. Would stay inert without the “embrace” if you will. The process has something of “metaphysic” for lack of better word, not exactly “supernatural” but it is alien to the way biology usually works. Mostly. Not totally hereditary, but has some probability of accompany the hereditary lines. Just not as reliable as genetic traits are supposed to.

Some powers are more common than others, and more useful. Families dispute those powers, since we are in constant state of tense armistice with most other families, and open war with a few. All Vampire Families are like that, always. Limited resources, predatorial instinct, interesting combination.

We call the “disciplines” blood-seeds. One of those seeds when developed allows the vampire to identify the seeds in the blood of humans and other vampires. Each family has its own “Apprizers” going trough samples of as many humans as possible, trying to find new talents. One of ours found you.

Your blood has a seed know as “Gremling Touch”. They are rare. I, myself, only met one in person. Basically, this fellow can brake things just by looking at them and concentrating his will. Weapons and engines fall apart, bombs explode, the more complex something is easier to affect. Does not work with living organisms, or vampires, but works with any material. Wood, stone, metal, plastic. Affect things at distance takes some effort, by contact he can affect things in a much larger scale, without any work from his part. I saw this vampire drop entire castles in the heads of his enemies, in Medieval Europe.

Well, that is the power you can have, in time, if you accept our offer. You understand why I am here. The family would really like to have you in our team.

Hum, what else I should say?

Sunlight burns. Can reduce us to charcoal and is very painful. Does not usually cause permanent damage. Under most circumstances anything that we think about as being fatal to vampires is healed by dropping human blood on the vampire, or the vampire in a bath tube full with the stuff. There are ways to kill us, permanently, but they are specific. Kept under “need to know” protocol, for the most part. As far as young vampires are concerned.

We call the “ghouls” blood thralls, and not all vampires can create them. I think current statistics are around two in each three, or four in each five. So, most vampires nowadays have the potential power to turn humans into their slaves. It is one of the most common blood-seeds. You still have to learn how to use the power. “Grow the Seed” as we say. You yourself do have that seed, by the way, in case you are curious.

Only very few vampires have the seed that allows them to turn humans into vampires. We call those vampires “Kings” or “Queens”, depending on their sex. NOT self-definition! Usually each family has one or a few Kings and Queens, and no more than two of them have the Royal Seed developed. Because, naturally, when we have civil wars inside Vampire Families those wars are between factions organized around different Royal Seeds.

That seed you don’t have, I don’t have it either.

You have a handful of other seeds, that may not justify the trouble to develop them. I don’t remember every detail, there is a file somewhere that will became available to you once we join us. If you choose to do so.

Your ride is turning a corner few blocks from here. I can hear it coming closer.

All vampires are stronger, more resistant, and faster than humans. And we all can give a sort of hypnotic commands to humans. Does not work always, some strong and well-trained humans can resist weak, young vampires. Time leads to improvement of those advantages, even without practice. And, about that, male vampires have considerable initial advantage in those things. We start with all those advantages twice stronger than those of female vampires, and we improve faster than they do.

In those things. The difference between sexes do not apply to blood-seeds. In fact women seem to have less difficulty to Grow some blood-seeds. That Apprizal Seed, for instance. Almost all competent Apprizers are ladies. No particular reason for that, just seems to happen.

The generic advantage in basic capacities over time inclined the Nocturnal Courts heavily to androcratic power structure. Heads of Family are preferentially males, only in emergencies a family is ruled by a Queen, and the longer it stays that way less likely it is to endure. There is no attempt to pretend otherwise, we have no place for “equality” of any kind in our civilization.

Oh, we do have some individual freedom, and lots of opportunity for merit based grow. What we do not have are “basic rights”. That kind of right people in human society are supposed to have nowadays by the mere fact of existing as members of a biological specie able to use language.

I understand that situation sounds intimidating, scary and hard to accept. For the average person nowadays.

On the other hand, you are suffocating in your own blood, slowly. In that context, “scary” may be a relative term. According to my experience.

I will leave you now. Your paramedics are almost here.

Some night that week, or the next, I will visit you again. To make the question and get your answer.

Know that: whatever answer you give me then will be definitive. I cannot afford to keep asking, and will not risk recruiting someone with a blood-see like your unless this person chooses to accept the offer.

Take your time to think it through. While your body recovers, the best it can.

Well wishes, Mr Theodore! Have a good rest of night.