As such, to fix that fatal flaw, I've expanded a bit with this one. Rather than aim for 'vampire literature', I am going to take a cue from the last few decent pieces of vampire fiction I've encountered and expand into urban fantasy, but I'm also at the same time going to subvert the fuck out of one of the big recent tropes of vampires. Or, rather, one of the single most annoying tropes.
Anyone who's read a vampire or watched vampire film that is from the last thirty years will know exactly what I'm talking about.
In the area of urban fantasy, the single most tempting thing to do would be introduce magic, sorcery and other such as major elements, perhaps also expand a bit into stuff like werewolves, demons, angels, and the like. But I'm going to go into this with a series of ground rules, which are very easy to follow;
- This will not involve Judeo-Christian legends or Judeo-Christian myths of any type, unless they appear substantially in another iconic mythology.
- This will not involve any watered-down Count Dracula wannabes.
- This will in fact be very dark, but edged with a lace of comedy which is, I think, sort of essential for any project like this to work.
- I am, like always, going to take inspiration from old-fashioned vampire legends far more than the new Hollywood crap.
- The previous rule will be disregarded if the recent vampire film or story in question is in fact awesome.
- And finally, the sixth is that vampires are an important part, but not the only part.
Overview
The Crimson Chronicle is now a contemporary fantasy setting set mostly in what is, to us, modern-day Britain. The world at large, except for those who believe but are woefully mistaken and those who know but are keeping it rather covered up, has naturally long-since banished such things as magic and the supernatural to very crappy documentary programmes, television programmes of varying quality and a rather lot of novels that have rather declining quality. But for every hoax, for every weather balloon and for every nutcase with sharp dentures, there is something genuine to be found. Magic, vampires, werewolves, and many other even stranger things all happen to exist, but not in the way that films would portray them. This is only partly due to mistakes made by human ignorance; many things said about the supernatural are fabrications and lies made to propagate it as being an untraceable myth. Rumours spread regardless, and myths never truly seem to die down for various reasons, but they're often dismissed due to their sheer inconsistency and the sheer absurdity of some of them.
Humanity isn't ready to handle that which is in any way significantly different, but significantly similar to itself; it has enough problems with humans who have different skin colour, never mind humans who turn into wolves, supernaturally powerful humans who must drink blood to survive, or humans for whom reality itself is a plaything. It is best if humanity doesn't know what can hurt it.
Now, before I go any further, I am going to do my characteristic Influential Confession. As this is indeed a fantasy world, just one that's got a map, countries, cities and several other things named for me in a rather convenient fashion, I have got a lot of influences bouncing about. Fantasy is, after all, my typical sort of playing ground. In this case, Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch, Kouta Hirano's Hellsing, Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire and the 1980s vampire film The Hunger, among all of the classics such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's Carmilla and John William Polidori's The Vampyre. A great amount of general influence comes from various sources of literature, film and music, some of which isn't entirely obvious. In the area of werewolves, most of my influence comes from An American Werewolf in London, which is just about the only werewolf film you ever need to watch. Some of my unmentioned influences fall into a 'how not to...' in some aspects (Rachel Morgan), but it's still had an influence. There is a lot of inspiration to be had here, as this is technically my oldest 'verse.
Major Supernatural Beings
I'm not going to call this primary lot 'races', but instead 'types of supernatural being' until I can find a new term for them.
- Vampires; universally characterised by their tendency towards drinking the blood of other creatures, and having originally been human. There are many minor and major variants as to what a vampire can do, or what a vampire cannot do, but the universal fact of the matter almost always remains that vampires are immortal, and suffer from an addiction to blood, whether human or not. A vampire needs blood as part of their usual sustenance, otherwise they often either go insane and commit suicide, or die from personal blood loss even if they manage to retain their sanity. Most vampires begin life as humans, and vampires are almost universally infertile. Most cannot reproduce naturally. The process of turning a person into a vampire is variable, but it often involves the ingestion of the blood of an existing vampire or a blood magic ritual. It often takes between twenty-four hours and a full week for a person to become a vampire after the event. During this time, a fledgeling can often be weak and disorientated.
- Living Vampires; exactly that; alive. Contrary to many of the legends about vampires, a living vampire is neither dead, nor has necessarily died in the past. A living vampire has a pulse, and retains the intelligence they had in life. Though this may not be much, in some cases. Living vampires must still drink blood, however, and they are still considered immortal due to their unnaturally long lives, though they can most certainly be killed. A living vampire who is slain may turn into an undead or dead vampire, if measures are not taken by the killer to prevent such a thing occurring.
- Undead Vampires; a human who has been killed by some manner by the process of becoming a vampire, or a human corpse that was raised in the right way. Their bodies are dead, with neither a pulse or the need to breathe, but they retain full control of their physical bodies, and retain their ability to think. An undead vampire is often treated with disdain by living vampires, but they have even greater resistance to physical trauma than the living vampires. Most undead vampires will decompose or age unless they feed on blood. They are, however, able to mimic the appearance of life, and enjoy the same amount of power as a living vampire, but with a few more weaknesses in some areas and a few more strengths in others.
- Feral Vampires; there is always a chance of a vampire losing all sense of sanity, or even most of their intelligence. When this happens a vampire becomes Feral, regardless of whether they are among the living or undead, though it happens more often amongst the latter. This only happens in the rarest of cases, but it is still considered dangerous. The effects of Feral Vampirism range from merely going insane to losing all self-awareness and devolving into an almost animalistic state. Needless to say, a vampire having gone feral is always a cause for alarm among the supernatural community, and most particularly amongst the vampires themselves. Most Feral Vampires are killed upon discovery, though some can be enslaved by necromancers if they are amongst the undead. A vampire of the latter type is referred to as a zombie, in most cases. Though they do not resemble the slow-moving creatures of Hollywood legend, but instead they have all the speed, agility and strength of a vampire with all of the ferocity of a wild animal.
- Werewolves; universally characterised by their ability to completely or partly transform into a wolf-like form from a basically human form. Werewolves are known to have several major variants upon themselves, with varying powers and abilities, varying weaknesses and varying triggers to the transformation; werewolves are possibly even more wide-ranging than vampires to the point where they are less able to be pinned down into a single category. It is known that all forms of werewolf have rapid regenerative abilities and some enhanced physical attributes such as senses and agility. There is also, however, a burgeoning movement in fiction to categorise werewolf-vampire hybrids that must be addressed. Werewolves and vampires can't and won't ever be able to interbreed or infect one-another, as the blood of one is inherently regenerative and far too resilient to be taken over by the other, regardless of which one is infecting whom.
- Infected Werewolves; an infection-carrying variant of werewolves, which is an infection often spread by biting. This type of werewolf is unable to control the transformations, often transforming at night in moonlight, but the transformation to a wolf-like form is often very partial, only ever becoming complete during the light of a full moon. The transformation does not, however, fully resemble a wolf as much as a strange and twisted bipedal wolf-man hybrid, and are often called 'wolf-men'. Most infected werewolves go insane, and there is no known cure to this ailment. It is known that women are greatly resilient to turning into this type due to most of the infection targeting the Y chromosome.
- Natural Werewolves; an inherited, naturally-born variant of werewolves. These werewolves can often control their transformation but will sometimes transform instinctively under conditions of great duress, which is often made harder to resist by the presence of the full moon. Their transformation to a wolf is almost always complete, unless they are skilled enough to only partly transform, though they have a constant wolf-like pack instinct, and are therefore inherently social people in either form. Their actual wolf forms do resemble ordinary wolves, though are in most cases bigger, stronger and faster than ordinary stock, with far more intelligence and reasoning skills.
- Spellwolves; a magically-created variant of werewolves. These werewolves have two sources. The first is a cursed human who is forced to turn into a daemonic, ravenous wolf at in the light of the full moon and must then go around slaughtering people while fully aware of their new wolf-like forms, and is often driven insane by the transformation's mental side-effects and the guilt of the occurrences. The second is a person gifted with the ability to transform into a supernaturally strong wolf at will as a gift of power in exchange for a service of some sort, or as a combat necessity where the power of a werewolf might be needed. These werewolves are internally varied in the extent of their forms, but the most favoured forms are similar to larger and stronger loup-garou.
- Magic-Users; universally characterised by their ability to use the strange otherworldly force known as magic, and also being perfectly normal in almost every other aspect. Unlike with other types of supernatural creature, however, magic-users do not have many different types but are instead more or less continuous in what it is that they can and cannot do. This does, however, vary between magic-users as magic-users are all very individual in how they use magic and how they think about magic. Magic itself, and what can be done with it, is often considered to be another matter entirely. It is, however, known to be a fact that if a magic-user is changed by any of the other types of infective supernatural creature, that they do not necessarily lose their magical powers, but such a transformation is often a willing one anyway. Magic-users often have a certain level of immunity to transformational effects, though a sufficiently effective vampire can overcome such resilience.
- Faeries; not much is known of them, except that they reside in a magical realm partly outside of our own, and are immensely powerful immortals with machinations and motives that only they can truly understand. They are universally characterised by their human-like appearance, but with various differences that set them apart due to their difference in physical and mental form. It is believed that they are allergic to iron, but this is the only thing that most members of the supernatural community know to be a genuine myth, as opposed to a partial myth. It is known that they can appear as almost anything, however, and that there are many types of faerie, but differentiating between them is nearly impossible and many don't know one from another. They are mysterious, and reclusive, but occasional Changelings - humans replaced by faeries or imbued with faerie blood at birth. It is known that faeries can breed with humans and other such; it is believed that Myrddin was perhaps a half-faerie.
- Yokai; similarly to the faeries, to which they are distantly related, they reside in magical realms that exist partly outside of our own, but are often more likely to venture out into the normal physical world. They are most commonly known in Japan, where they worked their way into a substantial part of the mortal mythology. They are universally characterised by their possession of two primary forms; an animal form and a human form, and it is known that they are grouped by which animal they are associated with. They have less magical power than their faerie cousins overall, and are less mysterious, but they are known to be more common, and there is more known about them. They have the ability to interbreed with humans, and the offspring inherit the powers of the yokai parent. Whilst in human form, Yokai often display slight aspects of their associated animal.
- Kitsune; associated with foxes and fox-like forms.
- Tanuki; associated mostly with the raccoon dog.
- Hebi; associated mostly with snakes, can be mistaken for a lamia
- Mujina; associated mostly with badgers
- Bakeneko or nekomata; associated mostly with cats
- Ōkami; associated mostly with wolves, and can be mistaken for werewolves.
- Inugami; associated mostly with dogs, and can be mistaken for werewolves like the Ōkami.
- Reapers; similarly to vampires, the reapers are universally characterised by a form of parasitic existence, having to live off of other creatures, and also having a very human origin. But the difference is that reapers, often called 'energy vampires' or 'psychic vampires', must drain the life energy of others in order to survive, as opposed to blood. There are several types of reaper, though they do not differ in that they must consume life energy or eventually wither away and die. This has the side-effect of making them highly immortal, as they can drain with a touch and physical hand-to-hand combat with them is made thus nearly impossible. Unlike vampires, reapers are not infertile, though reapers do have their origins amongst older versions of humanity, and it is possible for someone to become a reaper via magical methods, or by consuming the blood of a reaper. Even vampires and werewolves can become reapers, though such a thing cannot be done in reverse, and all reapers that aren't an incubus or succubus are in fact transformed from other creatures, and thus share many their older form's powers. Reapers can never be undead, and undead vampires turned by reapers are often restored to a more proper form of life. It is noted, however, that the undead are immune to being fed upon by reapers, due to lacking life energy.
- Succubi or Incubi; the only true form of reaper, noted for favouring sexual contact with their victims in order to feed, as the act of sex often stimulates the life energy. They are the most common form of reaper, possessing powers of mild shape-shifting and mind-reading, as well as the ability to charm others, though they often prefer to simply seduce and tempt their prey. They are often known for keeping a single victim alive, feeding from them in increments, as opposed to completely draining them. It is known that they are sexually compatible with base humans, and that there are many half-succubus children in the world. It is believed that Merlin is one of them, though there are those who say that he is half-faerie.
- Human Reapers or Half-Reapers; reapers which are originally transformed humans, or are born as the offspring of a fertile reaper and a human. Human reapers are not entirely required to feed upon life energy in order to survive, though they are able to do so and may indeed develop an addiction to it; the act of absorbing life energy extends their own lifespans to an indefinite amount, and grants them supernaturally high physical strength and various extra senses. Many human reapers can gain the powers of a succubus or incubus, given enough time and regular feeding.
- Vampire Reapers; reapers which are transformed from being vampire in nature, and therefore possess almost all of the qualities they possessed as a vampire. In the case of undead vampires, they are returned to full life upon first feeding using life energy. A vampire reaper can feed using either of their lust for blood or lust for life energy, as both may feed them. Their powers are variable, though they do not automatically receive powers outside of their ability to feed upon life energy by a direct touch. Vampire reapers do, however, gain significant increases to their powers after feeding upon life energy.
- Werewolf Reapers; reapers which were originally werewolves, and therefore possess all of the powers and qualities of their original werewolf forms, though the interference of various sources of conflicting magic can cause a spellwolf to lose his or her transformative powers. Like human reapers they are not required to feed, but they can gain an addiction to it, and the act of feeding can further empower them. They are, however, the least likely of all types of the transformed reapers to indulge in any actual feeding, due to their already increased strength and speed, as well as their nigh-immortality.
- Vampire Groups
- Thorne Clan; established in the early 14th century in the Lowlands of Scotland by the living vampire Lady Thorne, and her consort, Lord Adam Thorne, primarily making the clan up of living individuals. Its influence spread to the rest of Britain in the 17th century after the merging of the monarchy, and the ascent of King James VI of Scotland to also become King James I of England, Wales and Ireland, and it soon established itself as a major player in the area of the supernatural political circuit. It grew large enough, and quickly enough, that it soon rivalled its closest magic-using equivalent, the Ordo Merlinus. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Lady Thorne began to grow weary of the running of the Clan, as she was approaching her own third millennium, and thus she bequeathed control to her consort. This caused a schism in both the Clan and in the relationship of the two vampires. Adam Thorne proved himself more than capable of handling the strain of this event after organising the stealing the sword Clarent from the Ordo Merlinus, and through his leadership the Clan came out even stronger after the event than before. Lady Thorne currently lives in an almost reclusive method of drifting from social event to social event under a myriad of different identities, amusing herself in various fashions.
- Societas Draconistrarum or the Order of the Dragon; the Order of the Dragon, in its vampiric form, was founded sometime in the late 15th century by the newly transformed undead vampire and former Wallachian prince, Vladislav Drakulya. The Dragon's Son proved himself to be a greatly powerful leader of vampires, and by the 19th century, most of the vampires in Romania and some parts of neighbouring countries were a part of this order. At the end of the 19th century, the Order lost its leader to the actions of the vampire hunter, Abraham Van Helsing. Though one of his brides escaped to continue his legacy, under the name of Lady Drakulya; under her guidance its influence spread even as far as Germany in the early 20th century, with Count Graf Orlok claiming membership. Currently, they are engaged in an attempt to raise their old leader from the grave.
- Les Anges de Sang or the Angels of Blood; they were formed in their current state during the Napoleonic Wars by a centuries-old living vampire, Christine Madoré, though their roots go much further back. They are currently the largest clan of vampires in France, primarily made up of living vampires; they rose to true prominence in the World Wars, wherein they were secretly behind several effective though minor movements of subterfuge against invading forces, much to the chagrin of those who would have supernatural concealment. They are most noted for their nigh-interventionalist influence of the formation of the French Resistance, and for this they are often held in contempt by those who would rather have it that humanity's affairs were left to humanity. They have been less active in recent years, however, having stopped most of their interference since the formation of the Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle.
- Werewolf Groups
- Die Freien Wölfe or the Free Wolves; a relatively recent group that was formed during the second World War, as a product of Nazi experimentation on Jews, black people, gays and various 'undesirables' utilising werewolf genetics. The result is that some of these people effectively became full loup-garous with complete transformative power, though most only became wolf-men, and the testing was ruled a success. Before the Nazi scientists could move onto effective testing upon Germans to create werewolf supermen, the newly-created werewolves broke free of the Nazis, killed most of them and destroyed most of the research before escaping into the Schwarswald. They formed themselves as the Free Wolves to help the other, natural and unnatural werewolves of Germany some time after Nazism's reign of terror. Their leader is currently a Jewish loup-garou called Leben Cohen.
- Magic-Using Groups
- Ordo Merlinus or the Order of Merlin; established in the 6th century, in honour of the famous mage, Merlin. It was established to carry on the work of Merlin, and bring an end to societal belief in magic in order to protect humanity from the darker influences of what lay outside of human knowledge, and also keep care of the swords Excalibur and Clarent (the Sword in the Stone) for the eventual return of Arthur. They also kept the secret of the true location of the island Avalon, and often used it as safe-ground in times of trouble. By the time of the Renaissance, the end of disguising magic had mostly been achieved, and the revolution of science was considered a godsend by many. In the later 18th century, however, the Order was mostly disbanded after the sword Clarent was stolen, and it fell into the hands of the vampires. The schism was devastating, but most of the Order survived in an unofficial state , and later formed what are now known the Hermetic Order and the Wiccan Sisterhood.
- The Wiccan Sisterhood and the Hermetic Order; though they are technically a single continuous group, holding the task of safekeeping the island of Avalon and the remaining sword Excalibur as a continuance of the Order of Merlin's work, they count themselves as separate in public matters. They give out the impression of being harmless Sunday Cultists who basically act as a small social group of friends who meet in someone's garage every other week and sprinkle water around a chalk pentacle. In practice, they are technically the same as the Order of Merlin, however.
- The Prospero Triad; a very small group, consisting of three English wizards from Elizabethan times; Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and John Dee. They took on the single continuous identity of Prospero, after the original illusionist who taught all three of them. It is known that they were involved in the running of the Ordo Merlinus and are now involved in the running of the Hermetic Order. Their number was reduced by one during a rather large battle at Tunguska in 1908, but it is not known which of the three Prosperos was killed. They soon found a replacement, the original identity of which is still, in 2008, more or less unknown.
- Children of Salem; a splinter group of the Order of Merlin formed in the aftermath of the deaths by various methods of twenty-five suspected witches in Salem in 1692 and 1693 in an event that is remembered as the Salem Witch Trials. At least three of those killed had some genuine potential to learn magic. The group was formed in order to protect the interests of magic-users in the colonial Americas, and attempt to keep such trials from occurring within the limits of the laws against overt interference. There had already been some notable movement against witch-trials growing in British territories since 1612, with the trials in Pendle, Lancashire. The Children of Salem operate publically in the 21st century as Wiccans, mainly centred around the city of Boston, Massachusetts, borrowing the idea from their more British cousins. The group is currently led by a triad of witches.
In the early years of the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II, otherwise known as Ozymandias, a warlock of some skill and knowledge scribed the first version of what would become a greatly powerful grimoire. The warlock's identity remains unknown, but it is known that he wrote originally on papyrus, in the blood of a sacrificial lamb that was intended for the god Thoth, whom he viewed as a god of magic. For their time, the spells and notations of magic were said to be far beyond any knowledge possessed by any of his contemporary magic-users. It is said that the book was given to one of his students, who took it away and added to it, expanding upon the knowledge contained therein, and improving it. It is not known what happened to the book for over a thousand years afterwards, but it was next seen in the possession of the infamous Merlin, expanded upon to at least three times its original length, and bristling with magic in various languages.
Merlin added to the book himself, and it is said that the book was the source of his great power. The book was later stolen by his student and lover, Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, who used its power to trap him in stone towards the end of the first millennium. After this time, it was kept, but not expanded upon by her. She bound it in reddish leather, and gave it the name, however. It was eventually stolen, however, by an airy spirit at the behest of an exiled master illusionist named Prospero, a few centuries later.
Though the power of the book was sufficient to free Prospero from his island, it is known that his own mental state kept him there, and in many ways he was waiting for revenge. He expanded a lot upon the book, and used its knowledge to fashion a wizard's staff of great power, but he recognised a great amount of evil magic within the book. After his release from his island, he cast the book into the ocean, but it is not known where. He also broke the staff, and buried it next to where Merlin was trapped, on the island of Avalon, where its magic made it grow into a tree.
It is not known if the book even survives, or what powers it holds.
Rightio, any opinions, criticisms or comments to be made?