The King is Dead: A Vampire History

In ancient times, during the height of the Remulan Empire, a king called Hordos ruled the land of Tzion as an ally of the Remulans.  The king was an unhappy man.  His people rebelled against the Remulan presence and his own enlightened rule; they did not recognize the natural order of the world -- that the strong should rule the weak, that the will to power is the right to power.  Street preachers and rabble rousers emerged in Tzion’s great cities crying out that all men were equal in the eyes of God, that even the scum of the earth were worthy of love and respect.  King Hordos looked upon his kingdom and feared rebellion came.

The king had married his brother’s sister, and his wife had a daughter named Salome.  This devout girl prayed nightly to the darkness for the happiness of the king and the safety of the land.  A filthy itinerant called Yohanon preached at the palace gates against her step-father, and Salome knew that if she could make an example of Yohanon then King Hordos’ rule would be secure.  She prayed and prayed and the King of the World answered her.

Sathaniel the Advocate, First and Greatest Child of the Unseen Maker, King of the World and Lord of the Darkness, came to Salome as a black-winged angel and bestowed upon her the gift of unlife.  He made her the vessel of His blood, the vehicle of His deliverance, and sent her to her step-father.  She came to King Hordos and nursed him with her blood – with Sathaniel’s blood in her – and Hordos became a vampire.  Together they drank Yohanon’s blood and together they reigned.

Alas, Yohanon was not alone in his heresy.  The Pariah, He Who Shall Not Be Named, lurked yet in the streets and gardens of Tzion and gathered to him the base and the poor.  The eyes of Saint Kerioth were opened by Sathaniel and he gave the Pariah over to execution; only Shimon the Swordsman escaped King Hordos’ justice.  The prefect of the Remulans, Pilatus, beheld the rising forces of anarchy and accepted the gift of unlife from Hordos.  It seemed that the world was ready to embrace the true teachings of Sathaniel, but it was not be.  Mankind was not yet ready for His word.

Pilatus and Hordos turned their armies to Remula to spread the word of Sathaniel.  Mighty was their struggle, but they had not learned the greatest strength of the unloving – they had not learned patience.  Sathaniel does not help fools; Pilatus was slain by an ash wood spear and Hordos was overthrown.  The king and Salome, his daughter and mother, fled into the wilderness.  Tzion was torn down and its people scattered and slain. 

Four centuries passed as Hordos and Salome wandered the wilderness.  Many lands they visited and many times they tried to bend the rulers of men to the King of the World, but always the ungrateful mob rejected them.  The wife of Pilatus and other disciples of the blood gathered in the catacombs of Remula and there the Church of Sathaniel grew in secret, but the hedonists and degenerates of Remula – so enamored of the pleasures of the body – hunted them out when they could.  These were terrible times.

At last, Hordos found a son who deserving of the blood of Sathaniel, a man of ambition and violence who reveled in bloodshed: Etzel, king of the Hunnoi.  Embracing unlife, Etzel and his army sacked Remula and conquered the mother of cities.  Etzel proved his worthiness as the Scourge of Sathaniel at Hordos’ coronation; he struck his blood-father down and became emperor in his stead.  Sathaniel does not reward failure, and Hordos had failed once too often.

The wealth of fallen Remula belonged to the Church of Sathaniel and the Emperor Etzel and mankind grew jealous.  Even as the Hunnoi embraced the working of stone and the cultivation of their human flock, untamed men conspired against them.  Centuries passed as war consumed Incus.  The Ashmen of the far north raided Malleus and the continent; despite their natural affinity to the way of Sathaniel, it was many generations before they threw off the yoke of their heathen werewolf god Wotan and accepted His word.  At last they put away their poison ash wood and became civilized.  Their nobles accepted Sathaniel and became vampires.

One of these nobles was your own ancestor, Wilhelm the Everlasting.  Wilhelm knew of a pagan land, an island that still worshipped the sun and knew not the blessings of peace, the rulership of a sure, strong hand.  Anarchy ruled this island for the king had died and left no proper heir.  Wilhelm gathered his sons – the Blood Princes Ruprecht, Rickard, and Wilhelm the Red – and his army and sailed to Malleus in the year 1066.

from A History of the Island of Malleus Suitable for Young Noblemen

by Tomas Bowdler