Ascendant World Building: Vampires
The first vampires were a coven of seven blood mages, dedicated to wresting control of earth from the Fae empire. Chief among them was Militades, and when they were transformed, he was the first to gain control of himself and usher his companions back to rationality. With him at their helm, they began a bloody campaign against the remainder of the elves, Militades political cunning also gained them the cooperation of the unaligned mer clans.
Militades wasn’t just well versed in politics, he was a ruthless military commander who was in no way afraid of casualties. It was a quirk of the vampire ritual that the newly transformed were mad with blood lust, blind to any pain or rationality. Legions of blood-ferals could be turned against their enemies and the would be unstoppable until their thirst was slaked or they were killed.
Militades unleashed these blood ferals on elf territory, satisfied to either kill the elves or the humans that they relied upon to keep themselves alive. When he wasn’t unleashing swathes of destruction though, Militades plans could be insidious. He found the few who knew how to preform the elven ritual and killed them all, sending the knowledge of elf creation into death with them. It was in this way that the vampires rendered elves extinct.
Though mermaids worked alongside them in this work, they preferred their independence to becoming part of a new empire, the werewolves were of the same mind. Preferring their friendship with Guardians over servitude to another Shadow Race. The Guardians themselves were weakened from the Calamity still and though they had a new king, they didn’t have the numbers they used to. The vampires, luckily, were more sane than the elves and made themselves content with ruling their own lands. Treaties sprung up between all of these races and peace was—at least temporarily—returned and the Fae Empire forever ended.
It was during this time of peace that Militades comrades turned against him. In one night, the vampire’s Elder Council was reduced from seven members to four. Militades and two of the other Elders simply vanished, presumed dead. The truth of the matter was that the Council had turned against their own leader, and though they couldn’t kill him, they managed to lock him away with a small guard of humans. There he stayed for the next three hundred years, as his guard slowly transitioned into a cult dedicated to worshiping—and containing—what they believed to be the end of the world.
