Ch 2 A focus is the Rock, 2 B moves on in space

“Glory to the Empire!” We all had shouted out, as we walked thru the portal onto the ship Looking around no one could see anything that deserved praise. For, should it be told, this was rather a dismal, backward place, not worthy of such platitudes, it was warship not a palace. Scanning down to the planet the view was not any better.

We were here though and here we would remain for a very long time. Of the hundreds, no thousands of systems available this near desolate rock was chosen merely to get me out of the way.

At least I had some company on the trip, they would be boon, gloom and perhaps doom, unless I was careful. There were several of us though, Their offspring would unwittingly become the nucleus of a new but fragile society. I say fragile not because our kind were weak and subject to human type frailties; rather we were ten to twenty times stronger; no, our one fault lay in the length of time required to reproduce on this world. If Joshua had not put forth his suggestion this single limitation might have resulted in the demise of even my new lander.

‘What was the real problem you ask?’ From logs left behind at the abandoned base camp, we read: ‘Through trial and error it was discovered a lesser version of ourselves could be created, several kinds in-fact. With these in combination with blood servants, familiars and regular human slaves they thought they would soon become a viable family. This had not been the case.’ Here is what my status report had said: ‘Like all families, not everyone sees things one way though. Three groups soon became just that, three separate factions, so to speak. Each was led by the Alpha male and the nine Alpha females. Few Pure-bloods would ever born, most in number were natives turned or granted some measure of powers and immortality. Over time, those numbers would only grow and with that so did the problems and challenges we would face.

To fix it, required several changes. This then is our story, our time on this rock and the resulting drive and determination, for me at least, one day to return home, our home-world, our real home.’ That however, might not be what ‘others’ had planned for me.

A flashback taken in the future.

An apt summary found on a probe back to the home-world.

“God Wills It!”

(Pope Urban II ‘s ‘Deus Vult’, not to be confused with the Muslim ‘Insha Allah’)

‘What a time to have arrived. Well. It might have been worse, Jerusalem could have just as well been where we set down instead of Romania; of course it was called something else then; at least I think so, hard to remember that far back. Wait, back then it was part of Hungary, I was only off about 900 years or so. My, how time flies, ‘Tempus something or other’.

Of course Bran Castle wasn’t there yet, neither was the town but for us it seemed to be the perfect place to begin from. Transylvania and eventually Wallachia would gain some stories from us, but never mind that right now. At the moment the imperative was to ‘get cracking’ and beef-up the ranks. It was a ‘hard’ thing to do but ‘duty is duty, you know’. Like I said it was slow going until 1330 or so when we got some ‘new blood’, pardon the pun, in the neighborhood and a new way to increase ourselves.(Founding of Wallachia by humans) Again, I forgot something else. We would see some souls about 1307 (The Children’s Crusade from Germany) small ones at that, who were only ‘snacks’. These, unlike those from France never made it to the slave pens (The Children’s Crusade from France). It would take 900 plus years to birth just 100 ‘pure-breeds’, those we turned never listened and tried sucking the blood of whomever and whatever came their way thinking they might discover some secret way to improve their lot, as if.

Getting back to the point I was trying to make. We began to change, slowly at first then, when more resource was available, much more rapidly. Notice I indicated ‘change’, life on this world would never be the same as it used to be back home for anyone.

Looking back now, that was a good thing for me at least. The chance to start over became more important than ever. Of course one or two other things might have influenced that conclusion.

Something came to the forefront of interest, at least for me, it might be called a difference of opinion; at least for one of my kind, maybe a few more names actually. Joshua stayed out of it, luckily for him. It must have been 1500 or was it 1600 their time, who knows; I already told you about time, right? Anyway, whether it was planned or a result of the situation on this rock, the sweet, kind, loving females from the original landing had turned, joining Bayon’s faction in an attempt to overthrow home rule. Not their brightest ideas I’ll have you know.