Chapter 1: To Reign in Hell

My world is at once similar to and distinct from your own. We have learned that the Hell-Lands- your Earth- could hardly have earned a less appropriate sobriquet. Its expanses and herds of cattle would be a paradise for us, the Lords of the night. Ah, but I digress. I have a tale to tell about the old days, how I came to my present power. I see you glance behind me at my handmaidens. Alluring, are they not? Very well. I shall tell you how they came to be.

Our ability to measure time here on Starside is limited. Days pass slowly, our world's off-axis tilt resulting in something far less ordinary than your world's metronomic diurnal pattern. But based on what I have learned from my prey in the past, I estimate my story began a little over a millennia ago, a blink of an eye for one such as I.

I was birthed to the Szgany, the nomads of Sunside upon whom we Wamphyri feed. Amongst them, those with psychic gifts- prescience, heightened senses, hypnotic suggestion- are both despised and respected. On one hand, their abilities offer some protection from the Wamphyri, as they can sense their presence or the times they are likely to hunt, offering the caravan an opportunity to flee. On the other, those abilities are the mark of the Wamphyri's perversion, an indicator that their possessor has inherited the tainted blood of the creatures that hunt them. Some also feared that a gifted child would also serve as a beacon to the Wamphyri, drawing them in like a moth to a flame. I can speak only for myself, but I have never found it to be true.

As I matured, my gifts strengthened. My visions proved useful, forewarning my Clan of Wamphyri predation, locating clean water we needed as we moved about, and so on. But as I began to master my unnatural gifts, as I was able to better aid my people, I was pushed ever further away. When the elders approached me to learn whether their intended campsite, close to the Barrier Mountains, was too close to Wamphyri territory, I refused to answer their questions. I reasoned that a healthy dose of fear would teach them humility, the value of my abilities. I thought that after such a lesson, my Clan would grudgingly come to accept me the way the other Clans had. During the rare times when the Szgany gathered, I met others of my kind, some of whom were Elders in their own right, their counsel sought with respect.

In any case, I could foretell that the campsite was well within the Wamphyri's hunting range. The future was always difficult to divine, many branching paths and possibilities making it a task to unravel. I could see nights where we were safe, nights where a great hunting party of Wamphyri Lords descended upon us, and all manner of potential fates in between. The tangled skein of what was to come seemed to offer more nights where we were safe beneath the massive peaks separating Sunside and Starside, but I had no way to be certain.

The first night passed uneventfully, our own hunting parties taking a rich killing in the forests where few Szgany had dared trespass, teeming with game and unplucked fruits. Ensconced in this unexpected paradise, the fears of the Elders were overcome by their desire to stock our larders with salted meats and fruits we could trade with other Clans, and announced we would stay, watching the night skies carefully for the Lords.

It was on the third night the Wamphyri came, a Lord leading a detachment from his Aerie. His forces having been recently decimated, he took every male he could find, intending to create thralls. There was something in my nature, however, that he found repugnant; I was saved from the fate of my Clansmen. The Lord was seeking to worm his way into an alliance- and the bed- of a Lady who ruled one of the lesser spires, a particularly comely woman. He offered me up as a gift to her, a quirk of fate that had dire repercussions for both of our futures.

The Lady, Helene, proved to be a gentle mistress, quite unlike the fearsome creatures I would learn the rest of the Wamphyri were. Or perhaps it was simply my gifts that caused her to treat me well, sensing that I craved acceptance above all. She made me a Thrall, used my powers of prognostication to analyse the paths before her, moving deftly through the politics and blood feuds of the greater and lesser Wamphyri that surrounded Helenestack.

I was a quick study, and the infusion of her ichor strengthened my talents, giving me the ability to take the lottery of fate and deliver the outcomes she desired with astounding frequency. In less than a year, she elevated me to her right hand, allowing my flesh to transmute as I became a Lieutenant. As a reward for my service, she took me to her bed, the many carnal delights we shared spurring on my transition to inhumanity.

Before the Lady Helene had use of me, she had needed to find allies among the lesser Lords to stave off her neighbours in the eternal blood war of our kind. With me by her side, however, she was able to pick the winning side, manipulating her enemies into weakening or destroying each other. There where whispers that the Great Lords were considering elevating her to the status of an equal, a feat not accomplished in the recent memory of the Wamphyri.

This, of course, changed. The Lord who gifted me to Helene had been rebuffed in his calls for an alliance, after I warned my Lady that he sought to ultimately betray her in his quest to become a Great Lord. Denied my Lady's bed as well as her aid, he became a powerful enemy, eventually leading a daring raid on Helenestack. He came under a flag of truce, but produced a silver long-knife, delivering a mortal wound to my mistress.

I cradled her as her mortal flesh died, great rents in her perfect body exposing her bloody internal organs. With a great tearing sound, her Leech fought free of her body, the trauma of its passage too much for her to cope with. As she passed from this world in my arms, I swore to avenge her death, erasing for all time and from all memory our hated foe. Having shucked her dying flesh, Helene's ancient Leech attack me, burrowing into my stomach. Occupied with my grief and fury, I had not noticed the strange parasite emerging. Its touch was dire agony, a pain I have not felt before or since even in the sun's loathsome light or at the touch of the death metal, silver.

My Lady's patronage prepared my body well to accommodate her symbiont, and within a short time I bonded with it fully, gaining access to a strength beyond imagining. My metamorphic flesh was already mated to hers, and my psychic might enabled me to tame her war beasts and fliers. Some of her Lieutenants and Thralls, upon seeing my Lady's demise, had forsaken their duty and sworn themselves to the service of her slayer; others, more loyal, pledged themselves to me.

I proceeded carefully, learning how to manipulate the ichor-infused flesh of the war beasts. The nearby Lords sent sorties of their own vile creations against my inherited armies, testing to discover any vulnerability. Casting about in the web of potential futures, I was able to guard Helenestack- now renamed Furystack by the other Lords, who had heard of my oath of vengeance.