Vampire Crusades

In Harbabureşti, dark days fade into black, endless nights. People huddle like medieval peasants, trying to ignore the yowling shrieks from outside, trying not to think about what moves just beyond the feeble reach of their lights. They mutter words like “strigoi” and “moroi” and “nosferatu” while clutching blood-caked rosaries.

An army of loathsome hungers. Siege engines looming at the forest’s edge. War has come.

Initiate the secret bedtime story.

Vlad III Dracula, whom some call “Impaler,” had a bride named Mara. They did not live happily ever after. The end.

The moral of a story changes depending on where you end it, sweetling. Did you know? Fairy tales become tragedies on the other side of happily ever.

Now the vampire queen of Transylvania leads an unorganised army of rapacious leeches to take back their ancestral lands. Her broodlings migrate from Europe and Asia Minor, summoned by the incestuous beat of their mother’s heart. Every day they wash over the valley in a necrotic tide.

A new phase in the undead hive-queen’s life cycle begins. Decades ago, she gave genetic vampire samples to KGB scientists – the eggs of a vile plan laid. The experiments. The operations. The Soviet soldiers brought in as test subjects. Evil sows and time reaps a generous harvest. The bio-engineered throwbacks stir in the bunkers of the Red Hand facility. Mara hears her lovelies and throws open the door.

Now she has an army to take back her homeland. The gore-crusted chaos it creates is a means to a vicious end. In the pandemonium, her own blood, her broodlings – powerful and loyal vampire generals – will see her designs fulfilled.

It was supposed to be easy.

The fiends outnumber the humans. They are as strong as hate, teeth sharp as sin, and the people should have fallen with the ease of tearing bleats from sheep. But the Romany returned, those who call themselves the Drăculești, and the secret worlders came, and what should have been slaughter, became war.

The battle rages on without end. We can read the vibrations. The vampires have time and stamina as allies. Heavily padded armour protects them from the sun. The living tire. It is all so inevitable. Mara stretches like a pregnant cat. She grins. After all, she can always make more children.

Knowledge given is a curse inflicted. Now you know what will happen, sweetling. What will you do about it?