Deviation Actions
Description
Long Live The King:
A request by sonicrocks57 based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (and a lot of subsequent vampire/ horror literature). In this world Abraham Van Helsing fails to stop Count Wladislaus Drakulya (Dracula) in England and dies. The vampiric count then proceeds to take over the British government and eventually overthrows the royal family, placing himself as king. Through a variety of methods – both mundane and supernatural – he is able to consolidate his rule over the UK and the British Empire.
From there the new vampiric king-emperor moved to establish further hegemonic dominance over Europe. His minions and vampiric spawn moved onto the continent and began to supplant the governments as well. He worked subtly at first but as he succeeded in consolidating more and more power his actions became increasingly overt. This strategy unfortunately didn’t work as well, as the Catholic Church learnt of what was happening and mobilised against them. A new silent war broke out between the Church and the vampires.
By 2016 the state of the world has been shaped by the vampires and the silent war against them.
The British Empire is still in power and an unholy behemoth straddling the world and serving as the means through which Emperor Dracula exercises his immense power. The UK and its empire has been transformed into a vehicle for his ego and ambition and is dedicated to eventually conquering the world and finally throwing down the temporal powers of God.
The former Count – now King – Dracula has spread his influence through a wide variety of methods to ensure the entirety of the British Empire is under his absolute control. Renfields, humans under his control through supernatural means have been strategically placed in positions of power ranging from parliamentary seats, bureaucratic offices and even seemingly minor community positions in order to keep the populace in check. Quislings seeking immortality through the vampire’s bite and genuine supporters of the regime also support these renfields. This backed up, in turn, by an extensive propaganda machine that extols an intense cult of personality around the king and the inevitability of the empire’s victory.
The other tool through which Dracula has spread his influence are his vampiric spawn. He has converted many people into his kind and has taken great effort to make sure they are still subordinate to him. Though they are prone to competing with one another to fulfil their ambitions, each of these vampires is loyal (to an extent) to their king. How Dracula instils such loyalty is unknown though the fact that many of them are ambitious human servants who worked hard to earn the right to immortality helps engender some fidelity to the crown. They are spread throughout the empire and keep watch over the colonies and other territories. They possess all of the abilities their king has but also his primary weakness. Every time these agents are shipped out they must take several boxes of earth from their homeland in order to regenerate. Those who lose them will wither away until they either return home or are put down whilst in their weakened state.
Life in the British Empire is a grim and oppressive one. The empire is now a totalitarian state of royal absolutism backed by an apparatus of state control made up of predatory immortals. The people all work to further the king’s efforts to conquer the world and are encouraged by the copious propaganda. Criminals, rebels and those under suspicion are imprisoned and will eventually end up being bled dry by either the king or his vampiric spawn. People from certain groups in society that are known for being rebellious will also be targeted by vampires when they go to hunt for their food. The rest of the populace, though constantly reassured that only the guilty are subjected to the hunt, live in fear of their ruler’s rampages which further serves to keep them in line. This fact is even more-so in the colonies where greater control is needed.
The vampires serve in a wide variety of roles in the empire but most of them are Dracula’s enforcers. They are the ones who hunt down dissidents, silence political rivals and assassinate enemy infiltrators. They are often treated like a new aristocracy as well as they will usually have households of renfields and other retainers that support them both in a personal and professional capacity. They and their human supporters do not completely suppress religion but sacred sites have been desecrated to reduce their influence and secular or even atheist ideas have been spread to reduce the power of faith in their territories. This has led to religious reactions in much of the empire that are then violently repressed in turn.
As Dracula was bringing the British Empire under his sway he also sent many of his new spawn out overseas into northern Europe in order to spread his influence further. Before they met the staunchly Catholic and independent Islamic nations of the Mediterranean, where the servants of God and Allah were strongest, he managed to subvert much of the continent and bring them into his empire.
The Empire of Germany is the most powerful of these subordinate states and has been granted a lot of power in order to persecute the war against the Holy Alliance. Germany, like Britain, is a totalitarian state ruled by both mundane and supernatural means. The vampires that rule Germany have been granted a lot of autonomy and even have their own hierarchy though they are all supposed to be subordinate to Dracula himself. They have a lot of trouble in their empire due to having appropriated them from the French and so they tend to let their new spawn run wild in the rebellious territories as a means of getting used to their vampiric abilities by hunting down rebels.
Due to their instability and the fact that they directly border more of the empire’s enemies, Germany has a higher population of renfields and lesser vampires. Control of the population is also a lot tighter with the mundane military and secret police forces being very extensive and holding a lot of power. The population has been mobilised in order to build up the economic and military power of Germany, its empire and the system of satellite states it has been given responsibility for.
After the true nature of Britain’s rulers was made clear the rest of the world rallied to oppose them. When the vampires’ weakness to the symbols of the Christian faith was discovered they rallied around the Catholic Church and formed the new Holy Alliance, united in their opposition to the unholy rulers of Britain, Germany and their satellites.
The spiritual heart of the Holy Alliance is the Latin Union, a collection of Catholic states that formed after the vampires attempted to stage a coup in France and successfully turned Germany into a threat to the rest of Europe. The centre of this union is the Catholic Church which has increasingly taken control of the seats of power in its member states and has installed a semi-theocratic system of government across the entirety of the union and its associated states. With the rise of the Catholic Church within the union and the consolidation of power in order to stand up to their enemies, the Latin Union has been centralising.
Italy is practically run by the Catholic Church and has become the Union’s centre of power after France lost so much territory to the vampires. France has largely recovered but is still subordinate to the Italians who have used support from the rest of the Union to modernise and develop themselves.
The fact that the Christian faith and its symbols holds power against the vampires is what led to the Catholic Church’s rise to power. This has led to the rise of the extreme religiosity that has come to define the Union. Churches are now a feature of every community and every house has a small shrine or icon that they pray to daily. Massive church services are common on Sundays, sometimes filling entire town squares but always taking place in front of churches or cathedrals. There is also a new Inquisition that serves as the Union’s secret police force and is tasked with rooting out vampires, renfields and anyone suspected of either heresy, blasphemy (of the physical sort specifically) and sedition against the Papacy and the Union.
The current powerhouse and physical leader of the Holy Alliance is the United States of America. The USA remained uninvolved for the beginning of the Early 20th Century but once the true nature of Britain’s new leader was made apparent even they dropped their isolationism and began to intervene. Vampiric attempts to incite revolutions and subvert the government thankfully failed but the US has lost a few bits and pieces to infiltrators of both the mundane and supernatural variety. These attacks have to a strong backlash that saw religiosity similar to the Latin Union’s become commonplace. The USA may be highly religious and primarily Protestant but they do tolerate other Christian faiths (up to and including Mormons but don’t expect the government to accept them to be congress members any time soon) which has smoothed things over with the Catholic Latins and Orthodox Russians.
The USA is a powerful nation and their culture has become both highly religious and militant in response to the rise of the vampiric empire. American society, like the Union, is often centred around whatever church exists within a given community. There is still enough religious tolerance for there to be other churches, especially in the larger cities but smaller towns tend to be much less tolerant of other faiths.
The US has a large military presence on its northern border, waiting to sweep through Canada in the event of war. They also encourages the citizens to either join the army or one of the industries that support it through copious propaganda in the media and church. The US military presence is even stronger in the rest of the Western Hemisphere where they support the Latin Union backed governments that have been set up in Latin America. Though the highly Catholic governments are associated with the Latins and the Papacy, the US has the largest foreign military presence in these states and influences them as much as Rome does.
The Holy Russian Empire is the third major power of the Holy Alliance. Russia suffered terrible losses during the rise of the vampiric empire when they engaged in war with the Germans. These losses led to a lot of upheaval in Russia that coincided with the rise of extreme political movements and civil instability. Though radical revolution did not entirely engulf Russia, the new – extremely right-wing – government did bring about huge reforms that turned Russia into the clerical-fascist state it is today.
Russia is still technically an autocratic absolute monarchy but the government is largely dominated by high ranking members of the military and church. Whilst the army actually manages the secular aspects of Russian society, the church is responsible for national security, particularly against vampires and their thralls. Russia, possessing a far less sophisticated surveillance state, is arguably one of the more paranoid powers with the state encouraging active citizen support for informants and even a system of tangible rewards for people who uncover particularly dangerous secrets. Militarised church agents are often well armed and, surprisingly, do cooperate with the Vatican to share knowledge and, on occasion, certain relics to help keep the European vampires at bay.
The Ottoman Turk Empire has only recently emerged from being a joint Latin/Russian protectorate and has lost a few bits and pieces to their ‘allies’ whilst doing so. They did suffer from a vampiric infiltration for a time but Christian agents were able to help local religious leaders lead a hunt against them. The Turks have managed to avoid falling into complete theocratic dominance but they are a highly religious state and the Imams have far more influence in government than they used to. Surprisingly there’s a lot of pragmatism in the government as the Ottoman Empire still needs the support of the major Christian powers and therefore focuses the propaganda on the inhuman vampires rather than their infidel allies. They plan to liberate the Muslim portions of the British Empire but tend to be a little less talkative when it comes to the Muslims areas of their allies’ empires, not that it means that there aren’t a lot of bad sentiments.
Technologically this world is at about the same level as the OTL 1950s, on the verge of the early 60s. Between vampiric overlords (who are a rather conservative minded bunch) and theocratic governments, the two major factions have been very slow to innovate and aren’t happy about scientific theories that could be applied philosophically. Whilst evolution and the true age of the Earth couldn’t be suppressed again by this point, they have been subsumed into modern religious dogma instead. Free thinking and innovation (outside of government approved and monitored institutions in the major powers) is discouraged and usually feared by the powers that be for their tendency to generate nonconformity. The nations of the Holy Alliance are, of course, divided between the opportunists, the status quo aligned pragmatists and the true believers, all three of which try to maintain things in their societies.
The atom bomb has been around for several decades now and whilst ICBMs are still out of the question there are long range rockets that can cause a lot of damage and both sides have set them up in strategic areas within their respective territories. Considering the state of the world and the even more fragile Cold War situation fingers are constantly hovering over big red buttons, waiting for the opportunity to press them and end it all. Considering their near immortality, several vampires are wondering if its worth continuing this fight. They have access to bunkers and will still have plenty of thralls to feed off of. They’re ageless and deathless, they can wait for the fallout to clear. King Dracula is more restrained at the moment but who’s to say how long it will take for someone reckless or stupid enough to step forth and finally bathe the world in hellish nuclear flames.
