Argeus the Paladin
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Chapter 1
April 8th, AD 125. Somewhere in the woods of Dyrrachium, the Roman province of Macedonia.
The second king of the Black Vampire kingdom, formed barely a few decades prior, was on his deathbed, fighting a losing battle against a terrible illness. What disease Thermon I Centaulos could have acquired then was a complete mystery to us, as, even today, researches on vampire physiology have been few and far between. What we know, however, is that he had not been well in the last five years of his reign, his health having deteriorated steadily much like a old human's.
From a historical standpoint, Thermon I had little to regret. To date, few Black Vampire sovereigns, up to and including the present Ioannes Sigismund Komnenos, could boast a greater role in shaping the vampire world as the dying monarch. It is well known that Pergamonios I was the one who first brought the hunting-gathering vampire communities in Western Greece, Macedon and Epiros into an unified faction some half a century prior, yet it was Thermon who lay the foundation for the Black Vampires to become less of a bandit kingdom which literally fed on Roman caravans and defenseless farmers and more of a kingdom proper. It was he who took over the throne and stabilized their people after that disastrous defeat that Pergamonios brought upon himself by his own naivete. It was he who forcefully pushed forth a proper reform scheme that turned said robber kingdom into a semi-agrarian country that could produce basic goods and services its people required - food, tool and household products, in that order. It was he who created the foundation of the "blood as currency" scheme still religiously followed by the Holy Komnenian Empire to this day. It was he who reformed the vampire hunters into a proper army, with ranks and files and decent leadership for that age. And finally, it was he that sired Nikator Centaulos the Great.
And yet, it has been widely regarded, that the last thing might have as well been his undoing. At the age of eighty-seven, barely an early-middle-aged vampire, his passing has been the cause for much speculating till this day. This, plus his revolutionary and radical way of thinking had left many to wonder what sort of improvements he would have thought of had he lived well into the 3rd century AD. A popular Royal Vampire joke “We’d have a [impossible and impractical scientific achievement] now had Thermon I live a lil’ longer” was probably based around this belief.
While his death was usually treated as a sudden incident, modern view is that his declining health must have been obvious within the last two years of his life. For all his life of tireless contribution to the betterment of his people, Thermon had apparently abused his health in more than one way. He still held the record for being the king who had spent the most time in sunlight throughout his relatively short reign as well as being one of the few monarchs who had consorted with many different women of both vampire and humankind. Finally, he was known to be a heavy drinker, especially after his dear human lover Cornelia’s death.
Today his romances had become an integral part of Royal Vampire folklore, the story of a dashing hero who was as dedicated to his lovers as he was to running his country, and we know Thermon I was nothing less than completely and utterly devoted to his fledging people like a father to his son. Myths aside, we know that Thermon probably had three main lovers, one of which was a human. His first wife whose name was lost forever in history was married to him by Pergamon I and who had likely perished before he was crowned for unknown cause. His second, Queen Appolonia, was more fortunate, outliving both him and their only son Pergamon Centaulos and in time became somewhat immortalized as a vampire patron saint for familial love and devotion.
But it was the third love interest of his, Cornelia Cappadius, that drew the most attention for many reasons. First, it was the first and only time in several centuries to pass that the supreme vampire lord fell in love with a human girl, brought her home and actually sired a child with her despite his queen’s protests. Second, this love resulted in perhaps the greatest general to have ever served the Royal Vampires, Nicator Centaulos. And perhaps a third, only obvious in hindsight – this marriage provided a solid proof that humans and Royal Vampires could in fact coexist in peace.
Unlike many human consorts that other vampire nobles took home, Cornelia refused to be changed into a vampire despite her husband’s power and pleas. This refusal might have been the deciding factor that cost her life. She died in childbirth in AD 117 while bringing Nicator to life – her human body simply could not withstand the stress of a vampire birth. Needless to say Thermon was distraught. Modern historians tend to share the view that despite the fact that the king was fond of his queen, the marriage was still of more or less of a political nature and that Cornelia was probably his first true love.
In any case, in the next few years Thermon’s mental and physical health was in constant decline. He became a drunkard to the point of near-paralytic in the last years of his life, and the rare hours he was not drinking, he was caught between the various administrative tasks he began adopting since the reforms. From 122-123 he was probably unable to even do those work properly and had to rely on a close circle of trusted noble advisors to keep the court running in good order. In the last year of his life alone he was recorded to have put ten good servants to the sword for seemingly minor misbehaviors. All of this might not have directly led to his death, but they might have been major contributors.
Thermon’s treatment of Nicator was also a topic much explored by Black Vampire folklore. Accounts run the wide spectrum from a tyrannical, drunken father who would give the young boy the lash at the smallest misdemeanor like a textbook abusive parent to a loving father who wishes he could do more for his son but couldn't and hating himself for it. From the more reliable sources we can assume that his attitude was schizophrenic at best. He likely both loved him as a son and the only living memorabilia of his true love and hated him for dooming said love at the same time. Nikator was fortunate, though, since Queen Appolonia was fond of him and so was his elder half-brother Pergamon. This was partly because the queen was almost certain that this young boy would not be a threat to her son’s succession anyways and Pergamon Centaulos was, in hindsight, quite literally the most innocent youth in the court at that day with a naivety that, towards the end of his life, would do him more harm than good.
What Appolonia did not expect was her husband’s sudden demise. At the time of Thermon’s death, Pergamon Centaulos knelt before his father's deathbed, barely twenty in age and even younger at heart. He might have been physically mature, but he simply lacked the spine and authority needed to lead the fledging kingdom after the sudden loss of its steadfast ruler over the last four decades.
The events to transpire in the years to follow were of vital importance to the development of the vampire kingdom. The forming of the Elder Council, a governing body commanding vast power with a surprisingly complex cross-checking mechanism to both make use of and reining in powerful nobles was one thing, and the beginning of the tenure of Thessalos Metiades, a most powerful Black Vampire lord at the time, marked those years. None of them, however, concerned the young Nikator. For all he knew, he still had a loving stepmother and a kind brother and depending on which source you cite, might have been even living a far better life than while his father was alive. Their consistent and seemingly unconditional love and kindness had much shaped the young prince's fealty. Until death he remained fiercely loyal to both of them, something that could hardly be said of Appolonia's own grandchildren years later.
In AD 135, his coming-of-age ceremony was held with as much lavishness as that of a crown prince, followed by his first title, estate and his first post in the administration. All of these were customary for a Royal Vampire noble at that point, mostly borrowing from Roman tradition mixed and matched with Near Eastern practices. Needless to say, the young prince was even more elated and secure in his place, believing fully that he was well loved and respected by his only family.
Historians today, on the other hand, shared the view that Appolonia purposefully set him up in that position where it would be very hard for him to gain any real power in the court, so as to avoid her son gaining another political rival. It is a distinct possibility, given that Appolonia had proven through the entire Elder Council formation to be a shrewd politician, but so far no conclusive evidence have been unearthed. Either way, at that point Nikator seemed to be well slated for a long, happy, fulfilled life. Had he gone along that path of settlement, he would have lived an ordinary, if only more luxurious life, and then perhaps died a wealthy noble a couple of centuries later like many nobles would.
Circumstances, however, dictated otherwise.
*******
By the middle of the 2nd century AD, the Dyrrachium kingdom encountered the most serious contender to its power yet - the Parthioi. A people who were as bloodthirsty as they were resistant to the bane of sunlight, an unique trait found nowhere else in the world, the Parthioi had, by then, overcome most of the difficulties that beset Thermon's reign, up to and including the dependence on blood slaves, instead relying mainly on pillaging Roman caravans along the trade roads from the Black Sea and the East to the heartlands of the Roman Empire. Like their human counterpart, they boasted an unmatched cavalry force unlike anything the other fledging supernatural factions of that day and age had ever seen, adept at raiding and plundering and yet not the least unskilled in pitched battles as well. Those vampires, fearless of both the sun and the Romans and at the peak of their power, were then spilling into the greener pastures of the Hellenic provinces, encroaching on the sphere of influence previously held by the Royal Vampires.
Unlike the Latin Whites and the Celtic werewolves in Cisalpine Gaul, the conflict between the Parthian vampires and the First Kingdom was one of direct interest. In AD 152, news reached the Royal Vampire court that the Parthian vampires had, at long last, united themselves into a kingdom of their own. They elected their own governance, wrote their own laws and formed their own sphere of influence. As early as that winter, the first serious incursions began, regularly pressing into the Lower Danube and sometimes having gone as far as into the outskirts of Pella and plaguing the road between Dyracchium and Thessalonika, both known for almost a century then as the strongholds of the Dyrrachium kingdom. In due time, the entire region as far West as Pella and as far East as Byzantion was a conflict zone.
The war took a turn for the worse in the following year with the ambush near Thessalonica, where a small detachment of Parthian vampires ambushed, destroyed and pillaged a Roman trade caravan, which a member of the Elder Council, Artemios of Naissus, was expecting to pillage himself. While the Royal Vampires suffered no losses, this bold act of trespassing was seen as an irrevocable declaration of total war, and retribution was soon in place. The Royal Vampires immediately thereafter, as a large army of nobles and Heilotai were quick to steamroll over the offending detachment. The Parthians responded by sending another, larger and better organized army over the border between the Roman Empire and Parthia.
In July AD 153 this army clashed with the main body of Black Vampires army near Byzantion. The Royals had greater number, consisting of roughly 600 militia equipped with iron weapons versus around three hundred Parthian vampires. Their number was much swelled by the one thousand Hemoheilotai and Nekroheilotai and sixty nobles wearing the best armor and wielding the best weapon blood and money could buy. This host was led by a member of the Elder Council, Artemios himself.
Eager to claim vengeance and overconfident with his numerical superiority, the Royal noble ordered his troops to swarm over the Parthian rank and overwhelm them with sheer weight of numbers. What happened next, though, was easily the greatest nightmare to have befallen the Royals since the betrayal by the Celts many years prior. The Parthians were almost made up of entirely cavalry archers who easily maneuvered behind the Royals blinded by glory and tore apart their poorly armored Beholdens and citizen militia before charging the now outnumbered nobles.
The First Battle of Byzantium concluded with five hundred dead and wounded on the Royals’ side and barely a couple of dozens on the Parthians. Only 12 out of 62 nobles returned to the capital alive. Among the dead was Artemios himself, the first ever member of the Council to have been killed in battle. It was only when the Parthians had to retreat from the Northern Greece forests due to their inability to prolong campaigning in such unfamiliar and unfriendly territory that the Royals were allowed a breather.
Later that year, an envoy from the Parthians came to Pergamon II’s court bringing terms for peace. From the standpoint of a potentially more powerful nation with much more resources and wealth, the terms imposed upon the Royals were a humiliation. They were to admit Parthian influence in the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea, cede their zone of influence in and around Byzantium and all bounties thereof to the Parthians, and pay an indemnity of 230 talents of gold up front. To buy time to recover from the Byzantium disaster, Pergamon and the Elder Council agreed to all of those terms but the last, which was then negotiated down to 150 talents.
This crushing defeat taught the Royal Vampires an important lesson – while their economy was strong and growing thanks to Thermon’s reforms, their military had been more or less neglected in the past few decades. There were no credible threats, since the Romans were no match for their raiders and the werewolves and White Vampires were busy guarding against each other to actually pose a threat. And even in the unlikely circumstance that they should strike, enough Nekroheilotai, which the Roman graveyards of late should theoretically be able to take down everything.
The Parthians, on the other hand, was nothing like they had seen. Vampires as they were, their citizens were born and brought up on the steppes. They were masters of horses and horse combat, the sort of agile archers who could face off against vastly superior off and still emerge victorious every time. They were far more resilient to sunlight than the Royals, partly due to their reliance on animal blood rather than humans as per steppe traditions. It didn’t take long before the Royals realized that if the war was to go on that way they would sooner or later lose ignobly.
What they had to do, however, none of them knew. At that point aside from the obvious, the Royals were completely ignorant of their new foe as well as their way of life and war. If they were to do anything significant, first they had to learn more about them.
The first person to rise up to this task was Nikator. His plan was to infiltrate into the Parthian vampires’ territory, mingle with their folks, learn about their society and their military, and then perhaps conduct sabotage if the opportunity arose. In short, the cloak-and-dagger dealings of a spy. It was a dangerous task, and the king himself opposed to this decision at first. However, it did not take long for Pergamon II to cave in to the persuasion of his half-brother and the entirety of the Elder Council who believed that something radical might just be what they needed.
In late August 153 AD Nikator set out into Parthian territories with a handful of hand-picked bodyguards, where he would stay for the next decade. It is this period that he would gain knowledge of the essential tactic of cavalry warfare, the significance of missile superiority in a conflict, as well as set the ground for Royal Vampire influence in the local populace. During his ten years in the sun-baked steppes he and his faithful men had been exposed to sunlight far more than perhaps the entire nobility for their entire life put together. This might have condemned him to an early death just like his father before him.
What happened during that time was a matter of dispute and varied wildly from source to source, and the prevalence of later day romanticization by adoring folklorists did not help the formulation of an accurate account much. Some said Nikator eloped with a local Parthian noble's daughter, who, blinded by the ignorance of love, gave up the secrets of the Parthian war machine to her lover, who then, having found no other use for his lover, abandoned her and his child. Some other sources painted Nikator as a spymaster, having infiltrated a hundred camps and a thousand stables to glean out nuggets of wisdom from the very heart of the enemies. Still others detailed a vivid story of how he, after spending a day in an abandoned roadside mausoleum to both evade the burning sunlight and pay respect to the dead, was visited by the apparition of the famed Spahbohd Surena of the human Parthian kingdom himself. This general, after having so splendidly defeated the Romans at Carrhae, were betrayed by the very king he was sworn to and executed like a common traitor. Sympathizing with his cause and great loyalty, the ghost general shared with him all his experience and knowledge of cavalry warfare from a land never before known to the Black Vampires. From a scholarly perspective, all of those high tales should, needless to say, be taken with a grain of salt.
Whatever the case, in January 163 AD Nikator returned to Dyrrachium ten years older, with barely half the men he had brought with him and his body almost crippled by extensive sunlight exposure. In return, he had with him many volumes of hand-written manuals on cavalry warfare and tactics, most of which became required reading for Imperial officers in the Justinian military academy almost two millennia later. And most of all, he brought with him the secret of the Parthian vampires' longevity in the sun - a form of armor he coined the Hemothorakes. These were traditional Eastern leather or metal scaled armors with each and every individual scale soaked in blood and subjected to a complex enchantment procedure. The resulting material would be extremely resistent to sunlight almost on par with ordinary human skin while also capable of turning away swords and spears with ease. And the rest was history - even today, the Imperial Cataphracts are still wearing their Hemothorakes proudly. The design of the armor itself might have changed greatly from then to now, but the core mechanic remained unchanged - blood-soaked scales enchanted with the highest standard the Imperial forges could manage.
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< Message edited by Argeus the Paladin -- 12/20/2011 8:22:08 >
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