A YJA Moment - Vampires

The Anti-Life Equation makes a copy of everything it desires, attempting to replace the laws of the universe with crude facimilies that serve as a mockery of everything that exists.  The cycle of life-death-and-rebirth has been subverted by Anti-Life, creating what is known as Undeath.  Though various creatures such as Liches and Spectres utilize Undeath to remain alive, the most famous are the blood-suckers known as Vampires.

While the curse of vampirism itself is believed to lie within the biblical Cain and his dreaded Mark, the first recorded Vampire was a being known as Thuringwethil, a servant of Sauron during the closing years of the fabled First Age.  It is said she possessed a form of immortality, forever holding her between life and death but shunning the light of the sun.  What happened to her is unknown, but she was believed to have been slain sometime before the Second Age.

Her curse could be spread, and throughout the intervening years, the blight of Vampirism has fallen upon mortals throughout the world.  The most notable was Vlad Tepes, who would be immortalized in Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula.  He became the most powerful Vampire to have ever lived, second to perhaps Thuringwethil herself, founding both the powerful House of Dracul, but also the feudal system that most of the Undead adhere to.

House Dracul dominates much of Europe, forcing the other Houses into a subservient position.  Under the might of the Dragon, Houses like Corvinus, Damaskinos, and Lioncourt continually warred for those assets not claimed by Dracula himself.  Because of this eternal struggle, many small houses find themselves fractured and outright destroyed by the machinations of the House Elders, leading many to migrate across the group for new territory.

Some of these minor Houses and rebel Vampires fled to The New World, often migrating to what would be known as New York.  These disparate Undead would form an alliance which in the modern nights is known as House Erebus.  As the most powerful Vampire House in the Americas, its power rivals that of Dracul, though it has neither the age of prestige as House of Count Dracula.  Recently, House Erebus has been under siege, most notably by hunters such as Blade.

On the West Coast, the House of Aurelius is the most established coven, despite the loss of its Elder due to the actions of a supernaturally-imbued vampire-slayer and her allies.  Smaller Houses such as Maximillian and Santanico are allowed to rise and fall, as long as the dictates of Aurelius are not disobeyed or their direct territory trespassed.  This has led to a free-for-all, not unlike the 19th Century "Wild West" in its culture.