Draugr City: An Epic Fictional Universe by NG Murphy
The following is an introduction to my historical vampire-like universe called Draugr City, not an essay. There are no prerequisites.
For years, I’ve been intrigued by vampire/mythical monster universes but have found them awkward and unintelligent. I’m obsessed with alternate-history and epic sci-fi world-building, but these genres tend to be inaccessible, dry, and overly expositional, sometimes barely qualifying as fiction. I love movies and comics, but their developers are constrained by the need for brevity, especially in the “microwave society” of today. And I always wanted to see a brand of mythical monsters (directly or indirectly) produced by extraterrestrial beings.
So I created an accessible supernatural-horror-like universe bottomed, instead, on an expounded science. It’s influences include the comic book series “League of Extraordinary Gentleman” by Allan Moore, the movie series “Underworld,”and the film “The Ninth Gate.”
Millennia ago, a planet in another part of the Milky Way teemed with life. One species existed on the brink of sentience. It was dependent on a smaller symbiont that lived within them. The “subordinate” species, numbering three per host, served as semi-independent psionic (psychic) senses, making their hosts cunning predators and allusive prey. Their fertilities were completely intertwined, as gametes were symbionts, as well.
Then came an ice age. Freezing rivers deprived oceans of water, causing seafloors to rise. The species’ continent merged with two others. An influx of similar creatures transformed it into a veritable psionic battlefield. Owing to a rapidly mutating genetic material, the symbiont species became increasingly intelligent and independent, allowing them to spend less time within their hosts and ascend to dominance. Though the two species remained physically and psychologically dependent, the hosts had become little more than parasites. But by then, their symbiotic societies were technologically advanced. Fearing for their mutual continuity, they developed electromechanical technology to compensate for the deficiencies of the ever-devolving hosts.
But the plan backfired. The electromechanical elements became sentient themselves, becoming the dominate partner in a new symbiosis.
A civil war broke out between the organics and the cyborgs or “hyborgs.” It was a “conventional war,” for the planet and its extraplanetary colonies lacked uranium, preventing the discovery of nuclear weapons. It raged for decades, spanning the breath of their binary star system. The war ended when the droids mastered Scalar wave physics and developed directed energy weaponry that destroyed what remained of their enemy. Unfortunately, the planet and its colonies were stripped of valuable resources and rendered all but uninhabitable in the process.
Utilizing electrogravitic technology, the race of cyborgs built hyperspace-capable vessels to scour the galaxy for recourses and living space. As they expanded, they encountered new enemies.
Eventually, a reconnaissance droid established Earth as a resourceful planet. They contrived a virus that transformed a few Earth species into immortal soldiers and slave-laborers, including humans. In the sixth century, they sent their first vessel to begin preparations for the mining of a rare material in Earth’s mantle, beneath what’s now the American West. Something went wrong during the reentry from hyperspace, and the ship broke into several pieces. One crashed in Eastern Canada; another in London, which was largely devoid of inhabitants at the time. Both halves contained samples of the Virus. Many of the crows living in the kingdom of Essex were exposed to the Virus, bestowing them with immortality and enhanced predatory features. Their bite was contagious to a small percentage of humans (though strangely not to mortal crows), turning them into werecrows. The dozen or so infected humans acquired immortality, low-fertility, and, most of all, therianthropy: the ability to Change into Crows (see article on relativistic subquantum kinetics for the science of therianthropy).
The aliens returned fifty years later and destroyed the werecrows’ progenitors, but they learned nothing of the werecrows themselves.
The hyborgs infected and enslaved Native American and West African infants and eventually formed a base near the rare mineral’s repository. Eventually, the aliens would have 50,000 slaves within a massive underground city. The Native Americans were given additional physical augmentations and employed as slave-laborers at the base or elsewhere in the galaxy; the West Africans acquired profound psionic or Quintessential powers and were more often used on the battlefield. After generations of service, a regiment of humanoid soldiers were granted freedom and returned to West Africa. There, they founded the Gnoisase Civilization. During their 200-year history, they established colonies in what became the New World.
In the mid-twelfth century, a Constantinopolitan nobleman named Anaclypse rose to power. An accomplished explorer and military leader, he read widely and voraciously, and was perhaps the most learned man in the World at the time. In his travels, he heard of lands far across the Atlantic Ocean. These lands, the traders told him, were inhabited by red-skinned natives. Eventually, Analypse came in possession of the writings of a clergyman named Adam of Brenham. Brenham wrote of Norse Sagas, the Icelandic poets, and three Scandinavian colonies called Markland, Vineland, and Helluland. Analcypse also learned of the Gnosisase Civilization and their outposts a thousand leagues west of Europe. He became convinced that there was at least one continent somewhere in between Europe and Asia.
He outfitted four ships and braved the glacier-packed waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he acquired another ship and took several Scandinavians including a warrioress named Helja, whom he married.
They allied with natives shortly after landfall. Alarm spread through the camp when a biracial hunting expedition was attacked by a symbiotic pack of birds and wolves, for the natives had never encountered the animals prior to Anaclpyse’s arrival. Days later, another expedition fell under attack.
The birds could fly close to one hundred yards per second, had razor sharp teeth and feathers, and lethal excrement. Since the birds’ resembled stymphalians from the Greek mythology the Constantinopolitans learned as children, it seemed a fitting name. The wolves, who had brown fur, weighed over two hundred pounds and could run faster than any species that ever lived on Earth. Gigantic paws and talons allowed them to climb as high as the forest canopy. The Alpha Wolf’s head rested almost five feet above the ground; he weighed over three hundred pounds; and could run faster and leap higher than any of his kind.
The native chief’s son, Istas, Anaclypse, and Helja gathered six hundred warriors from among the surrounding tribes and led an expeditionary force to root out the animals. They found them sheltered twenty miles away in a mysterious machine. The battle was brutal, and though the Alpha Wolf and a small flock of stymphalians escaped, the day was won. But only the leaders and a handful of natives survived the battle. Shortly afterwards, Istas’ remaining warriors succumbed to unexplained infections. As the injured leaders staggered back to within a mile of the camp, they, too, fell ill and died.
But death wouldn’t hold them for long, for they all reawakened immortal. The whites, bitten by stymphalians, became human-stymphalian therianthropes, vampire-like creatures able to undergo the Change into large stymphalian-like creatures. Having died before Transmuting, they called themselves “draugrs,” Scandinavian for “ghost.” The native prince, bitten by the alpha male, became the progenitor of the lycanthropes: beings able to undergo the Change into enormous bipedal wolves. Soon afterwards, through what eventually became known as psychic or Quintessential Instinct, they learned whom they could Transmute and whom they couldn’t.
The immortal infections continued to prove enigmatic. Only the genetic and not Viral descendants of the first generation Draugrs became therianthropes, or Therians for short. Virtually all the natives could be made lycanthropes, or werewolves, but no white could be made lycanthrope; nor could any native be made a Draugr. The purer the blood, the more infectious the bite proved to be, but also the lower the fertility. The progenitors only reproduced hermaphrodites. In all, they had four: a hermaphroditic male; a hermaphroditic female, Teetra; a hermaphroditic male, Vectum; and his hermaphroditic twin sister.
The two races built twin cities and lived in peace for roughly 175 years until the hyborgs invaded.
Anaclypse met his end shortly after the attack commenced, and his wife and the progenitor of the lycanthropes were captured for scientific examination. The rest of the natives and several of the draugrs were killed. But Anaclypse, always one to plan for every eventuality, had already prepared a hidden escape ship if the aliens returned, having foreseen it through the psychic or psionic medium known as the “Quintessence.” He placed his eldest son and daughter and several of their most trusted draugrs on the ship and suggested they return to Europe and build a draugric city isolated from humanity. Five hundred pounds of precious metals and large quantities of the blood and saliva of werewolves and the draugric progenitors were already packed for subsequent bio-alchemical research.
The surviving draugrs returned to Europe and built Draugr City. During the journey, however, the son killed all passengers not loyal to him and the older sister and decreed that their new society would adhere to a faith known as Draugrism--where Anaclypse and Helja would be worshiped as creators and masters of the universe while he and his siblings would be demigods. The lycans and the 175 years in North America would be forgotten.
Twenty-five years later, the hermaphroditic male twin was exiled to Ireland after impregnating his hermaphroditic sister through simultaneous mutual penetration. What their older brother didn’t know was that the male twin was also impregnated. The child of the female twin, a fully female therinthrop, was killed shortly after her birth. Two years later, at the end of his five-year gestational period, the male gave birth to a non-therianthropic, fully male draugr. Following the horrifically painful and destructive ordeal, however, the exiled Elder lost his femininity and therianthropy due to anatomic destructions and hormonal alterations.
Once he recovered, he granted immortality to his mid-wife and most trusted Familiar, a brilliant alchemist named Dynast McMurphy. In exchange, McMurphy would restore the Elder’s hormonology, bioengineer a serum for draugric therianthropy, and aid in his eventual revenge on his elder siblings and usurpation of the World. To keep the offspring’s existence a secret, he was reared by trusted vassals in England.
Soon after its inception, Draugr City became the penal city of the Holy Roman Empire and grew to 25,000 inhabitants, half of whom were indentured humans. Viral and spiritual Draugrism spread throughout Europe, Asia, and the New World, but the former remained such a well-kept secret even most humans in the penal portion of the city, “Outer Draugr,” were unaware of their existence until the Battle of Draugr in 1755.
In the early eighteenth century, Dynast’s liege, Lord Vectum, allied with The Draugr Queendom of Scandinavia, whom they had aided in suppressing a recent rebellion. Dynast used zombie powder to preserve Scandinavian super soldiers called Enforcers in comatose form in crypts beneath Draugr City in preparation for a coup.
Around the same time, several natives were poisoned by vapors from an immortal plant that had been Transmuted by the original Virus. Dynast’s son Mavrus, who was already producing a powerful dispersal cannon, learned of the plants and informed his father. Dynast also determined that the plant was an anti-elixir that debases gold and silver.
Once the chemical weapon and Mavrus’s dispersal cannon were ready, they were stolen by a Familiar. Now that the chemical weapon and the soldiers had been prepared, Dynast and the Irish Elder, unknown to Mavrus, were then ready to put their plan of conquering the World and putting Dynast on the throne of Great Britain into action.
Daniel Rawlings, an attorney and private investigator, tracks a ravaging man-beast from Philadelphia back to a barn in York Pennsylvania where the beast had been infected by the Viral plant. After killing the beast, Rawlings discovers one of Mavrus’s cannons. Upon learning of the incident and recruitments for alchemists and metal workers by a French naval captain allied with the thief, Mavrus fears the worst. He hires Rawlings to travel with him to Paris and help him track down any and all samples of the plant virus and copies of the dispersal cannon.
This is the basis of the first major story of this fictional universe.
And that’s Draugr City—so far. Suggestions welcome.
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