A new project! A lovecraftian-gothic horror sold as an adult fantasy

Hey there, traveler!

Dar here with exciting news: we started a new project! First, let’s see if I can entice you, then we’ll do a deeper dive into the how’s and why’s.

A lovecraftian horror / adult dark fantasy in a land that sunk beneath the Earth’s surface around 1000 A.D. and a curse turned half the people into vampires. The order of the day is gloom and despair, human kingdoms are stuck in a perpetual war while the vampire clans toy with powers they barely understand, threatening to unearth an ancient eldritch entity hell bent on consuming the world. Are you on board? 

Good, here we go!

I. Prelude (skip forward if you’re only interested in the WIP)

The story of this WIP starts back in 2015, when me and a good friend of mine we shall call Niel got out of high school and into two distant universities. We still wanted to keep in touch somehow, so instead of chatting on facebook like normal people, we created a play-by-post roleplay forum in a dark fantasy setting. This was a land of many races, among these the aforementioned vampires and human kingdoms, but also elves, dark elves, half-angels and more. We created our characters and invited many other players through various channels, and in a few months, we got ourselves a quite populated internet playground. For a fun fact, this was how I met Lory for the first time and we fell in love through roleplaying and chatting on this forum. Years went by, we played many characters but eventually had a falling out with the players, so last fall we left. However we had a really fascinating story cut in half basically with three vampires and the world was just too good to be left alone. After months of trying to recapture the same feeling elsewhere, we just bit the bullet and decided to make it into a grandiose adult fiction novel. Yupp, this is a co-production of three indie writers sticking their heads together to write three distinct point of views around the same conflict.

So, what’s this about exactly?

II. The vampires

There’s a thing I want to nail down at the beginning. Our vampires are different from most fiction, they do not reproduce by biting people nor do they need blood for survival. They are a new species born from the descendants of an almost forgotten army that tried to invade a new, fertile land but got into such a bloody conflict God punished them with two things. First the very earth broke asunder under them, sinking the land under the Earth’s surface and at the same time a curse struck, making sunlight harmful for them. They hid in caves or perished in the open, only coming out at night, but over centuries they created an entirely nocturnal society and separated from their old enemy, the humans who missed the curse by praying really hard (it’s a bit more complicated, but that’s for a later time). They created the Towers and the Families, colonies of vampires picked by their profession, resulting in entire clans of only hunters, soldiers, physicians and mages. Yes, mages. Because after a while they realized their Curse can tap into a dark power source, creating grotesque magic effects like manipulating living flesh, sewing shadows into solid objects or creating living creatures out of stone – but this came at a price. And that price was blood. The Curse would only lend them magic if they drank blood, so they started enslaving humans to use as a source for magic, forever condemning themselves in the eyes of the southernmost human kingdom and their Church.

III. The characters

So, the story follows three characters. 

Aura is a half-blood with a vampire mother but human father, now serving as a low-ranking member in the Thesantei Tower, a family dedicated to maintaining social relationships. She deals with the previously mentioned human slaves and tries to form a bridge between the humans and the accursed, all the while trying to prove herself to be a rightful member of the Thesantei. 

Laetitia, on the other hand is as pure as vampires come. The youngest daughter of the lord of Nerinai, a feared vampire clan of physicians capable of manipulating blood and tissue at will, she arrives at the Thesantei Tower to learn about the only organ her family knows little about: the mind. Only her research doesn’t only tears down the borders of sanity, but her curiosity leads her to dark paths.

Arion is fully vampire, yet far from pure. He’s the bastard son of the Nerinai head dissector – a servant of much higher lords – but his mother is a prestigious Ataris noblewoman, from the family of vampire mages. He left the Nerinai tower when they denied him the right to practice as a physician, now he tries to treat the outlaws and lowlifes of Eschatia, a human kingdom that tolerates him. However his mission to heal requires deeds much more dire than he’d first imagine.

That’s the main three. Their story starts off separate, but after a shocking event that turns the already dark and hopeless land even worse, their fate intertwines in a desperate attempt to save what’s left to be saved.

IV. Where’s Lovecraft in that?

I mentioned there’s a Church. We based it on the real life orthodox beliefs, mainly to mix up the usual Spanish inquisition style fantasy religions with something creepier and less known, but also because it has a strong focus on angels.

And let me tell you, if you read the Bible literally, angels are anything but pretty. Most angels are many-dimensional horrid monstrosities, with maddening shapes and mind-bending voices – which means they are perfect for cosmic horror feel. I think it isn’t much of a spoiler if I tell you we focus heavily on these eldritch-looking angels, not just as antagonists but all over the spectrum.

As I said, this will be a clearly adult fantasy, so it will be chonky. Like really chonky. Drama, politics, horror effects, family bloodlines and dark secrets are a-plenty, and there isn’t enough space in a blog post to touch everything. And if I did, where would be the fun in that? 

If you’re interested in more details, feel free to comment, I’ll try to address every question!

Until then, stay sharp!

Dar