Carpathia: Nikolai

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Hey there, I am Nikolai Vlademyre. It depends on who someone is, as to what they address me as. You can call me Nik.

I am the new King of Carpathia. Well, new in our terms. I took over the seat a decade back. In human governments that seems like a long time; to vampires you’re still fresh until you’ve been at it a hundred years or more.

I was groomed for the position by the previous King my father, and Queen my mother prior to the crowning, but it was still unexpected. They ruled our part of the world for about six hundred years before their untimely deaths put me in the chair.

Probably a lot sooner than I was ready to be.

As the Vlademyre heir and having trained with my Dad for over a century, you’d think I’d be good. Not really. Without my brother’s I’d have bombed the first year out.

I am the oldest of four boys. There is my twin Mikhail, my middle brother Roman and my youngest brother Malachi. All of us have different fathers. Aside from Mikhail, obviously. I had an older sister too, but she died when Hail and I were young.

I realize that to some this may seem a bit odd because all of my mother’s husbands lived with us. It wasn’t a make-up, break-up thing. It’s how mine and many of the royal families operated.

There are a lot of misconceptions about Vampires, but every family has its Queen so to speak.

For my family, a rule of five was applied. My mother had the option to choose five husbands to continue the Vlademyre line. Being one of the originals, it was a big deal which is why she had more options than most were allowed.

You’ll probably hear a lot about pure bloods through this tale. It basically means that we never mixed with mortals. Our blood is old, powerful and untainted. I really don’t get into how that’s possible. More Hail’s cup of tea as he’s the Caretaker.

Boiled down this simply means Hail is my right hand, and a historian slash advisor. Roman’s my left, and Kai is kinda the legs I stand on.

If Hails’ my advisor, then Roman is my General. All my armies are his. Malachi is equally important. He is young, but he’s the one who keeps all our shit together. The eternal student handles every penny to the Vlademyre name and monitors every investment made by our clan.

Clans and Families are different. Sort of immediate family versus cousins and others with several degrees of separation, if not linked to us by marriage.

Any way, despite being the youngest, and possibly the most flamboyant vamp I’ve ever met, Kai keeps our businesses at pretty high gains.

I’m all for my people.

Kinda my job as King, but the only people I trust or need in this world are my brothers. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll help people out. Especially beautiful women. Hell, I’ll answer most people’s call for assistance noble or not when it comes down to rouges or assholes trying to fuck up the relative peace in my part of the world.

I’m just not the commitment sort. For anybody or anything other than my position. It’s a demanding one, and one that my family has upheld for more than a few millennium. Since there was a throne, a Vlad has sat in it.

Carpathia is more or less the Carpathian Mountains.

There are a lot of stories that come from my part of the world, most of which demonize or fancify my kind depending on which you hear. We aren’t undead or damned. In some ways, it does feel like we are cursed, but that’s just personal shit.

We drink blood, have a lot of sex and fight. Silver doesn’t hurt us, the sun doesn’t make us burst into flames. I love garlic and crosses. What idiot came up with that I’ll never try to get. We can also walk in and out of anywhere we choose, invited or not.

I sleep in a bed, not dirt or a coffin. We eat food, have beating hearts and do breathe air.

We don’t require those things to survive, at least not in the same way that humans do, but it sure does make life easier. Without blood though we will eventually die. Food does taste good and processes through are bodies pretty similarly.

Blood though has nutrients on physical and spiritual levels that sustain us. Just like there are enzymes in red meat you can’t get anywhere else, there’s shit we need in blood that keeps us alive and healthy. It also takes good to us. Well, some of it.

Just like every one has a distinct smell, they have a distinct taste. Some are sweet, some savory, some sour and some are just nasty. I have a sweet tooth personally.

Every vamp in my territory has a family and a clan. My family is Vlademyre, my clan is Dracule. A family doesn’t have to be blood related, but generally are. It’s us and our mates, what you call husbands and wives and kids that determines someone’s ‘house’.

Extended family is the clan.

We just aren’t like the ones who have extended family barbecues. Any Drac can come to us for assistance and as the head family we have to open our home to someone with our seal, whether we like them or not.

There’s a lot of expectation in that department, which is why Hail has been hounding me for the last five years to get a new Head. We’ll get more into that in a bit.

The Dracule are families with Vlad blood. No matter how far removed, all of them distantly related and well mixed with mortals rather than being pure bloods like us. There are three other clans in Carpathia, and all of them have more than a dozen families, each larger than mine.

There aren’t many other mystics in the black mountains by ratio, it’s more vamps than anything. There’s only one were wolf pack in our region, which Roman avoids at all costs on top of the three mage covens.

There are scattered other sorts of unassociated mystics, but all of them both accept and adhere to my law as King. That’s just on the Vamp side.

On the human side of things, I own a few corporations and pay off local government to make us more or less boss of them too. One major city lies about three hours out from my place. I have to do a lot of business there, but only stay overnight when I absolutely have to.

More for never getting to be home than being opposed to the place.

It’s actually a really nice city as far as urban versus rural areas go. The crime is low, business is high and all around it’s pretty well cared for. I don’t allow gangs and the sort. The elected officials are all under our watch and limit drugs and other filth rampant in other urban areas. I do my best to leave politics in that arena to other members of the Dracule, but when shit goes down I’m there.

Our companies are worldwide which requires pretty frequent travel on my end. I relish being home when I can be there, but like I said, without my brothers holding down the fort as they say, I for sure would have bombed my first year out.

I don’t have a mate like my parents had each other. My mom trusted her husbands, implicitly and knew how to divide the responsibilities among them. The workload alone is enough of a reason for the way that we do things.

While Earth has advanced technologically and in other ways in the past century.

Most vamps are still generally armed with swords or blades of some sort though. At least here. We are a mix of old world and new in layman’s terms. All the new age tech and business stuff aside, one of our main responsibilities is keeping the people safe. Humans and mystics alike.

I suppose our clan is an army of sorts, but we don’t always meet on battlefields anymore.

Among other things, we deal with traitors, monsters, rogues, and demons. Rogue is a really loose term for the flesh eating and or blood sucking entities that attack civilians unprovoked. Some of them have a conscious, some don’t. Some look human. Some don’t.

There are a lot of specifications that come with it. Roman would be the man to ask about the particulars. Defense is his job, while keeping shit together is mine.

Carpathia has always been well known for a wealth of superstition. Modern day or not, the folklore and rather untouched wilderness of the black mountain remains at the very least superstitious. Unlike a lot of other countries humans here are very aware of our existence.

Whether they fully accept or admit to the fact that Vampires, Werewolves, and Witches walk among them or not, every single one of them knows that we’re the only ones who are going to save their assess when weird shit goes down.

And believe me, ‘weird shit’ goes down here more than in other heavily inhabited parts of the world.

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