Vampire city hierarchy

[Ireth]

In keeping with the trend that seems to have popped up in this board lately, I'm posting some ideas for one of my stories here in search of feedback and advice. I have an underground city populated by vampires, and I need to sort out the ranks and such. Here's what I have so far, from top to bottom:

Lord Senior (Conall, first of the vampires, progenitor of the rest and self-appointed leader)
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Lord Junior (Luthais, second of the vampires, Conall's second-in-command)
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Sentinels, First and Second Rank (responsible for bringing newborn and/or rogue vampires down into the city from aboveground)
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Hunters (responsible for providing food, both human and animal, to the occupants)
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most other city occupants
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those newest to the city (cutoff limit to be decided)

I have yet to decide the population of the city itself, as well as the number of rogue vampires living aboveground. Vampires as a race have been around for between 400 and 500 years, but their numbers only began to grow significantly between the second and third centuries (circa 1100 AD). The novel which I'm making the hierarchy for is set between 1360-1363.

Not all vampires drink human blood or create more vampires, but many of those who do, do it fairly often. Some younger vampires choose to commit suicide soon after rising rather than drink any blood; others do their best to maintain a diet of animal blood, with varying levels of success. Still others kill humans for food but do not turn them into vampires.

I'm just throwing this out there, so feel free to state your thoughts.

 

[Queshire]

Vampires are one of those things that I have a strong opinion about. I personally hate the whole vampire court idea or the idea of special elder vampires, they tend to be overdone. That said, by all means you can still have that type of society, it's not at dead horse trope territory just yet.

So, questions;

"The first vampire," how'd he become a vampire?

From what I tell, the sentinels are largely recruiters to the city. I think you need to either expand that to a police type force or create one. I'd also suggest adding formal groups for other types of jobs such as scribes and what not.

How does the city survive? Considering the dietary needs of Vampires, I imagine them either have to be solitary hunters or powerful enough that they have a whole country under their thumbs. A city of vampires would be fairly obvious, like drawing a big old sign saying "vampires here," true it'd be hard to exterminate a city of vampires, but I think they'd quickly run out of prey as people move away.

Do they have a particular reason to follow this high lord muckity muck? I mean, if he's the first vampire, then that would make him responsible for all their conditions and I'm sure they'd be pretty pissed about that.

I suggest looking up how real life vampire bats act and including that.

 

[Ireth]

Conall became the first vampire via a curse laid on him by the Crone Goddess after he drank his wife's blood in an attempt to save himself from poison. The full story can be found here under Origin.

I hadn't even thought of scribes and the like -- definitely a good idea to look at.

The vampire city is completely underground, and surrounded by a labyrinth of tunnels. This has the twofold purpose of making sure that it takes a long time for new vampires to get in, ensuring they'll be thirsty when they enter and (ideally) more willing to feed from humans (because Conall is a huge evil butthole and likes eating humans and encouraging others to do so), as well as making it difficult for escapees to find their way out again. Conall's a huge control freak, very power-hungry. Likes having all his chicks in one nest, as it were.

The city survives by the efforts of the Hunters, who bring in animals and humans regularly for food. They lock up the humans and animals they bring down to keep them from fleeing, and the labyrinth also helps. They are careful to make their live stock last as long as possible, and conserve space by feeding the living people on the flesh of their drained fellows (those who aren't turned into vampires, anyway). I imagine they also bring in vegetables and things for the humans which they can store, and possibly employ bakers and the like to round out the food groups. Goats and cows would provide milk for the humans and blood for the vampires at the same time. There's also a subterranean river running through the city which provides fresh water.

Basically, Conall is batshit insane and would immediately dispose of almost anyone who dares disagree with him (with the sole exception of Luthais, his best friend and second-in-command). The underground city was actually Luthais' idea; he thought it up as a means of containing the growing vampire population and keeping them safe from humans, but Conall seized the opportunity to style himself the Lord of the vampires and cultivate his own society. Luthais, despite his efforts to rein Conall in and his initial desire that they would be equals, was bullied into subordination.

I'm not sure vampire bats would be a good comparison in this case; I would want to include it as something Conall or Luthais himself would look to as an analogy for their kind, but vampire bats aren't native to Scotland, and this being the Middle Ages, their knowledge of such would likely be pretty limited.

 

[Queshire]

ah, just as random trivia, vampire bats are named after the mythical vampire and not the other way around.

 

[Ireth]

Even so, the comparison doesn't quite work for the reasons I've stated. The closest thing the novel has to my vampires would be blood-drinking Fae such as the Baobhan Sith, and my vampires know for a fact that they are a distinct type of being from either Fae or humans, thus they need a distinct name. Also, the word "vampire" doesn't exist in the time period the novel is set in anyway; I'm using a Gaelic translation of the phrase "blood-drinker" instead.

 

[Ankari]

I like your relationship between Conall and Luthais. It will add layers of depth to your story. From what I can tell from real life examples, I don't see why Conall would allow an official second in command. Conall sounds like a crazy dictator type, one who is paranoid yet seeks comfort in the familiar. I would think that Conall would be leader then there is everyone else with Luthais having power only because of his relationship with Conall. In reality I could see Conall as Lord then the functionaries (your sentinels, hunters,scribes and such) then everyone else. This would be especially true with the limited number of residents in the Vampire City.

You could have positions evolve as you write your story, positions that arise from the common vampires seeking recognition. I would think a religion would start developing at this point. You would have stories told to the new recruits that are twisted with every telling. Some fanatic seeking to appease Conall combine these stories to create a holy book.

This could be intriguing if you plan to write future novels placed centuries from this current novel. It would be interesting to the reader to have witnessed the beginning of Conall worship.

 

[Jon_Chong]

Two questions.
1.) How does Conall maintain power?
2.) Why has the vampire population increased?

And as an addendum, how does question 2 influence question 1?

 

[Ireth]

Ankari: At the point of the novel, Luthais is second-in-command only in title; Conall holds all the real power in the city, and to heck with the rest. Conall and Luthais at first were almost equals, but as Conall grew more and more insane he stole more and more power from Luthais. Luthais tries to stand up for himself and sway Conall in more beneficial directions, but is very rarely successful, if at all.

Jon: 1) Mostly by force and manipulation. When bullying and verbal tactics don't work, he has ways of controlling those in his bloodline (which is to say, every other vampire in Scotland) with an enchanted set of bagpipes which work as a mind-control device when he plays them.

2) Their numbers have increased because one day Conall decided to stop trying to resist the temptation to drink human blood, and started biting humans. Some of those humans bit him back in the struggle and became more vampires, which Conall did his best to keep in line like a good father would. Then some of them began killing humans for various reasons, thus increasing the vampires' ranks further, and it basically snowballed from there. When they started getting out of control, Conall and Luthais decided to build the underground city, and there you have it.

Addendum: The job of the Sentinels (who will probably be getting a new name) is to increase the population of the city by bringing in rogues vampires, and thus bring more vampires under Conall's direct control.