Episode 27: Memory of Origin
Long before the dawn of man, members of a marauding ectoparasitic species, were lost in the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Their vessel knifed through a distant galaxy, encountering a storm of stone, an asteroid field, and the warped tide of a black hole. Ensnared in a gravitational pull, space folded, and when it let go, they tore into our solar system. Their craft, damaged beyond repair. With the hull failing and death clawing at the seams, they hunted for anything that could keep them alive. A blue world answered.
Alien ship falling to Earth - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Flames sparked off their craft as it entered the atmosphere. The ship breaking up as it plummeted, leaving a trail of fire in the night sky. Crashing in what's now Central Africa.
Amongst the jagged burning wreckage and uprooted Earth, the travelers emerged from the craft, unharmed. The survivors were Rah, the flights commander and scientist. Ezath, information analyst. And Anu, the navigator and shock trooper...In time, the three were remade by this world. Stories carried them by firelight, names thinning into whispers and warnings. Their fates hitched to a reckoning yet to come. From them, a legend took shape -- the Vampire.
Survivors emerge from the wreckage - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Realizing the crash was inevitable, Rah sent a distress signal before entering Earth’s atmosphere, but far from their home planet. Whether it was successfully transmitted, no one could say. Even if it was, rescue would take lifetimes to arrive. So the survivors chose an extended hibernation, a stasis the species was capable of called the Long Sleep.
Eons later they’d awaken, finding no signs their S.O.S. was ever received, no signs of rescue. The parasites faced the reality of being marooned with no way home.
Fortunately, Earth was similar enough to their home planet with an acceptable mixture of atmospheric gases for them to persist. Though the oxygen rich environment would preserve them in an unexplainable ageless state. But the sunlight intervals here were much too frequent and powerful. Survival meant seeking refuge in darkness. Hide by day. Move by night.
The crew also noticed drastic evolutionary changes during their dormancy. Being ectoparasitic, the stranded would required the concentrated nutrients that only blood offered. As the species on Earth had progressed, the parasites feeding habits would gravitate towards the humanoid creatures that had evolved from apes.
They, themselves, were nearly identical in appearance and biological makeup to Homo sapiens, so human blood was metabolically the most complete food they could sustain themselves on. They also found it enhanced their senses and abilities, to an almost preternatural state -- And so, mankind was crucial to their survival.
Being part of a superior, conquering race, they’d spent lifetimes scientifically engineering their genetics for battle. Instead of sending hordes of troops to quell enemies, they’d rely on smaller battalions to infiltrate and use their own blood, altered by a specific chemistry to create bioengineered Soldier Clones from indigenous populations.
A simple transfusion of their parasitic blood acting as a pathogen, taking over the DNA and RNA, mutating hosts to become subservient and conformist to their invaders. Once enough clones were created, the army would vanquish the remaining enemies and pillage the captured planet.
Hosts would usually take on physical characteristics of the parasites as well, to distinguish friend from foe. Humans, a near-perfect chromosomal match, needed only mere drops of parasite blood to turn. The change would happen fast, forcing a dramatic and drastic mutation, causing the human to become undying and take on unique attributes of light sensitivity, blood lust, heightened senses, skin and tissue regeneration, even hypersensitive motor-skills -- becoming what’s known as an Underling.
When an Underling passed their altered blood to another human, the change took, but was weaker. A copy of a copy. The process was called Simulacrum, and its result, a Minion. Still lethal, but diminished beside its maker.
Underlings and Minions cluster into Broods. Their order branches like roots, each new Vampire bound beneath the one who made them, and so on down the line, but only if a psychic bond is achieved. The connection comes from an ability called Tuning...a telepathy born in the moments after mutation, when the body blooms with magnetic auras and the mind lights up with points of tension that recognize their kin. Under a tuned maker, a Brood moves as one.
Vampires move through a brighter spectrum than we do, senses sharpened, abilities heightened. Among them is the sending and drawing of thought between their kind, a practice called Reading. It travels by their Sight, their telepathy. Because humans don’t come with that wiring, a new convert needs the maker to forge the link, without it, the bond is hard to cultivate, and sometimes never forms at all.
As with any gift, range varies. Some can read only other Vampires. Others hone the skill to brush the edges of human minds. Those are called Empaths.
Empaths can exert power and control over subordinates, and even on human subjects, but proximity matters. Stray too far and the hold thins, even breaks. And as with any individual, heightened powers and senses among Vampires vary drastically.
After waking from their Long Sleep, realizing rescue wasn’t coming, for Rah, Ezath, and Anu, their mission directive was aborted. And life for them became simply about survival.
What also no longer existed was the complicated hierarchical system they belonged to. Birthrights, class, and status on their home world was everything. But here, none of it mattered. At the edge of the cosmos, they were castaways. Settlers on an unfinished world. Whatever came next would be of their own making.
The year was 10,000 BCE, and as human civilizations flourished around them, each had a differing view, and strong feelings towards the evolving species. The parasites were a superior race. With an inherent nature to conquer and vanquish. But no longer bound by duty, the world could be whatever they wanted.
Rah - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Rah, raised in the warrior-class, was one of their kinds greatest and most skilled killers. Obtaining the distinguished rank of Hunter Supreme, he had survived thousands of campaigns and oversaw invasions that erased entire worlds. Hunters weren’t meant to outlive their battlefields, but Rah did. Survival earned him the privilege of pursuing noble disciplines, like science and medicine.
Finding himself on Earth, and having caused as much death and destruction as he had in his past, something in Rah bent toward mercy. He watched humans with reluctant awe, the developed languages, use of tools, the rise of agricultural civilizations. He walked among the very tribes the others hunted. Over time, he even refused human blood altogether, feeding instead on animals. Sating himself without killing, having learned how tightly the food chain bound beasts to human survival.
Ezath - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Ezath, the youngest and most impressionable of the trio, had never left her homeworld before this mission. Humans fascinated her. They were food, yes, and destined to dominate, but more than that, she saw a canvas. By accident she discovered how quickly the symbiosis of their blood could turn a human to a clone. The idea gripped her. Strength in numbers. Voices to answer her own. Companions who weren’t just Rah and Anu, whose conversations with her had curdled into arguments.
Anu - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Anu, the most unyielding of the three, was born to a great military line and carried the same ambition. He despised humans and saw them as inferior, a species fit to be conquered. He watched their violent tempers and brittle societies. Anu felt man’s very nature would be their undoing. So better to break them early, he argued, and impose their conquering will, claiming the planet in honor of their home world before the walking livestock multiplied and grew clever enough to resist.
Rah and Anu collided, principle against principle, mercy against mandate. Ezath in the crossfire. Their convictions ground against each other until sparks turned to fire. The feud boiled, tearing open wounds that would not close.
TO BE CONTINUED…