Episode 46: Vampires in America
In 1700, Victor Monfret, fresh off of selling Rah’s stolen plantation in Haiti, set his sights on the American colonies. A young continent, expanding by the year, offered him a chance to root himself in a rising world. He settled in the Colony of Carolina, buying land at a furious pace. Within a decade he’d built a vast plantation system and forged lucrative export contracts with Dutch shipping houses and the British East India Company. Along with him, he brought a massive contingent of Vampires, refining and strengthening his ever-growing Brood.
The Monfret Plantation, circa 1705 - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
His fields flourished under moonlight. Hundreds of Underlings and Minions tended to his crops after dark. A workforce unlike anything a mortal landowner could afford. By sunrise, no laborers were ever seen. Yet his yields soared. The profits were staggering.
Victor ruled his Brood with a cold, calculating efficiency...Provide for him, remain loyal, and he provided for you. He surrounded himself with powerful “Generals”, vampires who acted as enforcers and shields. But he watched Rah’s former Brood closely, suspecting treachery in every sideways glance. Attempts at escape or uprisings were dealt with swiftly, Victor had learned well from the old world -- paranoia was the mother of survival.
In the human world, however, questions began to surface. Competitors, and eventually agents of the Crown, wondered how one plantation grew miracles in the dirt without a single slave or hired hand ever seen under daylight. But gold paved roads as surely in the colonies as it did in Europe. A few well-placed bribes and “donations”, and Victor’s kingdom thrived with impunity.
Victor watching his Brood work by night - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
By 1729, Carolina had split into two parts, with the newly formed South Carolina Colony prospering greatly from good growing conditions and the bustling harbor at Charleston. Victor’s plantation, being just a day’s ride from the port, became one of the most profitable properties in the region. But he sensed danger. Where prosperity bloomed, tension followed, especially between landowners in London and the colonists who did the real work.
He’d come too far to jeopardize his expanding kingdom to the futile indiscretions of men. So, he devised a plan, something to fortify himself, his estate, and his Brood in the case of catastrophe. The thick swamps and patchy land offered no good escapes or suitable hiding places for such a large constituency of nocturnal, predatory creatures. The only logical place to go was down.
Creating more and more members of his immense Brood, hidden tunnels were constructed under the main quarters of his plantation, leading to a subterranean fortress called the Hive. A secret city below the earth where hundreds could hide in darkness should war or disaster descend.
Vampires digging subterranean tunnels - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Low and behold, in 1775, rumblings began to trickle down from the north that America was beginning the process of declaring its independence from the British. Victor immediately ordered his Brood into the underground sanctuary to ride out the strife between the colonies and the English.
VICTOR: My children, we do not know what violence our growing country will be facing. I want to protect you. Provide for you. Preserve what I’ve so carefully built. War brings great dangers. The only course of action is for you all to remain here, until I know it is safe to continue with business as usual.
Prisoners are marched into the Hive - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
He bribed a local jailor, marching terrified prisoners into the Hive, a grisly food supply for an unknown duration.
VICTOR: I can't say how long this war will last, so ration them wisely...
And with that, the heavy door to the Hive was sealed from the outside. Victor Monfret retreated to Great Britain as a pampered guest of the Crown, leaving his Brood entombed beneath the Carolina soil.
The door to the Hive, locked and secured - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
Some fourteen years before the Revolutionary War, in the fall of 1761, Elizabeth and Seamus set foot on America shores. Although it was under the rule of the British crown, and despite growing hostilities between the monarchy and the common man, the Colonies still represented a fresh start.
People came from countries all around the globe as it was a place where the past didn’t matter, and the possibilities seemed endless. Elizabeth had again built her wealth to a considerable amount, so the new couple was able to live comfortably above suspicion, which was necessary to help Seamus acclimate into his new life as a Vampire.
They discreetly intrenched themselves in Philadelphia, which seemed the hotbed of political activity for the burgeoning colonies. There they stayed, until the upheaval. While Vampires typically thrived in chaos, the dawn of Revolution was a much more volatile and violent affair than any war fought up until that time. Advancements in weaponry, and the general unease of the conflict drove Elizabeth and Seamus out.
She had seen to many empires fall too quickly, to want to risk staying in the thick of it. So, they retreated, out of sight and out of the reach of the crumbling society, to the wilderness. They lived off the land, hunting indigenous peoples, along with the French and Dutch fur traders, who were skirting the fighting. It reminded Elizabeth of her days in the snowy North, stalking Vikings under starlight, hunting in a world that belonged to no nation.
Following the end of the war, the couple quietly rejoined the populace. The colonies had won their independence and a renewed heartbeat reverberated through what was now the United States of America.
For countless centuries, Elizabeth had witnessed first hand “democracies” rise and eventually rot from within. Greece was fractured by pride. Rome devoured by its own decadence. The upper crust sapping ruin to what was once great. But this land was different. She listened to speeches in taverns and crowded halls. Men and women speaking of liberty, equality, of a society not ruled by bloodlines but by shared intent. It stirred something ancient and hopeful in her.
Elizabeth inspired by freedom - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
There was something in the words “We the People”, that called to her. A creed that dared to bind chaos to order, to forge civilization from the wild. It was not perfection, but intent, the individual was now important to the success of the country. She’d never seen that before.
Among her own kind there was no such introspection. No unity, no code, only the endless appetite of the night. Vampires were scattered, untamed, divided by instinct. Watching this fledgling nation shape itself from nothing, Elizabeth saw a reflection, not of what humans were, but what her kind could become.
For the first time in millennia, she began to imagine a different future. A nation of vampires, united not by bloodlust, but by law. An empire of the shadows, ruled by reason and guided by the ageless. And as one of the first, as one of the oldest who still remembered the species’ first dawn, who better to start a revolution amongst the Vampires, than she?
Pressure building in the Hive - © 2025 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
In the south, during the war, Victor’s Brood remained trapped in their subterranean prison. Hidden away as the outside world nearly tore itself apart. But being below ground the Hive became a crucible of its own making. The food supply became scarce quickly, and those imprisoned had no way to escape. Divisions grew between them, as younger Brood members saw Victor as a God, believing he would return for them. While older Vampires, especially remnants of Rah’s old Brood, knew better.
The force of pressure would become too much as the discord turned into pointed dissent. At first those who expressed concern were immediately silenced. But small groups of defiant voices started to grow. The divided Brood would often clash in the underground prison, with bloody results. The Hive became a powder keg, waiting for a single spark to ignite catastrophe.
TO BE CONTINUED…