#purebred

One of these doesn’t show up until the second book, but he’s mentioned in the first one, so I figured I’d keep his design with the others.  He’s important enough, after all.

Stefen Lamia (age about 350) – Stefen is the current King of the Vampires, and happens to be Thomas and Benjamin’s older brother.  He’s considered a bit unhinged and dangerous because he’s doing all these radical things, like revealing to the human world that vampires and werewolves roam amongst them, and declaring genocide for the werewolves.  He was attacked by a werewolf shortly after taking the throne, which is the reason for that particular order.  The truth of the matter is that he’s not really all that crazy or dangerous, but he’s also being manipulated into seeming that way.  Most vampires are a bit wary of him, though, because he does give into his whims a bit too much.

Grigory Zulnerowich (age about 1,000) – Zulnerowich is pretty much the oldest vampire in the story, and the one who created the Enforcers as well as running them.  He is very strict and by-the-book (which he wrote, by the way), and doesn’t really take nonsense from anyone.  He’s the most dangerous person in the entire story, and the reason why the Norths are on the run, since he’s the one in charge of chasing them.  No one’s ever escaped Zulnerowich, which is impressive that the Norths have managed it for over two hundred years, but Zulnerowich is patient.  He will capture and punish each and every one of them eventually.  Although he’s starting to get a little impatient now.

Aislin Flanagan (age 21/about 130) – Aislin is one of Zulnerowich’s lackeys.  She’s the oldest daughter of turn of the (last) century Irish immigrants in New York City who was orphaned when she was about 6.  She was forced into the streets and had to also take care of her little brother, and she did what she had to to survive until she was about twelve and ended up catching the attention of Zulnerowich.  He took both her and her brother in and basically started grooming the two of them to become future Enforcers/minions.  She asked him to turn them on her twenty-first birthday, which he agreed to, provided she remained at his side.  Which she had planned to, anyway.  She is the sly one of the lackeys, and considers herself the brains.  She enjoys inflicting pain on others as a sort of weird revenge on how she spend the first few years of her life.

Aiden Flanagan (age 19/about 130) – Aiden is one of Zulernowich’s lackeys.  He’s Aislin’s younger brother, orphaned at the age of three and forced to fend for himself alongside Aislin.  Weirdly enough, despite their circumstances, Aislin wanted him to have a ‘normal’ life, going out of her way to ensure he was going to school, at least.  (It was an easy way to get him out of her hair for a bit, and she knew Aiden was smart enough to potentially escape their circumstances.)  Zulnerowich agreed to take him in as well after discovering Aislin while also agreeing to continue his education.  He got accepted into Harvard and had a bright future ahead of him when Aislin asked for the two of them to be turned.  While this basically ruined the bright future that he was headed towards, this was mostly because Aislin hated the idea of being separated from her baby brother, the only family that she had.  Aiden only half blames Aislin for what happened, since he understood her reasoning – just wished she chose a later date to do it.  He remains with Zulernowich and Aislin because he feels like he doesn’t really have any choice, although he really hates what they do.  (He did manage to graduate from Harvard despite being turned into a vampire halfway through.  He’s the only one of the lackeys who doesn’t drink human blood.)

Nikodemus Katsaros (age 23/about 170) – Nik is another lackey of Zulnerowich.  His backstory isn’t all that involved – Zulnerowich discovered him picking fights in Crete and decided this muscle bound moron would make for a great Enforcer.  So he turned him and Nik was really too stupid to understand why this was a bad thing.  He just saw it as a sort of upgrade, since now he was even stronger.  He’s somehow managed to survive to modern day, partially thanks to the fact that Aiden’s saved his ass more time than he can count (which admittedly isn’t very high).  His role is pretty much being he PoC vampire to show that, unlike the Twilight vampires, they don’t turn White when they’re turned. 

The North family is the main vampire family that Ryan deals with.  They’re currently on the run because the Vampire King wants them dead, since the younger generation all have claims to the throne, and he’s supposedly terrified that one of them would off him to gain it.  This, of course, is hardly the case – none of them were raised in nobility and are perfectly happy with being in the peasant class – but he sort of has a reputation of being a bit unhinged.  They’ve been on the run for a bit over two hundred years at this point, which is sort of impressive.  Even moreso when they’ve never left the North American continent.

When Benjamin was born, the family worried, because his existence was going to make things much harder for them.  They decided to move to a remote location that they heard was protected by werewolves to hide and raise him, since he was still extremely vulnerable as he grew up.  They also decided, since he was being raised around humans, that they didn’t need everyone around him drawing suspicions from everyone.  So it was decided that Robert would take him into New Haven and raise him, while the rest of the family chilled just outside of town, waiting until Benjamin was old enough to leave and resume their normal lives.

(The plan was for the family to pack up after Benjamin graduated high school, since he would be an adult at this point, and going away to college and never returning, and Robert following him since he’s his own family, wouldn’t be too crazy.  What they didn’t count on was Ryan and his close relationship with her, and how he didn’t want to, you know, leave her.  Luckily, they’re fine continuing to chill there, since nothing’s happened in the last twenty years.)

Amelia North (age about 141) – Lia was the youngest of the family until Benjamin was born, and is technically an oopsie baby as well, since she was born while the family was on the run.  Thanks to the fact that she takes after her father more than she should, she’s a freespirit who likes to go ahead societal norms.  Not to the point where she’s draw attention to herself, but she tends to vibe with the counter culture more than anything.  (She totally was a flapper in the 20s and wore pants in the 50s).  She’s a sweet girl who has more energy than most people know what to do with, and, like her father, is the one who most easily can fool humans into think she’s one of them.

Elizabeth North (age about 450) – Elizabeth is Robert’s wife and Benjamin’s aunt.  She’s also a doctor, although she’s not practicing at the moment.  Her family has always treated humans, traveling from village to village until someone figure started accusing them of witchcraft or something.  Elizabeth was the only one of her sisters who followed her family’s profession, and Robert met her when they were both around a hundred while she was practicing under the name Eli.  (Since obviously, a woman couldn’t be practicing medicine, ew.)  She was a bit hesitant to let him get too close, because she thought for sure that he’d be against her continuing healing people, but Robert was insistent that he was cool with it and the fact that she was pretending to be a dude.  He’s been pretty much helping her keep up to date with the latest medical discoveries and helping her get jobs in hospitals and whatnot.  She’s the one who tricked Robert into thinking the fact that he was raising Benjamin was by chance, because she didn’t need to be practicing medicine all the time, whereas he needed to be involved with humans.  (Otherwise, he’d sneak into town too often.)  She is extremely maternal and loves it best when all the kids are under one roof.

Thomas Cartwright (age about 250) – Thomas is Benjamin’s older brother and the exact reason why the family’s being hunted.  King Stefen had pretty much left the family alone until he learned of Thomas’ existence, since that meant that there was now an heir to the throne should something happen to Stefen.  Thomas, for the most part, could give two shits about being royalty.  He prides himself for being the strongest vampire the family has met.  He is very aloof and loves his baby brother very, very much, and he was a bit annoyed that his family didn’t automatically just decided that he should get to raise him.  (This would have been bad, because Thomas tends to give off dangerous vampire vibes, although he is absolutely no danger to humans.)  He also loves teasing Benjamin because he claims he’s so serious all the time.

Caroline Cartwright (age about 250) – Caroline is Thomas’ childhood friend later turned wife.  Her family had been thrilled that there was another purebred vampire family in the area, and even more so that Caroline had befriended one of them, but they were less than thrilled when King Stefen send Enforcers out to kill them.  Caroline was actually only engaged to Thomas when they found out, and rather than allow him to run off without her, she insisted that they elope so she would have a reason to run away with them.  She tends to be charismatic and people are just drawn to her, and Ryan describes her as being a ‘classic’ beauty.  She’s also the only one to can keep Thomas from doing anything too stupid.

Adrian North (age about 330) – Adrian is Robert and Elizabeth’s first child, born shortly after they got married.  Robert wanted a whole horde of children, but being pregnant sort of put a damper on Elizabeth’s disguise at the time, so he was fine with just the one.  Adrian followed his parents when they left England just for the hell of it, since he honestly had nothing better to do.  He’s sort of annoyed at the whole hunted situation, despite the fact that he has a claim to the throne as well.  He was especially annoyed at his parents for having Amelia, although he loves his sister dearly.  He's really annoyed at the whole situation with Benjamin being born, and worries about what’ll happen in the future should Stefen find out about him.  For now, though, he’s just looking forward to when they could leave the area and he could start doing shit again.

Ferdinand Ortega (age 27/about 275) – Ortega is a halfbreed vampire who is assigned to be North Brook (the city that New Haven is technically a suburb of)’s Enforcer right at the start of the story.  (This used to be Anselme Lavoisier, who was someone else’s character, so I decided a couple of years ago that I should, you know, make him my own thing.  Although…the backstory is sadly the same.)  His turning was unexpected and he was left on his own afterwards, meaning that he woke up rather confused and sort of had to figure out a few things on his own.  He quickly realized that the stories about vampires he had always known were false, and that he didn’t need to feed on human blood to survive.  However, he didn’t like the thought of other halfbreed vampires roaming around killing people (he had been traveling with his youngest daughter when he was attacked, and she didn’t survive), and decided to take matters into his own hands, becoming a sort of vigilante going around offing ‘evil’ vampires.  He wasn’t really looked upon favorably by the Enforcers, and he ended up running away to America to get away from them, but they eventually caught up to him there as well.  He was captured and imprisoned for a bit before being released under the condition that he become and Enforcer himself.  Which he agreed to, because he was sort of doing that sort of thing anyway.

Alexander Wolfe (age 22) – Alexander is a second-generation halfbreed werewolf whose parents were killed when he was around five or so.  He had just been recently bitten by his first generation werewolf father when both his parents were caught in a vampire attack, leaving him an orphan and very, very confused.  While his father was there for his first transformation and helped him through it, he was still just a child.  Luckily for him, Ortega happened upon him and ended up taking him in once he learned that Alex was a werewolf, despite the fact that the two creatures are mortal enemies.  Ortega basically raised Alex, taking him to each of his assignments and hiding that he had basically adopted him.  Alex is a bit mistrusting of vampires as a result, although he does know the difference between the two types.  While he is an adult and could start his own life, he’s a bit scared of leaving Ortega’s protection because of the genocide order against werewolves.

I had these designs done a while ago from the last time my muse got briefly on the story, so all I really needed to do it tweek them.  (It doesn’t help that I’ve been attempting to revamp all the designs I have in the new template, so I do have a lot of designs that I fixed but then never posted because my muse moved on.)

One reason why I’ve been a bit loathed to think about Purebred is because, to me, it’s a YA story where the characters are all in high school.  Ryan was always 16.  But with this current muse attack, I got to thinking, well…what if they were adults?  I mean, the story would still work very well even if they’re not teenagers and in high school.  In fact, it’ll work better because a certain author’s been out of high school for over twenty years now.  >.O

In any case, the plot still works, everything still works.  I mean, its not like these characters wouldn’t find time to spend together just because they’re not in school together, right?

The idea of this story is that this is a world where people know vampires and werewolves exist.  Originally, New Haven was a place that took protection to extremes, priding itself in its vampire fence and all, but I decided to drop it.  Vampires are an issue, certainly, but mostly in more populated places like cities and downtown areas.  New Haven is too small, plus has been protected by a werewolf family for generations.  Most of the fear the people have is from misinformation, anyway.

Now, the biggest thing about this world is that there’s two classifications of vampires/werewolves – purebred and halfbreed.  Both vampires and werewolves are actually a subset of humans, each who evolved separately like the Neanderthals and the like, before meeting back up with homo sapiens thousands of years later.  I don’t know how werewolves came to be, but I know vampires evolved a way to get nutrients out of drinking blood rather than eating, because they evolved in the frozen north where food was scarce and they needed a way to not kill what was available.  The vampires, as a result, extended their lifespan to the point where they’re immortal, and they’re immune to all diseases, as well as, you know, fast, strong, all the vampire qualities. 

No one is quite sure how it was discovered, but once the vampires and werewolves came upon their human brothers again, it was discovered that their bite had the ability to turn humans into versions of themselves.  However, it wasn’t without consequences.  A vampire bite killed the human, and a werewolf bite drove them insane (sort of).  This, of course, terrified the humans, and as humans do, they attempted to eradicate the newcomers, so the two hide themselves for thousands of years while also living amongst them.

Obviously, they didn’t do the best job, since vampires and werewolves where in human legends, but at some point, the vampires created a system in order to keep the humans from finding out about them.  At least until King Stefen took the throne and pretty much said screw it, and let the humans know that, yes, the beings of your nightmares are real and amongst you and all that.  So people became aware, but the vampires and werewolves still kept to the shadows for the most part.

I do have a lot of characters for this story, so I figure I’d so this is waves.  (And hopefully I’ll get them all out.)

Ryan Hutchinson (age 20) – Ryan is the main character.  For the most part, she’s rather unremarkable.  She has a general concern about vampires, but she also knows that they don’t come to New Haven.  Which basically means that she has no real plans on leaving the town, and she’s wary about going to the city that’s close by.  She current works at her father’s hardware store, mostly being in charge of the monthly kids’ workshop that that offer, as well as odd jobs in between.  She did go to community college just for the hell of it, but she has no real clue what she wants to do with her life.  She’s known Benjamin since they were one, and she’s been in love with him for years.  She’s waiting for him to make the first move, though.

Benjamin Cartwright (age 20) – Benjamin is the love interest, and he’s a vampire.  He’s a purebred vampire, which does help with the human disguise he and his uncle are attempting.  People can tell there’s something ‘off’ about him, but he mostly keeps to himself.  He’s managed to keep the secret for twenty years, although it’s mostly because people don’t know about purebred vampires and have watched him grow up.  Although he’s obsessed with the written word, he currently works at his uncle’s computer repair shop just because.  (He doesn’t really need to work, but it helps keep up appearances.)  He’s been in love with Ryan as long as she has been with him, but he doesn’t want to act on it because of the whole he’s a vampire thing. 

Charlotte Hutchinson (age 20) – Charlie is Ryan’s older twin sister.  She makes videos for TikTok or whatever the world’s equivalent is, mostly making fun of other influencers, thanks to the fact that she was once the queen of the school and know the type of people they are.  She’s also a first generation halfbreed werewolf, having been bitten accidentally by her boyfriend about a year before the story.  She and Ryan are actually identical twins, but one reaction being bitten by a purebred werewolf has is they take on the features of their sire.  Being first gen halfbreed means that she’s basically a purebred, she just wasn’t born a werewolf.  It gets worst down the generations to the point of monsters during the full moon.  Charlie wants to help protect the territory with the other two, but they won’t let her, much to her annoyance.

Rebecca Lee (age 20) – Rebecca is Ryan’s best friend.  I don’t have too much on her other than the fact that she’s one of the few PoC in the story, whoops.  She went to community college with Ryan and Benjamin, and I don’t know what she’s currently doing at the moment.  Possibly something in child care, I don’t know.  She spends a lot of time helping with her younger brothers since her father is a single father, but they mostly can take care of themselves at the moment.  She’s currently in a relationship with Henry.

Henry Reid (age 21) – Ryan’s other best friend, and another PoC in the story.  He came to New Haven when he was ten after his father died in a vampire attack in North Brook, and joined their little friend group then.  He’s the only one still in college, going to school in North Brook while studying to become a game designer.  He’s dating Rebecca, and has plans to move in together once he graduates and gets an actual job.  He’s one of the few people who isn’t werided out by Benjamin because he happens to be immune to the vampire venom (and thus, his body doesn’t react negatively from being around a vampire.)

Robert North (age about 450) – Robert is Benjamin’s maternal uncle and the man whose raising him.  The story is that Benjamin lost his parents right before his first birthday, and Robert took him in before moving to New Haven.  He is wildly fascinated with human technology and it’s advancements, and he owns a very successful computer/electronics repair business.  He’s a vampire nobleman who ran away from the vampire capital because he didn’t really like that life and had been disowned by his father.  Despite that, he still siphons money from his family’s stores, although he’s never revealed how.  While he thinks he was picked to raise Benjamin because he chose the short straw, in reality, its because he’s the one who is most human amongst the family, and the most trustworthy, since he’s a giant nerd.

William Stidolph (age 21) – Will is Charlie’s boyfriend, and is a purebred werewolf.  His family as been in the area for generations, but they try to get their population low because of the rivalry with vampires and the human’s fear of them.  And because Stefen has ordered the werewolves genocide shortly after taking the throne.  He’s the one responsible for turning Charlie after accidentally biting her while they were playing with him in wolf form.  He doesn’t have a job, although he helps with editing Charlie’s videos. 

(Purebred werewolves in this world are technically just wolf shapeshifters, since they can turn into wolves at will.  They start becoming the traditional werewolf we know in about 4 generations in, and most werewolves are halfbreeds because the purebreds kept their populations low.  The same is true for the purebred vampires, with most of them being halfbreeds, since halfbreeds are more likely to attack humans.)