#vampires!!!!!

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Wilhuff Tarkin/Darth Vader Characters: Wilhuff Tarkin, Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader Additional Tags: Treat, Alternate Universe - Vampires, Rule 63, murdering minor characters as a seduction technique, lovingly detailed descriptions of blood drinking, unmasking Summary:

The young Jedi whom Grand Moff Tarkin used to have her eye on, during the Clone Wars, appears to have resurfaced in the form of a vampire. Being a vampire herself, Tarkin is... interested.

OHHHHH NOOOOOOOOO IT’S TOO CUTE

anyway so Victor has been a vampire for upwards of eight hundred years and he’s just bored, so so bored: nobody told him how boring being a vampire would be. sometimes you have to fake being dead and dye your hair. Then you have to move continents. Then you accidentally acquire a younger brother that you didn’t actually make but follows you around anyway. He’s so bored. He’s just so bored all the time. Regular humans are only interesting for a few years, and then they get old, and other vampires are never surprising after you’ve known them a hundred years. 

Victor goes to Japan just to have something mildly interesting to do. He hasn’t been there since they opened up the ports: he went in with the Dutch traders and it was a lot of fun, then, but he hears that it’s interesting now, too, so he spends a week in Tokyo - dull, just parties and nightclubs and people trying to get his attention. Kyoto’s a little more interesting, but temples make his skin itch, too much holy energy. A priest came out of a little one and watched him very carefully, making it clear he wouldn’t have a problem with Victor, if Victor didn’t cause any problems.

Well. You don’t get to be eight hundred without knowing when to gracefully leave the domain of a god, so Victor wanders to a little town called Hasetsu. He’s never been there before, at least. 

He pokes around for a while, trying to find something interesting. It’s dull here, too, too quiet, like St Petersburg when he had been human. He’s starting to consider if he shouldn’t take a nap for a decade or so and chance little Yuri bursting into his lair and yelling when – 

oh. OH. What’s that. There’s a boy, walking with a backpack slung over one shoulder, very graceful, his head held like a dancer. He smells delicious, all sweet and rich iron, and before he quite knows what he’s doing Victor drifts closer, comes up to the boy and gives him a big, practiced smile.

“Do you speak English?” he chirps. “I’m lost!”

The boy – and now Victor’s close enough to see how beautiful he really is, hair like ink and eyes like dark amber, a mouth made for kisses and a neck begging for bruises and bites– looks up. 

Oh, oh, Victor’s so interested.

“The tourist center is right there,” says the boy, pointing, and walks off. 

Well, ironically, the Sanguine and Choleric courts are the more conservative of the two, but it’s mostly because they’re entrenched in their own history and culture, and when they do add new people to their mix, the pressure is on to respect and conform, rather than to challenge and come up with new ideas.

The Sanguine court is the most like a traditional royal, well, court. The upper echelons are filled by a single ruling family and their extended relatives, and underneath are several lesser nobles and unaffiliated sycophants that squabble for favor. They consider themselves crusaders of virtue and guardians of the noble union of vampires, which… basically sums them up, good and bad. On the upside, they’re very driven to protect and provide for vampires and bring them success and triumph. On the downside, they’re incredibly inflexible and stubborn when it comes to their moral views, as well as quite aggressive.

The Sanguine court’s motto is “A life well lived is seized by the horns” and their ideal social construct is the cultured warrior: someone who is strong, loyal, and classically educated.

The Choleric court are very theatrical (literally; while the Sanguine Court also favors art, they’re more of a “sit down and slave hours on a painting” type- the Choleric court is all about dance, theater, and performance) and very vibrant. They’re simultaneously some of the most interesting people to talk to and one of the more volatile courts because at any given moment they’re teeming with like five assassination plots, assorted elopements, unsolved thefts, needlessly convoluted scheming… if you’ve ever seen the movie The Court Jester, this is the level of different plots running into each other that you get. They have a massively developed and incredibly storied culture but they’re also very beholden to the classics and their artistry suffers a bit for it.

The Choleric court’s motto is “To wear many faces is to be unknowable, and thus invincible” and their ideal social construct is the court jester: someone who is clever, charming, and succeeds by guile.

The Phlegmatic court is a bit removed from the court politics- not nearly as dynamic as the other three- and with the Melancholic court, it’s considered one of the “new blood” courts, against the “old line” of the Sanguine and Choleric. The Phlegmatic court opens its gates much more liberally and it has a majority of female members. More keyed to the modern world, they still favor the old-fashioned dress habits and architecture of all vampires, but they’re quite versed in modern issues. They highly value wisdom, and are the most up-to-date with modern science and technology, and as a result their court is a curious blend of old and new. Anyone can become a Phlegmatic vampire if they know the right place to go and the right questions to ask. At the same time, though, they’re the most likely to dip their hands into forbidden or morally dubious research and interests.

The Phlegmatic court’s motto is “A silver tongue speaks words as easily as poison” and their ideal social construct is the philosopher: someone who is wise, perceptive, and shares that wisdom with others.

Lastly, the Melancholic court. They are, a bit literally, the black sheep of the vampire courts- they’re almost always at odds with the Sanguine court one way or another, and depending on how well things are going, most of the other courts trust them about as far as they can throw them. They have very little in the way of courtly trappings and tend to be a rather dour and grim bunch, but they are viciously loyal to their own. Pretty exclusive and obscure in their recruiting habits, not much about their court is accessible from the outside. They value privacy and secrecy, but collectively they’ve known to be a little high strung and quick to cast blame. They have a very worshipful attitude towards death, and value the concept of eternity over short-term gain.