Graphic Novel | Pax Vampiria

I'm also a working stiff--I carry a stake and a badge. The name is Scintilla Musgrave and I'm a detective for the New Carthage Police, Necrocide Division. Also, Vampire.

It's a violent place with very sharp edges. And now I have to work a case with my ex, an asshole who threw me under a bus sixty years ago to save his own career. We're investigating the re-murder of someone I might have re-killed myself if I'd had the chance--a patrician, very old-school and very, very old. A millennial in the truest sense of the word.

I LOVE THIS CITY, BUT...

It's a violent place with very sharp edges. And now I have to work a case with my ex, an asshole who threw me under a bus sixty years ago to save his own career. We're investigating the re-murder of someone I might have re-killed myself if I'd had the chance--a patrician, very old-school and very, very old. A millennial in the truest sense of the word.

The stake she's holding--in her aorta--is made from Bloodwood, rare and most likely illegally imported. That is quite literally our only clue in this case.

In VII AC (After Caesar, Vampirium Calendar), Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus, annoyed at the constant incursions into Roman provinces by the kingdom of Dacia, led an army into the Carpathian mountains to subdue the troublesome client-state. During a skirmish, the Emperor was attacked and his throat pierced by a fearsome fanged creature. He lived...sort of. A year later, Augustus, fully recovered...sort of, returned to Rome in triumph with 10,000 Dacian slaves to award to loyal patricians.

Now, more than 2000 years later, Rome still rules the known world--now the entire globe--and Caesar Augustus is still emperor. Dacians--today known as Romanians--and Romans, together collectively called Romes, control the empire’s wealth and prosper under the Pax Vampiria, a state of relative peace created when Augustus and his followers (bitten by their vampiric slaves) all became Homo desmodus, the common flightless vampire.
Humans and vampires live apart, but every month a number of “Breathers” are hunted and turned--some becoming vampires, but most becoming thralls, half vampires blessed with eternal life and little else. Still, most humans are eager to get The Bite. Undeath, even as a poor vampire, offers better prospects than life as a human and tends to be considerably longer.
Vampirium society is violent, socially stratified, governed by self-interest and a complete lack of moral strictures--in other words, Roman. In the face of this anarchy someone has to keep the Pax and it takes a tough cop to prevent the streets from running with (more) blood (than usual).

In VII AC (After Caesar, Vampirium Calendar), Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus, annoyed at the constant incursions into Roman provinces by the kingdom of Dacia, led an army into the Carpathian mountains to subdue the troublesome client-state. During a skirmish, the Emperor was attacked and his throat pierced by a fearsome fanged creature. He lived...sort of. A year later, Augustus, fully recovered...sort of, returned to Rome in triumph with 10,000 Dacian slaves to award to loyal patricians.

Now, more than 2000 years later, Rome still rules the known world--now the entire globe--and Caesar Augustus is still emperor. Dacians--today known as Romanians--and Romans, together collectively called Romes, control the empire’s wealth and prosper under the Pax Vampiria, a state of relative peace created when Augustus and his followers (bitten by their vampiric slaves) all became Homo desmodus, the common flightless vampire.
Humans and vampires live apart, but every month a number of “Breathers” are hunted and turned--some becoming vampires, but most becoming thralls, half vampires blessed with eternal life and little else. Still, most humans are eager to get The Bite. Undeath, even as a poor vampire, offers better prospects than life as a human and tends to be considerably longer.
Vampirium society is violent, socially stratified, governed by self-interest and a complete lack of moral strictures--in other words, Roman. In the face of this anarchy someone has to keep the Pax and it takes a tough cop to prevent the streets from running with (more) blood (than usual).