Progress at All Costs
Ruled by an aristocracy of immortal Vampire Lords, the Valrath Dominion is a vast nation built on ruthless control. Its caste system places the Vampire Lords and their demon legions at the top, with every conquered people forced into servitude beneath them. The Valrathians hold themselves to be the race meant to determine Elyrion's future, and their gift of vampirism is reserved for those they judge "worthy" — everyone else is treated as disposable. That conviction drives the Dominion's continuous wars of conquest, waged both to grow its territory and to seize the ancient Primals, which the Vampire Lords regard as the key to holding back the Blight and opening a new golden age.
Origins
The Valrath Dominion traces back to the creation of the first vampires. Almost three hundred years ago, a party of scholars and alchemists journeyed into forbidden territory in search of a cure for what would later be named the Blight. There they found the remains of Demos, a colossal, bat-like Primal. Once its fossil was recovered, Valrathian researchers set about unlocking what it held.
Their experiments let them isolate and copy the Primal's cells, producing a synthetic blood serum capable of altering an organism's DNA. It seemed at first a miracle: those given the serum stopped succumbing to the Blight, and also gained tremendous strength, speed, sharpened senses, a stronger connection to aetheric magic, and cellular immortality. The scientists who developed it transformed themselves first, becoming the original Vampire Lords, and each was able to select trusted followers to undergo the same ascension.
The gift came with a price. Those changed by the serum became acutely sensitive to light and were seized by an uncontrollable, frenzied hunger for blood. Alarmed by what they saw, the people of Valrath turned on the vampires, calling them abominations, and kingdoms ordered that anyone suspected of being one should be killed on sight.
The result was a civil war that devastated nations and killed millions. The vampires ultimately won, and out of that victory the Valrath Dominion was declared. The Noble Houses founded by the Vampire Lords have ruled without challenge ever since.
Society of Valrath
Authority in the Valrath Dominion rests with the Noble Houses, lineages tracing back to the original Vampire Lords born of Demos's synthetic blood. These Houses hold total control over politics, the economy, and the military, while those beneath them are kept in servitude. To secure loyalty, the ruling class dangles the possibility of ascension: those judged worthy may be offered vampirism itself, a status that functions simultaneously as reward and trial.
Valrathian society prizes progress and bodily enhancement above nearly everything else. Its scientists work past ordinary ethical limits in their pursuit of new enhancements and new ways to exploit the Primals' power. Their latest achievement is an entirely new race: the demons.
Demons are engineered beings, produced by fusing synthetic Demos cells with the Blight itself. Prisoners, dissidents, and other subjects considered expendable are dosed with the mixture and exposed to the Blight within factory laboratories. The process is fatal — the host dies in agony as their body is remade into something monstrous. What emerges keeps distorted traces of its original form, now fused into a stronger, hybrid creature.
How a demon turns out depends on the dose and the subject. Some become mindless brutes, fitted with harnesses and control devices and deployed purely as weapons. Others keep enough awareness to serve as elite soldiers within the Dominion's forces. Demons withstand sunlight and injury better than vampires do, but they are unpredictable and dangerous, sometimes even to the Dominion itself — a cost the Vampire Lords accept.
Military
Few nations in Elyrion can match the Dominion's military, which combines arcane science with an ongoing program of genetic manipulation. Its forces rely not just on conventional weaponry but on dark aetheric magic that most opponents cannot resist.
The Valrathian dreadnoughts anchor this arsenal — immense airborne battleships driven by aetheric reactors. They ferry the Dominion's armies and serve as heavy bombers able to raze cities outright, and their shadow passing overhead has become a warning that battle is about to begin.
On the battlefield itself, vast numbers of vampire thralls and demon troops fight without restraint, backed by hulking demonic juggernauts sent in to smash fortifications and break enemy lines. The Dominion's elite are its high-born vampires — powerful warriors at their strongest after dark, who both command the armies and carry devastating aetheric weapons. A force of even a dozen of these nobles is enough to decide a battle, striking down opponents with speed no mortal can match.
Only the Converted will Survive
Even as they pursue conquest, the Vampire Lords recognize that not everything can be won by force. Vespera, a free city with its own government and trade networks, sits between Valrath and Concordia, a rival nation whose values run counter to the Dominion's own.
Letting Vespera remain self-governed is the Vampire Lords' method of extending diplomacy — a way to spread their creation through commerce as much as through war.
"The Blight spreads relentlessly… and the blood of Demos is the gift that will save us all."