The Bloodfall

By Chief Archivist Gloria Merrik

It is written by the Paradise Church that belief is power, including belief in the self. If true, it is no wonder that Sitri Baal has ascended.

Despite what you may hear, the decline of House Baal did not begin with the Hell Breach. The losses they bore were a cliffside, to be sure, but they had been tumbling downward for some time. The Baals had ruled for three millennia, after all, and it would take more than a single event to bring such an empire to the brink of extinction

It was Sitri’s mother, I believe, that instigated the fall. Lilith Baal came to power two hundred and twenty-four years ago at the age of eighty-three. Ancient to us mortals, but to the vampires of Baal, she was barely considered an adult. Her rise came following the death of the previous warden. Her father, Lord Beleth, fell in combat with a plague of nightmares that beset the city of Falryn. After his death, Lilith’s own mother made an attempt on her life hoping to secure power for herself. Said mother was a remnant of another old and powerful house, one that had lost its wealth and influence but not the strength of its scions. Lord Beleth made a hasty match in order to garner that strength for himself. He succeeded, but underestimated how devious his bride could be, and Lilith’s first act as warden was to obliterate her own traitor mother. She swore then, that she would not make the same mistake her father did, and pursue a match suitable to her position.

The first century of her reign was a stable one. Territory expanded. Losses to nightmares were minimal. Cordial relationships with Paradise and the other wardens. On the surface, all appeared well, but beneath this veil was the onset of rot. Lilith had a sound mind for governance, but the attempt on her life had shaped her; namely, her opinion on other highborn. She made frequent tours to the cities under her control, hearing and addressing the ailments of their people. Though this made her well loved by her subjects, it also alienated the nobles beneath her that ruled over those territories. It was over seventy years ago when I first laid eyes on Lilith Baal. An unforgettable experience: like seeing the sun for the first time again, and yet the first thing I thought to myself was that she looked so very lonely. I did not know it at the time, but despite a genuine love for people, Lilith could never bring herself to trust them.

It saddens me to chronicle, for I enjoyed her. She paid me frequent visits as I grew into my role as archivist. I assisted her in compiling her thoughts and experiences from time to time alongside my mentor; a jovial bastard who is, for the sake of this record, irrelevant. Though she appeared as stiff and detached as any of those gaudy statues, Lilith was in fact far more emotional than she appeared, and this would be prove to be her undoing.

I warned her. Her seneschal, the walking corpse Valentine, warned her as well. Half of the lords and ladies warned her against it. Paradise, I’d bet even the other wardens advised her, but she wouldn’t listen. Lucius, he was named, or so she claimed to us. I never heard her speak the name aloud except officially. He had been named a knight in her service for some time, and this drew the eyes. He was strong, to be sure. A striking warrior who won many victories. But he was lowborn; common. A vagabond, blown in by the frontier winds and, in the eyes of the nobles, little more than a weapon to be used and discarded as they saw fit. Yet, Lilith chose him to be her Lord. 

It was love, she said. Something that she had never known in her life. A novelty to the ruling families, that such a thing could command a warden. Lilith had her defenses, of course. Roman Sterling had managed it. Cassandra had been common as well, and strong. The two were due for their first child, and his strength was only growing. All of those things were true, but they were deflective. Roman’s empire was a monolith, held up by a single pack. His human subjects would not object, and he had no other powerful names beneath to undermine him. The truth, I believe, was that Lilith took comfort in Lucius being separate from all that she had known. He lived to fight, disdaining those who schemed for power, and she found companionship in him that she couldn’t in anyone else.

An unapproachable man, that Lucius. He was beautiful, but not so much as the highborn. Serious and self-important, but with an undeniable authority that very nearly made you forget his origins. Even as my hair turned gray, in his sights I always felt like a child. He was always courteous to me, though. Despite the misgivings of her nobles, things were well, for a time. In the years that followed, her children were born. The frontier held together, and she seemed happy.

It was raining, the day we received word of the Hell Breach. We should have seen it coming; out of season rain never portends anything but tragedy. The collapse of the defenses in the southern frontier demanded action, and the Paradise church called all houses that could spare forces to war. There were those that protested this. Why should we sacrifice for another frontier that had never done the same for us? We did not yet understand the horror. Whether by foresight or by adherence to the church, Lilith complied. I remember the day Lucius departed. I think that was the last time I saw her smile. The nobles that sent members of their own did so first with haughty arrogance, determined to assert their superiority over another frontier. Then, as time passed, and their brothers did not return that arrogance withered and turned to something poisonous. 

Thus began the Baal downfall in earnest, brought about by a war Lilith could not control and many choices she could. Nightmare attacks at our borders accelerated, and we had lost many of the nephilim who could fight them. Those that remained grew less cooperative: a combination of resentment born of their losses and hunger to regain the same. It was their nature, after all. Nephilim are predatory creatures; and they sense weakness on instinct. 

None sensed Lilith’s weakness more keenly than her northern neighbor, Eydis Nero. Once considered the weakest of the four Eastern wardens, Eydis had managed to change that paradigm by shirking the orders of the church and keeping her forces close during the breach. The church was still too occupied to censure her, and so her strength had not waned. It was a cowardly choice, but a clever one, though nobody saw what she was truly planning until it was too late. Slowly and carefully, Eydis bled our forces, not attacking directly, but undermining support and  defenses against nightmares. Land was lost quickly, and Lilith couldn’t understand why. But as tragedies mounted and chaos took over, she realized. It was because her nobles were not victims of the plot, but conspirators. She had disrespected them, she had cost them sons, daughters, wealth and power. Now, she would suffer for it. And suffer she did. Over five years, the Baal empire crumbled. As territory dwindled, usurped and overtaken by nightmares and turncoats, Lilith had fewer and fewer forces to call upon. She increasingly set out to defend the borders herself, until one day, she couldn’t. Official reports read that nightmares killed her, but that is a lie. A nightmare would have eaten her body, not left it impaled on her own broken spear.

I have, until this point, neglected to speak of Sitri herself. That is because for much of her young life, the heiress was kept away from her own broader empire. She was a loud little thing, from infancy to adolescence. My mentor once joked that she came out of the womb with her fangs fully grown. Sharp tongued and insolent, always eager to demonstrate her immense power. I thought her a silly little girl, marching about giving orders, right up until I saw her shatter a castle rampart mid-tantrum. She was eight at the time.

A strange thing, watching a nephilim grow up. Even waist-high, Sitri was voracious for power, for knowledge, for glory. She would train through the night with sword, spear and her bare hands. She would come to the archives with a servant on hand to carry the piles of tomes I would fetch. Politics, law, battle tactics, music, calligraphy, there was no subject that escaped her attention. Every lesson not yet learned was a foe to defeat.

One would think that her position would make her arrogant, and it certainly did. She was born special, and had no illusions to the contrary. Despite that, I found myself strangely pulled towards her. She was compelling; never one to believe that she had done enough. She trained as hard as the lowest conscript, and often alongside them. Most nephilim hold themselves above us, even those that claim to be our protectors. Some, like me, are treated better than the rest; those with rare aptitudes or a talent for magic. But we are novelties, exceptional is the exception. Even one like Lilith who cared for our wellbeing did so from a place of detachment.

Sitri did not have that. Instead, she looked at each of her subjects as a teacher. Every one of them had something to offer her; some manner in which they exceeded her for a change. She recognized the struggle of beings who fought tooth and nail for what she had from birth. It is natural for humans to admire the strength of the wardens, but Sitri Baal may have been the first that admired us in turn. That deeper connection would feed her strength in the years to come, but in those days, it was only a source of conflict.

I am not privy to the conversations Lilith had with her lieutenants in the spiral of Eydis’ conspiracy. I am, however, possessed of two working ears that have not left me with age, and I was able to hear, even from my isolated quarters, the arguments the young Sitri had with her mother. She had no hesitation, no fear, and no sense. Night after night, she drew up plans; tactics to discipline or hold hostage their traitorous nobles. To sabotage, attack, even assassinate Eydis “They are coming for us,” she screamed often and loudly “And the greatest sin would be inaction. We must fight!”

She may have been right, that something needed to be done, but Lilith was firm. They didn’t have the strength. To do so would have given Eydis all the pretext she needed to destroy the Baal line completely. Their relationship grew worse. The fury intensified. Night after night, until at last, there was quiet. 

I learned of what happened only later. The heiress had attempted to leave the castle and attack the Neros directly in violation of Lilith’s edict. As a mother, and as warden, Lilith had punished her. Sitri was sent away to Paradise, ostensibly to better relations with the church in wake of the breach, but in truth, it was banishment. Lilith hardly spoke after that. I believe she hoped that Eydis could still be reasoned with; that there was a compromise to be made between them. A naïve position for one who had already seen the worst of the highborn. If such a thing were possible, it would require the cooperation of all still under her banner. She had lost her Lord husband, and been defied by her daughter. She stopped visiting even me. She had made mistakes, but I don’t think she deserved to be so alone in the end.

Word of her death spread slowly; which I found strange, given it was so clearly Eydis’ objective. The old crone did not capitalize as quickly as she could have. But then, what was her hurry? The nobles that had supported Lilith had flocked to her, and the rival warden was gone. All that was left was to defeat the few loyalists that remained and bring the capital under her control. Control of our remaining forces fell to Lilith’s younger son, and though Vergil was both clever and powerful, he was not a god. He saw no hope of anything in resistance except for prolonging a gruesome defeat, and prepared to offer terms of surrender.

That was when the rumors began that Sitri had returned. There was a traitorous house by the name of Rocke. Simple, brutal vampires who, if certain rumors were to be believed, were in fact the source of the late Lord Baal’s strength. I never liked them. They had all of Lucian’s thirst for battle but none of his respect. Vergil had known them to be conspiring against him, but allowed them to maintain their façade of loyalty to order to keep tabs on his enemies. One day, without warning, House Rocke went silent, and Sitri’s voice was heard in the frontier for the first time in years.

She spoke grandly, announcing her triumphant return as the dawn of a new age and promising retribution for all that had wronged House Baal. The words were honey to a hopeful few, but to most, they rang hollow. House Baal’s greatest warriors were dead or sworn to the enemy, to say nothing of the Nero’s own existing forces. Sitri was strong, of course, but so was her brother, and even combined, they did not have the might to oppose Eydis’ army.

The arrogant declaration did have one effect. Eydis formally moved into the Baal territories. It seemed that Sitri's declaration, however unrealistic, had served to provoke her, and she had decided that the time had come to crush any hope of resistance. She made directly for Veridian, and her goal was clear. Take Sitri's ancestral seat and cut her off from her remaining family and followers. That would leave her with whatever handful of soldiers she had managed to collect since her return to the frontier.

I remember the city coming under siege. Veridian is the heart of the Baal's economy, and held great value for Eydis to take. That was our only advantage. The city was full to bursting with refugees, barely held together by our few remaining soldiers. Our only remaining ally, house Bleakshroud, was cut off by their former contemporaries. The full details elude me. The days were chaos to those outside the castle walls, but I was all but a prisoner. Old, frail, and with the history of the Baal family at my fingertips, I was to be protected along with the priceless literature of ages past.

I remember hearing the notices one at a time from one of my guards; a silly looking boy with whose patchy beard was at war with the rest of his face. He couldn't shut up about it, probably because he was as scared as I was. Still, when the Nero soldiers scaled the dust gate, he was the one who held the door until they shot him in the head. Our forces fought, but they were outnumbered and poorly equipped. All they could hope was to stall, but no salvation was coming.

Or so Eydis thought, for that was when Sitri made her appearance and challenged her to a duel. It was a formality by that point. Sitri was alone, surrounded by hostile forces and facing a warden five times her age. Eydis agreed to the affair for the sport of it; the spectacle of killing the Baal heir in view of the public. She tossed Sitri her mother’s broken spear, declaring that she was owed a weapon, at least, and her men laughed. Sitri laughed with her, replying that though she appreciated the thought, she had brought her own. She then produced a new spear; a jagged forge of Hades steel that dulled the amusement. Eydis’ humor shriveled and died with what came next. 

Sitri sent the old warden through Xera’s crossing, bringing the bridge down on her head. She hit her so hard that the Nero’s staff; an enchanted treasure forged a thousand years ago, cracked and screamed, raw magic bleeding into the world. Soldiers of both sides watched in shock and awe. Sitri was mighty, but she should not yet have been strong enough to stand on equal footing with a warden. She did so and more. Edyis’ magic flared to life, only to drown in the wave of Baal Entropy that poured from Sitri’s form. That was the first time the world saw them; that which put them in ascendance above even the saints of Paradise and etched their names into history. The wings of awakening, borne by a scant few nephilim across the millennia. 

A decade later and I still see them when I close my eyes, emerald light and bottomless shadow, woven together . Recall my words; that the remaining Baal forces would have needed a god to win a war against Nero. Now, they had one. 

Eydis panicked. She disregarded the terms of a duel and ordered her forces to kill Sitri and slaughter any who bore her colors. This would be her final mistake. By declaring her intentions so brazenly, Sitri had baited Eydis into her land. By inciting her to take the capital, she had lured the warden into a crowded and unfamiliar city. And by getting the better of her in a duel, she had cornered the old crone into disregarding the honor of tradition in an attempt to achieve victory. This would all be meaningless if she died in a storm of silver bullets, but Sitri had one last card to play. 

At her word, the forces of Nero came under attack. By a few humans, yes; those remaining soldiers that could still defend their home. But that would not have been enough. Instead, the Neros were beset  by nephilim: Not the nobles of any established house, for those were not present, and even if they were, their numbers were small. Sitri had spent her time in Paradise seeking out a different kind of help. 

The common, the lowborn, the gallery of rogues that stalked the heartland of humanity. These creatures had no houses to stand on, no lands or armies or names to protect them. To many humans, they were predators, yet in the grand scheme of things, they were prey. Of noble houses, of the Church, and even humans in aggregate. These were not just those common to the east, either. Vampires, shapeshifters, sirens, gargoyles, lamia, naga, manticore, centaur: there was a satyr, if you could believe it. As I live and breathe. It was, and is, an army unlike any the world has ever seen. With her new power, Sitri had treated with them and brought them under her control. She had spirited them away into the frontier and snuck them into her capital, biding her time and waiting for the perfect moment to unleash them. That happened when Eydis disgraced herself, and I’m told Sitri grinned ear to ear as she gave the order that followed.

They called it The Bloodfall; the end of Eydis Nero. The nephilim massacred the Nero forces, who had been so assured of their position that they allowed themselves to become surrounded. The new ‘special powers’ were anointed in the carnage of would-be usurpers, and there was no end to it. No quarter was given, except to the members of Eydis’ family. Those unfortunate few were brought before Sitri herself. The old warden was broken and bleeding, her perfect victory snatched by the hands of one she considered a child. Supposedly, things quieted, as Sitri stood over her and she pled mercy for her family, if not herself. I wonder if the audacity of the request prompted what happened next, but I doubt it. The Sitri I knew would have known what she was going to do before it ever came to that. She always had a taste for the theatrical. 

She tore out Eydis’ throat with her own fangs, and obliterated what was left. I was not there when Eydis Nero died. I was in the castle, half a city away. Still, I saw it, for the flash of Entropy was so large and so bright that when I covered my face I saw the bones of my hand through my eyelids.

There was nothing left of the Neros in Veridian, and their forces were torn to pieces by a horde the likes of which they were never equipped to deal with. Those nobles that had stood by and allowed them to take control of Lilith’s land turned upon the occupiers in hopes of currying favor with this rising star. It worked only until every man, woman and child of the house was dust in the wind and the Nero lands were subsumed by the very family they had sought to destroy. After that, Sitri entertained the nobles personally, and one after another, the voices of her mother’s court were forever silenced. Castle to castle, she went without pause, returning her betrayers to dust with quiet fury. For she had no need of those that had betrayed her family. Us frail, pitiful mortals had held the line without anything but their spirit, and she would see them rewarded for that service.

Fifteen. That is how many bloodlines were struck from history. The chronicles of these families alone fill an entire wing of the Baal archives. I have read them all, and written the same ending for each. They were exterminated. Lilith Baal became warden at the age of eighty-three and was considered young and untested. Her daughter was less than half that age when she caused the greatest upheaval in the history of the frontier. Sitri Baal declared herself warden of the frontier before the bowing mass of her subjects, human and otherwise and set off for the edge of the world. 

There were many who called it foolish, to face the world itself. Insanity, to some. It certainly is that, but not in the way most mean. History teaches us that things move slowly in this world. Well, Sitri has never had the patience for it, and seems intent to drag the future to her at a more immediate pace. She lashes out with fire and fury, because she recognizes that she has set the world aflame, and that flame enables her to reforge it. Hers is an infectious mania. I see it in her followers, the boys and girls who saw her topple an empire and raise a new one in its place. It is a madness born of unstoppable purpose. We know it as hope, and it gives them the will to do anything to achieve victory.

It is strange now, conversing with her. I do not do so often, yet every time I am reminded of the girl she was. What was it, I wonder, that turned the reckless angry little brat into what she has become? Was it her time in Paradise? Was it the loss of her family? Is it a consequence of her awakening, or was it the catalyst for it? Perhaps it is just my age; I was old when she was born, and have seen far too many decades go by since. Or perhaps that is why she calls upon me so rarely. For all my knowledge, there are some secrets that the nephilim do not share with any servant, no matter how valued. One thing is certain; the change that she experienced will be visited upon the rest of the world. At her hands, it will bend, or it will break. Either way, she believes it will be better for it.

For The Bloodfall was not an end, but a beginning. The first step in the rise of Sitri Baal.

-Journal of Lady Gloria Merrik, ninety-eighth archivist of the venerable House of Baal