THE NIGHTROADS
Once, long ago, there lived a group of vampires simply referred to as The Seven. The Seven was composed of an amalgamation of powerful covens, vampire families akin to nobility in their land. Among them was the Nightroads — an outlier. Unlike most covens at the time, the Nightroad’s refused to worship the ashes of tradition. They were infamous for accepting more than just vampires under their wing. Shifters, witches, ghosts, and even the stray human found themselves under the group’s protection. It was said that everything the rays of the moon touched would be under their watchful eyes. With the centuries that passed, their influence grew. They saw years of peace, prosperity, and spread past all expectations. However, the coven experienced a shift when ████ took his place at the head of the coven. A man fueled by ambition, he resented tranquility and sought complete compliance and dominion over the other Six. ████ turned to ████████ . . . He whispered pacts into candlelit seas, carved runes into viscera, and called upon ██████████ — a terrible ████ who knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings. Like magic, ████ gained abilities far beyond his own imaginings. In the same vein, some of his kin began to exhibit the same competencies. Enamored with his taste of imperium, ████ he continued to barter blood for each demand, damning his progeny in the process. Horrified, the coven ██ █ ██████ ██ ████ They ███ █ ████ and hid his blight from the rest of The Seven. They hid it from history. Still and all, his sin was inherited like jewelry. Diamonds. Emeralds. Rubies.Isolation. Madness. Blood. █████ curse manifested in many ways — it curled its way deep into the marrow of every Nightroad from the main branch but only bloomed in a few. The telltale sign was the slow growth in prowess after the birth of a particular offspring. That fledgling would also begin to display ███ streaks of hair and ███ eyes, which officially indicated the plague was taking shape yet again. Thus, the coven would, involuntarily, experience the powers ████ worked for at the cost of ████ ███...