**Mortals of [[Hexa Landing]] – Life Beneath the Fang** --- **Overview** [[Hexa Landing]] may be ruled by the undead, but it is lived in by mortals. Traders, artisans, servants, and street-singers fill the alleys, unaware—or willfully ignorant—of the horrors above them. This wiki explores the mortal population, their societal role, why most remain blind to the truth, and what life is like when the sun no longer matters. --- **The Mortal Veil – Life Among Shadows** Most mortals in [[Hexa Landing]] live under the illusion that their city is simply decadent, strange, and ruled by shadowy nobles. Only a minority truly understand that vampires walk among them. **Known Types of Aware Mortals:** - **The Touched** – Commoners who’ve had encounters: lovers of vampires, survivors of attacks, or those who traded secrets for protection. - **The Blood-Fed** – Willing servants, blood dolls, or employees of the Night Courts. They know the truth and accept it for security or pleasure. - **The Red-Bound** – Mortals employed by the Red Ink Guild, Black Castle, or elite houses as accountants, lawyers, guards, or familiars. These few are officially acknowledged by the [[Vein Law]] but have no protections beyond usefulness. --- **Why Most Remain Ignorant** - **[[Vein Law]] Enforcement** – Harsh penalties for revealing vampiric nature, including blood purging or memory erasure by the Red Ink Guild. - **Memory Magic** – Selective memory erasure is used on individuals or small groups who witness vampiric activity. These rituals are targeted, subtle, and often leave behind strange emotional gaps or dreamlike memories. - **Cultural Normalization** – Hexa’s strange customs — night markets, masked balls, curfews — disguise the signs of vampirism as eccentricity. - **Self-Deception** – Many mortals choose not to believe what they see. It is safer not to understand. --- **Daily Life of Mortals** - **District Life** – Mortals cluster in districts ruled by noble houses. Rent, safety, and access to food depend on their proximity to vampire favor. - **Jobs and Trade** – Most mortals work night-shift labor, entertainment, brewing, or services in the blood or memory economy. - **Relocation Fear** – Movement between districts is tightly regulated. Transfers require noble sponsorship. - **Religion and Rumors** – Cults of hope or vengeance arise, some worshipping the Queen as a god, others praying for a dawn that never comes. --- **Why Stay? – Mortal Incentives in the City of Blood** Even for those unaware of the truth, [[Hexa Landing]] is a place of dreams, desires, and opportunity. Its strange rhythms and nocturnal grandeur draw mortals from across the continent, promising more than most cities dare to offer: - **Strategic Benevolence** – Queen [[Callidora]] understands that mortals are not just a necessity for survival, but the foundation of [[Hexa Landing]]’s prosperity. She has worked relentlessly to ensure that Hexa is not merely a den of horror, but a functioning, thriving city. Infrastructure, mortal culture, and trade are upheld to a high standard to attract fresh talent and ensure social stability. While the setting is steeped in gothic dread, there is method to the madness: Hexa thrives because it seduces as much as it feeds. The Queen’s calculated mercy ensures the city functions, and she carefully balances terror with opportunity to keep the mortal heart of Hexa beating. - **The Queen's Protection** – Queen [[Callidora]] Von Constantine is one of the few vampire rulers known to actively shield the mortal population. She enforces strict laws preventing unauthorized feeding, public torment, or predatory abuse. Her word is law, and her wrath against rogue undead is legendary. While she keeps a few personal sex slaves, even they are given comfort, care, and dignity—protected by regulations that forbid cruelty or mutilation. For many mortals, especially the poor or displaced, her rule offers a strange but real form of justice. [[Callidora]] has also commissioned public works, subsidized artisan districts, and opened limited education houses for orphaned or freed slaves. - **Servitude and Status** – The Askaria Empire’s influence has normalized class-based servitude. Slavery is legal, with varying degrees of visibility: public house-slaves may be elegantly clothed or completely nude, depending on the status and taste of their owner. In Hexa, high-ranking mortals and nobles treat such servitude as a status symbol. For some, this normalized hierarchy offers opportunity—owning or managing slaves marks one as successful, and for slaves themselves, proximity to a powerful house can mean safety, luxury, or even favor. This system, while cruel, is familiar to many who arrive from Askaria or the borderlands—and therefore does not repel, but comforts. - **Luxury and Opportunity** – Hexa boasts thriving artisan quarters, exotic markets, and elite salons. A clever mortal can gain wealth and prestige, especially in fashion, performance, or trade. - **Safety in Obedience** – For many, the city is safer than the haunted frontiers or war-torn human kingdoms. Compliance brings protection. - **Cultural Splendor** – Hexa’s public face is enchanting: nightflower parades, masked performances, open-air feasts lit by glowing spores, and alchemical wonders that mesmerize even the skeptical. - **Forbidden Pleasures** – From dream-feeding dens to memory-sharing rituals, Hexa provides experiences found nowhere else. - **A Place to Hide** – Criminals, refugees, and outcasts often find asylum under a vampire’s wing—if they offer something in return. --- **Mortal Culture and Resistance** Some mortals push back against the undead dominance: - **The Hollow Cross** – A secretive faith that teaches vampires are fallen angels. - **Lanternhood** – Smugglers and arsonists who destroy vampire caches and sanctuaries. - **Memorykeepers** – Mortals who preserve erased history through coded stories and ritual tattoos. --- **Cultural Identities and Factions** Hexa’s mortal population is far from monolithic. Culture, occupation, and belief shape distinct groups that define the city’s fragile human soul: - **The Drudges** – The working class: laborers, porters, and cleaners. They live in the outer districts and accept hard, thankless work to survive. Most know little and prefer it that way. - **The Gilded Poor** – Mortals employed by vampire houses in direct service: entertainers, courtesans, dressers, house-servants. Some are envied, others pitied. Their proximity to the undead grants them privilege—but never safety. - **The Marked** – Slaves and indentured mortals. Tattooed or branded with house sigils, their culture emphasizes coded language, body modifications, and storytelling as preservation of identity. - **The Dreamhunters** – Performers, alchemists, and illusionists who sell experiences to both mortals and vampires. Their creed is sensation over truth. - **Veil-Speakers** – Philosophers, poets, and heretics who subtly spread dangerous truths beneath layers of metaphor. Veil-Speakers keep knowledge alive at great personal risk. - **Faithborn** – Mortals aligned to cults or religious orders, from blood-worshippers to secret sun-priests. Their rites shape local customs and underground morality. These groups define how mortals relate to the dark, how they survive, and how they rebel. --- **Notable Mortal NPCs** This section will detail influential, infamous, or representative mortal characters who live beneath the fang: - **Sereth Hallowbane** – A legendary vampire hunter and former Faithborn inquisitor. He vanished for ten years after the massacre at Hollowspire, returning with silver-burn scars and a blade that sings hymns. His mere name causes silence in some vampire salons. - **Ilyra Vance** – Alchemical tactician of the Covenant of Broken Dawn. She designs weapons that dissolve vampire flesh and maps out blood-smuggling routes. Rumored to have once been a courtesan to a vampire duke before burning down his manor. - **Vorrick Bale** – A one-armed executioner who carries his lost hand in a silver jar. Formerly a Red-Bound enforcer, now the ruthless interrogator of the Covenant. Known to stake traitors as readily as vampires. - **Nessa Thornvale** – A wandering puppeteer and folk performer who claims to entertain children, but laces her shows with hidden truths. Rumors say she works with the Memorykeepers, though no proof ties her directly to them. - **Darik Vellum** – A scribe for the Red Ink Guild who sells falsified documents to slaves seeking freedom. Torn between self-preservation and silent rebellion. - **Alwen Mor** – Leader of a Lanternhood cell that operates in the Glowspore Gardens district. Known for her daring use of alchemical fire. - **Tima Croud** – A favored courtesan in the Crimson Ballroom and spy for House Valvane. No one knows who she truly serves. - **Brother Solace** – A faith healer with ties to the Hollow Cross. Preaches redemption to vampires, sometimes to their face. --- **Districts of Mortal Life** Each district in [[Hexa Landing]] offers a unique lens into mortal experience, shaped by the vampire house that oversees it: - **Glowspore Gardens** – A lush night-market district lit by bioluminescent fungus. Known for performance art, pleasure dens, and veiled Lanternhood activity. - **Ashwarren Reach** – A brutal industrial quarter where Drudges toil in steam mills and blood-refineries. Run by House Marquette. - **Petalshade** – A high-caste enclave of courtesans, alchemists, and favored mortals. All beauty, but owned by House Valvane. - **Chimegutter** – An underground slum where the Marked live. Echoes with bells and chain-song rituals. Strange whispers circulate of hidden shrines and outlawed lore, but nothing ever proven. - **The Crimson Promenade** – A central street of parades, festivals, and blood-tithes. Mortals and vampires mix openly under strict curfew laws. --- **Secret Factions and Hidden Societies** Beyond the surface culture, shadowy mortal factions influence life and resistance: - **Lanternhood** – A decentralized network of saboteurs, alchemists, and smugglers who burn vampire lairs and rescue mortals. Organized in cells named after stars. Fire and light are sacred symbols. - **Hollow Cross** – A secret faith that claims vampires are corrupted divine beings. Preaches a return of the 'True Dawn.' Uses hollowed-out holy relics to smuggle scriptures. - **Memorykeepers** – A niche network of archivists who resist magical erasure. Though influential in some circles, they are few in number and tightly isolated. They tattoo historical fragments onto skin and whisper banned lore in rituals. While valuable, their role is more symbolic than widespread—most mortals have never heard of them. --- **The Covenant of Broken Dawn – Vampire Hunters in the Shadows** Though few and rarely trusted, some mortals in Hexa have sworn themselves to the impossible task of vampire slaying. They are known collectively as the **Covenant of Broken Dawn**, a clandestine order of hunters, alchemists, and exorcists who operate under deep cover. - **Leader** – The Covenant is currently led by **Cassien Rael**, a former inquisitor of the Hollow Cross who turned against both vampire and church after witnessing [[the Red Massacre of Grenth Hollow]]. Known for his bone-pale skin, hollow gaze, and ash-drenched robes, Cassien is as much myth as man. He speaks rarely, but when he does, it is said his words cut deeper than any blade. His followers claim he drinks no water, only melted snow gathered under moonlight. - **Structure** – The Covenant of Broken Dawn is cell-based, each group unaware of the others' identities. They rely on smuggled relics, alchemical sunlight, and scavenged lore to wage asymmetric war. - **Recruitment** – Members are often survivors of vampire cruelty, former Faithborn zealots, or rogue Red-Bound. Some are trained from childhood by remnants of ancient knightly orders. - **Tactics** – They focus on sabotage, targeted assassinations, or disrupting blood supply lines. Few confront vampires openly, instead weaponizing their hubris and strict etiquette. - **Status** – Hated by most vampire houses and barely tolerated by the Queen, who unofficially permits their existence so long as they do not target sanctioned nobles. To the people, they are myth, martyrs, or monsters themselves. - **Symbol** – A silver blade bound in crimson silk, often hidden inside a sleeve or carved into the hilt of a blade. --- Mortals are both the lifeblood and cattle of Hexa — a population caught between complicity and captivity. Let me know if you’d like to add notable mortal NPCs, districts, or secret factions.