Vladimir's kingdom
Vladimir the Conqueror is the most infamous and hated vampire in Scarterra's history.
Vladimir created dozens of vampires, and these vampires created more vampires who created more vampires. At the peak of the so called Era of Vampires, it's estimated that there were somewhere between one thousand and two thousand vampires of Vladimir's lineage on Scarterra. Vladimir claimed millions of subjects and two thousand vampires cannot keep ten million plus humans in life by naked force.
Despite some accounts, Vladimir did not want destroy the human race or wash the world in his undead minions. Vladimir's made a declaration that vampire rule was good for the human race and that he would actually elevate humanity. In supposed his utopia, only criminals would be fed on. Few believed this because Vladimir's definition of what constitutes a criminal was vague. TO his credit, there were multiple confirmed accounts of Vladimir harshly disciplining his vampires for unauthorized feeding.
While his top lieutenants were all vampires, most of Vladimir's midlevel and low level bosses were ordinary humans and the overwhelming majority of his soldiers and servants were ordinary humans.
Vladimir tired to elevate a human aristocracy and rewarded them generously to win their loyalty. After Vladimir's death, a lot of his human collaborators were rounded up and brutally executed, some by religious inquisitions and government sanctioned justice, but all too often by unruly mobs of vigilantes. Historians believe that more of the few of the victims from these purges were innocent or at least had their supposed crimes trumped up.
To manage his massive and growing realm, Vladimir established a system of interlocking feudal obligations.
While few Scarterrans admit it, most feudal nations today are modeled after the system that Vladimir created.
It's also worth noting that the continents of West Colassia and Umera have very well entrenched and wide spread feudalism while East Colassia and Penarchia have far less solid feudal traditions. It is not a coincidence that Vladimir focused most of his efforts on conquering West Colassia and Umera first while only sending what were essentially expeditionary forces to East Colassia and Penarchia.
Structure
Vladimir was king and claimed all of Scarterra as his fiefdom (reaching about a third of Scarterra at his peak).
Vladimir's top lieutenants were arch dukes, who had the fealty of duke who had the fealty of counts who had the fealty of barons. Everyone, from Baron up through Vladimir had personal knights.
Every feudal position came with land.
History
Vladimir gathered power in secret for centuries quietly subverting many powerful human nobles before moving out into the open and declaring his openly intentions of world domination.
Demography and Population
While Vladimir planned to dominate all mortals on Scarterra, Vladimir planned to conquer humanity first and then mop up the others. He only went after non-humans that specifically got in his way.
Most but not all demi-humans did their own cultural equivalent of staying home and boarding up the doors and windows. After Vladimir's defeat, this would cause racial tensions for centuries to come as humans were mad their supposed friends did nothing, or worse seemed to sell them out to vampires.
To their credit, the gnomes of Scarterra almost universally opposed Vladimir's regime. While they rarely took up arms, they were instrumental in setting up the alliances which eventually took him down and they were the main couriers for secret messages between disparate allied groups.
Territories
At his peak, Vladimir controlled roughly half of West Colassia and Umera while establishing footholds in Penarchia, East Colassia and what is the island that is now called Khemarok.
Military
Vladimir had a massive conventional army made up of well trained and well-equipped human soldiers with a wide variety of weapons and styles of fighting.
Vladmir's vampire minions would mostly stage guerilla style raids at night to sew general terror and confusion among their enemies, assassinate leaders, or sabotage enemy supply lines.
Technological Level
Due to handpicking his direct vampire offspring for merit, Vladimir had the best wizards, engineers, generals, alchemists, and sages humanity had to offer at the time.
One of the positive repercussions of Vladimir's attempt to take over the world is that it spread knowledge. One of the benevolent gestures he made for public relations was set up free schools (though admittedly there was plenty of "obey Vladimir!" indoctrination mixed in with legitimate knowledge.
Foreign Relations
While Vladimir had several warlords join him initially (all at once in a pre-planned move) and Vladimir had spies and saboteurs to undermine the most powerful nations he could not subvert entirely, eventually Vladimir had more enemies than he could handle where it almost turned into Vladimir versus the entirety of Scarterra.
Vladimir made his initial move when a lot of major Scarterran political powers were at war with each other. Vladimir sorely underestimated how quickly the warring factions could make peace and unite against them. Ditto for the competing priesthoods. They major priesthoods were able to put aside their preexisting issues surprisingly well to take on the threat Vladimir posed. Even the normally undead friendly Children chose to remain neutral and did not take advantage of the chaos of the vampire wars to strike at their traditional rivals.
He also faced opposition from many rival vampires, both within his own lineage and without.
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Type
Geopolitical, Empire
Leader
Head of State
Head of Government
Government System
Monarchy, Constitutional
Power Structure
Feudal state
Economic System
Traditional
Currency
Judicial Body
Feudal lords had authority over their own lands. It was possible, but rare that a feudal superior could overrule the judicial rulings of their vassals.
Executive Body
Feudal lords and their knights were the main enforcers of Vladimir's laws.
Location
Official Languages
Comments