Lamia Silvia

         In the middle of the 21st Century, wars became commonplace; biological and nuclear weaponry advanced immensely.  In the year 2157, the crisis came to a head.  Nuclear war broke out, forever scarring the earth and triggering a permanent winter.  In an effort to survive, we began to build underground.

         Unknown to the survivors, an experimental virus was also released.  It spread fast, and with no record of its development, there was no way to stop it.  It mutated its victims’s muscles, making them unnaturally strong and fast, allowing them to see in extremely low light, and slowing — in fact, nearly stopping — the natural degeneration process.  But it also caused severe anemia, requiring direct ingestion of blood in order to maintain their red cell count.  The need was so great that those effected would resort to attacking other living beings just to obtain sustenance.  Myth had become reality — true vampires now hunted among us.

         Somehow, we persisted, despite the dual onslaught of Famine and Pestilence.  We learned to exist in, and even enjoy, the darkness that surrounded us.  After generations spent in a constant state of twilight, the color began to fade from our eyes; all that remained was a pale, ghostly blue tinge.  Oddly, skin pigmentation did not follow suit, though the vivid range of hues that had once existed was much muted.

But humanity was not alone in its transformation.  As the the viral vampirism proliferation continued and the prey learned to fight back, the predators evolved (with the assistance of further mutations of the virus) full sets of fangs as a more efficient means of procuring nourishment.  Unfortunately, their new tools also came with a form of concealment — they were retractable, like the vipers of old, allowing them to easily camouflage themselves as just another part of the masses.