From the Journal of Faris Khan
I have walked this city long enough to see the skeleton beneath the velvet. The system presents itself as art, hierarchy, necessity—but it is only appetite with manners. At the top sits Dracula's Ebon court and The Infernal Musketeers. Then under that the Ascendancy, calling themselves custodians of an eternal performance, as if eternity requires costumes and stage directions. They crown themselves with titles—the Diva and the Maestro—one to be adored, one to be obeyed, and both insulated from consequence. In the Torah it is written that kings are warned against multiplying horses, wives, and silver, lest their hearts turn away. In the Gospel, Christ overturns tables and names the transaction itself a corruption. In the Qur’an, Pharaoh is condemned not merely for tyranny, but for claiming authorship of order. Here, the Ascendancy claims all three sins at once: hoarding power, staging cruelty, and calling it harmony.
The Principals—those dukes and ministers who style themselves as lead performers—are not rulers but curators of suffering. They do not ask whether something is just; they ask whether it is memorable. They govern sustenance, law, war, and culture with the same poisoned measure: does it sustain the Opera? In the Qur’an, God says He created life and death to test which of us is best in deed—not which is most entertaining. The Principals invert this completely. Deeds are irrelevant; display is everything. The Supporting Cast of lesser vampires are trapped in the lie that proximity to power is purpose. They enforce, they feed, they posture—terrified of becoming boring. Even their immortality is leased, contingent on remaining useful to a narrative that despises them.
The Iron Dusters deserve particular contempt. They are told they are protagonists, when they are merely punctuation. Their oath strips them of light, name, and future, and they wear this erasure as virtue. In the Bible, the soldier is warned not to confuse obedience with righteousness. In the Qur’an, killing an innocent is likened to killing all mankind. The Dusters are trained to forget both warnings. They are rewarded for efficiency, not judgment—taught that anonymity is purity. They enforce sanity pacts and blood taxes as if these were laws of nature, not choices made by bored immortals. When they hesitate near silver, it is not fear of the metal—it is fear of remembering that weakness exists in their masters.
Below them, the Artisans and Chroniclers labor to transform pain into architecture and history into propaganda. The artisans sculpt flesh and compose agony with the pride of craftsmen, forgetting that skill does not absolve intent. The Chroniclers are worse. They do not merely lie; they curate truth until it suffocates. The Qur’an warns against those who conceal testimony, for their hearts are sinful. The Bible speaks of whitewashed tombs—clean on the outside, rot within. These Chroniclers are both: immaculate ledgers filled with carefully murdered facts. They decide which lives mattered, which deaths were instructive, and which rebellions never happened.
The human strata is presented as opportunity, but it is only rationed dignity. The Willing are praised as favored, yet they are livestock taught to smile before the knife. The Skilled are tolerated so long as they do not falter, their comfort a lease renewed nightly. The Functionaries are unseen, treated as part of the plumbing—noticed only when something leaks. The Audience is drugged, distracted, and drained, fed entertainments to keep despair from cohering into anger. The Broken are not criminals; they are sacrifices, consumed publicly to remind the rest of their place. In all of this, I hear the Qur’anic condemnation of those who weigh with false scales, and the Biblical curse upon cities that grind the poor while singing hymns.
And there are the outsiders—the demons and abyssal interlopers—used as spectacle and tool. Even Hell is subcontracted here, reduced to a special effect. This is perhaps the most blasphemous inversion of all. In Islam, even Iblis is bound by divine decree; in Christianity, demons tremble before judgment. Here, they are leased, costumed, and thrown into arenas like animals. The Ascendancy believes this proves mastery. It proves only that they mistake containment for sovereignty.
I used to wonder why the High Court of Constantinople felt less like a government and more like a pit of vipers mating. Now I know. The humans in the slums cling to marriage like a raft in a storm—a desperate attempt to not die alone. The vampires? They see that raft and set it on fire.
To the Ascendancy, "marriage" is a dirty word, a crutch for the mortal soul. But irony is a flat circle with these leeches. They don't marry for love, but they do bind themselves in what they call Sanguine Pacts. It’s a grotesque parody of a wedding. No vows of sickness and health here—just public declarations of Mutually Assured Destruction. I’ve seen the rituals. They use blood magic to stitch their psyches together. It’s a checks-and-balances system designed by sadists: if one spouse feels pleasure, the other might feel pain. They become each other's jailers. They don't bond to build a life; they bond to consolidate territory, merge curses, or breed "better" monsters to turn.
And their "Nobility"? It’s not inherited. It’s curated. You want to be a Duke in this city? You don't need a bloodline; you need a portfolio of suffering. It’s not enough to kill; you have to make the death memorable. The entire social ladder is built on an ecosystem of excuses—the weak believe they deserve servitude because they lack the "vision" for cruelty, and the strong believe they are gods because they’ve amputated their humanity.
Then there is the apex. The Rule of Half. The Diva and The Maestro. They sit at the top not because they are the strongest individually, but because they are the only entities in this damn city who figured out how to share power without stabbing each other in the back. They achieved a perfect equilibrium—her Beauty, his Terror. It’s the only "true" union in Constantinople, and frankly? It scares the hell out of everyone else. It proves that absolute power requires partnership, and that is a price most of these narcissists are too selfish to pay. One known Diva is @Alice, who seems more calm that others who held that title. There are a total of 4 Divas and 4 Maestros. There are 2 in the Ascendancy and 2 within the Ebon Court.
And finally, the Resistance—the so-called discordant note. They are accused of refusing their cues, as if refusing to be devoured were bad manners. In truth, they are the only ones who still believe the world is answerable to something higher than appetite. The Qur’an speaks of those who stand for justice even against themselves. The Bible praises the remnant who refuses to bow. The Resistance is not a movement; it is a memory that has not been edited yet.
This hierarchy survives by convincing each layer that someone below deserves their fate and someone above is untouchable. It is an ecosystem of excuses. But every scripture I have read—every law worth keeping—agrees on this: a system that requires the humiliation of the many to amuse the few is already condemned, whether or not the sun ever returns.