People of the Long Night
The peoples of Long is the Night are, on the surface, simply the peoples of late-eighteenth-century Europe — but every nation, faith, and bloodline has its hidden current.
Nations and Cultures
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Valluvians | Inhabitants of the heartland kingdom of Valluvia — courtly, devout, obsessed with lineage and propriety. Powdered wigs, gilded chapels, and dueling at dawn. |
| Mornavians | A mountainous principality of pine forests and snow-locked villages. Folk-Catholic, deeply superstitious, and the part of the world where vampires are not a metaphor. |
| Iberians | A southern kingdom of cathedrals and inquisitors. The Church here is at its most militant — and its most haunted. |
| The Free Cantons | A loose confederation of merchant cities. Wealthy, skeptical, and full of printers, salons, and Enlightenment philosophes who dismiss what walks at night. |
| The Sublime East | An empire to the east — vast, ancient, and home to traditions older than Rome. Travelers from here are regarded with both fascination and suspicion. |
| The Romani | Wanderers of every land and citizens of none. They remember what others have chosen to forget, and they carry charms that actually work. |
Bloodlines
Some old families have grown… strange. The Church has files on them. The hunters keep their own.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| House Vargheist | An ancient Mornavian line. Pale, beautiful, never seen by daylight. Their estate at Castle Karnstein has stood for nine hundred years. |
| House de Saint-Cyr | Valluvian aristocracy with a curiously short list of recent funerals and a curiously long list of disappeared servants. |
| The Sanguinari | A whispered name. Said to be the oldest of them all, and to be the source of all others. |
Faiths and Orders
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| The Church | The dominant faith — vast, political, fractured. Its relics genuinely repel the dark, but its leadership is more interested in power than in salvation. |
| The Order of Saint Severin | A militant clerical order sworn to hunt the strigoi — the undead. Officially disbanded in 1742; very much still operating. |
| The Cunning Folk | Village-level folk practitioners — wise women, hedge witches, charm-makers. The Church tolerates them only because the peasantry would riot if it didn't. |
| The Illuminated | A secret society of Enlightenment thinkers who believe the supernatural is a problem to be solved. Their methods are not always more humane than the things they hunt. |
| The Sanguine Communion | A heretical cult that worships the vampires as saints. Larger than anyone admits. |