THE SANTACARLINOS

Santa Carla is an archipelago southwest of the Old World, vast enough to be mistaken for a continent by anyone required to sail around it. Its temperate climate, mild winters, and three growing seasons produce fertile islands of farms, orchards, vineyards, and prosperous ports. Its shipyards produce the most advanced vessels in the known world.

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Two centuries ago, Captain Hermenegildo sailed from these islands and discovered the New World. There he awakened an ancient evil and returned bearing immortality. He called himself San Hermenegildo, conquered the archipelago through violence and the promise that others might share his gift, and became the father of vampirism.

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The immortal rulers of Santa Carla are known collectively as Los Santos. A male ruler bears the title San and a female ruler Santa. Their courts are elegant, educated, patient, and absolute. Mortal rulers plan for the reigns of their heirs. A vampire may continue the same policy until every person who remembers opposing it has become a portrait.

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Santacarlino citizens are well fed, protected, and cared for by the standards of much of the Old World. They are also property. They must work, pay taxes, defend their masters, produce future subjects, offer worship, and provide blood. Santa Carla demonstrates that a cage may be clean, comfortable, and beautifully maintained without becoming a home.

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Vampire worship is the official faith, though it grants no divine spells or sacred power. Churches are constructed from the bones of deceased worshippers, and the greatest shrine is made from the skulls of those consumed by their masters. Los Santos call this union beyond death. The dead have offered no comment.

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Something older and worse lies beneath the islands. The demon lord Orcus is believed to dwell within or below Santa Carla. Neither his name nor vampirism was known in the Old World before Hermenegildo returned from his voyage. This coincidence requires a heroic commitment to optimism to dismiss.

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Resistance survives through La Orden de San Hércules. Its paladins, knights, and clerics claim Hercules descended from Mount Olympus after the final crusade and fought beside them for a year and a day. Whether every detail is literal matters less than the fact that the Order continues to resist an immortal empire that has spent two hundred years trying to erase it.

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Many young Santacarlinos seek escape upon the very ships their masters perfected. They become sailors, mercenaries, adventurers, and pirates throughout the Old World and beyond it. Santa Carla possesses fertile soil, magnificent cities, unmatched fleets, and rulers who may never die. Its greatest export remains people willing to risk death for the unfamiliar experience of belonging to themselves.

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—Lantern of the Thirteenth Word