Editing Vampire Broods (section)

===A History Written in Blood===

When the galaxy was shrouded in the darkness of the [[Age of Strife|Old Night]] the first Vampires crept from the darkness.  As with many things the difference between history and myth is greatly muddled in the Vampire’s origins.  However, in the legends held upon rotting scrolls and crumbling dataslates there is one myth more common than any other.

Long ago a cabal of humans known as the Immortal Ones sought a means of eternal life.  In their quest they committed untold atrocities, descending further into desperation and madness, yet the secrets of eternity eluded them.  Until one day, upon a rotting world beneath a sunless sky, they found a nightmarish xeno-monster of immense power.  This creature, who referred to herself as the Dark Mother, was an undead horror, her alien “biology” unliving yet undying.  She had been alone for millennia, her people exterminated by the Lightbearers, cursing her with eternal isolation.

And so the two evils struck an unholy pact: in exchange for Dark Mother’s undying blood, the so-called Ichor, the Immortal Ones agreed they would become her children and slaves forever more, and together they would come to rule the stars.  Through arcane science and bloody sacrifice the secrets of deathlessness were unlocked from the Ichor of the Dark Mother, and the they willingly took the curse into their flesh and souls.  The Immortal Ones became the first Vampires, and with their Dark Mother carved an empire from the anarchy of the Age of Strife.  Within their Realm of Night they enslaved humans to feast upon like cattle while driving them to construct unholy monuments to their insidious glory.  In time they learned how to pass the Ichor onto new host through the freshly dead, and so propagated the first Bloodlines of the Vampire.  For millennia the Vampires and the Dark Mother gorged themselves upon the blood of Man, their dark domain ruling many stars and sowing untold misery for Mankind.

But at last did salvation break over these benighted worlds, for the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] at the head of his [[Great Crusade]] saw this wretched domain and deemed it beyond redemption.  The war between the Emperor and the Dark Mother was apocalyptic, but ultimately the Emperor proved mightier, casting down this evil domain and putting it all to the torch.  Yet some Vampires escaped the righteous onslaught and fled into the void, hiding among the shadows of many worlds.  Slowly, silently, they wormed their way into the new Imperium that mankind had built, becoming a dark cancer in its very heart.