I
The Noble Quarter
Wealthy estates and private gardens, joined by ornate bridges. Old money, older families.
Blood has a throne. Time has a price.
A new series
The City
A sixteenth-century city-state built around a royal castle on a raised stone plateau. Every quarter keeps its own hours, its own rules, and its own reasons for the doors being bolted after dark.
Wealthy estates and private gardens, joined by ornate bridges. Old money, older families.
Plazas, taverns and cobbled streets. The one quarter that keeps daylight hours, and pays for it after dark.
Waterways and lantern-lit walkways between the warehouses. Sound carries further than anyone intends.
Gothic cathedrals, bell towers and mausoleums. The bells still keep time for something.
Castle gardens and hedge mazes, where Mira has met her enemies more than once.
The medieval roofline the city's vampires use to cross Velorium unseen.
Fortifications, watchtowers and barracks. Built to keep things out, and useful either way.
Raised above all of it on its stone plateau. Queen Lisa's court, and the city's fixed point.
The Cast
A recurring company rather than a rotating one. They keep their habits between episodes, which is most of the trouble.
Red-haired vampire
Scarlet hair, red and black, and entirely at home whether she is on a throne or loose in the market crowd. Never breaks character — not even mid-advert — and always has the last word, which is usually a threat.
The Queen
Black hair run through with red, and a court lit entirely by candles. Serious, regal and poised — the straight-laced professional the rest of them keep testing, and the one they go to when it has gone too far.
Human
Purple mohawk, tattooed to the throat, and the last person in Velorium who ought to be the sensible one. Reacts in real time to instincts everyone else has stopped apologising for.
Strategist
Works at a desk buried under her own paperwork, with a cigarette and a view of the whole city. Hyper-intelligent, and a menace to any serious discussion once the whisky is out.
Poised
Ivory silk under black lace, white roses at the shoulder and red stones on every chain — the only one in Velorium who wears white and means it. A soft, childlike voice attached to someone entirely serious, which plays beautifully against Nyx's chaos.
Fearless
Small, wide-eyed, and completely unbothered by either fact. Faces down things many times her size and wins by refusing to be impressed — Tiny included.
Enforcer
An enormous man called Tiny, which is the joke, and he has never once been let in on it. Found where the furnaces are, generally standing over someone.
The Antagonist
The dentist. In a city of things with teeth, someone was always going to take an interest in them.
White surgical dress, white gloves, and a drill she has never once put down. Nothing about the outfit was clean when she arrived and none of it is an accident.
She does not come alone. The Jennys are hers — pale masked things in long coats, grinning with a mouthful they were not born with, moving through the districts in numbers.
You see them before you see her, which is the arrangement.
Watch
Everything out of Velorium so far. More as the city produces it.
The city's own band, on a cathedral balcony, playing to whoever is still out.
Mira meets the Jennys among the roses. Nobody blinks.
Ringed in the old cathedral, candles lit, and the white gown no longer white.
The Jennys walk the market in daylight, and the stallholders keep selling.
Aria crosses the district the quick way.
Jenny, up close, enjoying herself.
Chronicles
Recurring formats rather than one-offs — the city keeps making the same kinds of trouble.
The city's own breakfast brand, advertised by people who should not be trusted with a camera or a spokesperson role.
An off-camera interviewer, and Aria answering questions about Velorium as though nobody is going to watch it.
The city's gothic rock band, playing a cathedral balcony above the canals to whoever is still out.
Velorium rising in miniature out of a parchment map, with rather more hidden in it than the districts.
Follow
New scenes, new trouble, and the occasional advert nobody asked for.
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