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The Southern Durists of England
7 years ago
I know I'm making a game about the Durists in the north who held Hadrian's wall against the vampir's men but I was doing some research about their cousins in Shropshire and they sound like the most hardcore badasses of the day.
There had always been an unsteady truce between the Durists and the vampir after the vampir bankrupted the Roman empire attempting to defeat the Durists in Shropshire in an attempt to wipe-out the people that an ancient prophecy foretold would be the Roman empire's undoing. The Durists took pity on the poor starving Romans against the advice of their leaders and negotiated a peace treaty delivering care packages to supplement the diets of the vampir and aid their farms since the vampir had been cut off from their leaders on the continent and had destroyed so much of the natural habitat they had occupied via non-sustainable farming that they were unable to grow food for themselves and had already foolishly eaten all their livestock believing a victory was imminent.
The vampir often promised they would one day defeat the Durists and spent the entire time the treaty was in effect threatening the Durists despite the fact they owed their very existence to them. Many many years later their descendants instigated the events that lead to the English civil war following the Durists' descendants' attempts to establish parliament. This time the vampir attacked the Durists prior to the declaration of battle so they could attack the Durists before they had time to build defences. This action was illegal but was supported by their leaders which caused a controversy that would later lead to the Royalists' supporters abandoning the cause and overthrowing their leaders at the war's end. When the Royalist vampir attacked the Parliamentarian Durists in Shropshire with cannon fire they were all accumulated in the local drinking establishment and were in the middle of singing a traditional song about suckling the breast of their lovers (you can't make this up) when a cannonball flew threw an open window and took out a barrel of Ambrose which was a very expensive and rare mead that only the Durists knew how to brew.
The Durists saw this as a racial attack which threw them into a rage but the men being far too drunk to even walk properly were beaten to the door by the women who proceeded to take out 1000 men each armed with nothing but a bunch of kitchen ware according to reports. The fleeing vampir were reported by both sides as screaming "Dear God save us from these heathen women" as they fruitlessly tried to escape their pursuers.
The Durists would later be defeated by the Royalists but not by the vampir. However the Durists lived on in the form of their Scottish cousins and despite being double crossed by their leaders in Scotland and tried as witches they managed to have many descendants though these people adopted the vampir culture and much of the Durists' ancient knowledge was lost including the process of making Ambrose, many traditional Christmas dishes, cures for many types of poisons, an elixir that prevented the signs of aging, prolonged life expectancy to around a hundred years old (totally unheard-of in those days) and seemingly cured cancer and a huge chunk of the history of early man which included the location of Atlantis as well as many other legendary treasures like the location of a huge gold storage underground that is still yet to be found but historians are convinced it exists.
In case you're wondering my family is descended from one of the very very few Durists that stayed true to the Durist ways and escaped the witch hunts by hiding out in the forest. However their subsequent offspring progressively lost more and more of the old ways down the generations as they integrated into the dominant cultures that lived in the urban environments that sprung up around the area. I only know about the ways of my ancestors myself by researching scraps of Durist culture known to other cultures that lived alongside them as my family themselves have no knowledge of their ways or even their existence. I reckon my love of goats is some sort of throwback gene from my goat herding Durist ancestors that's found its way to me. I guess through the knowledge and research I've accumulated the Durists live on through me. That's quite a daunting prospect as the vampir made huge efforts to wipe them out and there are still some people who are trying to carry out the vampir's wishes today, some of which have seats in power like certain political leaders, some high ranking members of the police force and even some high status military officers. Not the type of people you'd want to piss off by simply existing really.
There had always been an unsteady truce between the Durists and the vampir after the vampir bankrupted the Roman empire attempting to defeat the Durists in Shropshire in an attempt to wipe-out the people that an ancient prophecy foretold would be the Roman empire's undoing. The Durists took pity on the poor starving Romans against the advice of their leaders and negotiated a peace treaty delivering care packages to supplement the diets of the vampir and aid their farms since the vampir had been cut off from their leaders on the continent and had destroyed so much of the natural habitat they had occupied via non-sustainable farming that they were unable to grow food for themselves and had already foolishly eaten all their livestock believing a victory was imminent.
The vampir often promised they would one day defeat the Durists and spent the entire time the treaty was in effect threatening the Durists despite the fact they owed their very existence to them. Many many years later their descendants instigated the events that lead to the English civil war following the Durists' descendants' attempts to establish parliament. This time the vampir attacked the Durists prior to the declaration of battle so they could attack the Durists before they had time to build defences. This action was illegal but was supported by their leaders which caused a controversy that would later lead to the Royalists' supporters abandoning the cause and overthrowing their leaders at the war's end. When the Royalist vampir attacked the Parliamentarian Durists in Shropshire with cannon fire they were all accumulated in the local drinking establishment and were in the middle of singing a traditional song about suckling the breast of their lovers (you can't make this up) when a cannonball flew threw an open window and took out a barrel of Ambrose which was a very expensive and rare mead that only the Durists knew how to brew.
The Durists saw this as a racial attack which threw them into a rage but the men being far too drunk to even walk properly were beaten to the door by the women who proceeded to take out 1000 men each armed with nothing but a bunch of kitchen ware according to reports. The fleeing vampir were reported by both sides as screaming "Dear God save us from these heathen women" as they fruitlessly tried to escape their pursuers.
The Durists would later be defeated by the Royalists but not by the vampir. However the Durists lived on in the form of their Scottish cousins and despite being double crossed by their leaders in Scotland and tried as witches they managed to have many descendants though these people adopted the vampir culture and much of the Durists' ancient knowledge was lost including the process of making Ambrose, many traditional Christmas dishes, cures for many types of poisons, an elixir that prevented the signs of aging, prolonged life expectancy to around a hundred years old (totally unheard-of in those days) and seemingly cured cancer and a huge chunk of the history of early man which included the location of Atlantis as well as many other legendary treasures like the location of a huge gold storage underground that is still yet to be found but historians are convinced it exists.
In case you're wondering my family is descended from one of the very very few Durists that stayed true to the Durist ways and escaped the witch hunts by hiding out in the forest. However their subsequent offspring progressively lost more and more of the old ways down the generations as they integrated into the dominant cultures that lived in the urban environments that sprung up around the area. I only know about the ways of my ancestors myself by researching scraps of Durist culture known to other cultures that lived alongside them as my family themselves have no knowledge of their ways or even their existence. I reckon my love of goats is some sort of throwback gene from my goat herding Durist ancestors that's found its way to me. I guess through the knowledge and research I've accumulated the Durists live on through me. That's quite a daunting prospect as the vampir made huge efforts to wipe them out and there are still some people who are trying to carry out the vampir's wishes today, some of which have seats in power like certain political leaders, some high ranking members of the police force and even some high status military officers. Not the type of people you'd want to piss off by simply existing really.
