Heilong Yu

Heilong Yu was the Empress of China during the Heilong Period, as well as the head of the Cult of Shenlong Shangdi from 1890 BC until her first death in 1600 BC. Yu took control of the Heilong holdings in China through a murder of her husband, Gao, and thus became the first authority figure in a vampire state who was born of gene splicing, rather than being a vampire by species.

Heilong Yu brought the state that was established by her predecessor into a more centralized state by transferring local power away from appointed warlords, and into the hands of local Dragon Priests, who answered to her directly.

The Conquests of Heilong Yu brought a significant amount of peoples once considered to be dangerous rivals to China under the control of the Chinese themselves. Yu pushed a significant amount of people out of China and into South-East Asia as well, with some others being wholly exterminated by her conquests.

The fact that Yu was born to the Yin tribe allowed the Yin to gain a political foothold that led to their high position that caused the step-son of Yu, Heilong Sui, to recruit them into his plot to take power. However, their betrayal would lead to the establishment of China's Shang Dynasty.

While Yu was known as a brutal ruler in her time, she had gained a significant following among some vampires in China for her efficient leadership and her military success, leading to a cult being formed around her image, who believed her to be the reincarnation of the dragon god Shenlong.

Yu would later return to life in the Middle Ages to depose of the pretender Dyrantis the Greek, who laid claim to the Heilong Dynasty. Yu enlisted the help of local leaders to destroy him and dismantle his army, but Yu decided that he current moment was not suited to her return, and thus named a successor to herself in the form of Élysabeth d'Athènes before retiring into a meditative state in a cave in the Valley of the Dark Lords in Armenia.

Lineage
Yu was descended from the Yin Tribe, a family of Early Sinitic peoples who were found in the area of the city of Anyang, at that time known as Yin, after the tribe themselves. Yu was born of a lower branch of the tribe, to father named Shang who was a rice farmer.

Early Life
Born as Yin Yu, Yu was the child of a rice farmer in the settlement of Yin. Little is known about her early life other than that her mother died in childbirth shortly after her own birth, dying along with one of her would be siblings. Yu spent most of her childhood working in the rice fields of her father's allotted land. As per the agreements of the Yin with the Heilongs, Gao demanded a bride from the tribe themselves to show their loyalty to him. As a result, the young Yu, due to her low position within the tribe, was given away to Gao as tribute.

As a wife of Gao, the then 10 year old Yu was subject to the Gene Splicing that would make her into a vampire. The process took 20 years to complete, and in that time, Yu was often too weak to leave the palaces of Yin. She was known, however, to wander around the palace and watch the actions of the residents and the workers in Gao's employment and slavery.

In her teenage years, Yu found herself the object of the sexual advances of her stepson, Heilong Sui, who was roughly the same age as her, and saw that she was of no interest to his father, despite being his wife. Sui often pressured, if not outright forcing Yu into sexual contact with him, leading her to seek out a refuge away from him.

Induction into the Cult of Shangdi Shenlong
Seeking a place to hide from Sui, Yu found the nearby temples of the state-sponsored religious cult, in worship of the Dragon God, Shangdi Shenlong (Chinese for 'the Highest Lord, the Dragon Spirit"). Yu came to spend her time in observation of the Dragon Priests, who took notice of her as well.

Yu came to attract the interest of the Saka born Dragon Priest only known as Kong. Kong saw potential for the young vampire and invited her to do tasks for the temple, before assigning her to be his assistant in rites. Yu soon showed strong potential with magic, and Kong saw it fit to induct her into the priesthood immediately.

Yu's potential with magic and her natural talents in conducting rites and sacrifices caused her to shoot up the ranks rapidly, soon becoming a head priestess out of a mix of her own abilities and her high social status.

When Gao disinherited Sui due to the discovery of his incestuous actions, the successor to Gao became apparent in the fact that Yu had taken on a massively important position in society.

Assassination of Gao and Usurpation of Empire
With Yu nominated as successor, Kong and Yu formulated a plan on how to be rid of Gao, and bring the high Priesthood into a government position. At a massive sacrifice, Kong snuck a drug into the wine of Gao, while Yu laced his medications with raw mercury. The drug made Gao sick, who returned home to take medications to alleviate his illness, only to die from mercury poisoning.

Yu assumed power immediately and had the Dragon Priests round up all vassals suspected to be disloyal, and had them publically executed by boiling as a sacrifice to Shenlong as an apology for tolerating such treacherous individuals in her government.

Conquest of Ordos
The two brothers Yokaqo and Arktahan, who were jointly in command of a large alliance of tribes in Ordos, saw the time to continue the conquests of their father, and push into China. While the Ordos were able to reach a significant ways into China, Yu and her armies met them at the  Battle of Xiashang in 1867 BC, where Yu was able to defeat the two brothers and drive them back over the Yellow River into Ordos, where she had her armies follow them, and lead a direct invasion of their territory. Yu ordered the Chinese to burn the land and kill all men and horses they found. Yu's brutal invasion culminated in the deaths of Yokaqo and Arktahan, who were slain in battle, and the bringing of Ordos under Chinese authority. The war earned Yu the title of 'Demon of Ordos'.

Dragon Theocracy
Under Yu, the Dragon Priesthood assumed a more direct role in governance, reporting directly to Yu and carrying out her orders. The Dragon Priests promoted the word of Yu as being that of the word of Shenlong itself, creating a mythos that Yu was the dragon god on earth.

Yu created the first true centralized government in China this way, stripping powers away from the mostly autonomous warlords set up by Gao.

Under the Dragon Theocracy, Yu had all local warlords dealt with in an infamous ceremony. Yu had the Dragon Priests gather the warlords into a single palace in Yin, where she was to address their grievances. Instead, Yu used her magic to rip their souls out of their bodies, and bound them to her signature axe, giving the artifact immense power, creating the Axe of Heilong.

Yu would experiment with soul binding further, learning that she was able to bind a portion of her soul to the axe as well, allowing her to survive beyond a potential death.

War with the Baiyue
Yu demanded that the Baiyue, a collection of peoples to the south of China, cease their attacks on her lands. When the Yue refused, Yu declared war on them and demanded that the Yue be completely exterminated as an example to those who would refuse her. The sheer brutality with which Yu killed the Yue was such that a collection of Yue banded under the leader known as Bak Kue, who organized opposition to Chinese forces. Eventually, Yu defeated Bak Kue, and had him captured and paraded around China, before having him skinned and burned to death. Yu then is said to have made a coat of his skin due to her intrigue with his unique tattoos.

First Death
Yu's step-son, Sui, sought the throne for himself, and thus conspired with Yu's tribesmen, the Yin, to help him in killing her. Sui convinced the patriarch of the Yin tribe, Yin Jiang to kill Yu, which he did so by getting her drunk on mead, and then locking her in a box, which was thrown into the bonfire in the center of the drinking hall. After Yu's death, Sui was killed by the Yin and the tribe took control of China as the Shang Dynasty. In an attempt to distance their association with vampires, the Shang ordered the expulsion and death of all vampires in China. Those vampires who were loyal to Yu, however, recovered the iron sarcophagus in which she was trapped, and dragged it to the land of Pamir, where the vampires of Asia would hide for the next few centuries.

Posthumous Manipulation
Yu was, unknown to her servants, still active in her axe. In her barely sapient state, Yu was able to create a rift among the vampires, and encouraged a small number of them to move west.

These vampires would come across the lands of Scythia, and settle on the Crimean Peninsula, that was until the coming of the Greeks, who mostly wiped out the Crimean Vampires, and took their loot for themselves, Including Yu's sarcophagus and her axe.

The King that used the axe, Mithriades, was a brutal despot who routinely liked to execute his prisoners with the exotic weapon, the blood slowly bringing Yu's soul back into its full intellectual faculties, and whispering into his mind to seek out greater chaos and death. Yu found human minds easier to manipulate, and her whispering lead to the Madness of the Black Sea, when seemingly all the Greeks of Crimea were reduced to bloodthirsty savages, with wars breaking out, murder and violence in the streets, and the complete collapse of social order. Hundreds of Greeks returned to Greece, with the Black Sea colonies being deemed failures. One of these returning Greeks was a trader named Orestes, who brought the Axe back for trade, and sold it to a wealthy collector in the city of Sybaris.

However, Sybaris would soon find itself destroyed and sacked by the people known as the Bruttii. The Bruttii, an Italic people, would become entranced by the artifact, said to speak to its holder. A group of Bruttii held onto the weapon, forming an underground cult in worship of the being who claimed to live within the artifact, who told them of ancient history, and of her own powers.

When the Romans arose and conquered the whole of the Italian Peninsula, the Cult remained, with members not only of Bruttii origin but Latins, Oscans, Greeks, and Gauls among its ranks. The cult called itself Cultus Draconis Negri, The Cult of the Black Dragon. The members used a language descended from Bruttian for its sacred rites, which would be known as Denwa.

After the Black Dragon was found to be involved in acts of human sacrifice, Imperial authorities sought to destroy the cult, with surviving members relocating to Dacia.

In Dacia, Yu, who was essentially speaking through her axe to all to hear, used her magic to turn 3 cultists in to vampires, and give them tasks before killing themselves in autosacrifice so that she could revive in her physical form. The Tasks were to build an army of vampires, conquer as much land as they could, and put down all rebellion so that Yu could return.

Yu's servants did as commanded, however one never returned to sacrifice himself, instead making himself the new ruler of the empire. Yu, in anger, had her cultists sacrifice themselves to her so that she could return and kill Dyrantis.

Rebirth
Yu revived herself in 908 AD when the empire was under significant problems. Dyrantis had proven a bad leader and the Neo-Heilongs in the East, who arose out of Pamir only a mere 100 years before the foundation of the Black Empire, had driven aggressive steppe nomads into Europe.

Yu enlisted the help of a local warlord, Volodymyr, who sought help in driving out the Turkmens, a nomadic tribe that had taken most of his land and made it unusable. Yu helped him, only to be betrayed when he planned to have his Rus warriors kill him. Yu did, however, betray him as well, turning the Turkmens out on his soldiers. Yu had gained the respect of the Turkmens and used them to wage war on Dyrantis, before breaking into his palace in Constantinople and killing him. All the while, Yu realized a problem. In her time of preparation, most of the Empire was now fragmented and in the hands of powerful new states, such as the Latin Empire and the Anatolian Kingdoms. Yu realized that the time had been wrong to revive, and thus needed a herald to pave the way for her once again.

Training Lys and Exile
It was at this time that Yu found and trained the young Lys, who had wandered away from Athens. The two trained for some time until Yu felt that she had shown enough potential with magic. Thus Yu was to go into exile until her time was to return. Yu sealed herself in a cave in Armenia, within the Valley of the Dark Lords, until time came for her to return.

Traits and Personality
Yu was well know for being highly draconian in her rulership, routinely sacrificing those she deemed problems to her Dragon God as a means to get rid of them. Yu instituted widespread human sacrifice in her domains, both as a means of population control, and a way to increase her own power with a constant stream of human souls.

Yu considered life to be cheap, and that humanity was expendable as there would always be more of them being made every second. Yu saw human souls as little more than batteries for her magic.

Yu had a fascination with the occult and with magic that tied into her natural curiosity. Yu was famous for spying on the behavior of the nobility and the priesthood, even as an adult, and was obsessed with what lay beyond the observable. Yu's mysticism led to her having routine visions of the dragon god Shangdi Shenlong, who is said to have informed her of the magic of soul binding and resurrection. Some say this may have been nothing more than hallucinations caused by her exposure to mercury as an alchemist.

Yu had little tolerance for betrayal and treachery. As shown when she had the vassals of Gao who plotted against her boiled alive in oil, or when she cut Volodymyr's feet off in her confrontation with him.

However, Yu was shown to have a softer side, as the diaries and psalms of Lys detail the mutual love the two had in their time training.