Brianna Wilson is 25. She grew up in south Georgia in the city of Valdosta. Her father was a pipe fitter and her mother was a waitress. She was considered lower middle class growing up. Her family had a house out near the Air Force base, and many of her childhood friends were the children of fighter pilots.

She wanted out of Georgia, and when she went to college, she went to live with an aunt in Florida and attended the University of South Florida. She double majored in journalism and business. She interned with a few different companies in Tampa while she was in school, and once she was out, she got a job with the Tampa Tribune. She’s been with the Tampa Tribune for two years and she’s now being given assignments of her own.

She’s due to take a vacation soon, to visit her grandfather in France. He’s a caretaker for an old castle in Moulins, and the family is worried because he’s fallen more silent than usual. They suspect he may be developing dementia, as his last letter to them was very strange. She’s promised to check on him and help to get him set up to move to the US if he’s not well.

She’s looking forward to some much needed time off, though. Time she’s not going to have.

While most of the made vampires are nomadic, not often staying in any one territory for more than a few years, born vampires have very strong territorial urges and blunted empathy, guilt, and other emotions, which make relations with other vampires difficult at best. In order to avoid conflict amongst themselves, the vampire families established a council to provide law and order for their kind, as well as settle disputes civilly, without need for bloodshed.

This council, for born vampires and consisting entirely of born vampires, was dubbed the Order of the Red Serpent by the early Church, and from early times has been the target of numerous unsuccessful hunts. The name was taken up by the vampires, and the name has enjoyed more success among the vampires than in the Church, where it has fallen into obscurity. Many of the older members of the council have ruby pins, rings, or other jewelry in the shape of serpents.

Membership in the council is established by a vampire's birth into one of the twenty-one original vampire families. For most families, the father would hand down his membership to his oldest son, in the event of his death. For some vampire familes, whose original vampire ancestor was female, that membership is instead handed down to the oldest daughter. Two families still possess their original vampire ancestors, and those ancestors still man the council. Sixteen of the other seats still remain active. The other seats belong to vampire families whose members have all been lost or are missing.

The Order of the Red Serpent passes laws to regulate vampire society as well as settles disputes between rival families and even disputes among made vampires. These laws are enforced by a police force consisting of lesser members of the major vampire families. Membership in the force is a status symbol as well as a matter of pride, and the council usually has plenty of vampires to enforce its wishes. This police force also deals with security threats from normal humans, such as someone trying to go public with proof of their existence, and even the ocassional hunter.

The Core Laws of the Order of the Red Serpent:

1. Respect the territory of thy equals and thy betters.
2. Thou shalt take care to keep thy blood away from mortals.
3. Thou shalt not create more than one vampire from a mortal every ten years.
4. Thou shalt never allow thy nature to become knowledge of a mortal.
5. Mortal hunters are to be killed, lest thou art to be counted among them.
6. Thou shalt never raise arms towards thy ally.
7. Thou shalt never leave evidence of thy feeding.

Other laws are added and dropped as needed, but the core laws have remained the same since the council first convened.

The Order of the Red Serpent has had its headquarters in Venice since 1347, and the council has maintained a strong presence in the city. The two oldest members of the council maintain their households in Venice. Other members of the council have their main residences scattered around Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Adrien Donatien Jacques de Moulins was born to Vicomte Auguste Benoît de Moulins and Anne-Marie Victoire de Moulins on December 21, 1537. He was the fourth of five children born to the Vicomte before his wife's battle and eventual death of cancer in 1547. Jean-Paul was the oldest of the de Moulins children and inherited his father's hungers at a young age. André was the second oldest, and while he didn't show signs of vampirism until puberty as was normal, he was a bully to his younger siblings. Élise was Adrien's older sister. Of all the de Moulins children, she was the best at hiding what she was, and was the most social of them. Adrien himself was a sickly child, and often spent more time in the library than the fields, nursing one illness or another. His younger sister, Colette, was born frail and succumbed to childhood illness at the age of five, long before the curse in her blood could protect her from such diseases.

The Vicomte was a strict parent, especially once his human wife died. The children, even Élise, had a tutor, Monsieur Laurent, who taught them to read and write and also taught them some of the more advanced subjects. The children were bright, though prone to terrorizing their tutor. Behind their father's back, they terrorized most of the human servants, especially Jean-Paul, who from the age of eight suffered the same hunger and thirst that his father did. Once they were older, their father took more interest in them, especially once they started showing more signs of vampirism. He taught them about magic, the occult, and their history. He also taught them about their nature and how to hunt, once they were far enough along in their change that they needed to learn.

They lived in Moulins until 1567, when the unrest caused by the Wars of Religion spread to Moulins. The de Moulins family were called witches and sorcerers at the best of times, and a Huguenot mob surrounded the castle, demanding the head of the Vicomte. He was decapitated in battle with a soldier who went rogue to help the mob. Jean-Paul and André were held in the castle dungeon until the mob finally decided to burn the two de Moulins captives. Élise was married to a duke abroad and was safely out of harm's way. Adrien alone managed to escape, and enacted a spell to protect the castle and its grounds from fire before he left to live with his sister and her family in Scotland until the furor died down around Moulins.

He returned to Moulins in 1589, pretending to be a son of Élise, and managed to hold onto the de Moulins estate for another 34 years, until the summer of 1623 when suspicion again began to rise regarding the de Moulins estate and its inhabitant. This time, he moved first to England, then took a ship from England to the Massachusetts colonies in 1652. He returned to Moulins from Andover in 1692, during the witch trials, which had again begun to compromise his safety. He lived quietly in Moulins until 1751 when he moved to a house in Paris. There he stayed until 1787, until growing resentment of the upper class and the king prompted a move first back to Moulins, then across the Atlantic to America in 1789 to escape the French Revolution.

Adrien discovered business while he was in America, and used family money to found a successful retail company, Moulins and Trapp, which specialized in European fashion. He was involved in the company with his partner, William Trapp, until the latter's death in 1817. The company was sold and Adrien moved farther north, into Maine, where he lived quietly until 1836, when he again returned to Moulins. He spent the next 90 years traveling between America, Europe, and Moulins, never spending more than five years in any one place. In the 1920s he moved to New York, where he met with figures in organized crime at the time. In 1931, he was suspected in two suspicious deaths at his New York apartment, and he moved back to Moulins to avoid prosecution.

Adrien dropped off the radar for most of the 20th century, presumably remaining in quiet solitude at the Chateau de Moulins until May of 1993, when he abruptly packed most of the remaining possessions in the Chateau de Moulins and moved to a mansion in Tampa, Florida. He was married in 1998, and his wife, Stephanie, gave birth to a his son, Nicolae in 1999. Stephanie later died due to anemia and heart problems, just after the birth of Adrien's daughter, Marie, in 2006. Both children currently attend a private Catholic school in Tampa. Adrien owns a security consulting firm in Tampa, Florida, specializing in corporate and cyber security. The Chateau de Moulins is still in the hands of the de Moulins family, but as it is in ruins now, it is no longer inhabited.