Frankenstein's Legions

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Frankenstein's Legions

A Brief History of the Thanatonic Revolution

 In 1818, a young Swiss scientist by the name of Victor Frankenstein did the unthinkable: by applying a powerful electric current to a body he had assembled piecemeal from stolen corpses, he actually succeeded in artificially creating life. In the basement of that secluded laboratory, the creature rose off the cold stone slab, tore the wires from its flesh, and stood fully-conscious before its creator. A man weaker is his convictions would have been horrified by what he saw and fled for his life, but Victor was driven, intoxicated by the power that lay at his fingertips. He taught and educated his creation, who fittingly named Adam, and it was only a matter of weeks before the creature became his new assistant. Over the next five years, the two of them continued their experiments in revivification and galvanism, pushing the boundaries of what they could reanimate: everything from individual limbs and organs to hulking constructs that were the product of multiple corpses grafted together. The scientist even created a bride for Adam, rightly named Eve, who was created from only the most beautiful and well-preserved parts. In future decades, the undead couple would become the public face for what Victor Frankenstein himself gave the poetic name of 'Promethean technology'.

When he finally released his findings at a scientific convention in Zürich in 1823, he shocked the assembled crowds; it was said that even the aging Count Alessandro Volta himself was in awe of what the young man created. A firestorm of discussion and controversy erupted across Europe, with the practical and scientific applications as well as the philosophical and moral ramifications of these new 'Prometheans' the center of debate and the subject of choice in salons from Paris to Vienna. No one could deny, however, the usefulness of the technology; it was not long before the governments of every nation in Europe was offering Frankenstein enormous sums of money for the secrets of his process and tasking the finest scientific minds with developing Prometheans of their own. Singlehandedly, a once-unknown chemist from Geneva and his undead assistant had ushered in a new era that would soon threaten to consume the continent: countless terms were coins for it, but the most enduring sobriquet was the Thanatonic Revolution.

Other brilliant minds followed, as unfettered by the constrains of ethics and convention as Frankenstein had been. To them, the future of science and industry lay not with the living, but with the dead. Having already mastered the art of manipulating the now-ubiquitous medium of corpseflesh, the scientists and philosophers turned their attention to exploring and harnessing the dead in less-corporeal forms; that is, ghosts, spectres, and the like. Their work blurred the boundaries between the scientific and the metaphysical even more than Frankenstein's had, a frantic search for not only how to attract deceased souls from whatever realm they inhabited but how to give them some manner of substance in the physical world. A breakthrough was finally reached by a group of scientists working in Paris who succeeded in summoning the spirit of one of their number; he had bravely ingested a lethal dose of cyanide in order to provide the experiment with a subject instantly recognizable by his fellows.

Perhaps the most radical and polarizing discovery since Frankenstein's original work and the invention of Prometheans themselves was made by the young German philosopher and scientist Heinricherson Faust. By combining modern scientific process and traditional occultism to an unprecedented degree, he did something beyond unthinkable: he not only evoked a demonic entity from the depths of Hell itself, he successfully bound it within a sigil-etched flask filled with the inert, gaseous substance aether. Many immediately renounced Faust's work as unethical, even outright evil, and there was not a single religious institution that did not universally renounce him as insane at best and a heretic at worst. Along with other like-minded occultists, he persisted, summoning and trapping more demons over the course of several months. In his notes, he divided them into two categories: the Demons of Motion, who could physically interact with their surroundings, and the Demons of Ideation, who projected thoughts and ideas and could even possess mortal if not properly restrained. It was only when Faust demonstrated the superiority of a revolver that had a demon bound within it, which could fire at blinding speeds and never ran out of ammunition so long as it was greased with fat of a newborn lamb, to a group of Prussian generals that his work enjoyed the same manner of widespread, albeit tentative, support that Frankenstein and his other successors enjoyed.

In the wake of the Thanatonic Revolution, some changes came unbidden to Europe, revealing themselves of their own accord. The most infamous of these came from the far southeastern corner of the Austrian Empire, from the previously-unknown region of Transylvania. The local prince that ruled there, known to his subjects as Count Dracula, had long been seen as a sinister, suspicious figure, attracting much negative attention when he travelled abroad. This reputation, as it turns out, was well-deserved, for while visiting Queen Victoria with his family, he revealed himself to be what many had quietly suspected him of being: a vampire, an ancient and incredibly-powerful one. Taking the cue from their de-facto spokesman, vampiric communities across the continent cast off their disguises and stepped into the light, metaphorically-speaking. There was a massive outcry in most countries and vampires throughout Europe were the targets of countless witch-hunts and mob attacks. Many of their number held positions of great influence in Europe's political, academic, and religious institutions, and it was not long before they had permanently cemented themselves in public society. In countries with democratic governments, pro-vampire bills and measures were swiftly voted in; in countries without, resistance was more likely to be crushed by military means. The greatest example of this undead dominance of government was is the Russian Empire, where the Tsar of All Russias and his entire family voluntarily became vampires themselves, much to the dismay of their subjects.

Going hand-in-hand with the revelation of the existence of vampires was that of the werewolves and other such beasts that also prowled Europe's moonlight countrysides. Lacking the widespread organization of the bloodsucking kin, the process was a far more gradual one; many simply saw the increased acceptance of the otherwise-nightmarish Thanatonic Revolution as a sign that they could show themselves more openly. Reactions were mixed; more often than not, fearful mobs attacked the theiranthropes, to use the technical term, only to be torn to shreds themselves. Of all the nations in Europe, England and Prussia were the most accepting of the creatures, but for very different reasons. The English believed themselves to be highly egalitarian and viewed the acceptance of werebeasts in much the same way as the abolition of slavery. The Prussian Empire, the so called 'army with a country', was not nearly as idealistic: creatures who could rip enemies apart with their bare hands, run as fast as a galloping dragoon, and absorb a full volley of musket balls without pausing to wince simply made too perfect of soldiers to persecute, though their normally-unflappable comrades did tend to give them an extremely wide berth.