Alaric was born to rule. In the sunless land of Neravichia where the trees raise their gnarled branches to the broken sky in futile supplication for the warmth of day, where the wind whispers of the pale hordes that march beyond the spine of Gherun, Alaric the Graven King is lord of the covens.

Once, in Alaric’s youth as a trueborn heir of the Bite, a council had ruled Neravichia with an iron fist. Comprised of the elders of the Great Houses of Vampire-kin, the council imposed draconic laws on the covens that served beneath it and paralyzed vampiric civilization with their endless, eternal bickering and politics.

No longer. Under the Graven King, Neravichia endures. Neravichia prospers. The empty streets once shrouded in darkness and misery now twinkle with lights and ring with merriment. No longer are the immortals starved by the blood-purist fanatics that barred them from the world of humanity for fear of mixing between the races. Instead, with every passing year, Neravichia grows as her men return from humanity, having sired new immortals to bring into her covens.

Alaric was born to rule, but he had not been born with the means by which to build his kingdom. He had been born with no army and no wealth. No treasure but the cold heart that beat in his chest and a thirst for justice awakened when Matriarch Akasha turned his human lover into her mindless thrall.

If not for his alliance to the Étrad Sídhthe, Neravichia would have remained a place of darkness and hunger. The Fey had granted him powers beyond his imagining. They had seen his birthright and wrought him into a king that would be worthy of raising vampire-kind to new heights. They broke him down as a warrior and built him up as a conqueror.

No longer could his eyes turn his enemies into mindless thralls. Instead, his glare imposed domination upon his foes. He could obliterate minds if he so desired, turn the objects of his ire into nothing more than mindless, cock-hungry sluts eager to obey for their next fix, but he could instead impose on his enemies perfect, inviolable obedience.

The Fey also touched his Gift. No longer could his bite simply turn a human being into a vampire. Now, he possessed the power to change those he bit according to his whims. The one restriction was that any person he bit would become male, but given his predilections he didn’t mind that too much.

Armed with his new abilities he had needed no army to challenge the council of Neravichia. With his Gaze of Domination and his Bite of Transformation, Alaric remade the council and all their cronies into his perfect, obedient slaves. As punishment, he forced them to remain conscious of their actions, of what they had become, but rendered them powerless to resist. His new slaves would suffer for their sins for all eternity.

He rescued his lover, using his gaze to recover the human’s mind from enthrallment. And then, as they made love for the first time in a while, he bit his lover and turned him into a worthy vampire king to sit the throne beside his. On their marriage, he presented his husband with a special gift: Matriarch Akasha turned into the eager pleasure slave Akash.

Alaric was born to rule, but he could not have seized his throne without the Étrad Sídhthe. So, when a veritable god of a man in purple robes strolled into his palace, he did not act like a presumptuous king. He descended from his throne and prostrated himself before the Brogda Sídhe. He kissed the Purple Fairy’s toes, an act of submission he did not do for anyone but his husband in the privacy of their room, and declared "We pledge our aid to your cause."