CASTLEVANIA Premise: Warren Ellis/Nov 28 2006

1470: DRACULA’s wife LISA is condemned to death by fire by the Inquisition in

WALLACHIA. DRACULA himself appears in the flames, vowing revenge.

1476: The CURSE CASTLE appears in the CAPITAL CITY, and HORDES of night
creatures swarm from it, killing everything they see. This is Dracula’s revenge – the
human race took his love from him, and he will commit genocide in return. We see some
of the night creatures breaking into packs and scattering across the land…

CUT TO: TREVOR BELMONT, the last of the legendary vampire hunters, sitting alone
in some village’s drinking house. Belmont is a bitter, resentful outcast, wandering from
village to Wallachian village: the Belmonts were exiled from Wallachian society for fear
of their supernatural abilities. Someone rushes in to tell the drinkers the news from the
Capital. Bringing Belmont more beer, the barman spots some heraldic mark on him,
recognises him as a Belmont, and a fight ensues that sees Trevor kicked out of the village.
Full of hate, he starts walking on to the next town, the great walled city of GRESIT.

Gresit is being besieged by a pack of night creatures; they're playing with the remote
town, picking people off in ones and twos, and attacking from outside the walls to create
even more panic.

Belmont sneaks into the town, looking for food and supplies before moving on. No-one
pays attention to him because the populace are focussed both on the night creatures and
the SPEAKERS, the Romany-like tribe of magicians scattered across ancient Wallachia,
whom they believe to have brought the curse down on them. Falling in with a group of
Speakers, Belmont learns from the Elder Speaker that the usually nomadic people stay in
Gresit because of an old oral history that says a strange messiah sleeps in the catacombs
under the town. One of them went down to find this mythical creature when news came
of Dracula's attack on the land, and never came back. Soon after, the night creatures
arrived, and the people blame the Speakers for disturbing old powers beneath the earth.

That night, the townspeople come for the Speakers, triggering off a pogrom riot.
Belmont fights for the Speakers, and it becomes a running battle through the town,
through marketplaces, graveyards and churches. At its peak, the night creatures attack --
and Belmont stands in front of the townspeople.

The tide changes: Belmont knows how to fight these things and the townspeople don't.
He finds himself organising them in a pitched defense of Gresit, using every dirty trick of
medieval warfare and supernatural combat.

In what seems to be Belmont's climactic defeat of the final night creature, a street gives
way under Belmont's feet -- and he tumbles down into the catacombs. Down in the guts
of the town, he discovers a woman turned to stone, and a Cyclops wandering these
underground corridors. Blinding the Cyclops breaks the spell, and SYPHA, the Speaker
who went to wake Wallachia's strange saviour, is released from the stone spell. She insists
on pressing on to keep her task, and he reluctantly accompanies her.

This place, filled with defense mechanisms, is built with a weird, steampunky kind of
high-medieval technology, as if by a Leonardo DaVinci of the dark ages. And at its core
is a pale sleeping man. Their entrance sets off a mechanism that awakens him. He
hisses, bares fangs -- Belmont thinks, is this Dracula himself? The vampire asks what
they want, and Sypha, believing in the myth, tells him that Dracula is abroad in the land,
bringing genocide. The vampire claims to recognise Trevor as a Belmont, and asks him if
he cares about the news. Belmont said he didn't before, but now he does -- now he wants
to save humanity. The vampire attacks Belmont, and they have a huge dramatic duel,
fighting to a standstill. And the vampire laughs. Yes, he says, you'll do. I am
ALUCARD, Dracula's son, and I have slept because I couldn't stand to share a world with
my father. If he has finally gone mad, then he has to die. We three: we will destroy my
father.

###

###