Grounded Vampires

This idea started as a take on elves for a Cairn one-shot I ran about a year ago. It has been peculating ever since and evolved from elves to grounded vampires.

In a previous age a handful of connected billionaire families fled the Earth's climate crisis to live on an orbiting space station. There they spent unknown generations festering and self mythologizing and remixing the same limited gene pool. Finally the Earth's environment had recovered enough to be more appealing than station life and the twisted descendants returned home.

Inbreeding, crude gene editing, and diminished gravity had produced something tall, pale, and anemic. Vampires are lanky with knobby joints, roughly eight feet tall. They have a limited warrior class who have been chemically and mechanically enhanced but most are frail and lack stamina. Their skin is pale to the point of translucence, only a step more opaque than a spring roll. Their veins can be read beneath their skin like a roadmap, a feature that they exaggerate with makeup and their followers mimic with tattoo.

Their detractors may call them vampires but they proudly refer to themselves as The Family. They possess a cruel feline pride and overconfidence, believing themselves to be above or beyond the rest of humanity. Their society is very hierarchical as they have started to replicate their own idea of nobility. Blood letting has become wrapped in customs of deference and subservience. A simple finger prick might be sufficient if the difference in station is minor or the interaction is brief enough. The most common version involves the hollow needles of a particular cactus to drain a mouthful of blood into a shallow bowl. On rare special occasions it is expected of one to splay open a vein into a ceremonial chalice.

The Family returned to a green pastoral Earth and expected to take over and run things. So far they have accumulated a small fanatical following but are a minor faction. They are unknown by all but their nearest neighbors. They still posses the Old Technology, a power they like to show off, but have only retained the knowledge to operate it not repair or create it themselves. They keep a flock of terrestrial humans that are used for blood, labor, and an occasional meal.

Their keep is a ruined toroidal space station, the rim forming the main wall and the hub forming a central thrown room. The shattered impact site in the rim is where the main entrance gate is located. A layer of new construction has covered the original structure.

Inspiration

The Exalted and Typhon from Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock, The Belters from The Expanse, Mars for the Rich by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Bluebloods and the Hapsburgs, Elon Musk's proposed Mars colony, Bryan Johnson,  Peter Watts' Blindsight, Pandorum, Elysium, Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, Mad Max Fury Road, Hannibal Lecter, Cibo and the various height difference in the manga Blame by Tsutomu Nihei.