Moonlight Bandits
| Moonlight Bandits | |||||||||
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| Sovereign: | Sнєłву™ Єαɱєş ÐαякƑiяє (sheiby13) | ||||||||
| CO-Sovereign: | TBA | ||||||||
| Ambassador: | TBA | ||||||||
| Proxy: | |||||||||
| History: | Place Holder for House History
Progeny: Vampire™ is a role-playing aid ecosystem developed for use in the Second Life™ Meta-Verse. Allowing your Avatar in Second Life™ to experience Lifestyle Role-play from the shadows of the eternal night. By feeding upon the life force of others, vampires stalk the night for ages, maybe even eternity. | ||||||||
History Moonlight Bandits
Most believe Wild Bill Hickok died in Deadwood on August 2, 1876 holding aces and eights, the cursed poker hand forever remembered as the Dead Man’s Hand.
But the hand itself was ancient, long before Hickok ever touched the cards.
The symbols first appeared centuries earlier among doomed nobles, plague survivors, battlefield executioners, and wandering oculists who carried whispers of a dark covenant bound through blood. Wherever the hand appeared, death followed. Not ordinary death, but the rise of something unnatural.
By the time the curse reached the American frontier, entire settlements had already vanished beneath it.
Long before Deadwood became a mining town, the Black Hills carried darker whispers. Travelers spoke of pale riders crossing the forests beneath moonlight and creatures sleeping beneath the earth long before roads, rail lines, or churches scarred the land.
Hickok learned the truth while traveling the territories.
The frontier was infested with ancient vampire bloodlines hidden behind outlaw gangs, rail empires, military forts, and booming mining towns. Saloons were not merely places of whiskey and cards. They were feeding grounds. Entire towns unknowingly belonged to creatures older than the nations surrounding them.
And among them walked Shelby Eames Darkfire.
Deadly. Fierce. Untouched by time.
No records marked her birth. No grave carried her name. Some claimed she crossed the ocean before America existed. Others whispered she had stood beside kings and watched empires collapse into dust.
Shelby Eames Darkfire was no ordinary vampire.
She was the founder and ruler of the House of Dead Man’s Hand beneath the greater Dead Man’s Hand Clan, one of the last great visible vampire powers remaining within the territories. While countless bloodlines vanished into secrecy or rotted into myth, Shelby and the Moonlight Bandits rode openly beneath the full moon, feared across deserts, badlands, mountain passes, and forgotten trails.
Whispers followed wherever the Moonlight Bandits appeared.
Frontier towns locked their doors before sundown. Stagecoaches vanished without trace along moonlit roads. Entire saloons fell silent when black riders emerged from canyon fog. Men who once called themselves killers vanished into the wilderness, only to be discovered days later drained pale beneath the desert sky.
Fear traveled ahead of the Moonlight Bandits like a storm rolling across the frontier.
And at the center of it all rode Shelby Eames Darkfire, her flowing blond hair dancing beneath the moonlight like strands of pale fire, crimson eyes glowing within the darkness as if Hell itself had marked her soul. Clad in black and feared across the frontier, she rode with the silence of death and the fury of a coming storm, her presence alone enough to empty saloons and send hardened killers reaching for prayers they no longer believed in.
Some called her monster. Others called her queen. Most prayed they would never hear her voice carried upon the night wind.
When Hickok crossed her path, he became entangled in a war far older than Deadwood itself.
On the night he was murdered, the creatures hunting him believed they had silenced the last hunter capable of resisting the curse.
Instead, death completed the ritual.
Three nights after burial, Hickok clawed his way from the grave with the Dead Man’s Hand burned into his flesh like a mark from Hell itself. The curse fused with Shelby Eames Darkfire’s blood and transformed him into something neither fully vampire nor fully man.
But when he rose from the grave, Hickok did not remain.
Some say Shelby took him into the darkness herself. Some claim he wandered into the frontier never to be seen again. Others whisper he still walks the old trails beneath moonless skies, hunting things even the Moonlight Bandits fear.
Only Shelby Eames Darkfire knows the truth of what became of Wild Bill Hickok after the blood fusion beneath Deadwood.
In the years that followed, Shelby tightened her rule over the House of Dead Man’s Hand. The House spread through saloons, rail lines, gambling dens, brothels, and outlaw camps, ruling through fear, blood debt, and shadow bargains whispered across cursed poker tables.
But while the House of Dead Man’s Hand ruled the towns, the Clan of Moonlight Bandits ruled the wilds.
And unlike countless bloodlines that faded into secrecy over the centuries, Shelby Eames Darkfire’s clan remained visible, feared, and very much alive.
The Moonlight Bandits became predators of the frontier itself, raiding settlements, hunting rival bloodlines, and carving their symbol into the West through bloodshed and terror. Yet beneath the violence was purpose. Shelby believed the old vampire world had grown weak hiding behind politics and secrecy.
She believed predators were never meant to kneel in shadows or beg survival from mortals. They were meant to rise, create change, and forge a path between both worlds through blood, fear, and the coming darkness. In Shelby Eames Darkfire’s eyes, the age of hiding was dying, and a new kingdom born beneath moonlight and blood would soon rise from the frontier.
Before vanishing into the darkness, Hickok sealed part of his corrupted blood inside a black obsidian bottle known only as The Blood Reserve.
The relic was said to contain living blood.
Not dead blood. Not mortal blood. Living blood.
Blood capable of awakening ancient bloodlines long thought extinct or creating monsters powerful enough to devour entire cities.
To the House of Dead Man’s Hand, it became sacred.
To Shelby Eames Darkfire and the Moonlight Bandits, it became destiny.
Now the frontier sleeps above buried crypts, forgotten tunnels, abandoned churches, cursed mining shafts, and ancient feeding grounds stretching beneath the West like veins beneath flesh.
The railroads carried more than settlers. The mines uncovered more than gold. And the dead beneath Deadwood were never truly buried.
Somewhere beyond the last lantern light, Shelby Eames Darkfire still rides beneath the moon with the Clan of Moonlight Bandits at her back, hunting relentlessly for the Blood Reserve. For she knows that whoever drinks from its darkness will possess the power to reshape the frontier, forge a path between both worlds, and either rule the coming age of blood or drown the West beneath an endless night And as the shadows of the frontier continued to spread, so too did the power of the Moonlight Bandits Clan. One by one, other ancient Houses emerged from hiding and bent the knee beneath Shelby Eames Darkfire’s rising banner. Some came seeking protection. Others came seeking power. All came knowing the old world was dying.
Yet this was only the beginning.
For beneath the endless moonlight, Shelby Eames Darkfire continued her hunt for the Blood Reserve, gathering loyal Houses to her cause as the Moonlight Bandits Clan grew stronger with every passing night.
And somewhere beyond the dying frontier, the darkness was still waiting.
To be continued...
Greater Houses of Moonlight Bandits Clan
Dead Man´s Hand
| Dead Man´s Hand | |||||||||
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| Princeps: | Sheiby DarkFire (sheiby13) | ||||||||
| Delegate: | Not Assigned | ||||||||
| Liaison: | Not Assigned | ||||||||
| History: | TBA | ||||||||
