Mikhailachev Manor babble

[infinitygoddess]

Yeah, I just updated The Beginning today with chapters 12 and 13, and I have chapters all the way to 31 done. The reason for this is because I took a ton of pictures back when I did The Road From Romanov and a lot of the dialogue and pictures are rehashed. This will change, of course, shortly after two of The Three Brothers (Sergei and Piotr) become vampires and bind their spouses (Sacha and Chelsea respectively) to them forever.


I'm still working on chapters for The House of Akim for this week and will have to go into my game to take more pictures. There isn't much left in the way of chapters for this series, so I'll be pretty busy.

[infinitygoddess]

Posted updates for both The Beginning and The House of Akim today.

Sergei and Sacha get to be parents for the first time in The Beginning. No, not with their son Akim (he was born centuries later in the Main Story), but their first son, whose name was Alexander Sergei Mikhailachev I. Obviously, Alexander never gets to show up in later series because he's long since passed from the world by the time Rasputin was born. In other words, he stayed human, unlike his living brother Akim. (It should be noted that Alexander also appears in the other prequel, The Road From Romanov, since it is Sacha's story from his point of view and yes, Alexander was effectively named after both of his parents.)

In an interesting twist, Alexander is not an adoptive child of his parents, which is interesting when you consider that his parents are two gay men. He was their biological child. Sergei has a biological mechanism by which he can become pregnant (this wouldn't affect Sacha since he's not a Mikhailachev) and that was how his children were all born (he ends up giving birth a total of four times over the course of his long life. This mechanism affects Mikhailachevs only, and the reason behind it is because of the vampires. An adoption from outside the family would be too problematic, especially if the potential adopters are either dormant or full-blown vampires, in no small part because all Mikhailachevs possess vampire genes, even if only some of them actually turn into vampires spontaneously.

Poor Rasputin was the first character shown in the series to find out that gay and bi Mikhailachev males can get pregnant the hard way when he became pregnant with his first child Dimitri.

[infinitygoddess]

So! I got a mention at Simsecret where someone was concerned they were the only one to read Mikhailachev Manor. I can assure that person that it's not the case, and I will confess that my Wordpress blogs can be a pain to comment on, considering the antispam tactics I have to take to keep those buggers out.

I do have a community on LJ called infinitysims where people can comment there with little or no hassle. Feel free to watch it if you want. Or you can comment on my personal LJ (link in sig) or follow me on Twitter (link also in sig).

Speaking of which, I've updated The House of Akim and The Beginning today. Lots of baby stuff going on in The Beginning, which is pretty crucial, since The Three Brothers are supposed to be the ancestors of the Mikhailachev family, after all.

For Akim, yeah...things aren't looking so hot for him, considering he's the latest in a long line of mutations that occasionally occur amongst the Mikhailachev vampires. The first sign something was different was when Akim's blood scent came on strong enough for a human Mikhailachev (in the past, it had only been the vampires that could detect the dormant vampires) could pick up on it and then later having the same thing happen with his son Nestor. Nestor turned into a vampire the same day his first child Yana was born.

Incidentally, I do have a Formspring, so if people who want to ask anon questions they can.

[Stacy]

Awww - give us time. We'll read it.

[infinitygoddess]

Nov 13, 2010 0:38:06 GMT -5 Stacy said:

Awww - give us time. We'll read it.

Heh, the Main Story (which was the one that started it all) is 186 chapters long, plus epilogue and one-shot. Anyone who manages to read all that to get caught up has my sincere respect.

[infinitygoddess]

18-20 for The Beginning is the start of a turning point for The Three Brothers, because these are the chapters in which the youngest of them (named Pavel Mikhailachev I) gets zombiefied.

Zombies in the world of Mikhailachev Manor are not dangerous, but they can be off-putting when you consider the smell of decomposition, the fact that they groan and their neural responses. They are slow and clumsy and because of this, they are weak against humans and certainly vampires.

Like humans, zombies require sleep and food in order to continue living their undead lives.

They're not stupid, and can retain the intelligence that they had in their formal human lives. The problem they have is with speaking with dead facial muscles that could take years of specialized zombie speech therapy in order to overcome and sometimes even age is a factor in surpassing this basic handicap. Because they cannot talk upon their initial changes, people often presume them to be stupid creatures and often zombies are easily bullied.

Zombies can only be created with an incorrect use of a device called the Resurrect-O-Nomitron, although to this date, Pavel is the only Mikhailachev Manor zombie who was created on accident; his zombie friends who live with him were created on purpose for sick purposes.

[celebkiriedhel]

I've started to read it - from the beginning. Yes I know. I am a sick, sick individual. What can I say? I'm unemployed - I have the time.

Zombies in traditional literature tend to be motivated by the will of their creator, rather than have a will of their own, and apart from that it's pure survival instinct that directs their behaviour. Your zombies sound like they have their own will, so it's a return of their 'self' to a dead body. And it's the quality of the link between the self and body that determines whether they would be a zombie, or a resurrected human. Is that right?

Do your zombies continue to decompose after they've been rezzed? Or is it sort of caught in a state. Like if they were 3 days dead, then they'd be 3 days decomposed for ever after?

Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions. I find it fascinating when someone takes a traditional legend, like vampires and zombies, and makes it rational thing. I love the genetic twist to the vampires.

[infinitygoddess]

Nov 13, 2010 19:14:01 GMT -5 @celebkiriedhel said:

Zombies in traditional literature tend to be motivated by the will of their creator, rather than have a will of their own, and apart from that it's pure survival instinct that directs their behaviour. Your zombies sound like they have their own will, so it's a return of their 'self' to a dead body. And it's the quality of the link between the self and body that determines whether they would be a zombie, or a resurrected human. Is that right?

Do your zombies continue to decompose after they've been rezzed? Or is it sort of caught in a state. Like if they were 3 days dead, then they'd be 3 days decomposed for ever after?

Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions. I find it fascinating when someone takes a traditional legend, like vampires and zombies, and makes it rational thing. I love the genetic twist to the vampires.

Nah, it's okay. I appreciate people asking me questions.

I intend to go into the aspect as to why Pavel maintains a sense of self in his body in later chapters in The Beginning. Right now, I'm focusing on his initial change into a zombie and the reactions from his wife and his family and then I'm going to turn focus onto his brothers Sergei and Piotr when they undergo their own changes into vampires.

The zombies remain in the same state of decomposition throughout their undead lives. They don't heal if they are scratched or stabbed. They just remain the same throughout.

The genetic twist isn't exactly natural, and the Main Story does cover the origins (though one does catch a glimpse of the creators of these genetic vampires in the first chapter of The Beginning as well). It's just some kind of unique genetic engineering that was ahead of its time. There is another brand of vampire discussed in the series that are that way because of a virus and these vampires choose their condition where the Mikhailachevs can't. The difference there is that the viral vampires are raging ravenous beasts that lay waste to all humans in their wake; the Mikhailachevs are more self-controlled and they were bred specifically to kill these Grand Vampire underlings as their natural enemies.

However, the Mikhailachevs are still vampires, and this is why they were forced from Russia. Even though they aren't as dangerous, the fact that they still feed on blood makes them scary enough that when the Russian people of St. Petersburg found out certain facts about the Mikhailachevs and which ones were more prone to turn into full-blown vampires (this was why Sergei was ganged up on and brutally attacked when he was eighteen; the boys knew he was a dormant vampire, even as he didn't know it himself!), things got so hairy that Boris Mikhailachev I moved his wife, sons, and daughter all to America, and that's why the Mikhailachevs are pretty brutal when it comes to keeping their secrets well into the future.

[celebkiriedhel]

Cool! I love it. I'm still working my way through your stories! So I'm probably not up to the bit yet where that is explained about the vampires.

Oh oops, I didn't mean to pre-empt you with your story line with the zombies.

I'll probably have lots more questions about your story that you answer already somewhere in it.

[infinitygoddess]

Nov 14, 2010 0:00:30 GMT -5 @celebkiriedhel said:

Cool! I love it. I'm still working my way through your stories! So I'm probably not up to the bit yet where that is explained about the vampires.

Oh oops, I didn't mean to pre-empt you with your story line with the zombies.

I'll probably have lots more questions about your story that you answer already somewhere in it.

Yeah, the explanations begin around chapters 84-86 of the Main Story. So you're probably not there yet.

You didn't preempt me at all. It's just not something that I'm getting into until well after Pavel learns to hold a conversation again in The Beginning (which obviously he will, since if you're reading the Main Story he can hold his own quite well, even if he does occasionally slur a bit).

[infinitygoddess]

Chapters 21 and 22 for The Beginning is the aftermath of Pavel's unfortunate change into a zombie. He has been rebuffed by his wife and father as stupid and useless. Yet, he manages to take on the chore of taking care of three babies all on his own in the face of their neglectful mother and an incompetent nanny.

In the Main Story, there is a clear bond between Pavel and his daughter Maria (who happens to be a vampire). These chapters in The Beginning start to establish just how that bond was formed, and was obviously started when Maria and her brothers were very young.

[infinitygoddess]

Chapters 26 and 27 in The Beginning go into Piotr and Sergei undergoing their changes into vampires and subsequently changing their spouses into vampires as well.

Now, here is where Boris explains to his son Sergei about the one of the only ways by which a Mikhailachev can change a human into a vampire, which is the mating bond. This bond is the reason why a majority of breakups in Mikhailachev Manor would end badly. The person who was bitten is so bound to the individual they love, that if there is hatred between the spouses for ANY reason, the spouse bitten would die horribly. They cannot ever turn on their host vampires.

The other way in which a Mikhailachev can change a human into a vampire is if the said human was their own relative. Human Mikhailachevs still have vampire elements in their genes, and these can be activated upon the bite of a full blown vampire in the family.

Unlike the mating bond, however, nothing detrimental happens to the human Mikhailachev if they turned on the vampire that changed them. The vampire genes protect them from any misfortune that would arise in an outsider human that was bitten.

It is important to note that there have been deaths associated with the mating bond being broken in the series.

In The House of Akim, it is discovered that the usual rules that applied to the other Mikhailachev vampires when it comes to biting someone, do not apply. One major rule that is broken by Akim himself (and by extension his son Nestor), is that a vampire can only bite one human at a time and cannot seek out a new mate while the current one is still alive, even if the mate in question is another Mikhailachev vampire.

Luckily, no real harm was done with Akim's actions, but of course, that is part of what could make his mutation potentially dangerous - the fact that it could be easily spread as it is with the Grand Vampire underlings (as their condition is spread through a virus and is easily spreadable to others).

[celebkiriedhel]

Has their ever been a vampire who've purposefully chosen a spouse to kill them with this? I mean, they'd have to be terribly sadistic and want revenge or some reason to punish the human, or the community the human is from? Or does the vampire need to be as in love with their spouse as well, for the mating bond to occur?

[infinitygoddess]

Nov 19, 2010 19:36:51 GMT -5 @celebkiriedhel said:

Has their ever been a vampire who've purposefully chosen a spouse to kill them with this? I mean, they'd have to be terribly sadistic and want revenge or some reason to punish the human, or the community the human is from? Or does the vampire need to be as in love with their spouse as well, for the mating bond to occur?

The feelings of love have to be mutual. Otherwise, the agent that the Mikhailachev vampires use to turn their spouses becomes a deadly poison.

And no Mikhailachev vampire would ever use this to deliberately kill someone. Mikhailachev vampires retain a sense of humanity when they change, so they are not complete monsters. If they kill anyone, they would do it because they have to for feeding or in self-defense/defense of others.

[infinitygoddess]

In the latest chapters in The Beginning (Chapters 28 and 29), Mikhailachev vampires prove that they're not ones to be messed with.

In the first instance, more details on what happens to the man with whom Sacha has his first kill can be found in The Road From Romanov chapter 25. Yes, that was done not only to feed Sacha, but also a bit of revenge and to keep that guy from hurting anyone else.

Of course, two of Sacha's nasty brothers also die, but at the hands of Sergei.

Chapter 29 goes into one of the few things that would make the normally cool-headed Piotr become a full-on monster - that is when anyone picks on his twin brother Pavel, including if that person is Piotr's own sister-in-law. (I should note that Piotr is not the only one who is protective of Pavel - Sergei, Sacha, Natasha, Chelsea, and then later Pavel's daughter Maria and grandson Pavel II are as well.) And as Pavel is a weak zombie and thus unable to defend himself if he is abused, his family naturally would feel inclined to protect him.

[infinitygoddess]

Maintaining consistency is hard when you're doing a prequel. Luckily, I had my Sims packaged and installed (SimPE is a GODSEND).

The reason I bring this up? Well, let's just say that trying to duplicate what was initially there wasn't easy. For example, Maria was born in the prequel 'hood with the right facial features. Her skintone and personality came out wrong. No big deal, it just took a trip into SimPE to fix it.

But then Pavel II was born. First, I had to make sure he was born the right sex (took two tries before I could get a set of twins that consisted of a boy and a girl, as Pavel II had a twin sister). Then it was about getting his hair the right color (since he is a blonde), his eyes, and his face (he's supposed to look like his other mother, and not Maria). I got the blonde hair and the sex. Eyes, skin and face? Not so much. So I had to use the prepackaged version of Pavel II and age him down to a toddler. Which meant that I had to wait until Pavel II was aged into a toddler before I could fix him.

And of course, Sim babies only take three Sim days to grow up in Sims 2. With birthday cakes, it's a day earlier than that.

Again with SimPE and the awesome Sim surgery feature. I used my clone as an archtype and viola: pics.livejournal.com/infinitygoddess/pic/0007dww1

And the reason I have to be so picky with Pavel II and how he turned out? Well, because he is a future vampire who has only shown up in the Main Story thus far (and now he's in The Beginning prequel during his more formative years).

[infinitygoddess]

Chapter 30 in The Beginning represents an interesting insight into Sergei and Sacha and their first child Alexander. In this dynamic, Sacha is exceedingly nervous that his heterosexual son will end up being rabid homophobes like Sacha's brothers and father (as they have been so portrayed in The Road From Romanov). It's an irrational fear on Sacha's part, and Sergei is trying to assure him that Alexander can be taught to accept those who are different than he is, as he is still a child at this point and time.

It should be noted that at this time, Sacha has a fear of small children, especially as he is afraid mostly because he fears he will break them, whereas Sergei adores babies. Sacha does not get over his fears completely until the time his daughter Kalina was born and calls him 'Papa' as her first word. This is an event that happens in the Main Story, which takes place generations after Alexander's death from old age.

Chapter 32 is where Sergei's twin sister Natasha learns about the vampire heritage in her family. This is important, as Natasha is the only one of her siblings who never becomes an immortal creature of some kind and eventually dies of old age.

Chapter 33 is a turning point in Pavel's undead zombie life; he begins to learn how to talk again and finds that there are at least some people who love him unconditionally. His kids are among those people, particularly his daughter Maria.

[infinitygoddess]

The latest chapters in The House of Akim provides an even more interesting, and yet unsettling twist in Akim's mutation. The things to know about Mikhailachev vampirisim, is that it is always changing in some form or another and once a mutated vampire is born, the ones who already exist eventually get affected with the said mutation.

Pavel II was the first of such known mutations; it was his own mutation that eventually allowed for the Mikhailachev vampires to be more mobile through the day (they still could not set foot outdoors, however during that time, but at least they weren't stuck in those coffins!).

Then came Dimitri, who is Rasputin's son, who came with the mutation that made the spontaneous vampirism more instantaneous upon achieving the life goal that made a vampire permanently happy. This, of course, came to the detriment of Kliment, who is Dimitri's grandson, who had become a vampire at the tender age of 15.

And then there was Mischa, Rasputin's grandson through his other son Vladimir, who came with the mutation that made it possible to become pregnant while a vampire (before, male vampires could impregnate a human female, but could not impregnate their fellow vampires).

Eventually, these mutations spread to those who were already vampires, along with any future ones. It is reasonable to expect that the same would be true of Akim's own mutation, of which we have only scratched the surface of all of its components.

[infinitygoddess]

Mikhailachev Manor has its own Facebook page. I'll be posting updates there as well as most everywhere else. I think I'm going to be laying off my personal FB page for a bit.

[infinitygoddess]

Chapters 38 and 39 are interesting chapters in The Beginning, because it is the first real encounter that Piotr and Sergei would have with the Grand Vampire underlings. It is implied that they have seen them before, but never in this manner. And the brutality that they display against them is a stark contrast in how they deal with humans.

Mikhailachevs generally can get along with humans, even making them into allies and sometimes even lovers

SPOILER: Click to show

(as shown in the Main Story where Piotr makes some key connections with the government and of course, the Mikhailachevs ally themselves with now-former lawyer James Briggs, who later becomes a vampire himself after he marries Rasputin and his assistant and friend Marion Cho, who later marries Rasputin's son Dimitri. They also ally with the whole of the Briggs family as a way of making amends after Piotr killed James' father Kenneth, but then later as a promise to help them protect Bluewater Village against the onslaught of underlings after the Catholic Church abandons the town to its fate, leaving the Briggs family as the lone holy warriors to protect it)

.

Underlings would never ally with humans. To them, humans are only food. They often start out as people who were loners and outcasts who actively seek out a Grand Vampire to be changed. Once they change, they are undead monsters that cut down every human voraciously, with their thirst never truly quenched unlike the Mikhailachevs, who are quenched after one human. Underlings can be easily defeated in small numbers using holy weapons, but in large groups, they are near impossible for a human to beat.

Holy warriors appear throughout the MM series, some with good intent, others with bad. In the Main Story, the intent of the Catholics against underlings were good, but the downside was they would only stay so long as they kept their zombie slaves.

SPOILER: Click to show

Kenneth Briggs was of the mindset that there was no such thing as a "good" vampire, but at the same time, he was among the few who believed that vampires were far more the important threat than the socially conservative causes he espoused. His son Vincent later became an advocate for equal rights for gay people (in no small part because of his brother James, who is gay), which caused quite the dilemma for him when he found he was alone against the Grand Vampire underlings who were threatening to invade and demolish the citizens of Bluewater Village. It was because of this that he had asked the Mikhailachevs to help him.

By the time The House of Akim comes along, the problem of relying solely upon holy warriors in the fight against underlings becomes clear with the arrival of the character Mia and her friends at the strip club. Most holy warriors do protect their towns, but with a price; people they deem as sinners are to be discarded from the community somehow.

The Mikhailachevs are naturally upset by this. They kill underlings with no such strings attached and they are far more effective at it because the Grand Vampires know not to cross them. Grand Vampires don't generally take any human seriously (which is why they have no remorse for setting the monsters loose), but a genetic vampire that doesn't take their cues from them and kills underlings easily and brutally they generally do. It is why Piotr is currently trying to get the government to allow his family to expand their range from where they currently are to other parts of the US where more innocents could benefit from having low violent crime and no underlings, and without the downsides of religious cults who want free range to discriminate and bully groups of people that they don't approve of.