Ekron

Constantinople - 1

1905. Ottoman sorcerer, assyriologist, and amateur engineer Gul Goker Gokshe has taken possession of an ancient Mesopotamian sarcophagus from Robert Koldewey's Babylonian excavation, after the unexpected death of all its crew by an unknown hemorrhagic disease. Ostracized by archeological community for his peculiar views on Anunnaki traditions, Gul had allied with another outcast, the dark witch and anthropophagite Gizem, to fulfill his appetite for obscure knowledge and power.

According to his investigation and subsequent conclusions, the Anunnaki had blinded, captured, and imprisoned the material form of twelve known Ekimmu, vampire-like demons that had defied their authority or offended them in an unforgivable way. The crypts of those twelve demons were documented in clay tablets from fifteenth century BC, including names, dates of imprisonment and causal offenses. Matching tombs were found by Koldewey's excavation supported by Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in 1901 under the Ziggurat Etemenanki. Strangely, details of those tombs were not publicized as much as the rest of the expedition's findings.

Gul Goker, aided by Gizem's extraordinary powers, contacted spirits of ancient Mesopotamian warlocks and their slaves to get a better idea of the reasons behind such concealment. He also consulted later papyri in Aramaic found by Bedouin shepherds in Khirbet Qumran and stolen by Gizem. Those sources indicated that the supposed twelve Ekimmu were merely human warrior kings that had defied Anunnaki supremacy and were punished for that, but without presenting any supernatural feature, and that the idea of them being vampiric entities only came from the nature of their punishment. The correct description for the twelve Ekimmu would then be, "punished as a vampire" or "punished in the same way as a vampire", remaining the original vampire unseen or hidden. Some papyri insinuated that it was only a supposition, that blind imprisonment would be the correct way to punish a vampire in case it would have existed and offended the Anunnaki, others on the contrary indicated that such vampire was real and was in fact imprisoned, but its name and tomb were kept secret. Unclear passages in a different language, identified by Gizem as Qatrat or Qatrian could be interpreted as if both possibilities were truth at the same time: there was a vampire imprisoned in one of those tombs, and it was only a hypothetical reference to an inexistent entity. It was as if the Anunnaki would be aware of both possible realities and were conciliating them by recognizing those tombs as Ekimmu imprisonments.

In any case, the spirits contacted by Gizem had a clear testimony; there was an imprisoned Ekimmu but not in any of those twelve tombs, but in another one hidden below them. Gul Goker's father had died in strange circumstances, aided by Gizem, and the assyriologist received a massive fortune as inheritance on his thirty-third birthday. Gizem, almost twenty-eight, used some of that money to buy Russian slaves and "recharge" her extracorporeal projection abilities. So, hidden by the immateriality of her spirit, Gizem inspected the Koldewey excavation and found the thirteenth tomb, kept aside, and covered from view with dark tarps. It was at least several millennia older than the other twelve and had no name scripted on it.

A red fly entered the excavation camp two days later, laid on all expedition members one by one and came back to a flask in Gizem's hands, who was waiting for the insect, hidden nearby. By the end of the day, a hemorrhagic fever had killed all members of Koldewey's expedition, and a truck driven by Gul Goker's employees arrived at the excavation site. The thirteenth tomb was taken to the truck, and then to Constantinople, with great precaution to avoid scrutiny from imperial authorities. In Constantinople Gul Goker and Gizem had prepared a laboratory, in a large basement that eventually became a bunker, and later, an underground city.