The Winter War

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Today, I saw this short animated film for the first time. The setting appears to be that each hemisphere of the Earth enters hibernation at a different time. Allied nations on opposite hemispheres are meant to guard their allies who are asleep.

But now consider: there's a whole hemisphere awake and capable of negotiation and conspiracy while the other one is asleep. The potential exists for a nation to awaken and discover it was conquered during hibernation, its people moved to detention areas. No one is coming to save them because their former allies joined hands with their enemies, "and everything is already settled". A bloodless annexation, not an unknown event in human history.

Our proto-Darklord grows up in one such conquered nation. He still remembers the days his nation was free, but that was when he was a very young child. Ever since, he has been property. He is well-tended property, or has been ever since it was discovered he is a potential polymath, but he still has to wear the collar and was tattooed like everyone else.
He stumbled on the idea for the Formula during research he was ordered to do for the masters' ministry of health. Research meant to help more people survive hibernation.
He kept the idea secret, worked it out and made it a reality without letting anyone know. He even ran some clinical trials on fellow slaves. The side effects - a slow, wretched death - came to light fairly soon... but he still saw potential.

He started selling the Formula through the black market. Not to other nations, for who could he trust? What once had been allies were now masters, after all.
No, he sold to thieves, psychopaths and terrorists. The greedy, the vicious, the deranged.
When hibernation time rolled around ... imagine the horrors inflicted on a helpless populace, the awakening to death, mutilation, destruction at the hands of men and women who were themselves already dead. Imagine the terror sweeping both hemispheres at the sheer unnaturalness of the attacks, the ever greater fear that when you went to hibernate, you would never wake up.
The existence of the Formula is uncovered, but its source is a secret no one can uncover. Alliances crumble as nations regard one another with suspicion. Weapons of mass destruction are primed, deadman's switches readied...

And amidst it all, our proto-Darklord, sleeping like a baby, content to see his world go down in bloodshed and paranoia as punishment for what was done to his own.
Sleeping, that is, until he wakes to the clammy touch of the Mists in his very own domain.

At the very least, I think he'd deserve an inverse of Hazlik's situation, requiring drugs to get even a little sleep because he can't get even a wink of it otherwise.

How say you, Fraternity?

[Joël of the FoS]

Cool idea. (and cool serie of films!).

Very creepy domain idea, nice.

And there could be a fear of a vampire feeding frenzy à la 30 days of night.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Cool idea. (and cool serie of films!).

Very creepy domain idea, nice.

And there could be a fear of a vampire feeding frenzy à la 30 days of night.

I hadn't even considered that!
The weather patterns could also be out of whack; people would constantly be watching for certain signs to warn them of an approaching cold front, which would not be bound to the time of year, but the whims of the Dark Powers.