Showing results by author "Yoshitaka Amano" in All Categories

It is a dark time for the world. Humanity is just crawling out from under 300 years of domination by the race of vampires known as the Nobility. The war against the vampires has taken its toll; cities lie in ruin, the countryside is fragmented into small villages and fiefdoms that still struggle against nightly raids by the fallen vampires - and the remnants of their genetically manufactured demons and werewolves.

The vampire hunter known only as D has been hired by a wealthy, dying man to find his daughter, who was kidnapped by the powerful vampire Lord Mayerling. Though humans speak well of Mayerling, the price on his head is too high for D to ignore and he sets out to save her before she can be turned into an undead creature of the night.

Krauhasen: A mysterious land under the control of Lord Vlad Balarge, a member of the vampire Nobility. When Lord Vlad's son, Baron Byron Balarge, needs to make a long and treacherous journey to faraway Krauhasen, he commissions the help of the infamous Vampire Hunter D, promising a princely sum and a solemn vow—no feasting on any humans for the duration of their journey! Still, D finds his work cut out for him as the duo encounters an ongoing parade of thugs, rogues, and runaways, all with riot and revenge in mind.

Baron Byron Balazs nears the end of his arduous journey; his bodyguard—the enigmatic and deadly Vampire Hunter D—has delivered him to his faraway home in Krauhausen. Having survived the near-epic journey, and many attempts on his life—ordered by his father, the dread Vampire Noble Lord Vlad—the baron thinks he is ready for his final battle, whatever the cost. But Lord Vlad is not so easily vanquished, as he unleashes yet another host of nefarious killers on his son, not least of whom is a mad doctor who was enlisted to perform sinister experiments on the young baron's mother years before!

12,090 AD. It is a dark time for the world. Humanity is just crawling out from under three hundred years of domination by the race of vampires known as the Nobility. The war against the vampires has taken its toll; cities lie in ruin, the countryside is fragmented into small villages and fiefdoms that still struggle against nightly raids by the fallen vampires—and the remnants of their genetically manufactured demons and werewolves.

"The City," a tiny metropolis of a few hundred sheltered citizens floating serenely on a seemingly random course a few feet above the ground, has long been thought safe from the predation of marauding monsters. It seemed like a paradise. A paradise shattered when an invasion of apparent vampires threatens the small haven.

Vampires: murderous creatures in the shape of humans, they stalk the night feeding on the blood of innocents. Seemingly immortal, they can be destroyed only by the use of a stake through the heart, severing of their heads, or exposure to sunlight. By the year AD 12,090, vampires have ruled the Earth for almost 300 years, and it is only these weaknesses that have kept these foul monsters from totally overrunning the world. But what happens when those rules no longer apply?

A mixed band of travelers from an inn, spared by seeming chance from a bizarre landslide that rushed and receded like a wave, find shelter in an ancient village older even than the most forsaken settlements on the Frontier! Indeed, for fearful rumor has it that once long ago the village was a testing ground of the Sacred Ancestor...that sought to twist the genes of aliens, humans, and Nobles into a new form of life! What was formed here in the distant past seeks to nourish itself on the travelers and rise again.

Vampires: murderous creatures in the shape of humans, they stalk the night feeding on the blood of innocents. Seemingly immortal, they can be destroyed only by the use of a stake through the heart, severing of their heads, or exposure to sunlight. By the year 12,090 A.D. vampires have ruled the Earth for almost 300 years, and it is only these weaknesses that have kept these foul monsters from totally overrunning the world.

Marquis Verenis—he's a powerful Noble...he's in possession of antimatter technology...and he's three hundred million dalas in debt to Old El, the lender of last resort out on the Frontier! The vampire lord even put up his castle as collateral—but not a single collection agent dispatched by...

Even a reluctant hero can't refuse the last request of a beautiful woman. On her deathbed, the mortally wounded woman gives him a strange gem and asks him to deliver the priceless stone to her sister, far off in a North Sea fishing village. D's journey is made ever more perilous by a series of scoundrels and rogues hired by the girl's murderer. They'll stop at nothing to claim the jewel. Will they catch him?

The vampire hunter known only as D has been hired by a wealthy dying man to find his daughter, who was kidnapped by the powerful vampire Lord Meierlink. Though humans speak well of Meierlink, the price on his head is too high for D to ignore and he sets out to save her before she can be turned into an undead creature of the night. In the nightmare world of 12090 AD, finding Meierlink before he reaches the spaceport in the Clayborn States and gets off the planet will be hard enough, but D has more than just Meierlink to worry about.

After a Frontier village's monitoring station fails, deadly vampire Nobles return to life, swearing vengeance on the descendants of the family that defeated them three hundred years ago. The mayor of the village, hoping to save his life and that of his family, hires five vampire hunters, but as the mayor's daughter returns from the Capital, he finds that she has been targeted by five revenge driven Nobles!

On an isolated island, vampire Nobility run a mysterious laboratory, continuously pumping out a white mist which compels the inhabitants of a nearby fishing village to become the vampire's slaves! When the village tries to retaliate, their fighters never return. The vampire hunter known only as D has been sighted on the island, but how did he come to be there, whose side is he on, and will any mortals survive the brewing conflict?

In the title story, "Dark Nocturne", D is hired to unlock the secret of a siren's song that is drawing men in their twenties to their deaths in the hills outside Anise Village. In "Notes on Imagined Autumn", D finds himself caught between two lovers during a ritualistic sacrifice in the village of Shirley's Door, but if D can't stop the sacrifice will all in the village be doomed? And in "Legend of the War Demons", two living weapons, genetically engineered creatures who are the last remnants of a war waged hundreds of years in the past, find that battle is not so easily forgotten.

In Sakuri, a young woman is about to be sacrificed to the vampiric Noblewoman who reigns over the village. But before the princess can drain the life from the woman, a young man tries to slay the vampire. He fails and manages to escape, but in doing so incurs the wrath of the entire town. The citizens of Sakuri have entered into a pact with the Undead princess and her monstrous bodyguards. With the ritual offering disrupted, the vampire's armored bodyguards vow to murder the villagers one by one until the would-be hero is captured.

In a world where even the smallest and most remote village is being terrorized by the monsters that stalk the night, there is a hamlet, prosperous and peaceful, where mortals and vampires have lived in harmony for years. It is there that seventeen-year-old Sheavil Schmidt has slept, neither waking nor aging, for thirty years since first receiving the vampire's immortal kiss.

D is a vampire hunter—and he's just been paid ten times his asking price to do exactly that, an assignment to destroy Duke Van Doren, administrator of the northern Frontier. Among the complications are that no less than three other groups, each with their own agenda, are headed for the Duke themselves...and D's supposed to hang back from striking until his target has eliminated all three! The question is, will the Duke oblige the terms of the contract—or does he actually want to be destroyed?

In the Wild-West wilderness of the Frontier, a sheriff has been tasked with escorting the captured servant of the vampire Nobility to the authorities in the Capital. Unfortunately, the stagecoach route they must follow crosses into the territory of the servant’s master, the dread Duke Sinistre!

The picturesque coastal town of Florence was known for millennia as a pleasure resort for the Nobility. As retribution for their decadence, the cruel and beautiful vampire inhabitants were ""punished,"" driven out more than a thousand years ago by a solitary traveler in black. Only one—Baron Meinster—refused to leave, only to be thrown to the waves by the mysterious assassin.