SHEEDA

“And The Apes went into 

The Forbidden Zone,

abiding not by The Law, but by vain Curiosity for 

That Which Should Remain Unseen.

And The Prophecy of The Wise Ones was fulfilled, when 

A Talking Man 

fell from The Skies,

to bring 

The End of Days.”

— Lawgiver, 68th. Scroll, Chapter I

SISTER AGATHA:

There is a contagion, a corruption, 

passing through This World 

from one sufferer to The Next.

For those unfortunate to fall victim to it, 

Life becomes incurable.

They lose the Divine Ability to DIE.

As their bodies rot, their consciousness persists.

Even as dust, their pain goes on.

It is a secret every gravedigger keeps.

There are those among us destined 

to scratch at our coffin lids for all Eternity.

If you work among The Dead, it's not Death you fear.

It's The Alternative.

HARKER :

Is there any salvation for such creatures?

SISTER AGATHA:

I Don't Know. 

HARKER :

Have Faith!

SISTER AGATHA:

Faith is a sleeping draught 

for Children and Simpletons.

What we must have is a plan.

HARKER :

Dracula's one of them, isn't he?

SISTER AGATHA:

Undead?

Undead certainly but, from your account, 

I think he is much more complicated.

“[These soldiers] are recruited into an apocalyptic battle with some ancient Enemies of Humanity, a race of beings called the Sheeda, who are familiar to us from folk tale and legend as ‘the Unseelie Court’, or the people of ‘Faerie’ among many other names.

Periodically, these Sheeda arrive like locusts in their millions in huge floating ‘Castles’ they use to ‘harvest’ civilizations which have reached their peak. The Sheeda ransack these cultures and take away their treasures, their achievements, their learning to enrich their own burned-out culture.

The name is from the Irish Sidhe, pronounced ‘Shee’, as in banshee. 

The Sidhe were the Fairy Folk, the strange ones from the hills who haunt the old legends of so many cultures. I had a wild idea about what these legends might REALLY be describing and realised I’d found the perfect villains for this story. I based my portrayal of the Sheeda civilization itself on a dark, inverted Goth image of Queen Elizabeth I’s England. 

They’re very evil, decadent and corrupt but as I say we don’t reveal their TRUE nature and who they really are until later in the series. In FRANKENSTEIN! issue 4 in fact, ‘Frankenstein vs. Fairyland’.”

The Ultra-Marine Corps are the LiveHero Vaccine dose which he used to inoculate Earth-Prime against incursions and infections by The Sheeda by injecting them directly into Our World at the very beginning of The 21 st. Century —

To gift Us all with immunity from The Harrowings and The Harvest of Summer’s End, beneath the Blood Red setting of The Sun.