Hm. I'm going to put my thinking cap on here and see if there isn't a simple short with it to get me writing again.

 

I was re-watching the Hellsing anime and OVAs recently and had a thought that it could potentially be compatible with The Dresden Files, with some tweaking. I don't have much of a plot worked out yet. Mostly I'm stuck on reconciling differences between the two universes.

For now, I'm wondering how the White Council would view an organization such as Hellsing. Can anyone familiar with both The Dresden Files and Hellsing give some thoughts on this?

 

As long as Hellsing isn't using Black Magic, they'd welcome the help.

I doubt they'd be seen as trustworthy, what with the whole Alucard thing, but the White Council would almost certainly treat them similarly as the Fellowship of St Giles or the Venatori. Specifically: Wish them luck then ignore them as much as possible.

 

The Binding Spells on Alucard are borderline at best in regards to Black Magic.

 

Alucard isn't human, so they don't particularly matter, and he's powerful enough that they're less borderline, more necessary.

 

Not at all. Black Magic requires the victim to be human. Alucard being a vampire means that there's no Black Magic involved, at least from the Council's perspective.

 

Gotta wonder where Alucard would stack up on the power scale. He's powerful enough to pull an entire army of ghouls out of his arse, but would that be enough to stand toe to toe with Mab?

 

That's what makes them not outright Black; if they used it on a human, they'd be dead before you can say "Krakatoa."

It's the equivalent of Dresden binding Sue, multiplied by at least an order of magnitude.

 

I haven't worked out exactly where Alucard would be put on the Dresden power scale. He's formidable, no doubt about that.

Comparing Hellsing's potential relationship with the Council to the Fellowship seems to make the most sense. Though, Hellsing is a hell (ha) of a lot better organized and funded than the Fellowship is, and they're backed directly by the British government. Still, I'll go with that as a basis.

Clearly I'm going to have to change some background info in the Dresden side of things, regarding the events of Dracula and the publication of the book and all that. I'm thinking that the Drakul mentioned a few times in the series, even from what little we know of him, wouldn't fit well with the lore established in Hellsing. I'll probably drop him. Wouldn't change much, since he's barely played a role yet anyway. Maybe Kincaid could have served Dracula back in the day instead?

There's also reconciling the Iscariot Division with the Catholic Church as it's portrayed in The Dresden Files. Didn't Father Forthill mention being a vampire hunter or something back in his younger days? I wonder if it'd be too far a stretch to have him be a former Iscariot agent, back before Maxwell took over and made it as fanatical as it is in the present day.

 

You would need to reconcile Michael and his quiet, righteous faith with Anderson's fanaticism. Both of them work for the Church, but Michael isn't the type to abide by fanatics. The Warrior pretty much showed that.

 

Well, Dracula was released at the turn of the 19th century, and Alucard joined Hellsing some time after that. Could be that Dracula was one of the Black Court Elders (it seems to fit his power level pretty well, in my eyes), but while the others used the defence of intense personal arrogance, Dracula saw what was happening and decided to join his would-be killers.

You know, thinking about it, Hellsing seems to fit pretty damn well into the Dresdenverse... Nazis excluded.

 

In terms of power, Alucard would probably be somewhere between Shagnasty and Mab, based on what he displays in the OVAs. Keeping/putting him there also lets him keep his whole "I'm gonna stand here and tank everything you do" combat style while still keeping some valid threats out there.

As for Drakul, you probably don't need to do too much with him. The only important thing about Drakul is that both Kincaid and Dracula were his scions. Dracula split from him a long time ago. You could easily keep Drakul in without affecting Dracula at all, and this lets Alucard troll the fuck out of Kincaid if/when they interact.

Finally, the Iscariot Division could easily be the hyper-fanatical sub-section of the Ordo Malleus (the thing Forthill belongs to that's revealed in The Warrior). I'd say make Forthill aware of Iscariot, but not actually a member. If you really need an Iscariot member, just use the antagonist from The Warrior whose name I've forgotten.

That's easy. Michael's also not the type to go around hunting people down for being fanatics. He's very live and let live.

Canon DF has Dracula as either the progenitor of the entire Black Court or at least one of the strongest IIRC. You could take canon DF exactly as-is and say "this is Alucard's backstory, until he defected" and it'd work just fine.

 

Not really. The books have it that Dracula joined the Black Court as a sort of teenage rebellion, which implies that they were around before that. My favourite fan theory is that the Black Court were the Black Death and that Dracula joined up while (or shortly after) they were in their heyday.

 

If I remember correctly, Kincaid wasn't a scion of Drakul.

He was just Drakul's right-hand man, and picked up the title of "the Hound of Hell" I think.


However, Kincaid is a Scion of something. Just, not necessarily of Drakul.

 

Kincaid might be Drakul's scion. But it's never specifically said as far as I know.

 

I think I'll favor Hellsing's version of events in this case, where the despair he feels after losing his war against the Ottomans drives him to become a vampire (though the details on the how, such as who turned him, could use some elaboration -- the manga was pretty vague on that topic).

EDIT: On the subject of the Black Court, I think I'm going to transplant some of their traits with ones presented by the "true" (i.e. the ones not made by Millennium) vampires in Hellsing. They're pretty similar in the most important ways: weakness to religious symbols and garlic, reliance on earth from their homeland to sleep in, inability to cross running water without assistance. Hellsing vampires aren't all falling apart though (and honestly, Dracula in the book wasn't either -- he could pass off as a normal human pretty easily, so I don't see why all the other Blacks are all corpsey if he wasn't, even if it does make for some very disturbing imagery), have an additional weakness to silver, can make ghouls in addition to Renfields (though some clarification might need to be made between Hellsing ghouls and the Dresden ghouls), and can only turn a virgin of the opposite sex into another vampire. I'd think that last bit would actually bite them in the ass harder after so many are hunted down, since it would be much more difficult for them to replenish their numbers compared to the Red Court which can breed like rabbits.

You know, with all the thought I'm putting into this now, I really hope I don't end up leaving it to rot like I do with everything else I try to work on. Damn flighty attention span.

 

I rather enjoyed the characters from Hellsing, but I felt that writing was very typical of anime. Everything's overstated and subtle as a kick to the crotch. Ultimate Hellsing was awesomely dark at some points, then had random fucktard manga moments which ruined the thing entirely.

Before going into a rant, I think you've got lots of interesting material to use and I'm going to be interested to see how you do use it.

 

Fuck subtle. Bring on the two-foot-long handguns.

If the "random fucktard manga moments" you're referring to are these kind of scenes, then yeah, I think we could've done without those entirely. They've got no bearing on the story, they're rarely funny and they just break up the flow.

And finally, don't put too much faith in me (i.e. don't put any faith in me). I have a chronic habit of disappointing people.

Anyway, I had another question pop up recently. In the Dresden Files, the events of Dracula actually happened, right? Dracula came to England, did spooky shit, got chased away and then killed? Van Helsing and everyone actually existed? Or is it more like, Dracula actually existed, and then died somehow, and then Bram Stoker was convinced by the White Council to write a fictionalized story about that to increase vampire awareness in the public? I'm a little unclear.

 

All we know for sure is that Dracula existed and that Stoker wrote a novel that may or may not be a factual account.

Most likely, the book was more-or-less factual, with minor deviations to make it a more effective how-to-kill-a-vampire guide (ie, emphasize weaknesses, etc), but there's no explicit mention in canon of it being true. I read an implication that it is, but that may just be me.

 

I got the impression that Dracula was still alive... Well, as alive as a Black Court vamp can be. Will you include Seras in the story?