In this animated action horror series, we follow the supernatural/occult cases of an elite team of monster detectives. The following is an excerpt from the pilot episode. Dominic and Bellicose are decorated soldiers with the Transylvanian Order of Monsters, and are preparing for an imminent attack from the newly-created rogue Zombie Nation now marching on their lands.
Hitler’s Engine Part I: Warlords of Transylvania ACT ONE
FADE IN:
INT. TENT - NIGHT
We are looking at a MAP. Old, tattered, burned at the edges.
A large, blue hand with sharp, black fingernails holds the map flat on one side while a smaller hand wrapped entirely in BANDAGES holds it down on the other.
It depicts a river, mountains, and a forest with a valley region at its center. Several WOODEN TILES have been placed here, three representing the enemy forces, which the blue hand moves towards two tiles positioned near a castle icon.
DOMINIC (O.C.)
How bad is it?
BELLICOSE (O.C.)
Very. The scouts say they took the West Bank when they crossed the river.
DOMINIC (O.C.)
Survivors?
BELLICOSE (O.C.)
No, but I wouldn’t turn cartwheels or anything. He--
This isn’t the kind of tent you camp in. It’s the kind they used to set up in the 19th Century before a big battle. It’s old and worn, as evidenced by patches sewn into the fabric here and there. Our map rests on a small wooden table, and the whole space is lit by the single candle atop it.
DOMINIC stands to one side of the table. He is a MUMMY, thin and gaunt, and wearing vaguely Japanese armor akin to a samurai. It’s not much more than a pair of baggy pants, greaves to cover his shins, and gauntlets on both his arms. He is otherwise shirtless, but has a bandana around his head. His katana and wakizashi are staked into the dirt nearby.
Across the table from Dominic stands BELLICOSE, a muscled and intimidating WARRIOR DEMON with long, black horns and a neat mustache and beard who must be over seven feet tall. Dressed in battle-worn medieval leather body armor consisting of several belts and buckles, he keeps a gigantic WAR HAMMER with a six-foot oaken shaft on his back.
DOMINIC
Recruited them, didn’t he?
BELLICOSE
Well, I was gonna say enslaved, but then, you’ve always been an optimist.
DOMINIC
How many?
BELLICOSE
Twenty, twenty-five.
DOMINIC
We’re gonna need reinforcements.
BELLICOSE
Those were our reinforcements.
DOMINIC
Bellicose, I don’t suppose it’s too much to ask that you’re making all this up just to annoy me, is it?
Bellicose raises a bushy black eyebrow just when a GOBLIN SQUIRE lifts the flap of the tent to stick his head in.
GOBLIN
Dominic, you have a visitor.
Dominic slams his hands down on the map, looking up with an exasperated SIGH. He doesn’t have time for whatever this is.
DOMINIC
Is it the Roman Empire?
GOBLIN
It is not.
DOMINIC
Then tell whoever it is to go away. I’m busy planning a battle I stand about as much chance of winning as I do of being crowned the next Queen of Scotland!
GOBLIN
Is... that what you want me to tell him?
Dominic and Bellicose exit the tent out into--
EXT. ENCAMPMENT - CONTINUOUS
--where we see their tent is but one of a few dozen.
We are in a bivouac, a staging area for soldiers. Dense forest borders the site on all sides, and even while a FULL MOON lights the entire camp, a few FIRES burn throughout.
A vast array of MONSTERS of every description move about the area, some carrying water and firewood while others forge weapons on an anvil and cook food over the fires.
They are warriors all, soldiers.
TITLE:
Transylvania, 1746 A.D.
TAI waits patiently just outside Dominic’s tent.
He is a fit, stern and wizened Asian in his 70’s with long, silver-streaked black hair pulled into a braided ponytail. He keeps a neat mustache and beard and wears a sleeveless tunic and baggy pants with a hooded traveling cloak.
Tai holds the reins of his horse, which stands next to INARI, his teenage daughter. She is beautiful, and also wears her hair braided. Her attire is similar to her father’s, only she keeps a PAIR OF SHORT SWORDS along the small of her back and a leather bandolier of THROWING KNIVES across her chest.
TAI
Are you the one they call Dominic?
DOMINIC
I am. And who is the one they call you?
TAI
I am Tai. This is Inari, my daughter.
DOMINIC
I’ve been expecting you, haven’t I? You’re from the Monastery of the Absurd.
TAI
The Ministry of the Occult?
DOMINIC
That sounds right.
TAI
Will you walk with me?
Dominic gestures, and Tai leads him from the tent where they leave both Bellicose and Inari behind, who looks up at him.
BELLICOSE
(uncomfortably)
Hi.
Ahead, Tai and Dominic wander through the droves of monsters as they come and go to and from their various assignments.
DOMINIC
I don’t have to tell you, we’re a little more than up against it out here. We’re honestly pretty damn-near next to gone.
TAI
That’s because you do not yet grasp what it is you’re dealing with.
DOMINIC
Well, we can be a little slow here in the Remedial Armed Services, so if the powers-that-be have a new strategy for us, don’t keep me in suspense. Not that the current policy of throwing insufficient manpower at a vastly superior enemy force until we lose our minds isn’t paying dividends, of course. Oh, and if it sounds as though I’m angry, it’s only ‘cause I am. These creatures are not to be underestimated.
(beat)
I trust you’ve fought them.
Dominic stops walking to look in Tai’s eyes.
TAI
I’ve studied them.
DOMINIC
Fought would have been better. What are you here to tell me I don’t already know?
TAI
They are the dead, risen. The corpses of those who have passed, absent the hearts and minds that made them whole. It cost me the lives of twenty men to learn being bitten by one makes you one. And it would take thirty more to discover removing the head is the only way to kill one.
DOMINIC
How did this start?
TAI
As things of this nature often do.
DOMINIC
I don’t...
TAI
A fairly unremarkable courtier for the Ministry stole a spell book.
DOMINIC
(chuckles, looks away)
I swear there’s always a spell book.
TAI
He slaughtered the staff... then brought them back. But they were, I don’t know, wrong. What we could not predict was that they would be able to multiply. Which is the problem. There is no remedy, unless you consider death a curative.
DOMINIC
Only if your illness is being alive.
TAI
Any soldier we send against them runs the risk of becoming one of them. We are effectively fighting both sides of this war, and it cannot be won that way.
Inari and Bellicose approach her father and Dominic...
INARI
Father, it’s time.
TAI
Then I had better change.
DOMINIC
Change?
Tai removes his cloak and vest then his boots, setting them down on a wooden bench outside one of the other tents.
TAI
The first thing their creator did after these beings were conjured was--
DOMINIC
Let me guess. He destroyed the book.
TAI
Our best hope of eliminating them lay in its pages, and I fear it may now be too late to hope striking the shepherd will scatter the flock.
(beat)
I wonder, now that they are here, will there ever again come a time when they are not? Can what they are be unmade? Or are we now simply consigned to abiding their kind for all eternity yet to come?
DOMINIC
Are you still talking to me?
INARI
He does this. It’s part of his charm.
Tai looks to the moon. We see its reflection in his blue eye before he squints it shut. His brow tenses strenuously. VEINS bulge along his face as a single tear runs down his cheek.
We HEAR the sounds of stretching flesh, splintering bones. Within seconds, Tai grows to nearly twice his original size as silver-streaked, charcoal grey FUR covers his whole body. He seizes, hunching over onto his hands, which become massive PAWS tipped in razor-sharp talons. His mouth extends a full foot until it is a fearsome snout full of knife-like teeth.
Tai is a WEREWOLF! He opens his eyes again, which are the only part of him that remain exactly the same. Dominic calmly fixes his sights on what Tai has become.
He isn’t freaking out or anything, but this has clearly taken him by surprise. He looks to Inari, who offers him only a wry smile, then returns his gaze to the werewolf.
DOMINIC
Does it hurt when you do that?
TAI
Considerably.
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