According to the Nephilem, the age began with the first star. When a nameless god possessing all the powers in creation formed the world to light up the darkness. Then, he split himself into a number of powerful beings to experience and develop that which he had created. Eventually these powerful beings split themselves further into a race the Nephilem describe as Angels. These angels created the bulk of life, including plants, water, warmth, they discovered Magic, the remnants of their original form, and used it to develop the world into a state known as the First Era.
The First Era ended with the splitting of angels into Nephilem, to descend from the heavens and experience the world in detail. Nephilem quickly spread across the land and explored the details of magic and it's mysteries. It was not long before the Nephilem came to the realization that they were too powerful, and were ruining the world beyond their repair, and many began to split themselves off even further. They cast off their unwanted traits and became human, whereas the unwanted traits slowly coalesced into Vampirism, the manifestation of the hunger for what they once had.
The Second Era eventually came to an end when Humans, having spread like rabbits, eventually produced enough archmages to run out of room, and the remaining Nephilem fought with the humans. The only known survivors of this conflict are the ones who hid. During the Second Era, the world existed as a single continent, after the conflict nearly half the worlds land mass was lost with the remainder shattered into several continents, the plates of the world permanently rended apart. Magic has been lost since then, even those such as Lucifer and Fubuki proclaiming the current levels of Mana to be a mere fraction of what they once were.
Many things are different from what you know. There are changes going on in the world that they don't want you to know about. To begin, we will cover what happened from the viewpoint in time of 2032, the year Sam first attended The School.
Formerly, the vampires of the world used to do their best to hide in plain site, and simply blend in. Those times have past and they have made their move on a global scale. It started by allying themselves with the United Nations a few years past. It has long been known amongst the most average of first world citizens, that the major world leaders no longer cared for them, and those who did were kept from power by any means necessary. The Head's of House used this to their advantage to begin making their move. By connecting with the few uncorrupt world leaders and installing their own slowly where necessary, they began to align themselves with powerful allies on a global scale within the rooms of the UN. Rarely if ever meeting in person, their communications done in private, quickly becoming a seperate faction while still flying under the UN flag.
Armed with the power of close to 10% of the global economy, and formed by the guidance of the Headmaster, this split faction of the UN began to take action, and moved with an overwhelming confidence the UN had always meant to have. By simply bypassing the entirety of the political red tape and chest puffing the UN had become known for, and armed with more money and connections than any one man could dream of, they quickly established a UN Embassy in northern New York under the guise of making a global university for the worlds brightest and most talented. The entrance requirements quickly became headline news around the world for one simple fact. The school publicly welcomed vampire students and had roughly a third of its student body as such. While the embassy was founded in 2016, it had not become a school and operational until 2024.
Though the details of their relationship remains a mystery, the new Governor of New York who had taken office in 2022 was very welcoming and supportive of the school and its efforts and held the school in great confidence. It was because of this support that the many riots, attempted vandalism, and outrage, were quelled at the behest of the National Guard. Vampires had been, until now, fairly disliked worldwide, with the loose exception of Italy. Now, suddenly public, and tucked away safe within the confines of a UN Embassy, figureheads around the world were baffled, as was the main faction of the UN, especially when they discovered they no longer had a voice with this new faction that operated under their name.
This led to a worldwide cold war from the years of 2024 to 2031. The original UN was outraged by these "imposters" however the impressive power the new faction held kept anyone from making a direct move against them, after all, that wouldn't be politically correct. Having done great work to establish allies behind the scenes, such as eliminating the leadership of North Korea in exchange for Korea as an ally, various bribes and hands of assistance had earned the split faction of the UN enough allies and political presence across the world to not only claim the flag of the UN as their own, but to also undermine the remainder of the UN to the point people considered them to be the imposter. Through military contracts with various nations, the elite vampires of the House of Ares, and mercenaries from around the world, the new faction of the UN usurped the previous leaders in its entirety and brought the presence of the UN to its rightful place.
With the now considerable respect and fear of the UN behind it, the school continued to teach classes while acting as the headquarters of the new world power. Bringing teachers in from around the world, nobel prize winning scientists and authors, vampires older than recorded history, and vampire hunters of legend, all gathered at the school to teach subjects at the highest level possible. Only the most wealthy could even try to buy their way into the school, tuition ran well over 8 figures in the U.S, due to the tuition including on site living, cutting edge medical care, security, living spaces, food, education, and more. Less than 1% of the students at any given time were there under their own finances. The rest were all under full coverage scholarships competitive enough to kill over.
The school searched for many qualities in its students, as such, its scholarships were difficult to apply for, and often would simply arrive at your door.