"They came after the impact and the firestorms. When the sun went dark. Like they’d been there all along. Just waiting."
It has been seven years since the comet hit the Earth. Seven years since the Sun was hidden behind an eternal ash cloud. Seven years since they appeared.
In a medieval castle in the British countryside, a scrappy band of survivors come together to resist the horde. Darcy is a jaded hunter who is always on the front line, giving her all to save humanity. Her younger sister Hope, on the other hand, just wants the world to go back to how it was, wanting to feel alive again no matter the potential cost.
Impact Winter is an Audible Original radio drama featuring the voice talents of Holliday Grainger, Esme Creed-Miles, Liam Cunningham, Himesh Patel, Bella Ramsey, Indira Varma, and Caroline Ford.
Impact Winter provides examples of the following tropes:
- And I Must Scream: Turns out this is what happens when a vampire is staked through the heart. They become totally helpless, unable to move or even make a sound, cut off from the world and trapped inside their own head with only their screaming psyche for company. And unless someone else removes the stake for them, that'll last forever.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Used for practical reasons. Guns exist but don't do anything to even slow down an attacking vampire. The only way to incapacitate them is a stake through the heart and the only way to kill them is by beheading. Crossbows, battle axes, and swords are the weapons of choice for pretty much everyone.
- The Chosen One: Because of an ancient prophecy, Rook believes that Darcy is this, destined to help bring about the end of the eternal winter.
- Cool Sword: Darcy's weapon of choice.
- Crapsack World: Pretty much a given with the whole apocalypse thing, but the future is not a nice place to live. Chances are you're part of a group of human survivors barely hanging on and living (literally) underground or you're a mindless vampire minion. You might "luck out" and find your way to a stable human colony that's constantly fighting to stay alive, or you might be one of the relatively few vampires that stays (mostly) sane but is still a slave to endless bloodthirst. The options aren't that great.
- Emergency Transformation: After Felix is shot too far away from the base, Darcy turns him in order to prevent him from bleeding out and dying. It's implied it was a mutual choice.
- Endless Winter: The post-apocalyptic setting of the series. A comet crashing into Earth has caused ash and dust to kick up into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun and bringing about an eternal winter.
- Feral Vampires:The most common kind of vampire in this world are barely sentient, savage creatures with more in common with zombies than their more intelligent brethren.
- Gothic Horror: And how. The weapons used are medieval and the setting is full of abandoned castles, ruins, and dark forests.
- Greying Morality: The series starts with pretty clear-cut Black-and-White Morality but quickly degrades into Grey-and-Gray Morality. This trope is invoked by name in Episode 12, and by this time Jep has gotten fine with using any means necessary to protect his people, Darcy has basically cut all ties with her former species and accepted killing other humans in order to survive, every antagonist's motivation is sympathetic in one way or another, and the remaining humans at the castle bunker have gotten used to working with a vampire who's helping them kill other vampires.
- Holy Burns Evil: Discussed by Penelope as being just a legend. Ironically, she uses Psalm 23 as a calming mantra when she's stressed.
- Horror Hunger: Darcy gets a lesson in this the hard way after trying to be a Vegetarian Vampire. Goes especially wrong when the bloodlust causes her to almost kill Felix. It's only amplified even more when she tries to let Jory escape, but can't stop herself from chasing him down and killing him.
- I Call It "Vera": The sword that Darcy uses gets the name "Bess" toward the end of Season 1. Hope seems to imply it's something meaningful. Turns out it's just the name of Darcy and Hope's old pet fish.
- I Love You, Vampire Son: There's this to a certain extent between Darcy and Rook but it's more "friends with benefits" than anything, and it's mentioned several times that other vampires see this as almost incestuous. Played straight between Darcy and Felix during Episode 12 with Felix and his subsequent Emergency Transformation.
- It Gets Easier: Darcy goes down this road after the first kill to satisfy the Horror Hunger. By the third kill or so, it's almost reached a level of "playing with your food", including teasing the victim and then talking about the kill afterward with the same casual level as mentioning the weather.
- The Runaway: A group of teenagers from the castle are tired of living in the bunker so they decide to run off and ally with the vampires. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
- Vegetarian Vampire: Poor Penelope really tries to be this but, sadly, vampires in this world simply cannot get by without human blood.
- Voluntary Vampire Victim: Thankfully, it seems that she can get around this with the help of Hope.
- Would Hurt a Child: Technically she's a child in form only and actually several hundred years old, but Jep has zero problems with shooting Whisper through the heart with a crossbow and then using torture to get her to talk. This includes breaking her fingers in bone-snapping detail, and waiting for them to instantly heal just so they can be re-broken over and over again for as long as it takes.
