Strigoi Progenitor

The most powerful strigoi are those intentionally summoned into the bodies of willing hosts in times long past. As the rites to do so are lost to time, very few strigoi progenitors exist today. Those who do trace their lives back well over ten thousand years ago to Thassilon, Azlant, or similar ancient empires. A strigoi progenitor may appear to possess the vitality of the living, yet closer inspection reveals sharp fangs, the faintest smell of decay, and the strange and unsettling shifting of their shadow. In life, this example strigoi progenitor was a powerful oracle and advisor in Runelord Sorshen's nation of Eurythnia.

The oldest of all vampires are the strigoi. They predate ancient nosferatus and view moroi as infantile children, yet their own origins are so far lost to the ravages of time that few today have heard of them and fewer still know their true nature. Many of the oldest tales about vampires trace back to the strigoi, and nearly every other vampire carries traits that ultimately have their roots in these powerful, ancient creatures.

Strigoi, in their true form, are bodiless creatures native to the Shadow Plane that are incapable of interacting with the physical world, existing only as pure forces of malevolence. When this malevolence is invited into a physical body by method of ancient rituals, though, a strigoi becomes much more dangerous. This requirement-that a living creature perform a rite of their own free will to draw the strigoi into their soul-may well be the source of a moroi's compulsion not to enter a home without first being invited.

Some myths point to Urgathoa as the source of the ritual that allowed spellcasters to become strigoi, while others suggest the method was spread by the cult of Zura. Whatever the source, this long-lost ritual was no gateway to power, but instead a trap that allowed the strigoi to inhabit the shadows and souls of once-living hosts. In so doing, they found a way to exist in the world of flesh and blood. The presence of a strigoi within the shadow of a living host causes sickness and swift death, after which the strigoi bonds with the host's soul and becomes one with the body. Thus did the first of their kind invade the world of the living, and thus did the first vampires walk the night.