Strigoi Bloodline

-1520 IC: The Lord of Masks​

The curse of the Strigoi bloodline begins in ancient Lahmia. When Neferata first brewed the Elixir of Life, she shared it with a chosen few. Among them was Ushoran, remembered in contradictory traditions: some as a dull, brooding noble whose only worth lay in brute strength; others as a master of spies and deception who cloaked himself in masks of weakness to hide his ambition. From this duality, and his famed hosting of glittering masquerades, he earned the title Lord of Masks.

-1200 to -1170 IC: The Fall of Lahmia​

It was in these years that Ushoran struck an unlikely alliance with W’soran, the necromancer-turned-vampire who would become the progenitor of the Necrarchs. Where W’soran sought knowledge in Nagash’s dark lore, Ushoran supplied influence and cover in Lahmia’s court. Together they schemed to restore the Great Necromancer to life, stealing relics and performing profane rituals.

When the Priest Kings united to destroy Lahmia, Ushoran fought with savage might, slaying foes by the dozen. Yet his power was not enough. Lahmia was razed, its vampire lords scattered, and Ushoran himself was seared by sacred flame. Gravely wounded, he fled north with W’soran and a handful of followers. Some say it was during this exile that the seeds of degeneration were first sown: his wounds never healed, and his hunger grew insatiable.

-1163 to -1151 IC: The God of Ghouls​

Exile drove Ushoran into madness. By the time he stumbled into the pits of Nagashizzar, he was more beast than lord, half-insane with hunger and pain. In that black fortress he found a strange kinship with the ghouls who dwelt in its shadows — degenerate cannibals shunned by men. They recognised him as master, and he bent them to his will, becoming their lord and master.

Nagash himself soon took notice. Some say Ushoran was broken in chains and forced into servitude; others whisper of a pact, in which he swore to bring the vampire bloodlines under Nagash’s dominion in exchange for vengeance against Neferata. Whatever the bargain, Ushoran emerged from Nagashizzar changed, empowered but also cursed. Many believe Nagash deliberately deepened the degeneration within his blood, binding hunger and madness more tightly into his essence.

But his service did not last. Nagash attempted his greatest work: a ritual to raise all of Nehekhara in undeath. The effort weakened him terribly. At that moment, the Skaven struck. They freed Alcadizzar, last and greatest of the Priest Kings, from Nagashizzar’s dungeons and armed him with the dreaded Fellblade, a warpstone-forged weapon steeped in corruption. In the throne room of Nagashizzar, Alcadizzar struck the necromancer down, hacking him apart and ending his dominion.

As Nagash perished, the sorceries binding his realm unravelled. Ushoran fled amidst the collapse, slipping away with his ghoul host into the Badlands. The death of the Great Necromancer marked a turning point: Ushoran was free, but the curse gnawed deeper, and his destiny lay no longer in Nehekhara, but in exile.

-1020 IC: The Gilded Cage of Strigos​

In the northern Badlands, Ushoran encountered the necromancer Kadon, who had unearthed the dread Crown of Sorcery from Alcadizzar’s corpse and used it to raise Mourkain as a citadel of undeath. Ushoran slew Kadon and claimed the Crown, drawing strength from its power but also falling prey to the whispers of Nagash that lingered within it. With this act he seized Mourkain for himself, refounding it as the capital of his kingdom — later remembered as Strigos.

For a time, Mourkain became a strange beacon of civilisation in the wastes. Ushoran ruled as king, surrounding himself with courtiers both vampiric and mortal. Clinging to echoes of nobility, Ushoran forced his monstrous subjects into hollow parodies of Lahmian ritual. Masquerades continued, though their dancers were half-feral ghouls. Thrones were draped in tattered finery, banquets served with carrion flesh. Yet Strigos was no mere grotesque show. It became the heart of the Mourkain Alliance, a true empire: men, orcs, goblins, and ghouls all bent beneath Ushoran’s will. For centuries, Strigos endured as a dark kingdom in the heart of the Badlands.

At its height, the city even drew other progenitors of vampirism as Ushoran callled out to his kin, attempting to recreate lost Lahmia. Abhorash remained steadfast, serving as Ushoran’s executioner and enforcer of feeding laws — decreeing that vampires drink only from criminals, captives, or fallen foes. W’soran came as master of necromancy, raising beasts and monstrosities for the city’s defence. Eventually Neferata dwelt there for a time as spymaster and mistress of intrigue. Yet jealousies seethed, especially from Neferata, who could not abide Ushoran’s throne.

-600 IC: Vorag - The first Ghoul King​

At the height of Strigos’ power, Vorag Bloodytooth—a powerful, volatile get of Ushoran whose ferocity made him a terror even in Strigos’s grim court. Though he rose quickly to prominence, his savagery could not be contained and he was banished from his sire’s court, with later rumour laying the blame at Neferata’s door. In exile he united the ghoul tribes about Cripple Peak, crushed the Red Cloud Goblins and enslaved the survivors to raise the Fortress of Vorag among the crags east of the Plain of Bones. Though Ushoran had bent ghouls to his will long before, Vorag was the first to be named a “Ghoul King,” a twisted title that would cling to his bloodline thereafter. Dwarf chronicles speak of punitive ventures sent to scour his lairs; greenskin tales remember a season of butchery in the high valleys. The siege of the Grey Hag ended with Vorag struck from the ramparts by a Goblin artillery bolt, his carrion host scattered—defeated but not slain. For a time he vanished from the chronicles, and the fortress fell into ruin as his trail passed into rumour.

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-327 to -200 IC: The Great Betrayal & The Sack of Strigos​

The fall of Strigos was no simple defeat of arms but a tapestry of treachery and disaster. For a time, Ushoran’s city had prospered through unlikely alliances. Strigos forged trade links with the Dwarfs of the World’s Edge Mountains, exchanging gems, silver, and steel for grain, livestock, and labour. These ties gave Mourkain a stability rare in the Badlands and provided the wealth with which Ushoran maintained his strange, savage kingdom.

But Neferata, ever watchful, saw in Strigos a rival to her influence. Through her spies she began to unravel Ushoran’s fragile network. False tidings and poisoned whispers were sown among the Dwarfs, eroding trust until the trade faltered. Vorag and other Strigoi on the frontiers were told that Ushoran intended to kill them, whether this was true or not as Ushoran's mind was fracturing more due to Nagash's Crown, this lead to a brutal but short civil war. Then came the Red Death — a mysterious plague whose origins are lost, but whose reputation was carefully shaped by Lahmian hands. Neferata’s agents ensured that Strigos was blamed, whispering of unclean practices, cannibal feasts, and the corruption of Ushoran’s brood. In the eyes of neighbouring tribes and distant powers, Strigos became an accursed place, a kingdom rotting from within.

Then came the hammer blow. From the east thundered a colossal Orc WAAAGH!, sweeping across the Badlands in an unstoppable tide. Some whisper that Lahmian agents had deliberately turned the horde westward, guiding it straight toward Strigos. Whatever the truth, the greenskins fell upon Ushoran’s realm with apocalyptic fury, even as the kingdom’s alliances lay in ruins.

Strigos was crushed in a brutal vice. Its walls were shattered, its palaces burned, and its masquerade courts drowned in blood. Ushoran himself fought with monstrous rage, cutting down foes in droves. In his final act of defiance, he tore the head from the Orc warlord who led the assault and hurled it from the battlements for all to see. Yet in that same moment, an Orc shaman known as Red Eye unleashed a storm of green fire that engulfed him.

Whether Ushoran perished in that blast, fled into the wastes as a maddened beast, or endured in some stranger fate, none can say. His disappearance marked the end of Strigos — a kingdom betrayed, shattered, and swallowed by dust, its name thereafter synonymous with ruin.

IC 400: Rumors in Sylvania...​

An ancient Strigoi was noted to be lurking in the forests of Sylvania, looking to return Strigos to it's former glory, referred to only as The Ghoul King

IC 600–2000: The Age of Hidden Kingdoms​

With Ushoran and Strigos gone, the Strigoi ceased to be a power in the open world. Instead they retreated into darkness, building hidden courts beneath ruins and tombs. Some became petty kings in forgotten crypts, draping themselves in bone and rags of finery. Others raised savage courts in barrows, ruins, or catacombs, gathering ghouls to worship them as gods.

When the comet fell upon Mordheim in IC 1999, Gashnag the Black Prince carved out a ghoul kingdom in its ruins. He ruled the city’s catacombs, preying on treasure hunters and fugitives, and his name became a terror in Stirland.

Other petty kingdoms arose — the Cannibal Court of the Howling Hills, the Crypt-Kings of the Dragon’s Grave, shadow-thrones beneath the Border Princes — but none lasted long. Each was destroyed by Orcs, Witch Hunters, or their own madness.

c. 2250 IC: A King’s Vengeance​

In those years the Strigany wandered beneath gallows-trees. Pogroms and burnings stained the roads from Ostermark to the Stir valleys, and a northern Count—hungry for favour—won acclaim by proving himself ruthless in the “cleansing” of caravans. Then, on a moonless night, a giant came out of the wastes: a Strigoi of such breadth and sinew that even seasoned soldiers fell back. The annalists leave him unnamed; the Strigany whisper only that a king returned.

He gathered the scattered wagons beneath his shadow and forbade any harm to them, turning his ghouls upon other quarry and tearing down the camp gallows with his bare hands. Watchtowers toppled; patrols vanished; the noose-wood was burned to ash. When at last he came to the Count who had made a ladder of Strigany graves, he did not kill him. He bestowed the corrupted Kiss, leaving the man to wrestle with a hunger he had once reviled—able to restrain himself only from terror of becoming like the carrion lord who had made him. For a season the guardian in rags watched his captive falter; then he vanished into the border fogs, and the caravans moved on under his unspoken protection.

The Strigoi in the Modern Age​

By the era of the Vampire Wars, the Strigoi were no longer a dynasty but a scattered remnant. Among mortals they were myths of horror, indistinguishable from ghouls; among vampires, their name was a curse, a warning of what awaited those who surrendered to the beast within. Yet they endure. In crypts, charnel pits, and forgotten ruins, the Ghoul Kings still reign over their degenerate subjects, worshipped as living gods. Among mortals, their human legacy lingers in the Strigany — wandering nomads scorned across the Old World. Most do not know it, but the Strigany are believed to be the descendants of Strigos’s human population, scattered into exile after the city’s destruction. Shunned and mistrusted, they carry fragments of their ancient heritage, preserving in whispers and campfire tales the belief that Ushoran yet lives. To them, he is a betrayed god, destined to return and reclaim his crown.