Over ten thousand years ago, the Precursors ruled what would become known as the New World. They were arrogant, though not without cause, for they wielded great magic and technology alike. This did not save them in the cataclysm that remapped the continent, but it did provide some of their people with a means of saving themselves.

Arigoz was one such survivor, though he cannot be called a Precursor any more. In the distant past, he was Baron Uril, a talented necromage working on the outskirts of the Precursor Empire. In his studies, he came across records of a vanished race of beings as old to him and his kin as the Precursors are to us. They were said to be supernaturally gifted with strength, immortality, and dark magic, all for the simple price of a life in the shadows, forced to shun the light and drink the blood of lesser beings. Baron Uril found this account fascinating, but ultimately little more than a curiosity… until the skies wrenched open and the landscape shook. Realizing the end was nigh – and that ruin and woe were all that awaited him and his people – he threw himself into his notes, feverishly working to decipher the secrets of the lost race as the apocalypse crept ever closer. In the end, his distant post gave him the time he needed, set far from the epicenter of the disaster as it was. After decoding the proper incantations, he desperately cast his stolen spell moments before destruction arrived, exchanging his humanity for the immortality that would allow him to survive it. In so doing, he shed his mortal flesh and arose as a primal vampire – a creature of blood and shadow – and in the millennia since that day, he has grown vast and terrifying indeed.

Now… that might be the end of this story, and certainly, to know the tale of Arigoz is to hold a terrifying bit of lore indeed – but the darker, more insidious truth even poor Baron Uril never discovered is that the ‘ancient race’ from whom he stole the secrets never vanished. They are beside us even now, preying on civilization from the shadows with far more cunning than the half-mad Arigoz could ever fathom…