Strigoi

Monster Summary

• Size: Special - Shapeshifters, shifting from human to the monster their core originated from
• Motivation/Temperament: Aggressive in monster form; intelligent in human form
• Preferred Environment: All
• Prevalence: Few
• Danger Level: Individual and Small Group | Large Group in monster form
• Attack Description: Full range of human attacks to animal attacks
• Monster Core Size and Appearance: The congealed fragmented core at the creature’s heart

Mystery

Strigoi are somewhat of a mystery to the average person serving as local boogeymen and infamous tavern legends. Their mysteries are widespread and exist throughout the continent in every wary bedtime story. Told to be nightmarish creatures that mask themselves in human forms, undetectable to all but the keenest eye (or the most well-behaved child depending on the story), sometimes nocturnal beasts, other times creatures of enormous strength and hunger, their singular point of similarity in these tales is always that they have an incredible ability to assume human form and walk among society. Their true origins, intentions, and abilities are much more fearsome than what is normally told.

Origins

True Strigoi (source strigoi) find their origins tied to the dangerous Blood Sands, as surviving an encounter with one of these dangerous hazards risks the chance of transformation. Blood sands contain microparticles of congruence cores and seek living beings for consumption. On creation of a blood sand, the shattered core freezes in linear time, and the previous existence pauses. The sands remain non-sentient, but remain with motive. Their shards of core are attracted to life, though their purpose is to find a suitable creature able to ‘unpause’ the existence that it thinks is still trapped by bonding and reforging itself with the newly acquired life. Essentially all blood sands lack the internal processing to make such a function occur, though when such a rarity comes to light, a source strigoi.

These unlucky victims have parts of their essence melded with the rampant core shards that spread throughout their body, after surviving a painful process that can last even a couple of weeks. The core then reintegrated into the body, begins a transformative process of reformation, mixing the currently living individual with qualities from the original monster or entity that the core initially came from. The new core, and newly formed strigoi are still horribly incomplete, and incapable of reaching any form of final creation, forming an incredible, endless hunger. The mind of the person becomes bent to this eternal hunger, though fragments of personality may remain, they are often snuffed out or suffused like so much else into the baser functions of survival.

Motives

A strigoi is not mindless, even if their morals and ethics become warped and foreign, instead, they develop a unique dogma based around 3 key factors. The remnants of their now fractured personality, the essence of the base beast they subsumed, and their ceaseless hunger. Each one influences what the strigoi sees as good or bad, and while much of it might align with the tenets of its previous life, the new creation follows a chief rule which everything else falls below in importance. The strigoi will earn what it hungers for. The nature of their unnatural union can make the targets for a strigoi’s hunger abstract, though in all aspects it relates to humanity in some regard.

Long lived source strigoi still are burdened by their unending hunger, but have a much more complete control over their functionality and are able to nearly perfectly blend into society should they wish. This expanded control applies not only to their mannerisms, but also for their abilities and power. Young source strigoi struggle for years with 3 separate fragments of harshly conflicting personality, and this is their most vulnerable time, and also arguably their most dangerous for their unpredictability.

Base strigoi (see Transference section below for explanation of Base Strigoi) have an even harder life. Where 1 in 4 source strigoi may possess the control or power that comes with long life, only 1 in 1000 base strigoi might reach this point, and will otherwise be trapped as an incomplete individual for the rest of their life.

Abilities:

Transformation: A strigoi has the ability to call upon either its humanity or its monstrous origin at whim. The strigoi can freely transform between either the individual that it was before it turned, to a strange, hybrid creature taking on several features of the core’s origin monster*. Most commonly, the transformation results in the skin becoming hard and leathery, sometimes with bestial hair or scales, the face contorting into animalistic features, growing claws and fangs, and always making the mouth more pronounced. In more extreme transformations, additional limbs, sensory organs, and even heads it is rumored have formed. The more aspects of the monster the transformed strigoi adapts, the less human its intelligence is (until it becomes an elder of its race) until a complete transformation renders the humanity completely inert, and it stays in its monstrous hybrid shape until its hunger is temporarily sated.

Congruence Powers: Being blessed and cursed with a core grants the strigoi a human’s ability for intellect with the magical strength of a monster. What takes a master years of training and effort becomes secondhand nature to a strigoi. Though they are adept with congruence, a strigoi is a master of whatever congruence abilities the original monster once held. Their dangerous strength lies in the fact that while their congruence power is arguably stronger, their reserves of power are nearly inexhaustible, though excessive use of the core drives the strigoi’s hunger even further, no case has ever recorded one truly draining. Elder strigoi can almost always be assumed to also be formidable congruence adepts, while younger strigoi will frequently rely on the definitive physicality of their transformations and strength.

Strength: Elder strigoi, and some younger strigoi have gained the ability to activate the powerful benefits of transformation while remaining in human form, granting them strength and defense of a monster without physically changing their bodies.

Monstrous Qualities: Scents, sights, sensory, congruence based, physical, all become enhanced as the base human, if the monster’s were better, and become enhanced to meet (or even surpass) the monster’s qualities when transformed.

Regeneration: The need and hunger provides a singular boon for a strigoi. When damaged, the congruence fragments that still swarm within the host attempt to pull themselves back together, stitching pieces of flesh to render the damage null. Elder strigoi can even reattach limbs, and the eldest can survive total destruction, so long as their monster core remains. For almost all strigoi, the core takes shape where the heart is, as the blood sands initial attack leeches the fragments of the shattered core into the bloodstream to circulate through the body. Opponents that survive or see a regenerating strigoi comment that the body and blood moves much like the sands that spawned them.

Speed: Ranges from fast human, to extremely fast monster.

Transference: Perhaps the most nightmarish aspect of these deadly creatures is in their final insidious ability. When a strigoi damages another living creature, either to sate its hunger, or in battle, there is a high chance that some parts of the shattered core which still flow within it will transfer over into the other target, who will over the course of a couple of days begin exhibiting symptoms of blood sand affliction. At which point they will begin to transform into a base strigoi, and repeat the cycle all over again. Base strigoi are often a much weaker and more common strain than source strigoi, and will show similar tendencies and mannerisms to their progenitor. The eldest strigoi are said to be able to use this transference to “seed” their identities intentionally into others, effectively creating clones should the original meet its demise.

The congruence core for a strigoi varies depending on the age and type of strigoi. A base strigoi has what looks like a tumorous latched growth on the heart, a small rock shaped like a lump of flesh and smelling like iron. Source strigoi have their core more well integrated into their heart, and the eldest have their entire heart taken over by the core.

The Ion’cavar

Strigoi are a particular menace to the Ion’cavar. As intelligent shape-shifters, they are extremely difficult to hunt. In a hunger frenzy, they are unpredictable and deadly. Certain Ion’cavar act as specialists in tracking down strigoi; they are viewed by their fellow hunters as a bit crazy.

---

*Naturally formed congruence core bloodsands can render the affliction to the unfortunate individual, but they will never transform into a Strigoi, though encounters with another Strigoi or bloodsands with a monster core will have a greater chance of reacting afterwards. After-effects of suffering from the affliction can carry over and may present some similarities to a Strigoi, but the transformations and strength that might have been gained from the monster's being are absent. At best they gain a slight edge with congruence powers, and at worst they receive chronic illnesses as the bits leftover wreak havoc to their system.