The Ferals

The most numerous predator of the frozen wastelands of the north are the vampires. Few names are consigned so frequently and so fearfully to nervous whispers than those denoting the undead hordes. They stalk the ice with relentless mindless savagery, hungering only for the blood which courses through the living. They require no food, they are at home in the chill, and they fear nothing save the light of the Aurora. In those times of warmth and brightness, the vampire burrow beneath the ice, slumbering until darkness claims the wastes once more.

The majority of the Vampire brood were originally human, but the vampiric curse has turned them into wild, feral creatures of nightmare. Driven mad by their insatiable thirsts, most vampires have lost all semblance of their former humanity, the frost even claiming the features that once marked them as anything more than beasts. They are possessed of uncanny strength, unparalleled reflex, unequalled senses, and an unquenchable thirst for blood. They can sense the warmth of a living being from a considerable distance, and the moment they do, their vampiric bloodlust completely takes over. The vampire is driven relentlessly to consume until they are no longer capable of doing so.

While the vampires only hunt together insofar as they will attack the same victim if they sense it, they do congregate in packs known as covens. Vampire covens almost invariably share a common sire, and will occasionally lay claim to territorial hunting grounds, defending it even against other vampires. More commonly, however, the covens roam the icy wastelands, because prey passing through a territory tends to be an inconsistent source of blood.

The Wendigo

While humans make up the innumerable majority of the vampire population, other races are by no means immune to vampirism. While the bloodlust and its ensuing madness reduce most victims to that same, feral state, there are certain races whose reaction to the transformation leaves them a different sort of beast. Such is the case with the Yeti. Already strong and equipped with impressive senses, the vampiric curse enhances their already considerable abilities beyond what most ordinary folk would dare imagine.

These creatures are known as Wendigos by their former kin. Yeti are notoriously difficult to turn, owing to their natural physical abilities and their cultural propensity for the hunt, and as such, Wendigo are exceedingly rare. Unlike the human vampires, Wendigo are solitary hunters, and have never been observed to hunt in packs. It is, in fact, unlikely that two Wendigo have ever been seen together at all, at least by living eyes and if two have indeed encountered one another, it surely ended with violence.

Nocturni

Not all vampires are doomed to succumb to the maddening hunger of the lesser brood. There is one type of blood that will sate the bloodlust forever, and replace it with another, even deeper desire. Those few vampires who manage to sink their fangs into the throat of a demon, and who are strong enough to survive the deed, become the Nocturni, the lords of the vampires. Though the Nocturni still devour blood, though they no longer require it, it does not satisfy their desires. Instead, the Nocturni are driven by an insatiable lust for power, a lust even more difficult to sate than that of blood.

The Nocturni are the masters of the vampiric race. It is they who sire the others, seeking always to exert their power and their influence. While nothing can truly control a vampire while in the throes of their bloodlust, the Nocturni do control those they sire at all other times, their very essence compelling them to obey. The Nocturni use this control to direct the paths of the wandering covens, just one more piece in their twisted and indecipherable schemes for power.

The Nocturni claim as their own large demesnes centered around the ancient and abandoned keeps that still stand throughout the frozen wastes. These keeps have become havens of death and unlife, and the living rarely venture there, even the Vulpine vampire-hunters. A Nocturnus is, by its very nature, a frighteningly dangerous enemy, and the demesne of one is almost assuredly patrolled by covens of lesser vampires. What truly goes on behind those ancient, weathered walls is not for mortals to know.