The Ousters
Neither human nor vampire: a race born from an act of mercy, raised by a miracle, and hardened by five hundred years of sleep into a single purpose.
Born of Karisas
The Ousters came into existence through Sorceress Karisas in the fifteenth century, when Rakia in northern Eslania lay under the control of the vampires. The poor victims of vampiric feeding had no hope and no cure — so Karisas turned them, through her magic, into half vampires. They were something new: alive, but no longer purely human.
They despised the vampires who had made them what they were. But they could not live among humans either, who saw only the hunger in them. Fate gave them no place to stand, so they set out to build one of their own.
The War That Almost Ended Them
The terrible war between vampires, humans and the young race ended in human triumph. To the victors, peace returned. To the Ousters, almost nothing was left: apart from Lady Karisas herself, only four of the race survived.
The Revelation and the Sacred Ground
Karisas did not let the race die. She led the survivors south, following a revelation. It carried them to the entrance of the Holyland of Adam. They had no way to break the seal that closed it — but they understood one thing clearly: the secret inside the Holyland would grant terrible power to the vampires. So the ancestors chose the post that no one else was left to hold. They took the place of the ancient guardians who had perished defending the Sacred Ground, and made their new home beside it.
The Miracle of Lavinia
Ten years passed in the new home, and in those ten years not a single child was born. The Ousters had no way to grow their community, and with every year the despair grew heavier, until even Lady Karisas bowed her head. Then came the miracle that saved the race.
Lavinia, the only woman among the four survivors, gave birth to twins. These children were like nothing before them: incredibly powerful and strong, stronger than the old generation, and neither male nor female. Lavinia and the others despaired a second time, believing nature had failed them again.
But when the twins reached adulthood, they began to lay strange eggs — the germins. The eggs came together on their own and started to breathe as a single life-form. From that moment, the flame of the race burned again.
The Long Sleep
Barely a century later, Lady Karisas was dying, and the prosperity of the Ousters began to fade with her. With her final strength she surrounded the village with an invisible seal, and cast both the village and her own soul into hibernation.
Five hundred years passed. When the vampires once again dominated Eslania and the Holyland of Adam finally opened, the spirit of Karisas woke, and the entire Ousters village woke with her. Her spirit now walks the world with Lavinia as her host, and the race has taken up arms once more — to drive the vampires from the land and defend the home and the ideals that were taken from them.
The Creed of the Ousters
The Ousters call themselves the possessors of a true faith united with the spirit of holy nature. They pray to Lady Karisas, and ask the elementals of life and nature to walk with them. The world calls them half vampires; the Ousters pay the name little mind. They consider the vampires — corrupted souls thirsty only for crimson blood — and the humans — a race that tramples other life-forms and their habitat — to be alike in their selfishness. We are different from both of them: those are the words of their creed, and the reason they fight.
They are a race of one gender, formed as one perfect whole, and all of them can love each other. Their elementals, granted only to those who commune with nature, protect them — though an Ouster can also stand on raw physical strength alone, without asking nature for aid.