Ancients (Legacy of Kain)
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The Ancients, more commonly known as the Ancient Vampires, are a blue-skinned winged race who populated Nosgoth in times long before the Legacy of Kain series in which they are found chiefly take place. While they are otherwise relatively human in appearance, they possess blue skin, large wings and three-fingers hands that distinguish them from humans.
[edit] Role
The Ancients were worshippers of the Elder God, and believed his doctrine of a pre-fated world in which all souls go through a purifying cycle of birth, death, and rebirth under the supervision of the Elder God. The Ancients eventually tried to convert the other chief race on Nosgoth at the time, the Hylden, to their religion, starting a war that proved devastating for both races. To end the war, the Ancients banished the Hylden to another dimension and raised the Pillars of Nosgoth to seal the passages between the two realms. Before the banishment could be completed, however, the Hylden cursed their enemies with sterility, a thirst for human blood, and immortality.
The Elder God, requiring more souls to feed his Wheel of Fate, despised and condemned the now immortal Ancients, and many of their number slew themselves in anguish to appease him. A few remained, chiefly the nine Guardians of the Pillars, as the Pillars required accomplished magicians to tend to them if the Hylden were to stay banished. As their race dwindled, the Pillars began selecting human guardians for themselves, forcing the Ancients to infect humans with their curse to keep the binding strong. However, some of the human Guardians opposed this ritual. In the end, Mortanius and Moebius revolted against the vampiric members of the Pillar Guardians and overthrew them, forming the order of the Sarafan to hunt vampires and establishing human Pillar Guardians.
The Ancients and their history slowly died out over the ages, and the only one to survive long enough to be seen in the games was the secret tenth Guardian of the Pillars, Janos Audron, who commissioned and guarded the Soul Reaver, a weapon intended to be used by a prophesied hero who would restore the Pillars to the vampires. However, the Ancients also prophesied a hero for the Hylden that would strike down the vampires and free the Hylden. It is eventually discovered that Raziel is the Hylden hero and the vampire hero, as Raziel possesses free will his choice determines whos champion he is.
Eventually Raziel would find Janos in the past and learn the purpose of the Soul Reaver from him, shortly before Sarafan follow Raziel's path through Janos' retreat and kill him. Being at the right time, Raziel sees himself as a human Sarafan, ripping out the heart out of Janos' chest in the first place. Five hundred years later, Raizel again tears Janos' heart from Kain's chest and restores it to Janos, allowing the Hylden to possess him in an attempt to open the portal to their dimension. In Blood Omen 2, Janos is cast into this alternate dimension, and his fate since is unknown.
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