Ludograd Incident

Star Vampire sightings are rare. Generally, when they are seen, they are not recognized for what they are, but are instead dismissed as human, or occasionally Din, with access to some form of magic.
One exception to this rule was the incident at Ludograd, where a Star Vampire was discovered by then-mercenary Arcturus of Kyev. Told he was the son of a Ruvian legionary and his mother, a seamstress, Arcturus never learned that the blood of kings ran in his veins.
It was because of this blood, which has mystic significance in the magical arts, that the young sellsword found himself bushwhacked twice by pallid, empty-eyed men in dark robes, disguised as monks. He slew them narrowly, but became suspicious as to their motives after finding an image of himself sketched in charcoal on one of the dead men in the second ambush.
He gathered some of his fellows together, and sought out the source of these assassins. He found it, finally, in Ludograd, where a Boyar had arranged for the assassinations, because he desired the sellsword's blood for some dark ritual.
Accusing the Boyar of black magic, Arcturus convinced the very superstitious Tzar of Ruscovy to allow him to challenge the Boyar, Vlastomir, to prove his innocence. And so, with a small army of angry citizens and fellow mercenaries, he marched to Ludograd with Imperial authority.
Vlastomir, he discovered, was a decrepit and senile old man who had not come down from his opium high for several years. Who he encountered instead was the power behind the throne--an adviser by the name of Ravenscroft.
What occurred in Ludograd that night, when the black wind rushed through the hall and the torches went out, will never be known. But of the six hundred men Arcturus of Kyev had brought with him to the keep, fewer than half emerged alive--and most of those fled within the first few moments.
But Arcturus of Kyev emerged last, with the decapitated head of the vampire under his arm.
The plot of the creature--the first to be even partially recovered in decades--was unraveled by members of the Order of the Black Sun, a Kasonic Order faction whose chief focus is the study of magic.
The Vampire had slowly taken control of the Boyar's household, and steered it towards the end of some magical ritual, using hypnosis, suggestion, and at times outright domination of the mind. The weak and intoxicated servants were no resistance, but the Lord himself could only be controlled through the use of drugs.
It was discovered that the ritual had claimed the lives of six bastards of royal descent--Most from the Kaselreich, one from the Krajina, and a few from smaller states. Arcturus deduced from this that he was meant to be the seventh sacrifice, hence the empty-eyed assassins.
After the report to the Tzar, the city of Ludograd was burned to the ground, and all its people were checked by the Kasonic Order for signs of corruption before being released. Many hundreds were suspected of some complicitcy in the plot, and vanished into the black dungeons of the Order, never to be seen again.
What the man called Ravenscroft meant to accomplish by this blasphemous ritual is unknown, but bastards across the continent are still disappearing. Those who suspect themselves to be of royal lineage have begun to seek refuge with holy orders, mostly the Kasonic, who will warn anyone who will listen of the necessity to secure these individuals.
Ravenscroft was not the only Star Vampire out there hunting down King's blood. There are more.