Moroi2 are the most common type of vampire in the Inner Sea region. When people of that region speak of vampires, they mean the moroi.3
Moroi vampires tend to place great importance on maintaining an appearance of civility and high class, and as such spend a great deal of effort in refining their personal appearance. Due to the vampires drawing on personal memories of style and elegance that may be centuries out of date, their appearances often seem archaic as a result. Moroi also view hunting for sustenance—as opposed to hunting for sport or revenge—as beneath them; instead, they feed by creating enticing environments that will draw their prey to them.4
Moroi are highly proud of their natures, and consider themselves highly superior to their nosferatu ancestors. They do not extend this view to the jiang-shis and vetalas, however, which they rarely acknowledge as kin.4
Moroi, like all vampires, descend from an ancient vampiric race, the strigoi, that entered the Universe from the Netherworld in the ancient past. The first descendants of the strigoi were the bestial nosferatu, who preyed animalistically on the living. Some of their kind rejected this way of life, choosing instead to adopt the veneration of youth and beauty common among their humanoid prey. They became the first of the moroi, and their ability to reproduce freely quickly led them to outnumber their nosferatu ancestors.3
The moroi, in turn, became ancestral to the two other strains of true vampires: those moroi who rejected the idea of consuming the unclean fluids of "lesser beings", although they nearly starved into extinction, learned to feed psychically on their victims' minds and became the vetalas; other moroi, who went into deep hibernation and emerged later starving and maddened by their desires, became the first jiang-shis.3
Moroi are active throughout Golarion and can originate from multiple different species. While the refined, formerly human nobles are the best known examples of their kind, these vampires are also active from the jungles of Garund, where lizardfolk moroi hunt in the wilderness, to the tundra of the Crown of the World, where vampiric Ilverani elves prey on lost travelers.4
A secretive cabal of moroi who survived the vampire lord Malya's Blood Drought purge of 3220 AR are now led by a powerful vampire called Jentani Valvasor, previously known as Countess Valvasor.5
For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.
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