The Pale Ones

“There is no sword that can kill a Moroi, at least not one that I know of.” — ‘Hailbringer: A Romanian Folktale’, pg. 299 (Paperback Edition, Revised)

Romanian folklore is teeming with legends and accounts of creatures of the night. The most notable, of course, is the vampire, popularized by Bram Stoker’s renowned “Dracula” and subsequently recycled by Western multimedia. However, local tales offer a slightly different perspective. What is known as a vampire is actually closer, at least semantically, to the Balkan dhampir, which in Albanian literally means ‘drinking-tooth’ (‘dhamb’ means ‘tooth’, and ‘pir’ means ‘to drink’).

In Romania, the closest creature to the ‘vampire’ is actually called a ‘Moroi’. The blood-sucking Moroi is said to be born from the union of a ‘Strigoi’ (‘undead’, ‘ghoul’) with a human. Accounts vary, and many consider them one and the same, depending on the region, but most tales distinguish between the two. Unlike the mindless Strigoi who gather in packs, the Moroi are subtle, solitary, cunning and vile. They are described as pale, lacking body hair, and, of course, sucking blood to sustain themselves.

In ‘Hailbringer’, I aimed to shed light on this distinction and only scratched the surface of their rich mythos.