Durga Syn

Durga Syn, also known as Synovea, is a Ravnos elder renowned for her powers of prophecy. She was an avowed foe of the Nosferatu Methuselah Baba Yaga until that ancient was destroyed.

A native of the lands of Russia not long before the arrival of Christianity, Durga Syn was a shaman in the cult of a Mother Goddess. Her people and their lands came under assault from Baba Yaga, who had degenerated into madness and cruelty. The ancient crone offered Durga Syn immortality in exchange for her servitude, but was rejected. Angered, the crone laid a curse on Durga Syn that gave her an aged and weakened appearance, and laid another curse on Russia itself before she withdrew. Soon, as magic began to fade from the world, the first Christian missionaries came to Durga Syn's people with the intent of converting them by any means necessary. In a battle with these missionaries, Durga Syn was fatally wounded, and Baba Yaga returned to her with the intent of Embracing her. However, Baba Yaga had other foes: namely, a tribe of Ravnos, who created an illusion of an attacking Christian army as they stole Durga away and Embraced her into their own clan.

Baba Yaga soon fell into torpor, apparently weakened by the fading power of magic. Durga Syn, however, remained active in the world of Cainites, where her powers of prophecy garnered her great renown. In 1444, she first encountered a coterie of fledglings called the Children of Isaac, and became a guardian angel of sorts to the neonates over the centuries that followed. She subsequently traveled to Transylvania, where she advised both Vlad Dracul and his notorious son, Vlad Dracula. Both Durga Syn and a Transylvanian coterie were later present for the Convention of Thorns in England. Durga returned to Romania, where she Embraced a strange youth in 1752; he took the name Zlato in homage of the gypsies he had followed in life. In 1991, Baba Yaga awoke from her slumber and sealed Russia off from the rest of the supernatural world with the mystical Shadow Curtain. Durga Syn remained the most powerful active vampire not in the service of Baba Yaga until the crone was destroyed, and the Shadow Curtain sundered, in 1998.