For my upcoming gothic horror campaign set in Eastern Stirland (and eventually Sylvania), I'm creating a major villain who is a Wight or Wraith.
In life, he was a chieftain or ruler of some kind of a tribe of Styrigen, an early Bronze Age people who essentially founded Stirland.
In the campaign, he is awakened by the growing evil forces in the East (Sylvanian Vampire Counts). But he cannot rise just yet to cause havoc. He needs to perform certain rituals to weaken the bonds of death, so that he may emerge and summon forth his former army.
I have one idea of a ritual that he will need to perform in order to attain a greater degree of physical form in the mortal world. This idea is shamelessly stolen from the Brothers Grimm movie by Terry Gilliam. He must gather seven mortal virgins and make them his symbolic brides. But they cannot be just any shepherdess or bar wench: they must be descended from ancient nobility. Imagine that the climax involves the PCs trying to rescue the comatose and hypnotized young women from a paleolythic tomb before the ritual can be completed.
This villain isn't evil PER SE, just ambitious and yearns for life once again. I see him being a bit like Francis Ford Coppola's version of Dracula: a sinister but tragic who had his life taken away by injustice and war.
For flavor, I would like to draw from Eastern European (especially Hungarian) myths and legends involving people like the Huns and Attila.
Some history on Stirland:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirland
www.warhammer-empire.com/library/guide/stirland.php
Some myths and legends:
users.cwnet.com/millenia/legend.htm
Map of Stirland:
www.warhammer-empire.com/library/images/maps/Stirland_v2.jpg
Map of Sylvania:
www.warhammer-empire.com/library/images/maps/Sylvania_v2.jpg
Does anyone here have any knowledge or resources that would point me in the right direction? Any Eastern Europeans here with any advice?