Hylden
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The Hylden are a fictional race of beings introduced in the series of games collectively known as Legacy of Kain which includes Blood Omen and Soul Reaver. They are traditional enemies of the vampires in the game's setting, called Nosgoth.
They were first introduced in Soul Reaver 2, where the protagonist Raziel saw murals depicting them in the subterranean chamber under the Pillars of Nosgoth, as well as in the Reaver forges. Ancient history depicted them as the bitter enemies of the winged "Ancients," the original vampires. They were similar to the Ancients in power, but "different in method and intention". Both wanted dominance of Nosgoth, and warred for a thousand years to claim it. The Ancients won the war, banished the Hylden to a demonic dimension, and created the nine magical Pillars of Nosgoth to keep them sealed in place. The Hylden did not go quietly. In a final act of vengeance, they managed to curse the Ancients with a thirst for human blood, and eternal life turning them into Nosgoth's first vampires.
In their prison, the Hylden plotted a way to escape. Their opportunity came centuries after their banishment. The Circle of Nine, a group of nine mortal sorcerers who were bound to the Pillars of Nosgoth to act as their guardians, fell to the corruption introduced by one of the Circle, Nupraptor, the Guardian of the Mind, when his beloved Ariel, the Balance Guardian, was murdered. His madness corrupted the Circle and the Pillars themselves. Another member of the Circle, Mortanius the Necromancer, realized what was happening and devised a plan to correct the disaster. He used the death and unlife of a nobleman named Kain to achieve his ambitions, but at the final moment (in the first Blood Omen game), Kain's choice not to sacrifice himself seals the fate of the Pillars "caused a rift throughout the world, sufficient to breach through the dimensions".
This was enough for a strong Hylden to re-enter Nosgoth and take the guise of the Sarafan Lord. He established the Hylden City as a home and base for his kind, and began to draw other Hylden back into Nosgoth. Two centuries later, the Sarafan Lord defeated Kain's vampire army outside Meridian. He seized control of Nosgoth, and used the reformed Sarafan Order as a tool to hunt down and destroy vampires. The human inhabitants of Nosgoth suffered high taxes, harsh laws and brutality under his rule, for the Sarafan Lord's agenda was to eventually purge Nosgoth of all non-Hylden races.
400 years after his defeat at the hands of the Sarafan Lord Kain came back to challenge him again. This is where Blood Omen 2 begins. The Hylden are depicted as "the authors of the demons, and the Device, and all else that threatens the land", favoring technology and machinery over sorcery.
The history of the Hylden in Nosgoth is affected by the plot of the games, which uses time travel a great deal to affect the course of recorded history.