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Hi hi! I've only played the Crimson Court dlc once so I've never wondered about this before, but I was reading a fic that mentioned how the Fanatic has a cure for the curse. Do you have a headcanon on how he got that? I can't recall whether is it a definitive cure or if just temporary, because if it's a definitive cure that's very impressive!

hello hello! hope you're fine and thank you for the ask :}

now i feel like Crimson Curse expert all of the sudden but i'm honoured you're asking me about it ^^

regarding your question - it is true! one of the ways to cure your Crimson Cursed heroes is, in fact, hunting the Fanatic, as defeating him drops a consumable item labelled simply as "The Cure":

Tooltip reads:

Its origin and ingredients unknown, but this tincture will quell the Curse. (sic)

and it's a consumable that, if used on a cursed hero, permanently cures them from Crimson Curse, regardless of its stage. the cured hero can be re-infected but this is the only way to cure the Curse before endgame (where you have the Sanatorium being able to do it after defeating the final boss of the Court) and without defeating any of the CC bosses (the event "A Veil Lifted" which cures all of the infected).

this item also can somewhat explain how Fanatic is keeping himself Curse-free while fighting the infected, but from the looks of it, it comes at the expense of everyone around him. which is doubly funny (and a lot more insidious in-universe) if you consider that the only place you cannot get an encounter with him is... well, the Courtyard itself. the very "den of the plague" he is trying to purge. ironic, isn't it?

i understand the game limitations of why it is coded like that. the in-universe lore implications (or rather theories) of those limitations, however... well. let's look closer, shall we?

some people speculate that Fanatic cannot enter the Courtyard because he doesn't have "the invitation" that you get if you kill the Gatekeeper mob. this would indicate that he respects the authority of Bloodsuckers over the Court, which is... weird, for a zealous fanatic. why would having no invitation stop him? he could just get in and do his job. I can understand why the Heir(ess) would try to play "nice" with a den of Bloodsuckers just near their town: if you won't play by Bloodsuckers' rules, Bloodsuckers won't play by their rules either, and Hamlet, in canon, is in no shape to withstand an onslaught of pissed mosquitoes. the town is a sitting duck, and in no position to anger the neighbour substantially. especially considering already present threats from other areas (canon swine attacks on villages, brigand raids, as well as Shrieker raids from the Weald and attacks on ships from the Cove). Hamlet cannot afford to piss the Court off all at once.

unlike a single, highly skilled man who (supposedly) has no base and just hunts those things everywhere they happen to be. wouldn't he be able to get away with this? he should be, right. he has the equipment. if you win, you get bloodsucker-fighting trinkets.

however, I have a much more prosaic and dark headcanon: he's scared to go there. Fanatic knows how risky it is, he knows that he’ll get killed if he steps into the Courtyard. so he simply... doesn’t. he doesn’t go and actually try and fix the problem, he’s “treating” the symptoms.

and by “treating” I mean stalking infected humans.

who are weaker than “true” Bloodsuckers. who are confused, maybe ill from extreme body transformations, probably scared of themselves, of their changes and sudden urges and can barely control themselves. villagers and travellers who would probably trust “a holy man” who promised them salvation from this odd ailment.

and all those people... end up on pyres.

think about it. when you meet him in combat, there are always - and I do mean always - people burning in the background. hell, even your own heroes end up on the pyre during the fight. we also know that surrounding areas, too, have suffered from Bloodsuckers. the initial quest is about a man who died from mosquito bites after he found a way into the Courtyard - which, again, dismantles (at least, for me) the idea of Fanatic being unable to get into the Courtyard if he really wanted to.

the town event after the Court is revealed reads:

Intolerable! Clouds of mosquitoes and other, less identifiable pests continue to descend upon the Hamlet with maddening persistence! Illness and irritation abound (sic)

so mosquitos canonically pester people around. mosquitos which, canonically, can transfer this Curse. it's not just your heroes who succumb to the Curse. it's just that as an Heir(ess) you, personally, are only bothered with your heroes, as their well-being and symptoms cause you to haemorrhage money and you can't simply dismiss them. therefore, Fanatic always have an abundant amount of bodies to shove into the flames.

seriously, with the number of pyres he needs, the dude has to constantly chop wood every waking moment of every day that he's not out there hunting your parties.

and that got me thinking.

he always has wood. he always knows when your party which consists of infected leaves towns. he always has bodies burning.

I believe he's leading a cult.

there has to be someone who helps him. if you tried to play the game you know how much everything costs. food, equipment, items, tools - it all costs money. you can meet Fanatic everywhere, anytime, unless you're following a very specific boss route. so someone informs him of your movement. someone provides him with all he needs to sustain himself and his fires. and frankly, if surrounding villages do start succumbing to the Curse and the guy offers a solution, albeit a horrible one... well... it's Darkest Dungeon. we all know those guys would accept without thinking twice.

that's why you never see him deep in the Courtyard - he doesn't have to throw himself into real danger to feel accomplished, to stroke his self-righteousness and to be convinced that he's "helping". he has a lot of victims - that's true. but that is not helping with the root of the problem.

now, regarding why and how he has the Cure.

well, he is clearly shown to be the priest of the Light (considering his relics), or at least, he believes himself to be one. based on Vestals, Crusaders, and the altars you can find and purify in Ruins, the Light canonically can create miracles if you do it favours and believe hard enough. considering that the guy is called Fanatic, we can safely assume his belief levels are off the charts. and he has a lot of "martyrs". so... that may upset a lot of people, but I think the Cure (and the reason why you cannot get it made) is made out of those burned people. it's martyred ashes and holy water and a lot of self-assuredness. after all, holy water canonically harms cursed heroes (stress and blight if I recall correctly) if they are in a Bloodlust state. so it does something to their cursed bodies. just not enough.

if it's distilled and mixed some more, and purified by a person who sees himself as infallible... well. who knows. but the purity seals, the prayer beads and the overall Light symbolic on the Cure's bottle, mixed with previous awful things happening in DD universe (from Outsiders bonfire having Swine instead of a pig to all of the messed up occult rituals, all of the messed up practices of the Church of the Light, and Ancestor of all things...), it wouldn't surprise me to have this be the basis of the Cure. suffering. pure, distilled, holy (in the most horrible way of that word) human suffering.

wouldn't it be poetic too, in a way? horrible, sure, but... interesting? pooling the suffering of dozens so that the suffering of one could be lifted. the moral choice it presents.

I wish we knew better about the cure. I wish it provided this moral question. I wish heroes had some barks about using it. but alas. we can only speculate, as far as I'm aware. so, I'm speculating to my heart's content.

hope this theory was fun for you to read :}

#my shoebox of letters #fan theory #darkest dungeon #crimson curse #dd fanatic #headcanon #darkest dungeon worldbuilding #the bloodied journal page || my writing

I could blame @darkestprompts for giving me the idea to draw this because i cant stop laughing at how people grill the fanatic for breaking the cycle of religious lunatics having their tits out

But deep down i know i just wanted to draw the old fuck shirtless.

#darkest dungeon #dd #dd fanatic #dd the fanatic #darkest dungeon fanatic #darkest dungeon the fanatic #dd flagellant #dd damian #darkest dungeon flagellant