#dd renders

[thedaedricdoll]

[thedaedricdoll]

Have you before had an encounter with one of the Blood-Cursed? We had one captured and caged here recently. Apparently doing such a thing is usually difficult, but this thing was sloppy and animalistic, behaving much less like the cunning creatures they're usually portrayed as.

I've learned a lot against my will through my station here as this thing was kept. In the human world, they'd call it a 'vampire,' but I've read some of those myths myself, and this is something different. They don't require blood for sustenance and instead need normal food to survive, just as any of us do. Feeding on the blood of other beings, the way they describe it seems more like a compulsion of some kind, but not exactly that because the compulsion - as they claim - is like a pressure on their consciousness from something outside themselves, rather than some kind of internal conflict. An incessant, keening itch. The longer they go on without tending to it, the more unstable they become, slipping deeper into a state of monstrous desperation until the thirst is sated -..to the point where any warm body around starts looking like prey, even if it's a child or a loved one.

I've learned most of this from one of the scholars who visited for a rare opportunity to study the thing. According to him, they used to be called “Addon's Forsaken.“ An insult when it comes to the Mardorisian's, but carrying the Blood Curse is apparently venerated by those who follow Addon. I can't imagine it's a pleasant experience to be damned to that kind of existence - even Addon's most devout must suffer as a result of it, but perhaps they view their suffering as a form of devotion? Their bloodshed as a form of sacrifice?

Maybe now that the thing is gone and I won't have to be kept awake by the unholy noises it makes in the night, I won't have to think about it anymore.

--Excerpt from a letter by a prison guard, translated from Cekenid