Hope

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Cleansing Elixir Battle Item A warm, potent elixir that cures a dragon of all harmful status effects. 100 Required Level: 1

Current Status: Enfeebled Current Age: Middle-Aged Time of Birth: Spring Mate: deceased Relatives: few living save for Aira and his later children. Friends: a few. Charge: long gone. Warning, lore is dark. Do not read if you don't like uh. Shade zombies? Otherwise, enjoy!

Gene Plans: Complete Occupation: Doctor, largely retired. Likes: not coughing up blackness anymore. Dislikes: the emptiness in his chest, the weakness that weighs him down. Hobbies: Cataloguing what he can of his - and others' - experience.

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- Biography

The former doctor - and one of only two remaining survivors - of a clan that was corrupted completely by Shade. Hope escaped his consumed homeland with little more than the clothing on his back, his treatment log, and Shade infection that gradually began to overtake him, as well.

The skydancer Helena sought him out, having detected his corruption. She explained she, as well, was Shadetouched, and how vastly different their two forms of infection were turned out to be fascinating. They made the choice to travel together in search of a cure, and over time became ersatz founders of what came to be known as Shadeward.

Hope may very well be considered cured in current times, but has sustained considerable internal injuries due to both his infection and the circumstances of its purging.
Said injuries are unlikely able to fully heal.

He considers himself more or less retired in Shadeward, and focuses what little energy he has in copying his medical notes for distribution.

He occasionally meets with Lilah and Valis on Helena's behalf, and has become somewhat of a friend to the latter.

- More Info


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- Previous Greeting, Infected:

Stay back.

*wheeze*

No, I’m not afraid of you harming me.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

*rasp*

I carry an illness, you see. One that took the lives of all I’d known. I’d hate for you to catch it.

*wheeze*

A healer? You cannot help me. I seek those versed in combating the Shade.

*cough*

A cure? No. I have little hope for that, in my case. But I must share my findings.

*rasp*

I have a document of everything. How it spread, who fell and when. I was their doctor -

*cough*

If - if I can share my notes, perhaps our kind can at least grow closer to finding one. A cure.

If that is true, then perhaps this loss… perhaps it wasn’t for nothing.

- The Beginning of The End

It started with a whimper.

The elderly and young began to fall ill. Only the feeblest at first, but it wasn’t long before the clan was devoid of children’s laughter, and elders no longer left their homes.

They began to pass. Peacefully, it seemed. Most simply falling asleep and never waking up.

Fearing a plague, the bodies were all burned. Burials were hasty and done en masse in vast pits just beyond the clan proper, with no headstones nor mark of any sort to signify just who had been lost.

Mourning parents and families had no time to fashion their own, for even those in the prime of their lives became gripped with the same pain and fatigue that had taken their parents and children away.

But they did not fall.

They struggled through their days, doing what they could to keep alive as the mysterious ailment continued to worsen and take hold of the remainder of their kin.

A cough developed amongst them all that shook bodies and rattled bones. Fevers – and delusions – became rampant, and soon the sickest of the clan were wandering the streets; dazed, lost, and violent when approached.

Those who still had their thoughts locked themselves away and barricaded the doors, until they too succumbed to madness, starvation, or whatever else.

Screams and wails filled the days and nights, tormenting those who could still understand,

Until only one remained.

The clan healer, who had done everything he could to save each and every member of his community and falling short each time. He’d documented each change in health, the names of each patient, and the date they had died until it became unsafe to do so and he’d locked himself away in desperate search of a cure.

When the outside world began to fall silent, he ventured out into the decrepit remains of his home. Bodies of former friends and allies littered the streets, amongst bodily filth and long since dried blood.

Donning what protective gear he did have, he began to dig another pit alongside the first, for even in his own weakened state he knew they deserved a burial.

But when the time came to gather the dead, he was able to fully understand the depth to this plague.

Bodies lurched upward in reaction to being touched. They stood on broken legs and watched with eyes that had long since rotted out.

His clanmates were dead, but what inhabited them was not.

He fought as much as he could, but after weeks of starvation he had no hope of succeeding.

The man fled the godforsaken place he’d called home, taking his medicine bag, the clothes on his back, and the log of all who had fallen with him.

Now, he wanders, walking until he collapses and resting only then. He has hope for a cure, or at least some way to kill off what still lives in that clan.

But he stays far away from anyone else, for he feels the cough that rattles his bones,

and can see the tarry black that webs over his palm whenever he coughs.

He, too, is infected.



- The Cure[?]

He awoke to a world of feverish confusion.

Terror choked his veins, but there was no clear reason why. All was calm, his clanmates sleeping peacefully nearby. He could see faint light from the cave’s entrance. Morning was coming.

He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself, and then he understood.

He was in horrible, horrible pain.

Hope tried to stand, but couldn’t bear to move his stomach at all: it felt like it was about to burst.
He was going to be sick. He prayed he was going to be sick.

The guardian dragged himself outside, doubled over in absolute agony.

He hardly made it out of the cave’s mouth before he had to stop. He couldn’t breathe. He inhaled in strangled gasps, but he wasn’t getting any air. He couldn’t speak—he couldn’t call for help.

He was at once white hot and freezing. He began to convulse. It felt as if something within him was writhing, attempting to fight its way out.

It filled his stomach. It reached his throat.

He retched, and everything within tore its way out to splatter onto the barren ground.

Hope collapsed; too exhausted to care he’d fallen directly into his own sick. He took his first proper breath – ragged though it was – in ages. His misted, weary eyes shut as he just lay there, slowly recovering.

And then

He felt something move.

The guardian bolted upright at the horrific realization something had slithered against his face. His movement was enough to obscure his vision with spots and have him reeling. He swayed on the spot, fighting vertigo until he was able to see once more.

Solid blackness covered the ground before him. And it was moving.

It began to split, arms, legs, and mouths sprouting from where it had pulled apart.

Raw, visceral fear took hold of him, and he turned to flee – but the motion was too much.

* * *

It was light when he awoke, his jaw throbbing from where it had hit the stone when he fell.

When memories of what he’d last seen came back, he looked about in a panic, but there was nothing. No hint of the horrendous entity. Not even a speck of black on the ground.

He rushed to the cave to check on his clanmates, but none were worse for wear; they all were still sleeping peacefully.

It was all a dream, he wanted to convince himself. None of it had been real, surely.

But he was a doctor, a logical man. Surely he wouldn’t have remembered a fever dream so clearly? Nor such visceral pain.

Even if that had been possible, one particular fact would keep him from letting himself slip into blissful ignorance.

He was feeling better.