The Scourge of the Wild

While the Watchers work with the other factions to fight back against the vampires, they also bring news of horrific changes in the land. These findings are confirmed by the Prophets who wake from premonition dreams of poisoned waters and wildlife monstrosities. And while they do not understand the cause, there are those in the untamed forests and plains who understand all too well. Kain and his kind are not only monsters but active blights against nature itself. These wild people are called by many names but are commonly called the Scourge of the Wild, brutal warriors fighting to restore nature by employing it as a weapon. Forests may be burned to set ablaze a vampire camp. Animals may be exerted to a point of death by a beastmaster's strange ability to steal command of their bodies, using rabid wolves to tear out the throats of their enemies. But these are necessary sacrifices to a greater goal.

And not just anyone may serve their cause. Exposed to deliberate pain to bring them in line with the agony Kain's empire causes to the land itself, potential recruits are challenged to endure this pain wholeheartedly. The slightest cringe is deemed the highest weakness and failures are left to be devoured by flocks of feral treshawks, mutated birds of prey that roam aplenty in the northern regions near Dark Eden. Those who withstand the trials without protest are taken to feed the crops with the very blood from their veins, a ritualistic sacrifice dedicating themselves to the Scourge and to nature.

But the Scourge is not so righteous. Their powers are not granted as nature's will to make them its protectors. Their powers are born of the twisted and awful magic that the insane Guardians used to create Dark Eden. This magic crept into the soil and, when humans were foolish enough to believe the area was free to be settled once again, it leeched into their very blood. Those who were most corrupted by it developed powers to command energy and call upon nature, to bind themselves to the mutant wildlife and steal their senses and forms.

But the Scourge either does not realize this dreadful truth or else does not dare speak it. Instead, they see their bizarre gifts as rewards from Bane and DeJoule, the Guardians of nature and the very energies of life, deified in legends ignorant of their end-of-life perversions. Regardless of their beliefs or ideals, the diseased blood spilled during their initiative rituals seeps into the land and spreads ever-greater corruption. And whether or not the vampires are exterminated in the end, the Scourge will have to be destroyed as well as their own curses transform them into brand new abominations unfit for a natural world.