Teumesia

Teumesia was raised in the rugged forest border marches of Kaerok, where one is prone to encounter brigands, Orcs, or roving Human tribes, rather than the trappings of civilization. An orphan, Teumesia was passed between the care of various distant cousins in the messy and chaotic outpost where she dwelled. Between them they offered only meager attention and guidance and she soon found her peace in the wilds, teaching herself the skills of hunting and trapping. Before long she was contributing valuable furs, horns, and antlers to the community. After she came of age and had proven her worth, Teumesia did not forget that the townsfolk had treated her as a pest and a burden. Lingering resentment gnawed at her, but she held her tongue rather than risk aggravating the only community she had ever known. One day she found one of her traps sprung, but empty. Suspecting her catch robbed, she stopped and scanned the treeline, and spotted a shape receding into the distance. Rather than return empty-handed to her people, she gave chase, and caught up to the potential thief with surprising ease. To her surprise, she found a biped with bestial features, crouched on its haunches like a bashful hound and holding a dead fox in its human-like hands. Teumesia had not heard the term Skinwalker, but she had heard tales of man-beasts – now she was face to face with one. Through sobs, the creature confessed her story: her name was Akalasta. She had been part of a merchant caravan, and one day, when times were tough, she had killed a game animal to supplement their supplies. She’d transformed in front of her friends, who cast her out with a beating, leaving her starving and alone, an animal released into the wild with few survival skills. Knowing well the feeling of rejection, Teumesia felt sympathy for Akalasta and vowed to help her in what way she could. They cultivated a friendship that brightened their lives, but that friendship eventually brought sorrow to them both. The trouble began over a meal. Teumesia had noticed how Akalasta would skulk and hide when feeding, and she guessed that her friend was ashamed to be seen eating raw flesh like an animal. But one day the shy Skinwalker offered to share a kill with Teumesia, which she accepted. She noticed how her friend brought a certain gravity and almost ritual dignity to their first shared meal. Teumesia found it strange, but out of love and trust for her friend, she ate. But this was something more than a friendly feast. A revenant spirit passed from the Skinwalker’s body into the dead flesh, an animal soul blighted by Darkness and made into that virus that afflicts the mind, body, and soul. As Teumesia consumed that flesh, the raging spirit, that of a fox, entered her. In a few torturous minutes her body was covered in ruddy fur, fangs and claws burst from her mouth and fingers, and her senses of smell and hearing became almost overwhelmingly sharp. As Teumesia slowly regained her bearings, she was struck by a fact she perhaps found more upsetting than her mutated body: her companion seemed thrilled. Teumesia realized that her duplicitous friend had planned this all along. She listened as Akalasta argued that this transformation had made them both faster, stronger, and powerful in ways neither could ever have achieved in the previous mundane course of their lives. Akalasta had decided she needed a true companion, someone who could share in the grisly joy she expected they’d create together. After all, what had society ever offered or given to them? Far from the weeping scavenger Teumesia had first met, Akalasta was now filled with the thrill of the hunt and a lust for more blood. Thinking her rhetoric effective, Akalasta allowed Teumesia to approach her. But her words meant nothing to Teumesia – Akalasta's grave abuse of trust had broken her heart. Teumesia sank her fangs into the neck of her former friend and there followed a bloody brawl that only Teumesia walked away from. From that day forward, Teumesia never knew peace nor ease nor comfort of home, and to this day she wanders still, ignorant of much of the truth of her condition and desperate to resolve it.