Curse Eater: Campaign setting info

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Dolorosa

A cursed world. Despite the ongoing existential threats to human civilization, technology continues to grow. Such wonders as the steam engine and early firearms have begun to spread. All people live on the continent of Hallusia - every other part of the human world has been brought to ruin by the Curse.

The Curse
Around five hundred years ago, the first signs of the Curse were observed. It turns humans into monsters, obsessed with nothing but killing other humans. There is no pattern to who it claims, but the Afflicted are so powerful that entire cities and nations have been destroyed by the Curse. If nothing ends it, the Curse will probably eventually consume all of human civilization.

The Five Nations
Hallusia is split into five nations: Coherst in the north, Elys in the east, Gaolfont in the south, Valvern in the west, and Rhyscadia in between them all. These five nations have their own cultures and histories with each other, but for now they are at peace. Besides, the business of nations and politics are largely irrelevant to the work of the Curse Eaters. The Beasts Templar operate internationally, although their main headquarters is in Rhyscadia.

The Lost History
The recorded history of human civilization goes back about 1300 years. However, in remote places, ruins have been found that seem to predate all of that. Was there another civilization that preceded the one we know? Details are sparse.

The Afflicted

Those taken by the Curse. Once cursed, a human can no longer be sated by food or water; the only thing that sustains them is murder. They must kill, and the more they kill, the more the desire to kill grows.

Abilities
The Afflicted are no longer human. They do not require food or water, although they do sleep and breathe. They can change their shape between their original human form and a personal true form that grows more and more monstrous over time. They are also far stronger, faster, and more durable than humans - even a basic Afflicted would require two dozen or more armed soldiers to take down, and even then there would be heavy casualties. Injuries that would kill a human will barely slow an Afflicted down - the only certain way to kill one is to destroy the heart.

Some Afflicted gain additional abilities beyond these universal properties. Sometimes this is other physical traits, such as extreme regeneration or turning their body into a living weapon, but some are more overtly supernatural. Conjuring flames, draining life from the landscape, raw blasts of curse energy... there are few limits to the potential destructive power of the cursed arts.

Behavior
The main change that undergoes an Afflicted is the Killing Urge. Your mind is gradually filled with an unignorable need to kill humans. Taking a life sates it, but only temporarily. Killing animals does nothing. The more one kills, the more their personality is consumed by the Curse, and they eventually transform into mindless predators that think of nothing but death.

Some Afflicted can live for long times in secret, retaining their human form and killing in the shadows. Some simply roam the countryside seeking victims. There is no cure for the Curse other than destruction.

Management
When an Afflicted is plaguing a community, there's little they can do directly. Sometimes, a group of civilians or mundane soldiers will arm themselves and lure it into an ambush, which can sometimes be effective but costly, both in terms of property damage and loss of life. More often, they'll send a message to the nearest branch of the Beasts Templar, who will send a Curse Eater to kill it.

Dragons
Not all Afflicted stay at the level of committing the occasional murder. If an Afflicted consumes the cursed heart of a Curse Eater, they there's a chance they'll ascend to a new level of monster. Dragons are larger, smarter, and FAR more dangerous than normal Afflicted. They can no longer assume human form, instead transforming permanently into horrors of blade and flesh. A Dragon's Killing Urge builds much more slowly than that of normal Afflicted, but it can't be sated by just one or two lives taken, either. No amount of normal humans have any hope of slaying a Dragon - such a task falls only to the Beasts Templar.

Queens
A very rare breed of Afflicted. Sometimes, instead of becoming Afflicted and killing directly, someone gains the ability to Afflict others and control the Afflicted. Queens experience a similar degradation of personality over time, and are extremely dangerous, and the Afflicted will instinctively defend them. These are some of the Templar's highest priority targets.

Curse Eaters

Humanity's last line of defense against the Curse. To create a Curse Eater, one must take the cursed heart from an Afflicted's body and surgically implant it into a human as a second heart. Most of the time, this results in death, but when it succeeds, what you get is a Curse Eater - a human with the powers of an Afflicted.

Abilities
The abilities of a Curse Eater are similar to the powers of an Afflicted, although substantially more powerful on average. They can transform their body to fight, although their base form remains that of a human body. They can wield all kinds of Cursed Arts as well. There is no theoretical limit to how powerful a Cursed Eater can become by drawing on the energy of their new heart, but doing so recklessly has its own risks.

Each Curse Eater has a unique way of fighting. Some use powerful weapons made in the Beasts Templar's legendary forge, some fight with magical arts or even their bare hands. The Killing Urge still exists in Curse Eaters, but it's weaker, and it can be sated by killing the Afflicted.

The Beasts Templar
A centuries-old international organization that creates, trains, and directs the Curse Eaters across Dolorosa. They are seen by many as the saviors of the world, but some also see them as a dangerous group with massive power and very little oversight. It's true that the top management of the Beasts Templar are a secretive lot, and it may also be true that people who speak out against the Beasts Templar tend to disappear quietly.

Organization
The Beasts Templar make sure that their Curse Eaters remain busy with missions, such that they always have enough targets to keep their Killing Urge in check. They're sometimes sent out alone to deal with smaller threats, and sometimes impromptu teams are formed, either by management or by the Curse Eaters themselves, to work together in the long term. The greater the threat, the heavier the response from the Templar will be - larger numbers, and higher-ranked Curse Eaters to lead them.

Curse Eaters are divided into three classes - Star, Moon, and Sun. The majority of Curse Eaters are Star Class, mainly sent to deal with weaker Afflicted or to support higher-class Curse Eaters. Moon Class makes up about a hundred of the roughly one thousand active Curse Eaters, and represents a higher level of power, skill, and experience - they often make team leaders for groups of Stars or are sent to face more powerful Afflicted. Standing at the top are ten Curse Eaters who bear the title of Sun Class - the strongest of the strong, incredible warriors without equal. These ten are reserved for the greatest threats facing the world.

The Top Three
Even at the pinnacle of power that is Sun Class, there are differences in strength. Out of ten, three in particular stand out as the Top Three, Curse Eaters so powerful that nobody else can hope to compare to them. They are:

• Mad Sacheverel, a bare-handed berserker. His abilities are all focused on raw physical strength, making him the strongest of all Curse Eaters - he'll tear any foe apart with his bare hands, but the damage to the surroundings will probably be enormous.
• Josiah the Silent, an efficient assassin with the ability to erase their presence from the minds of anyone in the area. Rare is the time when they have to fight - usually, they can simply walk unopposed up to their target and decapitate it. If they are forced to fight, though, there are few who they would lose to.
• Nadia the Immaculate, the ultimate warrior. The absolute pinnacle of martial skill and might. So perfect is her technique and so absolute is her power that when she fights, not a single drop of blood stains her clothing. She is warm and kind-hearted to all who meet her, but there are whispers that she's also the Curse Eater who the Beasts Templar management fears the most.

Fallen
There is one great weakness to the Curse Eaters, and that is the nature of their power. One can draw massive amounts of power from their cursed heart, but there's a limit after which you're drawing out the Curse itself. If a Curse Eater pushes themself beyond that limit, they'll be consumed by the Curse and become a Fallen - a former Curse Eater turned true Afflicted. These monsters are some of the most powerful and deadly of all Afflicted, retaining their skills and battle experience while unlocking immense strength and monstrous form. To make matters worse, their personality is twisted, all of their repressed hostility erupting to the surface in a surge of endless cruelty and malice. They often turn first to the people they cared about most in life. They average more powerful than even Dragons, although they lack the cunning and organization that lets Dragons form entire factions of Afflicted.

Falling is the ultimate fate that awaits any Curse Eater who does not die in battle. To combat this, most Curse Eaters who sense their limit coming will call upon a friend to take their life, so that they can die as a human instead of a beast. Once the line is crossed, however, there is nothing to be done but to destroy them. This often falls to Sun Class, because they are simply too strong for anyone weaker to oppose.

The Church

There is one primary religion in Dolorosa, which speaks of two absolute beings who preside over the world - God and the Devil, their true names left unspeakable. The two are equal in power, playing an endless game for both human souls and the fate of the world in general.

When a person dies, their soul faces judgment in the next world. If they were a great soul, upholding virtues of honor, compassion, and sacrifice, then they will enter God's kingdom of eternal paradise. If they were a wicked soul, corrupted by greed, hatred and cruelty, then they will be dragged into the Devil's kingdom of eternal torment. For those in the middle, a new life awaits via reincarnation to continue to be tested.

The Curse
The Church has this to say about the Curse: Those Afflicted by it are already dead, and the person's soul is trapped in their body until it is destroyed. No actions taken after being Afflicted will be weighed against them in the afterlife; the just thing to do to the Afflicted is to destroy them and free their souls. If an evil man is cursed, destroy him so that he may face judgment in the Devil's kingdom. If a good man is cursed, destroy him so that he may be rewarded for his virtue in the next life.

There are many who ascribe more religious significance than this to the Curse, of course. It's a very common belief that the Curse was created by the Devil, even if this is never technically stated by scripture. Some also hold the work of the Beasts Templar as divine and Curse Eaters as bringers of virtue, but there are also those who believe that by partaking in the same power as the Afflicted, Curse Eaters all belong to the Devil. In the end, there are no hard answers to any of these suppositions; one must simply have faith.

The Incident Two Years Ago

Two years ago, there was an incident involving a Sun-Class Curse Eater named Imogen the Wanderer. A skilled Curse Eater gifted with the power of flight and an endless sense of wanderlust, she often went off communication for months, simply traveling and killing the Afflicted where she found them. The incident happened when an unknown party met with her in the Schlafenvust, a valley of flowers with hallucinogenic properties, apparently seeking to assassinate her. However, instead she Fell, becoming a menace to humanity wandering the skies on massive wings that rained down destructive feathers like bombs.

Imogen posed a particularly difficult challenge to the Beasts Templar - her wings let her travel faster than any Curse Eaters, which made assembling a team of Suns to hunt her down impractical. In the end, it was a group of lower-rank Curse Eaters who faced her, who included one close enough to Imogen to act as bait and draw her into a battle. Many of the involved Curse Eaters were slain, and many of the survivors would take years to recover from the damage they took, but in the end, Imogen was killed, and the incident came to an end.