The Vigilants of Stendarr IV

Falrielle has been in a place like this before. It was on a hunt, almost five years ago and her quarry was a cannibal with a particular taste for drunks. It was the spirits they consumed. It made them easy prey and it saved her the trouble of marinating the meat.

The building was one of the numerous storehouses on the piers, not unlike the Crabber's Den. The windows of the storehouse were high up, safe from prying eyes. The roof was thatched and tarred with foul-smelling pitch. The pitch however was not overpowering enough to hide the distinct aroma of embalming fluids.

Inside was a rudimentary, musty room. There was no furniture beyond five tables, one of them was just a plank balanced between two barrels, and upon each table was a corpse though the last one was covered with a sheet. The lamps were unlit though the room was bright as day. Two orbs of light hovered over a man who was bent over a corpse. Falrielle's skin tingled from the concentration of magicka in the air.

'Falion!' the Jarl shouted.

The man looked over his shoulder and then returned to his corpse, barely acknowledging the Jarl's presence.

The Jarl stopped her Huskarl from drawing his axe and took in a deep breath. 'Falion!' she shouted, even louder.

The mage sighed and turned to face his guests. The man wore a set of common travel robes that hung to his knees. He had the hood down, revealing a brown, bony face and a shaved head that was typical of the Redguards. On his waist, he tied an apron that streaked with smears of black and red. It was rather appropriate that Falrielle met the man in a place like this – she found her cannibal wearing the same thing.

'Jarl Idgrod,' he said, not even sparing Falrielle nor the Vigilants nor the burly Huskarl a customary glance. 'I told you before – I'll send you a full report of my findings when I'm done, not before and right now, I'm a very busy man.'

'That you are,' the Jarl answered. 'And that is why I've brought you some help. Meet Falrielle, Senior-Vigilant of Stendarr.'

Falrielle saluted.

'Gideon of Wayrest.'

Gideon grunted and folded his arms.

'And Sven, son of Sig.'

Sven waved awkwardly.

'Don't be a stranger,' the Jarl said. 'Introduce yourself.'

The mage sighed again. 'I am Falion, Wandering Mage,' he said tersely. 'There. You, Vigilants, stand in the corner and don't touch anything,' he continued, turning back to do whatever he was doing.

The Jarl let out a small chuckle and shook her head. 'I'll leave you to it.' She padded her back as she left and both women gasped. For brief moments, Falrielle saw… she saw a wolf and a bear, fighting in a snowstorm. There was much gnashing of claws and teeth and their battlefield was covered in shades of crimson. What did it mean? With a twinkle in her eye, the Jarl smiled, and left with her entourage soon after.

'I didn't expect you to join these… fanatics,' the mage said brusquely.

'And I didn't expect the "Master of Conjuration" to fall so low,' Gideon replied. 'Reduced to vagrancy? By Magnus, if only the others were here to see you fall so low.'

'Lads, stop fighting, you're both pretty.' Falrielle walked towards the first corpse. It was of a man, a very large man. At first, she was sure he was a Nord but after noticing his intricate tattoos and remnants of a grey tartan kilt; the man probably a Reachman. One with Nord or Orc blood, she couldn't be sure because his face was missing most of its features except for bits of jaw and a single, deflated eye. The rest of his body wasn't any better and it wasn't just the stench of pitch. 'Mage,' she said. 'Was this one missing his liver?'

The mage stopped what he was doing and spun. 'Yes,' he said, sounding far too impressed with the question.

'And his heart?'

'Gone too.'

'And I others I take it.' Falrielle gestured to the second, third, and fourth corpse. 'Are the same?'

'Well done, Vigilant. Well done,' he applauded. 'It is rare that I encounter a fellow scholar in these parts.'

'Na.' She shook her head. 'I nae be a scholar – just experienced. Speak mage, tell us what have you found?'

The mage began in a lecturer's tone; very long winded and technical as they poked around the corpses. Young Sven, a farm boy whose most gruesome experience was slaughtering pigs, grew pale and a little green at the macabre demonstration. Falrielle nodded her head, occasionally interrupting to make clarifications while Gideon remained uncharacteristically taciturn. The other three corpses were in various states of mutilation. Beyond the heart and livers, they all had a missing limb or an organ of two though the skull of the fourth one, who belonged to a young woman, were so pulverised that when Falrielle pressed her temple, liquified brain leaked from her ears.

Young Sven did not appreciate the sight. Not at all. Falrielle herself grimaced. Not at the grisly sight – she was well accustomed so such things decades ago but the implications of these victims. In her mind, she'd already narrowed down the possible suspects to three, all terrible and worthy of an evening chugging swill to forget.

The fifth and final corpse was very different from the others. Even before the mage drew back the sheets, Falrielle saw that it had bindings on its wrists and ankles.

'Now Vigilants,' the mage said. 'This is the one that's left me truly baffled. Let me know what you think of it,' he continued as he threw back the sheets with a flourish. It was a short, emaciated 'man' with pins stuck on his chest. His skin was dry and flaky and had long scratch marks all round. His head well, his head was missing.

'This one's an elf. A Wood Elf to be exact,' he pointed out as he pulled out the pins.

'How do you know?' Sven said.

'From the muscles and the skeleton,' Falrielle answered, just noticing how lithe the corpse was.

'You may want to hold your breath.' The mage pulled the cadaver's chest and as he did, the air filled with foul miasma that made everyone but Sven cough and gag. The boy ran for a bucket and hurled.

'The organs,' the mage began, shifting around the cadaver's innards with a pair of silvered spatulas. 'Have atrophied. Its kidneys are gone, its heart and lungs shrivelled – all withered except the stomach. It's the queerest thing of this specimen – I have never seen it's like in my entire life, not even in books.'

Falrielle peered over and her suspicions were confirmed. The stomach was not shaped as it was supposed to but was contorted into a sickening parody of itself. The stomach sprawled, pushing away, even absorbing other organs such as the liver and the intestines. The centre of the stomach collapsed on itself, giving the impression of an eager maw, waiting for its next feed. 'Did you search the stomach?'

'Oh yes,' the answered, continuing to move and prod the organs. 'I found blood. Fresh blood.'

'A vampire?' Gideon thought aloud.

'Yes, but one I've never heard or seen, which I hope you Vigilants have an answer for.'

'I do,' Falrielle said, peeling back her left glove. 'This here is a feral vampire; a Bloodfiend.'

The mage raised an eyebrow. 'A Bloodfiend?' he said. 'But Bloodfiends don't look like this. Is this another strain? If so, then it's not recorded in the Malleus Vampirum.'

Falrielle drew her knife and nudged the mage aside. 'The Malleus Vampirum nae an ill book,' she said calmly. 'A good read for the academics and the curious but nae the most practical of manuals for the prospective vampire hunter. Watch closely everyone. Sven, come closer.'

She pricked her thumb and held it over the corpse. She squeezed, forcing a few drops of blood into the cadaver's stomach. The creature's atrophied organs suddenly pulsated with life and its stomach seemingly lunged upward, hungry for more. Gideon took a step back, Sven three, and the mage a step forward.

'By the Nine, it's still alive?' Gideon said, readying a spell.

'Nae,' Falrielle said, sucking her thumb. 'That's just a reflex.' She turned to the mage whose eyes were filled with a manic curiosity. 'Bloodfiends dinnae live very long,' she explained. 'And this one is practically ancient by their standards – at least two years of age.'

'Then why does it look like so?'

'A Bloodfiend only lives to glut itself, nothing else. When it hasn't had a good feed in a while, it starts eating itself; the muscles, the organs – what have you. I'd go so far say that it's not even a vampire anymore, more of a stomach with arms and legs. Mage, was there anything else that's weird about this one? For example, its throat?'

'Hmm. Yes, now that you've mentioned it. Ugh, where did I put it?' The mage picked up his scalpel and dug into the cadaver's throat. 'I did notice that the throat was unusually swollen. I didn't check I thought it was just the ether bloat and it was missing its head so I. Hmm. What's this?'

The mage reached in and pulled a bulbous, fleshy worm that never seemed to end from the Bloodfiend's throat.

'That's its tongue. Old Bloodfiends start to mutate though what they change is different from creature to creature. This one has developed a stinger and I'll bet good money that it'll be missing its jaw.' Falrielle sighed. 'I need to sit down.'

'Why, what's wrong?' Gideon said.

'That we have an ancient Bloodfiend, that's what's wrong.' Falrielle rubbed her temples and groaned. 'Remember when I said that Bloodfiends dinnae last long? Bloodfiends while growing more vicious, grow weaker. The atrophy you see. For one to grow this old means that it was part of a pack but even when the pack grows hungry, they will devour each other. That it lived this long means that something is controlling them.'

'Could it be a necromancer?' the mage suggested.

Falrielle shook her head. 'Were it so easy.' She pointed at pulverised skull. 'That there is the work of a Bann. A Bann with a thing for elves,' she added wryly.

'What's a Bann?' Sven said, looking pale.

'The Maiden of the Mist, the Howler in the Dark, the Whisperer of Calamities,' the mage recited. 'A Bann is a strain of Greater Vampires, endemic to the North. It is said that to hear the shout of a Bann is to hear the call of death.'

Falrielle nodded. No matter what transgressions or quarrels Gideon had with the mage, Falrielle could not deny that the man knew his stuff and she could respect that.

'Mentor,' Sven said. 'Have you ever fought a Bann?'

'Now that you mentioned it, I think na.' She smiled. 'But I wouldn't mind crossing this off my list.'

In popular thought, any haemophagic creature is a vampire. However, treatises on vampirism like the Malleus Vampirum, the Compiled Journals of Movarth Piquine, the Abaserc Chronicles, and the Librum of Vampirism often throw a hissy fit, pedantically and categorically classifying and defining what is and what isn't a vampire. For the sake of brevity, Codex Vigilas instead opts to divide vampires into two primary categories: True and False Vampires.

True Vampires are haemophages born of the legacy of the First Rape by the Daedric Prince of Domination and Corruption. True Vampires were once mortals, transformed into their cursed form through an infection, the vector which varies from strain to strain. True Vampires are ageless, forever frozen on the day the disease takes hold and consequently, they cannot reproduce through conventional means. Like the stories, True Vampires are immune to other diseases, are weakened in the sun though they need not feed on blood to survive.

False Vampires are mostly non-sentient haemophages of either Daedric or Magical nature. Unlike True Vampires, False Vampires are not undead. False Vampires do not procreate by spreading the disease, they reproduce sexually as with any other living creature. False Vampires unlike True Vampires are not ageless, are vulnerable to diseases, and they must feed on blood to survive. They are however resistant to sunlight.

It is important to remember that the category of vampire cannot be identified by sight alone. The insectoid Kaj-Wakota of Black Marsh for example bears very little resemblance to mortalkind but by the definitions as noted of their origins to the First Rape, their method of transmission, and their sentience, the Kaj-Wakota are classified as True Vampires. Inversely, the humanoid Giant Bat are False Vampires for while they consume blood, they reproduce naturally and one cannot be turned into a Giant Bat from their bites.

~ from Codex Vigilas: Bestiary: Vampires: What are True and False Vampires? by Senior-Vigilant Tomasin Gwenn, Master of Healing

Name(s): Bloodfiend or Blutfiend or Feral Vampire

Classification: True Vampire

Province(s): All of Tamriel

Average Length: Varies

Average Weight: Varies

Quick Description: Humanoid. Strong resemblance to their original, mortal form. Pale, sickly, peeling skin. Emaciated frame. May feature fangs, maws, suckers, stingers, or proboscises.

Extended Commentary:

Bloodfiends are the honest reflection of what vampires are: parasitic vermin driven by the need to feed. However pathetic they may be, they like all vampires should not be underestimated for they are dangerous creatures. Bloodfiends are the end result of vampires who were denied of blood for far too long and this process is not reversible.

When a vampire turns feral, their bodies mutate. The first of these mutations are not of the body but of the mind. The next stage of these mutations is that these creatures growing sallow, their skin will often be heavily disfigured by clusters of boils and scratches, and they no lose the ability to walk upright, leaving them to crawl like beasts. Most Bloodfiends die at this stage for the blood madness leaves very little room for a self-preservation reflex and Bloodfiends if masterless, Bloodfiends will fight amongst themselves, feasting on each other. Should they survive, the third stage of mutation is the most dramatic of the three.

Externally, the Bloodfiends will lose what little remained of their original forms, common mutations include fangs, maws, suckers, stingers, or proboscises. Bloodfiends also grow skinnier, almost emaciated with spindly spider-like limbs. Internally, the stomach as ravenous as the parasite itself, feeds on and atrophying the other organs while it itself grows larger. This mutation is fatal to the Bloodfiend for if the creature does not die of unhinged humours, it will when the heart is finally absorbed to feed itself.

Bloodfiends lose intelligence the further they fall in bloodlust and mutation, leaving them in a constant state of voracious rage, attacking with all their might to rip prey apart. This also means that Bloodfiends cannot be reasoned with, so don't bother. Sunlight does little to deter Bloodfiends. It is not that the vermin have any inherent immunity – it is that they lack any self-preservation when in search of food. Unusual they are for True Vampires is that Bloodfiends will also feed on corpses should they get the chance.

Note that feral Bloodfiends tend to drift on their lonesome. Should these creatures move about in a pack, this is a sign of a greater, more cognizant vampire in their midst.

On fighting these creatures, take joy in knowing that while twisted, animalistic, and vicious, Bloodfiends are vampires at their weakest state. They don't move as fast, their blows are no longer supernaturally enhanced, and they lack powers of regeneration. Thus, while fire, holy water, silver, or aspen is preferable, Bloodfiends can be felled by any sort of weapons used on their mortalkind counterparts.

Beware however for the greatest danger of Bloodfiends are not the creatures themselves but the curse they carry. Bloodfiends carry an especially virulent strain of the vampiric disease and not only those who endured a bite would turn within a night or two, even the dead are not safe for they shall rise again as Bloodfiends. For the living, potions like Sunfire or Laudanum would render the victim temporary immune to vampirism. For the dead, cut off their heads and burn their corpses. It's the only way to be sure.

~ Excerpt from Codex Vigilas: Bestiary: Vampires: Bloodfiends by Senior-Vigilant Isran, Master of Wards