What it means to be Myncha

The Diamond Curse

The sun does not burn Myncha. It does something slower and worse: it turns her skin into diamond, a beautiful, rigid crystal that spreads with every minute in the light.

Wrapped in her black mantle she can endure the daylight for a while. The mantle slows her down and steals her agility, but it shelters her skin and makes her harder to hurt. When that endurance runs out, the crystal takes over. Her body grows heavy, she can no longer run or leap, and only the hard diamond on her arms lets her turn blows aside.

If she stays in the light until the diamond covers her completely, there is no way back: Myncha becomes a statue of crystal, forever.

The Hunger

Since the night she was turned, an ache lives in her chest: a monstrous thirst for blood. It grows with time, and it grows faster every time she pushes her new body to its limits.

Animal blood keeps it at bay and keeps her soul clean: rats and bats in the city, foxes and fawns in the forest, and best of all, the feral monsters of Exius. Human blood quenches it completely and fills her with a dark, intoxicating strength, and it always costs something she can never get back.

The hungrier she is, the weaker her powers become and the faster her sanity slips. Starving, her body begins to consume itself.

The Weight of Guilt

Myncha has not stopped being human inside. Every innocent life she takes stays with her.

At first it is anxiety, a fear that follows her even when she rests. With the third life, the guilt breaks her: she falls to her knees in a panic she cannot control, and the sadness never fully leaves. With the fourth, nightmares tear her from her sleep, hungrier than before. The fifth would be the end of who she was: her human soul would dissolve, and only the monster would remain.

Day and Night

In Exius, the day is the danger: the sun hunts her skin, and she must move through shadows, ruins and the shelter of her mantle.

The night gives her skin back to her, and her endurance slowly returns. But the night belongs to the monsters too. Everything that hunts grows fiercer after dark, and stalkers far more powerful come out to hunt in the places that were safe by day.

At certain sanctuaries she can rest and let the hours pass, from day to night or night to day. Waiting is never free: time feeds the hunger.

The Humans of Exius

Unlike the people of the real world, the people of Exius know that vampires exist. Some hunt them: armed zealots with silver and stakes who attack on sight.

Others want them. The dark seekers dream of being turned. They walk calmly toward her, pull back their collars and offer their necks, and their presence alone wakes the hunger in her like nothing else. Myncha does not have to feed: a gust of her wind can push them back long enough for her to pass them by.