#ad lore

Relationships are a dynamic thing, but most of the time, it's like this:

Those markings are caused by a specific type of lifeforms that latch onto certain Dreeki because they have some degree of compatibility. And these markings are often an expression of their presence. Depending on internal and external factors, the markings can expand or shrink. Tho shrinkage is not often witnessed.

The Dreeki don't know what causes the markings.

For Dreeki, these markings (often referred to as Taint) carry a heavy stigma. Carriers are often socially isolated, excluded or even cast out out of their community because of supersticious fear.

This mainly roots in the fact that these markings almost always are accompanied by other effects, physical and/or mental. Carriers can exhibit unusual abilities, but these come at a price.

For example:

Ku-juuns arm can be really tough and strong, you can't injure it if he does not want you to. On the downside, he suffers from intense nightterrors if he actively uses that ability. Also joint-pains.

Recha can be scarily persuasive when talking, but speaking makes her throat hurt a lot so she rather keeps quiet and does not realize she even has this ability.

When Ku-juun was younger and still mainly working as a sword-for-hire with a group of other mercenaries, he got badly injured on a job. His lower arm was basically ripped to shreds, cut to the bone, mangled.

They were about two days riding away from the next town. None in his group were proficient in medicine, but they did their best to provide first aid and rush Ku-juun to the next physician. By the time they got there the wounds got inflammed and infected, and Ku-juun was more delirious than concious, suffering from a high fever.

Ku-juun does not remember much of what happened at the field hospital, but one nurse later told him that he was more dead than alive when he arrived. The arm looked dark and rotten. They rushed him to surgery immediately, to remove the infected limb, a last attempt to save him. But they were unable to cut it off. No saw or knife would go through. So they just wraped it up and moved him to the palliative care ward.

When Ku-juun regained conciousness a couple of days later, is lower arm was intact again, but permanently discolored and ended in a clawed hand. As the treating physicians and nurses were no Dreeki, they did not realize the meaning of this and were just glad he recovered against all odds.

The chances of getting 'Tainted' increases if someone went through a very traumatic experience. The most common one is having a near-death-experience, or an out-of-body-experience (funny that you can contract the Taint either by supreme meditation-skills or escaping death).

If someone is close to the line between living and not, and then return, they sometimes bring something back with them.