The path of the Desanguinare is not one chosen or sought, it is something the damned are forged into.

The sickness that pervades the city, the buildup of the beast within ones tissues, the ultimate outcome is always madness and death. There is a narrow window before this though that grants the individual great strength and resilience well beyond the mortal, between man and abomination. The cultivation of an order that can stand upon this razor edge, nay, dance upon it, is the Desanguinare.

Such an existence is not easy. Injury wakens the beast, as do stress, a battle against one abomination without can soon become complicated as the blood rises within and must be quelled. It is an evolving art, a campaign upon the frontier of what is or remains human, but no Bloodhound survives long. Besieged within and without, even assailed by the experiments of their own masters, most consider it best if they simply go down fighting. Those cases where they are allowed to give in to the blood, massacres best not recalled and an event that ends many another hunter. On more than one occasion a cleansing has become necessary.

Some, among the common folk, wonder is the cure is not worse than the sickness. To the alchemists though, the Desanguinare are the cutting edge of their research and rich ground to fight against the blood sickness that creeps up on them through their great work. It has nothing to do with cure or sickness, only progress and discovery – man, beast, and hound be damned.

And O the wonders of being able to live with the blood of the beast, if only for a moment. Rapid regeneration, a steely firming of muscle fiber, a speed of thought and clarity of the senses that puts mere men to shame; such are some of the baser gifts. The deeper gifts of the sanguis vitae are not so omnipresent and seem largely random to lesser alchemists.

(present a handful of unique gifts in the style the tarnished are introduced in Elden Ring)

Hoarah Loux, chieftan of the badlands.

The ever-brilliant Goldmask.

Fia, the Deathbed Companion.

The loathsome Dung Eater.

And Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-knowing.

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