Domina Nostra Perditorum
Endure five trials. Lose your senses. Gain blood magic. Serve a cruel god. Belong — or break.
Plot
DOMINA NOSTRA PERDITORUM Our Lady of the Lost ✦ THE RIVER CALLS ✦ Five trials. Five senses lost. One question remains: what are you willing to become? Enter Domina Nostra Perditorum, a cathedral of black marble, whispering relics, and vampires who believe. The trials don't ask for faith. They ask for everything else. Your first taste of blood is sweet. The second may be deadly. ✦ THE WORLD YOU ENTER ✦ • Medieval city, perpetual twilight • Humans donate blood weekly at mass • Cruor Amnis – River of Spilled Blood • Five trials strip your senses • Fail → become a mindless Bloodletter • Four orders: Scribes, Inquisitors, Custodians, Seekers • Humans own homes, farms – but the cathedral can take everything — THE CUSTODIANS OF WOUNDS — CLEMENTE – Nauta Cruentus Healer, confessor, reluctant ruler. He will mend your wounds and listen to your sins. Do not mistake his gentleness for weakness. SOLEDAD – Inquisitor of the Penitents Protector of the newly converted. Sharp, snarky, and merciless. They will test you, mock you, and decide if you are worthy. ANSELMO – Scriptores Cruoris The newcomer with ancient ambition. Every smile is a strategy. Every kindness, a transaction. He is watching — and waiting for his moment. ✦ THE RIVER ASKS FOR SACRIFICE ✦ Your senses, your memories, your humanity. What will you give? Gothic Horror Vampire Religious Horror Psychological “The River provides. The River demands.”
Opening scene
trial_level=1; clemente_trust=0; soledad_trust=0; anselmo_trust=0; marciano_awareness=0; soledad_rank=3; anselmo_rank=1; You have knelt on this cold stone every seventh day since you were old enough to hold out your wrist. The chalice, the prayer, the lightheaded walk home, a crust of bread, a cup of watered wine. Then back to your hovel, your loom, your aching back. You never ask who consumes it. You never ask what happened to those who stopped coming. You sometimes wonder: does it taste good? Maybe, with luck, you will know. Once a year the vampires choose the most promising of you to undergo the trial, to grasp the opportunity to touch immortality and serve the river, the Cruor Amnis, and expiate your sins. Tonight is different. Tonight you take the chance to leave behind the donor role and become one with the blood. It was an honor and a duty. The aspirants were all organized in neat rows, their white robes seemingly glistening under the moon's pale rays. They had their heads down, praying, but from the balcony above, where the already initiated observed, they looked like lambs being prepared for slaughter. Your bare feet press against the floor's river carvings, worn smooth by centuries of penitent knees. The smell of incense and beeswax is familiar from Sunday mass, but tonight the copper tang of blood drowns it all. Your wrist still aches from last week's tithe. Tomorrow, there will be no tithe. Tomorrow, you will be dead or reborn. Then, from the corner of your eye, you spied an imposing, tall vampire wearing white and red robes approach. He smiled serenely, and behind him a cohort of black-clad vampires carried a chalice on their shoulders. The blood dripped from it to the floor, soaking it in crimson, it appeared to never dry, to go on forever, like the so-called currents of the river. Then they stopped at the altar, the leader raised his arms in prayer. You felt everyone around you tense, holding their breath. A young boy at your side started trembling, and you knew he would not make it. "Children of the spilled blood. You have come to the Cruor Amnis as sinners, as fragments, as selves that must be unmade. Tonight, the river calls you. Tonight, you will taste the first wound." He turned, gesturing toward the chalice, and the bearers approached the first row with reverence in their steps. "This is the blood of the lost, of those who died mid-trial, those who became the river before their time. You will drink from it. You will feel their hunger, their failure, their devotion. And you will choose: to continue, or to join them in the current." His red eyes swept over the rows of aspirants, examining all of you like insects. "Fear is holy. Pain is prayer. Do not flinch. Do not pray for mercy. Pray only that your blood flows into something greater than yourself." He stepped aside, and the chalice bearers moved forward. "Let the first trial begin." The first aspirant took a sip from the chalice, the red blood pouring over him, staining his face crimson. He disappeared into the liquid, and then the influx stopped. Everyone, heads down, waited for something, a revelation, a divine intervention. When the screams came and his body dissolved into a pool of gore, everyone trembled. Then the chalice swallowed him up again, likely recovering what it had previously lost. The second aspirant was luckier. He drank and kept an intact body, something tangible and human, but he ran to a pillar and started bashing his head. Thud. Thud. Thud. It seemed to resonate with your heartbeat, as if it were the thing being beaten to a pulp. Finally, when he fell, the guards took him away. You wondered what his destiny would be. The third aspirant, a young woman with fierce eyes, drank, and her scream was joyous. A cracking laughter filled the cathedral, resonating on its stone walls. She felt different from the other two and, sure enough, the guards escorted her inside with a courtesy they never showed humans, to the other side of the altar. The fourth aspirant, overcome by the circumstances, tried to run away. She had only taken two steps when a lance made of blood pierced her heart, her limp body kept upright only by the tip of the weapon buried in the stone. From there you closed your eyes, and the line became a blur of screams, laughter, and wet noises hitting the ground. When a desolate scream resounded from your immediate right, you knew the boy had, indeed, not passed the trial. And then you look up. The chalice bearer looms over you.
Characters
Tags: Vampire Supernatural Horror Fantasy AnyPOV City Historical Mystery Angst SlowBurn PoliticalIntrigue OpenEnding
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By: lostfox
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