Carmine Beast

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   <default>Carmine Beast</default>
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The Carmine Beast is an Other at the center of Pale. Her absence is the inciting incident of the story, and is being investigated by the protagonists.

Personality

Originally a feral predator, she became more but still stuck to what she was.

Relationships

She reportedly did not have many friends.<ref>““What was her role?” Lucy asked.

“She handled monsters and those who kill monsters,” the woman in white said. “She handled matters of war and murder, carnage, blood, and execution. Justice, in its bloodiest form.”

“Was…” Avery started. She was suddenly very aware it could be a rude question, considering these things were like the Carmine Beast’s family. She decided to ask anyway, because the question would bother her. “…was she evil?”

“She was too fundamental a thing to call good or evil. But she did not have many friends.” - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.3</ref>

Appearance/Description

The Carmine Beast bears resemblance to an enormous red-furred canine.<ref name=":0">The moon hung heavy in the sky, and blood welled out along the edges where it met the sky, heaviest toward the bottom, with trickles periodically running down the face of it, changing the light it reflected to a dull red.  A thin trickle stabbed down to earth from the bottom-most portion of the moon.

Louise’s eyes traced the path of that trickle, and she saw a beast atop one of the forested hills.  It was canid, red furred, and barely visible in the dark, against the backdrop of the mountain behind it.  It was tall enough and massive enough that its furred belly traced the treetops.  The blood from the moon met the creature’s head, ran between and around its pale eyes, down a throat with a heavy fur ruff, and down long, thin legs, out of sight. - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref> Her feet and claws are black.<ref>There, she caught up with the beast, a creature so tall that the roof of the car blocked her view of everything above the bends in its long, thin legs.  The blood that ran down the legs seemed to disappear into the darkness of the fur that grew darker lower down, to claws that were as black as anything she’d ever seen. - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref>

Close to her, the whole world seems to be tinted red.<ref>She slowed as she caught up with the creature.  This close to it, everything about the world seemed to have a red tint, even the light from her headlights. - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref>

She is seen in the prologue to be dripping with blood, and followed wherever she goes by the moon overhead, dripping blood down on her.<ref name=":0" /><ref>It had moved, and now it slowly made its way into the town.  The moon remained directly above it.
[...]
She chased the colossal beast, using the bleeding moon to keep track of it when the tall pine trees or the dips in the road put the great beast out of sight.  For long stretches of her trip down the isolated road, only her headlights provided any illumination.  For the other stretches, the fact the moon was tinted red cast the entire city in crimson hues. - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref>

Its breathing is loud enough to be heard through windows when close by.<ref>She could hear it now.  The huffing breaths, the low sounds it made in its throat.  Even with windows up and a windshield in the way, that throat higher above her than any treetop. - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref> Its cry echoes off the mountains and makes buildings shake, unrecognizable as any natural animal.<ref name=":1">Louise’s eyes welled with moisture as an animal cry shook her house, and she found herself shivering as it died away.  She shivered in a very different way when she wiped at one eye and her fingertips came away crimson with blood.

It’s the hallucinations, she told herself.  She winced and held a hand to her lower back as she rose to a standing position, blinking the blood out of her eyes.  Has to be.

Again, the cry echoed through the town of Kennet, not a dog, not a wolf, nor coyote.  It echoed as though it came from far away, bouncing off of the nearby mountains, but it had a volume better suiting something just outside of Louise’s home. - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref>

Abilities

The Beast was immensely powerful, perhaps the most powerful Other in the region.<ref name=":2">“Something terrible happened, of a scale that words cannot easily convey.  We need you to look into it,” Matthew said.  “No need to solve it.  Simply… look into it.”



“That’s sketchy as heck,” Lucy said.  “Elaborate?

“Five weeks ago,” Miss said.  “A very old, very powerful presence that helps manage this area was lost to us." - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.2</ref>

She held influence over large portions of Ontario and Manitoba, although not the areas under the domain of Lords. All savage and violent Others within her domain were under her sway; she could send them on errands, and her presence served to regulate their population. The Beast served as a kind of personification of brutal justice, and was among those that could serve as a kind of Supreme Court of last resort for the region.

Her cry was immensely loud, and could cause strange effects such as making buildings shake, causing people to cry blood, causing intense bursts of emotion, making injuries ache, etc.<ref>Its back was hunched, its tail hanging straight down.   That cry earlier-

Almost as if it were completing the thought for her, it raised its head, and it howled.  It was so far away, but the mournful cry was still loud enough it made her worry the windows would rattle or make something break.

That was the same noise as before.  As it carried on, Louise’s eyes welled with moisture once more, with blood instead of tears.  Sympathy made her heart ache, while other pains erupted across her body.  That spot at her lower back, off to one side, was the worst, a pain that had become too familiar in the last year.

Joints ached, her head pounded, and she found she couldn’t breathe or connect her thoughts. - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref><ref name=":1" /><ref>“About as much sense as it did before you started seeing these things.  Tell me, you saw her?  Big, red, scary?”

“Big, red, beneath a bleeding moon.”

“That would be it.”

“But not scary.  Sad.  The blood on my face… I cried, hearing it.”

“Something that big, in your face, you’re not equipped to handle it,” Matthew said, and his voice was gentle.  “That’s why you had the bleeding.” - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref>

Like many Others, the Carmine Beast and her effects were hidden from Innocents.<ref>Just outside the gas station, lit by the fluorescent lights from inside and the neon red Mushie sign, teenagers were gathered around a car.  They didn’t seem to care or notice as the beast’s leg touched ground in the middle of the empty road, foot shifting and clawed toes parting as the leg took more of the creature’s weight, then picked up again, almost disappearing in the midst of the dark sky.  Their attention was consumed by the snacks they were parceling out between them. - excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref><ref>The restaurant employees stared at her, but they didn’t run up to exclaim about the blood on her face. [...] She was disheveled, she wasn’t wearing a coat, and she was hunched over a bit, one hand perpetually at her lower back.  If they saw the blood welling from her eyes, they might have assumed she had been in a car accident.  They didn’t, averting their gaze instead. - excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref>

On her death, the Beast seemingly dissolved into an outline of blood.<ref>Yeah, the ice was a mess.

Across the rink, she saw, there was a loose silhouette shape stained into the ice, matching a leg and paw of the great beast.  It extended, she realized, into the trees at the back of the rink, and onto the mountain of snow that had been built up over months of the parking lot being plowed and the ice of two rinks being cleared off.  It could well be the very last thing in Kennet to fully thaw.  On that mountain of snow, if she walked around, she could see the general shape of the thing’s ear and muzzle.  More of the stain extended across the outer perimeter of the parking lot.

All crimson.  Blood.

She hugged her arms to her body, shivering, as she walked the length of it, around three-quarters of the parking lot’s perimeter.  The red stain was thickest where the beast’s neck would have been.  Blood was sinking into frozen ground and snow in a pool as large around as the rink was. - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref> Her death left a strange, unexplained feeling of loss in the Innocent inhabitants of Kennet.<ref>Her eyes found the horizon, searching treelines and the hilltops.  She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she found herself searching with intent and feeling disappointment when she didn’t find anything.
[...]
She gave the mountains and hills one last glance, then another, then another.  The looking felt wistful, with a faint sense of loss she couldn’t put her finger on.

[...]
“Louise, hey,” dark-haired Tom said, as soon as his door was open.  He slammed the car door.  “Everything okay?”

“I think so,” she said, and she smiled.  “Why?”

Tom shook his head.  “Had a bad feeling.”

“Kind of know what you mean,” she said.

“I mentioned it to Arn, he said he felt the same way.”

“My first thought was maybe something happened to you,” Arnold said.
[...]
“That’s a relief,” Tom said.  His forehead was still creased in worry.  “I don’t know why I was so convinced something had happened.  It’s like…”

The twenty year old trailed off.  He looked back out over the town, toward the hills, and toward the Arena.  Like her, he didn’t find what he was looking for.  Arnold, too, looked worried.
[...]
This was and is a tragedy of the worst sort.  The sort that hurts everyone.  The thought crossed her mind, in a voice that wasn’t hers.- Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref> On some level she, or at least her power, could not be destroyed and lived on somewhere in the town.<ref>“Like the murderer?” Avery asked.  “Or… did you mean lost as in missing?”

“With creatures that old and that important, the line between the two is a fine one.  Power is rarely extinguished, and the power that is the Carmine Beast is still in Kennet.”

“It’s-” Lucy started.  She stopped, looking around.

“We’re keenly aware of practitioners and visiting Others.  There have been none.  What’s left of the Carmine Beast is still in Kennet.” - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.2</ref>

History

Background

Immensely old.<ref name=":2" /> Before becoming the Carmine, she was an Anima whose purpose was to remind settlers of the terrors of nature by acting as an especially ferocious predator. She became the Carmine Beast before the local Sable and Aurum's time, but the Alabaster was already in place.<ref>“The Carmine Beast predated us,” the Aurum said.  “But not the Alabaster Doe.”

“She was an Animus, a walking intent,” the Alabaster said.  “Much as your Dog of War is one.”

“I- I’m not familiar with that.”

“Forces between spirit and incarnation that exist for purpose.  Often malign, but not always.  Physical.  They are defined by the task they accomplish.  The Swordbearer animus exists to find the noble and heroic, equip them, and send them on their path.  The Dog of War exists to perpetuate the senselessness of war.  Muses inspire art.”

“What did she do?”

“Before she was the Carmine Beast, she reminded civilized men who had come here why their ancestors were so afraid of the deep night,” the Alabaster said.  “Henhouses emptied, livestock slaughtered.  Howling that shook hearts, and fangs that took the lives of people who were in the midst of discovering just how dark a forest can be without the torches, candles and lamps of a nearby city.”

“Was she evil?  I know we asked, but- before?”



“She wasn’t good or evil so much as she simply was.  Just as she was the Carmine Beast.  The role precedes all.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.1</ref>

She feuded some with the local faeries.

Charles Abrams sought her out in the hope of appealing his becoming Forsworn, but he never got an audience.<ref>“What was your relationship with the Carmine Beast?” Lucy asked.
[...]
“There was none. I only got a few glimpses of her. I reached out once or twice, after being forsworn. There was no answer.” - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.3</ref>

Prologue - Blood Run Cold

The Carmine Beast died under mysterious circumstances. Louise Bayer followed her as she headed further into Kennet, before seemingly disintegrating into stains of blood.

Fan Art

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  By megachrisbot on Reddit.
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  By andersdidnothngwrong on Reddit
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  By Muroid on Reddit.
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  By OctobertheDog on Reddit.

References

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