Doomed Course Character Lore
BHVR, you can't just drop a PTB without any warning when I'm busy like this. Especially for our first genuinely evil Survivor and the absolute fever dream that is the Killer's story.
Taurie Cain
Taurie Cain was born and raised in a suburb outside Glasgow with her older brother Ewan. Unusual for Scotland, the kids were homeschooled, but by all appearances seemed perfectly average.
In truth, they were quite the opposite.
Her parents were part of a secret society and Taurie and Ewan were raised to be acolytes of that same clandestine cult–
The Disciples of the Black Talon.
This mysterious cabal has existed for centuries and worships an ancient deity that exists in another dimension. They call the deity the Black Talon and believe it is somehow helping humanity transcend mortal existence.
Vincent Cain was a professor of archaeology. Rachel Cain taught anthropology. Family vacations took them all over the world. But instead of theme parks, they visited the historical sites of ancient civilizations. Like the site of the world’s oldest megaliths at Göbleki Tepe in Turkey, where ancient cultists boiled the flesh off decapitated heads and carved mysterious symbols into the skulls.
Locations like this had areas that overlapped with the Black Talon’s realm, and they called these overlaps the Bleed and believe secret knowledge and technology is hidden by ascended disciples from advanced worlds to be discovered.
But the Bleed holds many dangers, both physical and psychological, and those who venture inside wear special armored hazmat suits as a defense against those perils, though no one really knows how much protection they actually provide.
The Disciples of the Black Talon built an underground complex near each Bleed they discovered, complete with living quarters, storage areas and laboratories. When Vincent Cain entered the Bleed at Göbleki Tepe, Taurie and Ewan were mere fledglings. And when he didn’t return, his wife went after him and disappeared as well.
Desperate to find their parents, Taurie and Ewan snuck into a chamber but soon realized there were no hazmat suits left. There was only one of the original suits, like an old diving suit with a connecting air tube which didn’t fit her. But she refused to abandon her parents and decided to enter the Bleed without a suit.
Ewan was too afraid to follow.
Taurie found madness in the Bleed. And savagery. And horror. Blood-curdling shrieks and ferocious growls and something slithering in and out of the shadows. She could feel the eyes of predators as they hunted her in this strange, timeless place where two realities folded into one.
Struggling to keep her fear under control, she came across pieces of a bloody hazmat suit. She found no body, just hunks of hair, chunks of flesh and steaming viscera.
One hundred feet away, she located her father. His suit intact, but unconscious.
She struggled to drag him away even as predators stalked her from the shadows. As they circled closer, her brother, Ewan, suddenly appeared in the old, oversized hazmat suit. He led the otherworldly creatures away, allowing Taurie enough time to pull their father to safety.
With the screams of her brother still ringing in her ears, she emerged unscathed with her sanity intact, which amazed the Disciples of the Black Talon. Her father eventually recovered from his injuries but never again ventured into the Bleed.
Taurie suffered no ill effects from her time in the Bleed. At least nothing physically. But something dark touched her heart and she had many recurring visions of selfless disciples hunting and sacrificing victims to the Black Talon. She believed her visions were omens and she was certain she would one day serve the Black Talon in the same way. As a disciple.
Members of the cult rose through the ranks slowly. Secrets were doled out little by little as acolytes graduated from one tier to the next.
But Taurie rose faster than most and was sent on missions all over the world. She located and retrieved many arcane antiquities and strange oddities, and with each new find, she unearthed more knowledge about the Black Talon.
And each time she entered the Bleed, she felt more of its cold darkness taking hold inside of her. She liked the way it made her feel. Impervious. Indestructible. Unstoppable. As a trusted servant of the Black Talon, she no longer felt like prey. She felt more like a predator.
Taurie was single-minded in her pursuit of any knowledge that would help her serve the cult, but not everyone believed in transcendence, and some were even trying to expose the Disciples of the Black Talon as a force for evil. Such doomsayers didn’t understand that sacrifices needed to be made if humanity ever hoped to ascend to another plane of existence.
One such enemy was a paranormal investigator and podcaster who claimed the cult was an instrument of malevolence. This vlogger was determined to unmask them, but she disappeared while investigating a World War II bunker high in the French Alps. Her brother Jordan blamed the Disciples of the Black Talon for her disappearance and worked tirelessly to expose them to the world.
As Taurie reached the highest levels of the Disciples of the Black Talon, she learned their darkest secrets. Like how they appeased the Black Talon with a sacred ritual of torture and sacrifice before entering the Bleed.
Jordan discovered one such ritual was to take place at the grand opening of a new quantum research facility and secretly taped it. He then posted the grisly video online to show the world the malignant evil at the heart of the cult.
But the Disciples of the Black Talon had connections everywhere and they used their power to convince the world that this video was a fake, a mere prank among researchers and scientists.
They then sent Taurie to hunt Jordan down and end his one-man crusade against them. They told her if she accomplished this, she would ascend to the inner circle of masters and one day become a pure disciple in the Black Talon’s domain.
Unquestioningly and with fanatic determination, she located Jordan and rendered him unconscious with chloroform. When he awoke, he found himself tied to a chair in an underground complex.
Dressed in her ceremonial robe and mask, Taurie approached the young man with a dagger. But, having never killed anyone, she–
Hesitated.
She didn’t know what to say or do. A strange numbness began to crawl up her neck. Her ears, her face, her lips began to tingle. She just stood there staring blankly at her sacrifice, wondering what was happening to her. Killing was easier in her dreams. In her visions. As a spectator. And try as she did, she could not stop her hands from trembling.
And just when the masters were about to intervene, she took a deep, calming breath and remembered this sacrifice would usher her into the Black Talon’s domain where she would take her rightful place among the other disciples.
And so, with renewed conviction, Taurie lifted the ceremonial dagger with both hands, and just before she could plunge the glistening blade into the nonbeliever’s chest, a cold, black fog surrounded them. Everything went black. Time seemed to stand still. She heard muffled sounds and felt pressure in her ears as though she were in the Bleed.
When at last the fog cleared, her sacrifice was gone, and she found herself in a place of perpetual night.
The Black Talon’s domain.
Not as a disciple, but as a–
Sacrifice.
The Houndmaster
Portia Maye’s father helped found a prosperous settlement of sailors and merchants on an uncharted island in the Caribbean. They called their port town Fortune and created a vast trading network which exposed Portia to cultures and knowledge from around the world. As a sailor and lover of stories, Portia’s father read her the Arabian Nights, Shakespeare and Greek mythology, and he instructed her in sailing and celestial navigation. To be sure, he instilled within her a love for adventure so that she always wanted to travel with him.
Once she accompanied her father on a trip to Italy where he traded sugar and silver for rare silks and spices. There they also acquired a litter of Corso puppies which her father said they would train as hunting dogs for Fortune’s yearly hunting games. He also mentioned she could keep the strongest of the litter for her upcoming twelfth birthday. She named the pups Caeser, King, Shah, Athena and the runt of the litter–Snug. But before she could begin their training, a violent storm pushed Nightsdream off course into an area controlled by freebooters.
Desperately, her father tried to steer the ship to safety, but the dreaded Mad Molak attacked them with his ships and took Nightsdream quickly. Those who survived the initial attack were pitted against each other in vicious fights that Molak and his crew would wager on. The brigand promised that the last man standing would be let go.
When Portia’s father refused to participate, the most vicious of Molak’s men, his son, Tariq, tortured him for hours and finally–
Slit his throat.
Keeping Portia alive to get past Fortune’s outer defenses, Molak and Tariq returned to their sloop and left a skeleton crew on Nightsdream. Portia would lead them into Fortune and , once inside, Molak and his raiders would attack, pillage and burn their beloved town to the ground.
Using her skills in celestial navigation, Portia led them off-course through an area that many believed to be cursed. Known as the Dragon’s Tooth, some believed the area bled into the dark, malignant domain of some ineffable evil where monsters roamed. Portia hoped to lead Molak to his doom and if she perished in the effort, so be it.
As she approached the Dragon’s Tooth, dark clouds accumulated, and a cold, black fog surrounded them. Sheets of rain fell, and a fierce wind roared down on the ship, creating black mountains that crashed over the mast.
Instantly, Molak and his ship turned away from the storm and left her to perish. But Portia refused to surrender as Nightsdream plowed through the thick fog and lightning. Her heart thundered in her chest as the ship creaked and groaned and slowly capsized. The last thing she saw before the ocean swallowed her whole was the silhouette of a giant tentacle crashing down around them.
Portia opened her blurry eyes to see Snug staring down at her. He licked her face and barked for her to get up. Blinking the saltwater out of her eyes, she pushed her aching and bruised body from the ground but collapsed onto the strange purple sand. She had never seen anything like it before.
With difficulty, she gathered herself, stood and turned to face the runt. Snug barked twice and began sniffing the ground, leading her to a cluster of coconuts and purple seaweed. She dried out the seaweed, cracked the coconuts and ate on the rocks, quietly listening to creatures she had never heard before and suddenly realized–
They were marooned on an island in the Dragon’s Tooth.
They were in a strange world, an in-between world, a world her father once described as a living nightmare that tortured the mind and played with the heart. And as she listened to these strange new sounds, she suddenly saw Molak everywhere.
Instinctively, Portia closed her eyes and shrieked and only stopped when Snug jumped into her lap, returning her to the moment with a crescendo of barks.
Over the years, Portia survived on whatever washed ashore as she battled the predators that stalked the island. Ferocious animals, vicious humans and savage abominations not of this world. Snug now weighed over a hundred pounds and followed Portia everywhere. Together they made a daunting pair and most of the survivors on the island kept their distance. The few who didn’t lived to regret it if they lived at all. And just when she was about to give up on the idea of escaping, she spotted an impossible thing while searching the beach for Snug. To her disbelief, she saw–
Nightsdream drifting offshore in the cold, black fog.
She knew better than to doubt or question anything on this island. With a whistle she entered the water but was suddenly attacked by a group of castaways. In her mind, she slaughtered Molak fifty times and spared only those she needed to crew her ship. Together, they spent days searching for Snug, but he was nowhere to be found. He was–
Gone.
Gone, as if he had never been–as if he had only been a figment of her imagination.
For decades Portia terrorized the Caribbean as she searched for Molak. She only attacked freebooters, taking their gold and torturing them sadistically to satiate some intangible darkness living within her. A darkness like a parasite that demanded blood until it had its fill.
On the occasions Portia couldn’t appease its hunger, the parasite would squeeze her mind with its deadly talons, crushing reason and reality until she would see Molak’s face on every crewmember. She would attack and butcher everyone and anyone until one of her many trusted guard dogs barked for her to stop and–
Molak would suddenly dematerialize into wisps of black fog.
Terrified, the crew knew it was just a matter of time before her madness turned against them. And so, even when they finally located Molak, they conspired to mutiny.
But they had underestimated their captain.
By the time Portia was through with them, there were only five left standing in a pool of blood and gore. They instantly threw themselves on her mercy as her dogs surrounded them waiting for the kill command that never came.
Destroying Molak would take more hands than she possessed. Gathering her wits, she ordered the mutineers to clean up the deck and feed her dogs as she steered Nightsdream toward Mad Molak’s island.
Molak himself was out on the high seas, but Portia’s crew captured Tariq and locked him up in preparation for his father’s return.
When Molak returned, he found the island deserted apart from a woman offering chests of gold and jewels. She claimed she wanted to join Molak’s crew and had prepared an amazing feast for him and his men. Not recognizing her, Molak accepted the treasure and asked about Tariq. She smiled and assured him his son would be joining them for dinner.
Portia served Molak an elaborate meal and he drank and ate with gusto. The meat was especially good, roasted crisp and black on the outside and pink and juicy on the inside. He wanted to know if it was wild boar or venison.
Portia smiled, stood proudly and reached over the table and lifted a golden food cover to reveal Tariq’s decapitated, glazed head frozen in a scream of terror, the mouth vomiting bullion and jewels.
Molak roared his anguish like a wounded bull, and she reveled in his torment as a thick black fog rose from the floor like a black veil. But before she could strike Molak down, something unseen jerked him backward into the darkness.
At once her laughter died. Lips curled with mingled panic and rage. Veins in her neck stood out in livid ridges. Talons gripped her mind and squeezed and refused to let go. He was gone! Gone! Gone before she could stomp his head into a bloody pulp.
Unintelligible words fumbled out of her mouth and degenerated into a guttural rasp. And just as she was about to scream, she heard the impossible. A bark. A bark she hadn’t heard in years.
She heard it, again.
And again.
Snug!
He had Molak’s scent.
Not trying to understand what could not be understood, she charged into the fog to finish what she started with her long, lost friend.