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The Clade family has a long, proud history as monster hunters. Or… They did, anyway: somewhere in the many centuries since their progenitor - Quidel Clade - sacrificed herself to seal away the evil many-headed dragon whose worshippers called ‘The Devourer’, the Clades had laid down their swords and became plumbers, insurance brokers, car salespeople and the like.
Vadri had heard Quidel’s story since he had been a very young child: it was a story passed down from parent to child, and the one fragment of their past left. Of course, by the time Vadri had become an adult and was looking to leave home, this story had become just that: A story. Long gone were the days where he’d find himself an interesting tree and battle it as if it were The Devourer itself, or get up in the night when he had a nightmare about monsters writhing about in the dark.
At least, it was just a story until Vadri woke up, completely naked, in a field. With a mouthful of unidentifiable viscera. Until it started happening so often - and yet in no pattern he could find - that he despaired in his inability to live a normal life. Like this, how could he work a normal job? Have friends? Start a family? Even live around other people?
Vadri withdrew. His family was, of course, concerned, but what could he tell them? It had been terrible coming out to them, so how could he explain that he blacked out every so often and came to having definitely murdered something?
In some fit of desperation, Vadri poured his every waking hour into research: violent blackouts, sleepwalking, shapeshifting, and even Quidel Clade. He found very little that was useful, but there were some tidbits: apparently, Quidel sealed The Devourer into her own body, believing that its spirit would be disseminated amongst her descendants, and so finally be destroyed. Apparently, The Devourer’s cult had continued to exist after the monster’s sealing, plotting a way to make sure their terrible god survived...
