Hauru
Hauru
Hauru, called the Accursed, is a Precursor God and the origin of the vampire lineage.
She was once an orphan girl during famine and war. Despite hunger and hardship, she remained cheerful. At some point in the ancient past, the people around her accused her of being the cause of evil. Whether there was ever a real reason for this accusation is unknown and likely unknowable. What matters is that enough people believed it, repeated it, and eventually forced the belief onto her.
Hauru came to believe it herself.
Because The Essence responds to belief regardless of whether that belief is true or fair, the accusation became real.
Name derived from Basque: "Haur" (child) and "Ur" (living matter).
Transformation
On the day of her planned execution by fire, the Essence transformed Hauru's body into something undying and cursed.
She burned for hours. She did not die.
Anything that came near her had its life drained away. Pools of blood soaked the ground as she escaped into the wilderness. She had become the very thing she had been accused of being.
The Mountain
Hauru fled beneath a mountain and sealed herself away from the world.
For centuries she cried, wanting only one thing: someone who could speak with her without dying. She was heartbroken not only by her curse but by what had been done to her, the innocent child she had been and could no longer be.
The Essence, unknowing and uncaring, did not act. So Hauru made it her goal to create such a companion herself. This eventually led to the creation of the first vampires, the Hezuraitona.
She remains under the mountain. Her existence is the anchor that holds the entire vampire lineage together. The Hezuraitona are immortal because their lives are tied to hers. Vampires of all ranks undertake a yearly Pilgrimage to her mountain, in part out of devotion and in part because failing to do so carries consequences. Hauru herself receives them, celebrates with them, and tells stories with them for weeks at a time.
She has not revealed herself to the world. This should not change in stories without careful consideration of what that revelation would mean for everything built around her continued hiddenness.
Importance
Hauru is not simply a monster, a goddess, or a curse figure.
She is one of Duela's clearest demonstrations of the Essence acting without morality. The Essence did not judge whether the accusation against her was true. It did not weigh the fairness of what was happening to a child. It responded to the strength and persistence of belief, and it made the belief real.
Her story is also one of creation through grief. The vampire lineage does not exist because Hauru was powerful or ambitious. It exists because she was lonely, and because the Essence responds to need as readily as it responds to accusation.
Both of these things are true at once. She was wronged by the same force that gave her what she needed to survive it.
