Tarculu

Some say that it is at this moment that an ancestral curse, known as the Night Goddess’ Curse, is bestowed upon the female Nirnaeths. Many centuries ago, it was believed that the Nirnaeth were created by one of the six founding deities: Cujokra, Goddess of Dreams/Nightmares. Cujokra wasn’t ever the type of goddess to give freely without expecting something in return. So, in return for bestowing the Nirnaeth with Moon Magic, she cursed them. The Night Goddess’ Curse is a cruel thing indeed. The moment the moon-pearl enters the baby girl’s bloodstream, a piece of her identity is made permanently indeterminate. If I’m to describe this curse in a manner comprehendible to even the simplest of common folk, it’s as if Cujokra rolls two dice every time a baby Nirnaeth girl undergoes the moon-pearl ceremony: one to determine whether or not the girl will someday undergo a soul-stripping transformation, and the other to determine when in her lifetime this transformation might occur. Naturally, neither of these crucial pieces of information is known by the baby girl herself. The aforementioned soul-stripping transformation is a brutal and hideous thing to witness. Not that I’ve ever witnessed one, personally. Nor would I ever care to. But from what I’ve heard, one moment, the female Nirnaeth stands as a perfect specimen of the proud, strong-willed, dark-skinned, beautiful elven race that so many of us have come to love and respect. She might be laughing heartily at a joke, engaged in a training session with her fellow Nirnaeth warriors, or brushing the long, black hair of her young daughter. Or she might be the young daughter. Regardless, one minute, she is herself. And the next, she’s not. She begins to convulse with such sudden force that her bones begin to splinter right where she stands. Her muscles—which only moments before were toned and taut—are torn away from the skeletal frame of her body. She is twisted, snapped, and contorted in ways that I cannot even begin to fathom. The sounds of tearing muscle and snapping bones are muffled only by the unadulterated screams of agony coming from her mouth. As the transformation progresses—which, fortunately for her, it does rapidly—her screams begin to change in pitch and tune. The initial high-pitched wails are replaced with something much lower, guttural, and… animalistic. Something like a howl. A thick coat of black fur sets in, her face is pulled into something resembling a snout, and a set of razor-sharp teeth rips through the tender flesh of her gums. Her eyes are the last part of her to go. I reckon that Cujokra wanted her subjects to witness the transformation run its course… wanted them to see with their own eyes the monster they were becoming. When the transformation is complete, the Nirnaeth is no longer an elf, but rather a large, dark wolf known to us as a Tarculu. The only feature that she shares with her former, humanoid self are her striking yellow eyes, which some say retain an unnerving resemblance to what they were prior to the transformation. Apparently, if you stare into the eyes of a Tarculu, you can see her inner turmoil. Rage, sorrow, remorse, shame, pain, loneliness, and, above all… hunger. The first sensation that any Tarculu feels upon its “rebirth” is hunger. An unrelenting, insatiable desire to feed. And feed she does. There have been more than a few graphic tales of newly-transformed Tarculu mothers viciously tearing their infant children apart… but for your sake and mine, I will spare you the details.