Crimson

"Horror in creation. Beauty in destruction. Something so terrifying it's entrancing. Something so beautiful it's fucking scary. Mesmerising to behold, captivated by the terror it evokes, it beckons you closer. Instincts scream out to run until you collapse, but the fact that death is standing mere metres away is welcoming. Regardless of what is said, what is done, only death awaits. Morbid Curiosity on a level so incomprehensible, it is impossible to grasp until it's experienced for yourself.

Terrific Infatuation.

You find yourself submitting to the Fear.

Accept your fate.

Come closer.

Crimson.

Crimson is the first Predater. It hunts after all Blood Mages: Hemomancers, those who cry Tears of Infection, and Fleshsteppers alike because they all contain a portion of Crimson's body within them. It aims to regain its pieces and become whole again.

Appearance
Hard to describe one of my deepest fears but ok.

Personality
Intelligent, curious, doesn't take "it just is" for an answer, Crimson was a very empathetic and kind being who looked out for his fellow Predater kin. But just like all the other Predaters who aren't The Original, he lacks a sense of morality. What he sees as kind and good is kinda...not. Beneath all of that morally grey kindness and mercy is his true personality: a bloodlusted demon with an insatiable hunger to consume and assimilate. Agitate him and he'll kill you on the spot. But he can't help it, it's literally what he is.

Many of his kin think that he simply went crazy, but Crimson's been sane and whole this entire time. He just gave into the temptation.

Programming
Crimson's base programming is formed from millions upon millions of dead bodies, rotting corpses, and bloody entrails. A force to be reckoned with indeed. He officially became a Predater from absorbing the body of a scholar that The Original killed, and had his intelligence improved by absorbing even more smart people.

Nowadays, thanks to suppressing his sense of self, he's become an extremely intelligent, mindless predator more than capable of killing than any other Predater (besides The Original)

Effects of Hosting
Crimson has only ever been hosted by two people: Tom-Kelly and Deviké Mcleod, both of which can be considered very, very dead.

The story says that it was created from the blood and guts of fresh corpses, that it's only desire was to kill people and absorb their innards, assimilating them into its bottomless pit of amalgamated flesh and tissue.

It continues saying that it once was split into two, but that did not kill the monster. Two smaller, more agile Crimson were able to infect and dissolve people twice as efficiently. And as it grew more intelligent, two split into four, four into eight, eight into thirty-two, and then eventually, millions upon millions of pieces. Those several million pieces we too split up to be controlled, and only managed to complete the "infect" half of "infect and dissolve", bestowing upon those blighted up to three different Exceptions: Hemomancy, Tears of the infected (T.O.I), or Fleshstepping.

Crimson, reduced to a tiny drop of blood, sought to regain the pieces of itself it lost so greedily and continue its rampage. It took several thousand years, but Crimson was able to return to its former glory and begin its hunting spree. It claimed the bodies and souls of nearly every single Fleshstepper on Arcerra.

Nearly half of the people who cried Tears of Infection were returned to the Crimson devil too, but not before the Predater was sealed in a chalice by the Great Kings. This chalice is kept in The Tomb of The Great Kings, but due to translation issues over a thousand years or so, that chalice became known as the "Holy Grail, that which contains unfathomable power."

Origin Continent
Crimson originates from a mass of Ethraksha comparable in size to that of a Region Tyrant, which was flung into orbit during the events of the First Calamity. This mass was then left to absorb millions upon millions of human corpses that were launched into space as a result of Origin's impact with the Moon.

A couple of hundred years later and it grew into a writhing cluster of blood, guts, and organs floating endlessly around the planet. At this point, even if it absorbed something that wasn't a dead body, the sheer amount of programming it's absorbed from dead bodies overrides any new program that the Mass absorbs.

Until about, a few days after the 1.5th Calamity. For unknown reasons, Crimson comes plummeting down to the planet's surface, burning away nearly all of its Life Essence in the process. It crashes into Arcerran land, the wastelands of what would become the U.A.S, to be exact. It there it lay, a giant bulbous mass of blight and pestilence, dormant for hundred of years...

Extinction Event
Until The Original finds it, by complete accident. The Original wanted to try and reanimate a smart human it regretted killing. The Original was carrying the human to the Ethraksha pools that many Predaters were born from, when it dropped the human right onto Crimson's inanimate body.

Crimson is born and he joins the ranks of the other Predaters. When the others go out to kidnap and absorb people, Crimson insists he gets the smartest ones. This makes him incredibly smart. But smartness without knowledge is just curiosity. He gets all philosophical and shit like the rest of them. His underlying bloodlust begins to show too, since he's started going out and indiscriminately killing and absorbing people regardless of their intelligence. Crimson decides that he's being selfish, so decides to some research about why he's the way he is.

Crimson figures out Ethraksha Programming before everyone else. He's conflicted about using it since they're all made of the same programming. He experiments with a lot of things, but they're all lost to time. The only things that stuck was his "Self-Programming" experiments. He created a method that allows him to simply infect a person, have THEM do all the absorbing, and have them return to Crimson so he can absorb them. He wanted to vastly improve that method, wondering if it was possible on a countrywide scale.

He travelled to what would become Noxtyres and made it so that an entire population will harbor his essence, but it won't infect and kill them, just lay dormant until he figures out what he wants to do with it (lol). That country of people end up developing the Crimson Touch Exceptions.

Crimson gives into his bloodlust and hunger. He denounces himself as a Predater and invites any of him former friends to kill him if they can. One of them manages to cut him in two, but that does not kill him. Now there's two bodies with a shared mind and a shared goal that can reach that goal twice as fast. Crimson decides to split himself further as his assimilation spree continues: four, eight, sixteen. Literally thousands of Crimson pieces form into a hive mind of sorts that nearly sweeps the continent. Except, something Crimson didn't forsee: he spread his Programming equally amongst his pieces, meaning that once he passes a certain amount of Clones, he'll die. Crimson fucking LEAPT past that line.

So yeah. He's dead now. Also apparently he absorbed some estan king and now humanity wants to kill the Predaters.

(He causes the second calamity)

Elementalist 0
Crimson, reduced to a tiny drop of blood, sought to regain the pieces of itself it lost so greedily and continue its rampage. It took several thousand years, but Crimson was able to return to its a smidgeon of its former glory and continues it's hunting spree. But it was captured by the descendants of the Noxtyrans who he had experimented on in the past. They worship him because they gave them powers and sealed him in a giant throne.

A few years later, it escaped and ran rampant. It claimed the bodies and souls of nearly every single Fleshstepper on Arcerra. He got quite a good portion of the people who cried Tears of Infection too.

The Great Kings, still doing their monster hunter schtick, fought Crimson and sealed it in a Pallobalt Chalice. This chalice is kept in The Tomb of The Great Kings, but due to translation issues over a thousand years or so, that chalice became known as the "Holy Grail, that which contains unfathomable power."

Elementalist: 44
One of Zeleno's friends discovers the chalice that Crimson's sealed up in, mistaking it for the Holy Grail everyone thinks it is. He undoes the seal. Bam. Forcibly Hosting the most dangerous Predater in the continent.

Historical Impact
Basically next to none. Crimson has either been sealed away, or pronounced dead for the majority of its existence. Oh, besides this one thing...

The city of people that Crimson infected ended up developing the Blight System. Some of them had children with people who used the Flow System, and the two fused.

It's a strong gene, but there are no pure Blood Mages left, only people with Hemomancy, T.O.I, or Fleshstepping.

A Blood Mage who also awakened to the power of the L.U.C.Y Gene became an Elementalist would go on to become the ancestor of the Mcleods. Just like with the other Blood Mages, his descendants have a fusion between the two Magic Systems, although the Mcleod variant is stronger.

Trivia

 * I thought of the Idea for Crimson whilst listening to a Billie Eillish song. Copycat, of all I could've picked. Originally I was planning for it to be just an explanation for why Blood Mages have the powers they do. But then I was like, "Damn what if Deviké found this mythical Predater, then it copied her look, and one kills the other, and you don't know who?" Then I went from there. Deviké is now one of my best characters.
 * It used to be called "The Crimson Touch", or at least, that was the name of the thing that allowed Blood Mages to do what they do. Then I had the previously mention epiphany and I shortened it to "Crimson".
 * It's based on my greatest fear. What I have written at the top sums it up pretty nicely.