The Teflin reside in Hik, their reddish skin marking them as a people touched by an ancient curse. Blood is sacred to their culture, because an old Deoric command runs in it: a binding that grants them agelessness and takes something else in trade.
The making
The curse is older than the Teflin and was never meant for them. Somewhere in Hik a titan once cut a command into bone, and titan-bone does not weather, so the inscription has held its charge across every age since. The Teflin line came under it and could not get clear. The command fixes them. It holds a Teflin at the point the binding first caught them, so that the years which age all living things run past without taking hold, and a Teflin can live out age upon age unchanged. The price was not paid in blood, whatever their rites suggest. It was paid against the end. A Teflin does not die of years and is hard to kill by any other means, but when one finally falls, the binding has long since spent the anchor a spirit needs to reach Celestia. There is no crossing for them and no remembrance-rite that answers. A Teflin who dies is simply over. The red in their skin is the old command surfacing, and the reverence they give blood is reverence for the thing the command rides in, not a medicine they take to stay alive.
Aspects
- Blood is my burden and strength
- Cursed heritage