CHORDEVA

Lore

Chordeva is a vampiric witch who, by day, remains entirely indistinguishable from an ordinary human woman. She might live as a young wife, a respected mother, or a reclusive crone, subject to the same ailments and the steady march of time as her neighbors. Local folk wisdom suggests the only way to identify her is by an unnaturally heavy, piercing gaze, yet she possesses no direct anatomical differences to betray her dark nature while the sun is high.

At night, while her physical body slumbers, the Chordeva's soul slips out and assumes an astral shape, typically that of a sleek black cat. This non-physical body is a master of infiltration, capable of squeezing through the tiniest cracks in a home's foundation. It barely reflects the light of a lantern and emits a distinctive, unsettling meow that village watchmen describe as a mourner's wail, signaling that the witch has begun her nocturnal hunt.

The spirit primarily targets settlements where the sick, the elderly, or newborns reside, places where life energy is easiest to harvest. Her chief method in her astral cat form is the ritual "kiss of death." She slips onto the bed of a sleeper and licks their lips, initiating a slow, internal decline that ordinary medicine cannot cure. The victim wastes away as their life-force is steadily siphoned, eventually succumbing to an unexplained anemia or sudden heart failure.

In rare moments of open confrontation, the Chordeva can shift into a third state: a fully physical were-cat. While her raw strength in this form is no greater than that of an average human, she possesses a terrifying hypnotic stare that can cast a victim into a helpless trance. Because of this, villagers in infested regions are famously wary of stray cats, often keeping felines far away from the chambers of the ill to prevent the witch from delivering her lethal, spectral kiss.