Pain-stealers

Those with a low threshold for pain are sent to become empaths. They will learn to live with pain each and every day for the rest of their lives. By mastering their weakness, it is believed that they will pass on that strength to the next generation.

Dhe'nar empaths perform their rites of healing in much the same way as other cultures except a Dhe'nar healer will always place priority on the bloodiest wounds.

During the first stages of empath training, the young acolyte is wounded to near death over and over. Only when a total mastery of self-healing is evidenced is the acolyte allowed to move on to the next level of training.

At a young age, the would-be pain-stealer is given a young pet to care for. They are to take this pet with them wherever they go, eat with it, and sleep with it. As a result of the emotional bond they form, the young empath is made weak. To teach the young pain-stealer the folly of caring for anything that can die, the pet is then tortured to death in front of her, while her natural and trained healing abilities are totally restricted by more advanced priestesses.

This teaches the empath the vital lesson of never becoming involved in the healing process. Live or die, the empath will heal strictly for the pleasure that transferring pain to herself brings.

Dhe'nar empaths do not care for right or wrong. They do not ask how a wound was obtained. They will however refuse to heal anyone who appears weak or undeserving unless no other source of the pain they crave exists.

Dhe'nar pain-stealers will watch a victim bleed to death if his life is not worth their trouble. After undergoing the sha'mo la'ath, the path of pain, the empath is apprenticed to an older empathic priestess for a period of 30 years. At the end of that time, the pain-stealer is considered ready for initiation and undergoes the standard priesthood rites of entry, which are described later.

With the noted savagery of Dhe'nar warriors, it is not surprising that many of the Dhe'nar empaths often take a male warrior as a consort. The empaths wager among themselves and pit the lives of their warrior pets as playthings. They will often keep a warrior alive yet make him go through near death numerous times before tiring of him. Few warriors taken as such a consort do not come out the better for it in the eyes of the Dhe'nar.