Editing Taru the Dragon Slayer (section)

==<b>Background</b>==

Within the untold depths of time, two bitter rivals battled one another to a stalemate resulting in an impasse that lasted for centuries. Both were fourth-generation Methuselahs, immensely powerful Kindred immortals. Nuoia, a female Gangrel, was a favored daughter of Ennoia and a sublime huntress without peer. Her foe, Illuyanka, a male Setite, was an ancient sorcerer who wielded formidable dark magicks. However, in terms of physical prowess, Nuoia was clearly the superior of the two. But Illuyanka was wily and resourceful, and kept a multitude of thralls as fodder to impede Nuoia at every turn. And so their deadly dance continued through the millennia with neither ever gaining the upper hand, until the night that Nuoia turned Taru, her first successful childe. From that point on, the balance finally shifted in her favor. But it wasn't the first time that she'd experimented with siring a childe, though it was the first time that a chosen mark of hers managed to survive the Gangrel's harsh winnowing process.
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In the wild lands north of the Black Sea, she'd discovered Taru, a mighty hunter-warrior of a fierce Yamnaya tribe. Sensing his potential, she stalked him for a time to judge his worthiness and then gifted him with her savage Embrace. But then she left him on his own as an ignorant fledgling to fend for himself as was her way. He would either learn to quickly adapt to his new state, or he would die like all the rest of her attempts. Fortunately, Taru proved to be cunning and resilient enough to deduce the severe limitations of his undead condition. Only after several weeks of watching him struggle did Nuoia finally appear before her bewildered childe to explain what had happened to him and what he had become. But by then it was too late for his family, his friends, and his tribe. Taru, in his hunger-induced madness, had unintentionally killed them all.
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Nuoia spun a tale of a wicked demon in human form who haunted the foothills of the lands south of the Black Sea and how it had come north to terrorize the people of the golden Steppes. She painted a sympathetic part for herself as a demon-huntress who was on its trail and who had found Taru after he'd been brutally assaulted by the creature. She informed him that it was called Illuyanka and vowed to help him get revenge for the curse it had laid upon him which had caused him to slay his loved ones. They traveled together to the land of the Hittites where they attacked the serpent-sorcerer and its minions in its lair. After a hard-won victory, Nuoia urged Taru to drink his enemy's blood. It was his prize for his great deed and incidentally provided a deflective alibi for the Gangrel huntress by making him her scapegoat. She knew that Illuyanka's enraged Setite brethren would eventually seek retribution against the diablerist responsible for their brother's demise.