The son of Father Donavich, kept in the undercroft beneath the church in Barovia village. The party first heard him as a desperate voice rising up through the floorboards: “Father! I’m starving!”
According to his father, Doru is “unwell” and hasn’t left the undercroft since he came back from the castle. Donavich has tried to feed him, but he is always hungry for more. His father’s forearms are covered in teeth marks.
The party learned that Doru has been stricken with the curse of vampirism. Ignacious Teegan recalled a story of a vampire who became a monk by dedicating himself to the light of Lathander, and told them that a strict regimen, or death, is the only cure.
Donavich begged the party to save his boy, and they went down into the undercroft to confront him. A gaunt shape hunched in the far corner shifted the moment they stepped off the last stair, chains gliding across the floor as he came to them. “I can smell your blood,” he rasped. “Have you come to feed me?”
Ignacious Teegan offered him a way out: swear to harm no person again, hunt animals or take only from those who offer willingly, and the party would help him. Doru’s eyes never left him as he spoke, fixed not on his face but on his throat, tracking the pulse beneath the skin. Then he lunged.
Retnuh charged him first and was bitten before Edric Storm and Virro threw Doru off him. The party used the pillars and the length of Doru’s chain to hold him back, luring him back and forth with many close calls. Eventually he found a little slack, leapt to the ceiling, and dug his claws into Virro’s shoulder. Before he could bite, Retnuh’s axe found purchase in his side, and at that moment the groaning timbers gave way and the floor collapsed on them all.
When the party dug themselves out of the rubble, Doru was gone. Virro found a trail where rocks had been moved, and Ignacious Teegan and Retnuh rode after him. They found him in a ditch just outside town, one leg bent wrong beneath him, breathing in short, wet gasps, the wound from Retnuh’s axe deep and plainly visible.
“This darkness, you can’t control it. You almost killed us,” Ignacious told him. “This will be easier. There will be peace. Stay still, lad.” He pinned Doru to the muddy ground while Retnuh drove a stake, pared from a dead branch, into his heart. Doru didn’t scream. He only let out a long breath, something between relief and shock, before his features melted away and he dissolved into white ash. He had been a vampire spawn.