Beware, travelers to Venice! Hidden beneath the lavish wealth of the Mediterranean’s largest merchant empire seethes a clandestine world of cruelty and corruption, the long, dark shadow cast by the city’s bright lights. Amidst the gaiety of Carnivale, a few somber notes are struck… Whispers of mysterious disappearances, young men and women separated from their parties, never to be heard from again. Of parents wringing their gloved hands with anxiety in the Piazza San Marco, hoping desperately to catch a glimpse of their lost children. “Venezia is the greatest port in the known world,” their neighbors say, “surely your child wished only to seek adventure on the high seas. They will return soon enough, you will see.” But they do not, and as days turn to weeks, and weeks to months, it becomes clear that they never will.
Every year it is the same. Thousands flock to the city to take part in the spectacle of the Venetian Carnivale, and every year a few dozen vanish from the face of the earth. Dark rumors begin to circulate, about a malevolent being that comes out when the sun is low and spirits are high. He watches the festivities from the shadows, wraithlike, longing to experience the warmth of the festival. They say it has been many years since he was able to feel any warmth at all. If they speak his name at all, it is secret low tones… Il Dottore
Some believe that he is a ghost, the tortured soul of a mad doctor… Il Dottore. Driven to take his own life, his faith in God shaken by the horrors of the Black Plague… Il Dottore. Others believe he is a wolf, a foul beast in man’s clothing who dons the Zanni mask to conceal the gleam of his ravenous jaws. A few even believe him to be a lost soldier, so tormented by his visions of the battlefield that he can no longer tell if he wakes or sleeps, who takes the lives of innocents simply because he knows not whom he is fighting. Who or whatever he may be, he is known to all simply as Il Dottore.
I warn you again; if you choose to take part in the celebration this year, beware the silent man in the Doctor’s garb. His bag of remedies contains only ill fortune for any foolish and unlucky enough to encounter him in a secluded spot. Of his victims, no trace has ever been found: the mind recoils at the thought of what he might do to them. Those few who have seen him and lived to tell the tale describe his long black cloak and stained silver blade gripped in gloved hands, they say it’s the perfect Halloween costume idea. Past that, they often say very little… too horrifying for words are the images that dance behind their eyes.

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