How Brencis Became a Vampire in The Blood of Dawnwalker (Our Rotten Roots)

Partway through the quest “Our Rotten Roots” in The Blood of Dawnwalker, Coen has to track down three of Isbrand’s memories. The first one is the payoff most players are chasing, because it answers a question the game has been dangling since the opening hours: how the valley’s vampire lord became a vampire at all.

Quick answer: During “Our Rotten Roots,” climb the red-streaked rocks to the plateau in the raging sands and walk into the swirling red vortex. That triggers the first memory, which shows Brencis as a Roman commander choosing to kneel to Isbrand rather than die, and it flips your objective to “Search for the second memory.”

How to trigger the first of Isbrand’s memories

The objective tracker reads “Search for Isbrand’s memories • 1/3” while this part of “Our Rotten Roots” is active. Locra points you toward the raging sands ahead, and that storm is the marker you are looking for.

Follow Locra’s directions and climb the cliff faces streaked with red. The route ends on a plateau tinted the same color, with the storm churning in front of you.

Run into the swirling red vortex at the center of the plateau. There is no prompt to fight or solve anything here; contact with the anomaly starts the memory immediately.

Red sparks swirl around a figure as the memory cutscene begins, with the SKIP prompt in the corner — The memory plays as a cinematic once Coen steps into the vortex, with a SKIP option in the lower-left corner. Image: Rebel Wolves

What the Brencis turning cutscene shows

The memory drops you into a Roman engagement that has already gone badly. Brencis wakes on the ground in armor, barking about orders, and finds himself facing something that is clearly not another soldier.

Beat	What happens
The warning	Isbrand, pale and glowing-eyed, tells Brencis and the surviving Romans to run. Brencis answers with a flat “No.”
The fight	Brencis attacks anyway. Isbrand overpowers and disarms him without visible effort.
The stab	Brencis lands a blade in Isbrand’s torso. Isbrand pulls it out and is completely unharmed.
The ultimatum	“Kneel and live as one of us, or perish at the tip of your own blade.”
The turning	Brencis kneels. Isbrand takes him by the neck and turns him, and the memory fades to black.

Isbrand stands over the disarmed Roman commander during the memory of the fight — Isbrand shrugs off a direct sword wound before the fight ends. Image: Rebel Wolves

The choice is the whole point of the scene. Brencis asks “Did it save the others?” before he goes down, then takes the offer rather than the blade. He is not tricked into becoming a vampire and he is not ambushed into it. He picks survival over dying with his men.

Brencis kneels in front of Isbrand as he is turned at the end of the memory — Brencis kneels and accepts Isbrand’s offer, ending the memory. Image: Rebel Wolves

What the memory reveals about Brencis

Two facts land here that the game has not spelled out before. Brencis was Roman, and he held rank as a commander. Coen reacts to both, and Locra connects them straight to the present: a man used to leading armies is exactly the sort who could take a valley.

Coen talks with Locra after the vision, discussing Brencis's past as a Roman commander — Coen and Locra unpack the vision immediately after it ends. Image: Rebel Wolves

It also lines up with what the game says about him elsewhere. Born Caeso Burrienus Laurentius in AD 131 to a wealthy landowning family in the Roman Empire, he rose through the Senate with his eye on the consulship before he was turned, dropping from the top of Roman society to its bottom overnight. Locra’s read on him in the conversation after the memory is blunter: he does not just want power, he needs it, and it is the only time he feels alive.

Born in the Roman Empire under the name Caeso Burrienus Laurentius, AD 131, to a noble family who owned massive latifundia, Brencis was destined for greatness.

He joined the rank of Senators and quickly rose to the top of Roman officialdom, with ambitions to become the next… pic.twitter.com/rA2Uvvfu0U
— Dawnwalker (@DawnwalkerGame) January 16, 2025

Note: the memory shows the turning, not the centuries in between. It does not explain how Brencis got from a Roman battlefield to Greifberg Castle and the rule of Vale Sangora.

Dialogue options after the memory

Once the conversation opens up, you get three choices: “Where to next?”, “Did you know how he was turned?”, and “How old even is he?”. The first one ends the exchange and pushes the quest forward, so save it for last if you want the other two lines of background from Locra.

Dialogue wheel showing the Where to next option after the first memory — Picking “Where to next?” closes the conversation and sets the next objective. Image: Rebel Wolves

Coen notices the landscape has changed since the cutscene started. Locra explains that time and space barely apply inside this realm and warns him not to get lost, which is the game telling you not to rely on landmarks you passed on the way in.

How to confirm the first memory registered

You know it worked when the tracker swaps from the memory hunt to “Search for the second memory” after the conversation with Locra ends. The sequence also pays out XP, which is enough to trigger a level-up and a skill point at this stage of a typical run.

If the objective has not changed, you almost certainly still have dialogue left. The quest does not advance while the conversation options are still on screen, so pick “Where to next?” to close it out and let Locra assign the next target.

From there, the loop repeats twice more. Two memories remain, and Locra makes it clear she is hoping the next one is more directly useful than a portrait of how a Roman senator chose to stop being human.