August ends today, and we pick things right back up with another character deep dive, this time of the fascinating Nicodemus Blacroft from the comic Devil’s Blood by the amazing Dragonsong12!


Devil’s Blood is the story of a city in crisis and the people that are trying to resolve it. It’s a scientific mystery swathed in the intimidating absolute of an eldritch horror: a terrifying substance that behaves a bit like an animal and a bit like something inorganic, that only infects humans to a devastating result.


If one is infected with devil’s blood, then there is nothing that can be done except kill them before they turn into short-lived monsters that go on bloody rampages until the infection devours the last bit of their energy and kills them anyway. Once that happens, the devil’s blood leaves its host and escapes to find its next victim.



Whether the infection is intentional (by the foolish or the desperate) or accidental (by the unlucky ones), the end is unavoidable…

…or is it?

This is where our main character and the focus of this deep dive comes in: the one person that may be the avenue to a solution is Nicodemus Blacroft. Nicodemus is a fascinating character, so let’s jump right in!


Basic Character Design

Nicodemus Blacroft is a young man. His age isn’t explicitly announced in the comic but I’d estimate he’s pushing 30 or thereabouts. He’s a handsome guy, with intense blue eyes and a soft smile. He is also the son of the city’s most prominent family, so by his own account he was raised comfortably… but more on that in a bit.

What we know for sure is that he’s the 8th son, so part of a huge family, and one that hasn’t received his family’s support that would be expected of rich clans that hold a lot of power in a city.

Case in point is that he has done four years in prison without his family trying to help him out in any way. His incarceration, by his own account, has given him certain additional traits: he is a chain smoker, he has a bit of an acerbic streak in him, and he is not above black humor.



Nicodemus is a natural scientist. What I mean by that is that he is dedicated to research and seems to be going about it the right way- by using the scientific method. He calls himself a coward, but he is the only one (at the beginning of the comic) that commits himself to studying the cause of the city’s terror: the devil’s blood.

He wants to understand it to find a way to contain it and control it and thus save lives.
And when he’s presented with the opportunity to help the city, he jumps to it without much care about his own safety.



This of course, was before he was imprisoned. While helping, and very efficiently so, he got injured and infected by the very thing he was researching.



Unlike the rest of the victims of devil’s blood infections, though, one of his own inventions helped contain the infection and keep him from getting possessed by it. It is a very special collar that limits him within the borders of the city just like it limits the devil’s blood within his body and puts it under his complete control.



And it looks like the reason for his imprisonment is more the fact that he is infected than the fact that his researching the devil’s blood wasn’t done with permission. The city simply stored him away where it wouldn’t need to deal with him until a high enough ranking officer could argue that he’s too useful to stay incarcerated and bailed him out- with strings attached, of course.




Emerging out into the city after these four years, Nicodemus realizes that the city has been using his research and the insights to devil’s blood weaknesses to more efficiently deal with demon’s blood victims/emergencies, ironically using him even before he agreed to the terms of his release under the officer’s custody.



Despite everything, Nicodemus seems to be mostly okay with his new status quo and he is eager to help conquer the devil’s blood mystery.

…but what has this done to him? All these experiences and hardships he has endured so far?
Let’s find out.


Nicodemus’ Psych Scan

Let’s begin with Nicodemus’ family and the neglect that he has experienced growing up.



Let me say from the get-go that neglect is a form of abuse. The problem is that it’s harder to pinpoint and notice unless it’s extreme neglect where children are left to waste away locked up in a room (and that includes other kinds of abuse we won’t get into because it’s not relevant to our deep dive).

The type of abuse Nicodemus has experienced is hard to define because he hasn’t yet, at least, given us more to go by than that casual quote, and this one that follows up:




I think we’re safe to assume that physical neglect wasn’t an issue. However, unless he was fortunate enough to have some kind of acceptance and nurturing from someone in the family staff, I am confident that he has suffered some pretty chronic and ongoing emotional neglect.


Emotional neglect happens when a child’s significant others aren’t emotionally present in their life. Nicodemus’ weren’t even physically present by what he reports. Even in the case where he had a nanny or someone else that showed him affection, the fact that his actual parents had no interest to bond with him, support him, or be in any way involved with him, is devastating.

A child will not attribute the absence of their parents (especially if by comparison the experience of their siblings is different) to them simply being bad parents. A child will always attribute that sort of thing to them being at fault. Often, a parental rejection will lead a child to believe they are not good enough to enjoy their parents’ acceptance or attention.

The child that has been neglected is at risk for any or all of the following. I have put in italics what I think is relevant for Nicodemus from this list:

* Disrupts the ways in which children’s brains develop and process information, increasing the risk for attentional, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral disorders.


* Alters the development of biological stress-response systems, leading to greater risk for anxiety, depression, cardiovascular problems, and other chronic health impairments later in life.


* Correlates with significant risk for emotional and interpersonal difficulties, including high levels of negativity, poor impulse control, and personality disorders, as well as low levels of enthusiasm, confidence, and assertiveness.


* Is associated with significant risk for learning difficulties and poor school achievement, including deficits in executive function and attention regulation, low IQ scores, poor reading skills, and low rates of high school graduation.


From the above, I would say that Nicodemus has done exceptionally well in that he has channeled the impact into pretty adaptive ways- however, he hasn’t escaped having low self-esteem, an awkwardness in dealing with other people, and a tendency to be alone and withdrawn from others. We can see that even before he was incarcerated, since as a researcher he looks to be living by himself and isolated. That fact is further bolstered by what happened after he was put in prison:



Considering that being in jail makes everything worse and amplifies abuse, it makes me think that perhaps some adults in his life growing up (from the staff most likely, or a teacher, or some other person stepping up to be a point of reference) did offer him the emotional and cognitive support necessary to mitigate some of the more negative effects of neglect.


Neglect is also associated with imbuing a person with people-pleasing behaviors and behaviors of high risk.

Nicodemus displays both- he rarely sets boundaries in his interactions with others and while this hasn’t been abused yet, it still is an alarming trait. And of course, he chose to research a deadly substance that will not only get him killed but also turn him into a social pariah for the brief time he remains alive should he get infected; there’s not much that’s higher risk than that.

When given the opportunity, he immediately rushes into danger. This is a behavior that existed before his incarceration.



It only becomes even more prominent after.




But why did I say it’s adaptive?

Because it’s all channeled towards the common good. For all his problematic background that definitely carries trauma, Nicodemus is a person that cares about others. He wants to help, to save, to heal. Even when he is being abused, his concern lies mostly with what impact that same abuse will have to others than what it does to him:



Considering that research has shown that children that have been neglected (physically and emotionally) are less likely to develop altruistic traits, I’m convinced that someone in Nicodemus’ life showed him enough emotional support and affection that he developed this high sense of altruism.

On the other hand, altruism is a highly adaptive way to provide relief to the very issues Nicodemus’ emotional neglect background is causing, so he may have developed this trait through a different path rather than that of having someone in his life that showed him love. We’ll just have to see moving forward!


Finally, let’s look at what being incarcerated for four years has done to him. We know that he developed chain smoking while being in jail. Ditto for his rather acerbic/aggressive humor:





He also isn’t as quick to jump to helping someone. Though he does do it anyway and later, when he’s surrounded by some people that don’t outright neglect him or reject him, he just volunteers at every opportunity:

Reaction to being asked to help while still in prison: (he helped anyway)


Reaction to being able to help, without being asked, while having been treated humanely for one day:



Being incarcerated goes hand in hand with developing mental health issues, one of which is substance abuse- in Nicodemus’ case, he smokes like a chimney.

The fact that he was isolated even further than before, and the neglect from his family was stark by their simple absence from helping or visiting, is bad enough. But it seems that he is also wrongly imprisoned, or imprisoned without a trial or any due process:



The impact of wrongful imprisonment can be devastating in its own right. Not only because victims are at high risk for depression, anxiety, PTSD and sleep trouble (all of which are present in varying degrees in Nicodemus) but also because of the self-stigma that these people endure.

Self-stigma involves the person feeling guilty for being in this position in the first place, feeling dirty, tarnished, and unworthy, and generally feeling inferior to society and potentially a burden to others.

That’s not even factoring in the fact that Nicodemus literally carries devil’s blood within him. A starker manifestation of stigma than this I can’t think of- so consider that while he was imprisoned, he had that to ruminate about. He may not even realize that he is wrongfully imprisoned. But he is, and the impact is evident.


Instead of seeing that his breakthrough has helped the city, he feels he’s responsible for a health hazard instead. This is not normal.

Wrongful imprisonment can also create trust issues with the system, justice, and people in general. And while Nicodemus generally still seems a person eager to trust, it’s not clear how he will react moving on, and when he’s ready to experience the anger and grief at his own predicament that has to be there. Only time will tell!


I will wrap up this psych scan by saying that all in all, with all the continuous trauma that Nicodemus has endured, he has persevered. He’s an adaptive, highly altruistic person struggling with impossible odds and horrible, traumatic things that keep happening around him.

He has incredible resilience that I am confident will see him through, especially as he starts to develop a network of people he can call friends or at least associates.

2D vs 3D

Despite the fantasy elements within the story, it’s remarkably realistic in how a faceless authority will mishandle and mismanage a crisis. It’s a given that politicians have no capacity for delayed gratification and will go for the easiest route to ‘make it go away’ even if down the line the ‘it’ will come back with a vengeance.

In the process of this, good people get trampled on. We see that happen to Nicodemus and, I suspect, to a good few others that are constellating around him as the story develops.

On a 2D level, the story is an excellent suspenseful mystery with a terrible threat and capable characters that are set to oppose and vanquish it.

On a 3D level, we get the subtle struggles of a person that carries elusive trauma together with a very distinct, stigmatizing injury that may also be granting him a type of superpower. Through these struggles, we get to experience the city and its ‘dirty hands’ and what it does to its people.




I’ve a feeling that while things may get substantially worse before they get better, this is going to be a fantastic healing journey for a lot of the characters involved, including Nicodemus.


Environmental cues

It’s clear that a lot (if not all) that Nicodemus struggles with is environmentally caused. From his neglectful family to his wrongful incarceration to the fact that he’s still not quite free, everything contributes to an frankly surprisingly benign combination of traits and behaviors.

Nicodemus is flirting with depression. He has anxiety and sleep problems (I have chosen not to comment on his dreams beyond that because it’s only a developing situation), a stoic acceptance that he is inferior to others, he is a people pleaser and regularly engages in high risk behaviors. He smokes like there’s no tomorrow. All behaviors explained by what he’s been through.

And yet, he’s also an amazing example of resilience. He is highly adaptive. All of his behaviors are only self-harming or somehow beneficial to society as a whole. He could have gone any other way, but he is empathetic and caring. He puts others before himself (this is also a symptom out of the sheer frequency that he does it) and gets in the way of harm in order to help (also kind of a symptom-turned-adaptive behavior).

Nicodemus is a fascinating prism that has taken abuse and converted it into something positive for the world, even if not as much for himself. And the environment created for him in the story supports that very well, and I am certain it will do so even further in the future as we learn more about him as well as the city and his influential family.


I can’t wait to see what happens next! Kudos Dragonsong12 for creating such a compelling character in such a wonderful story!

Read Devil’s Blood!




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