Hour of the Wolf (WHF)

prometheus110 · Dec 30, 2024

Hour of the Wolf
A Warhammer Fantasy Quest

A howl escapes your throat as harsh and terrible as your form, clawed hands as big as dinner plates slamming into the unsuspecting Ungor and tearing a bloody gash across its hairy hide. Bowled sideways, the Ungor slams against the still-smouldering wall of the tavern in a shower of sparks and squeals its last, wine-dark blood spilling onto the ash beneath your feet.

"Butchers!" You roar as you leap into the light of the beastmens' fire, the others scrambling back toward the darkness as smoke stings your throat and tears sting your eyes.

Slipping and stumbling for their discarded weapons, the clutch of foul-smelling chaos-kin bleat and bray as you lash out with another claw; a Gor's skull bursting as you slam it into an overturned cart. Dimly, you feel the animal part of your mind exalt in the sensation.

"Murderers!"

An instant later, pain explodes up your back, and you pivot to see the snarling face of an Ungor looking up at you past the spear stabbed into your flank. Letting loose another howl, you twist in place and snatch at the goat-legged man-thing, its victorious bleating cutting off in a gurgle as your claws plunge into its throat and tear the bloody mass free.

Yelling a not-quite-human cry, a goat-headed beastman lunges forward with a rusty sword in hand only to scream as you rip the spear from your flank and slam it into its knees with inhuman strength, bones crunching as it spills to the ground. Stamping your foot on its neck as you stalk towards the remaining beastmen, you end the Ungor's suffering far sooner than you'd like, delicate vertebrae shattering as the wound in your side knits together.

Wearing only loincloths and thick leather strips that smell of sweat and smoke, the three remaining beastmen appear to you veterans of many battles, the knotted scar tissue that adorns their hides and bestial faces telling of countless battles won. Chattering among themselves in the language of animals, they stand before you in a semi-circle; two of the three goat-legged creatures holding spears made from gnarled branches and the last clutching a short bow whose fine quality makes clear its provenance as plunder.

Rising to your full height, you would have grinned if your toothed snout could make such an expression, the stench of fear they unleashed almost overpowering the smell of burning homes and charred flesh.

"Vermin," You growl as you step forward, batting away a questing spear and sending it flying into the night.

An arrow to the chest is your answer, the twang of the bowstring and thud of impact coming so close together they were almost as one. Growling again, you pull the barbed arrow from your flesh and let it drop to the ashen earth, the bloody wound it left behind sealing like a smile in reverse. Pausing your advance, you eye the beastmen.

Shivering with fright, they huddle together as if numbers are any protection from your wrath; the human-headed creature that shot you struggling to draw another arrow from its quiver. Already, you can feel the red overtaking you as you stand before your prey, the scent of blood and the sound of pain filling the animal part of your mind with the urge to hunt and kill. Underlining it all is righteous anger and contempt, the desperate need to hurt the beastmen burning beneath your skin and coursing through your veins.

Kiiiillllll, hisses the part of you that yearns for the hunt, the wolf inside you tensing and flexing.

Rip and Tear, the wolf's not-words speak again, spilling into your mind and setting fire to your thoughts.

Pushing back the inner voice, you turn your head from the beasts and glance around your hamlet's still-smouldering ruins, the threat of the bowman and its guardians beneath your notice.

Your world for nearly twenty summers, Roslas is now no more than a cluster of burned-out shells and fallen stones, the air thick with the smell of flesh, blood, and smoke. Once home to more than a hundred people, most human but some Children of Ulric like yourself, none remain save the remnants of the beastmen horde that attacked it. A tableau of wanton violence visited upon the innocent, your supernaturally keen eyesight spies the crumpled bodies of people you knew since childhood scattered throughout the destruction, the occasional cluster of beastmen corpses telling you where other Children had fought to the last.

The crack of a twig breaking snaps you from your reverie, and you snap your attention to the trio of beastmen fanned out before you. Frozen in fright and illuminated by the orange light of Roslas' funeral pyre, the trio of chaos-spawns seem, for a moment, the avatars of all your ills—a fresh wave of righteous anger rising in your gorge.

Kiiiillllll, the inner voice hisses again, the desire to rip the beastmen apart with your claws and teeth bubbling beneath the not-words, your clawed hands flexing almost beneath your notice.

This time, you don't resist its call.

You wake the next morning amidst the red ruin of your act, the bodies of the three beastmen little more than scraps of meat and bone spread around the burned-out remnants of their campfire. Rising on unsteady but fully human legs, your clothes soaked in the blood of those you slaughtered, you hock a wad of phlegm onto the ashen ground and turn about in a daze.

All about you, the ruins of Roslas loom large, blackened timbers clawing at the slate-grey sky and sending brief spurts of steam hissing into the air as the occasional raindrop strikes. In the wan light of day, the nightmare that was once your home has not changed one iota, the bodies of your friends and neighbours no less hacked apart in the sunlight than they had been at night.

Wandering the hamlet as the morning mists begin to lessen, you search the ruins for any signs of life other than your own, calling out for survivors to reveal themselves, only for silence to answer you. An hour later, tears streaming down your blood-crusted face, you collapse to your knees in the middle of what had once been Roslas' marketplace and let loose a howl of grief that rises high above the forest floor, icy fingers stabbing into your throat as you tear at your hair and claw at your face; each act followed by the familiar sensation of your wounds healing.

You wake again in the marketplace's ash sometime later, the noonday sun blazing high above you, and the morning mists nowhere to be seen. As if from a great distance, you realise that you feel strange. Hollow. All your grief wrung out of you, and all your tears shed.

You do not rise as you did before. Not to your feet, at any rate. Kneeling in the ashes of your home, you turn your face to the sky and mutter with all the passion of a dead thing. "Why?"

No one answers save the birds.

"Why this? Why us?" You beg again.

As before, no one answers, and white-hot anger suddenly seizes your heart and burns in your chest.

"Why?" You all but scream at the sky, the calls of unseen birds ceasing as you leap to your feet. "What did we do to deserve this? What crimes did we commit? Answer me! Answer me!"

You shout the last again, the echo of your voice bouncing back from the trees as if mocking you. Without warning, your rage suddenly gutters and fades, and you find a hollowness in your chest once more. Swaying on your feet, you feel pain prickle in the corners of your eyes as tears refuse to fall, and you let out a final choking gasp.

Loyal as a dog, you feel the wolf inside you stir in response to your grief, and ghostly memories of the satisfaction you felt the night before rise to the forefront of your mind. Slowly, you feel the desire to hunt more beastmen flicker into existence in your chest, and you let loose an ugly chuckle as you realise that's exactly what you should do.

Opening your senses to their fullest, you blink in surprise as you scent a trail leading west, the thickness of the stench telling you that the swarm of beastmen that attacked your home were part of a much larger brayherd, one so large that not even the morning rain could hide their passage.

Growling to yourself, you turn west and set off after the butchers of your people, the wolf within you eager to hunt.

It is the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful, when the fated are born. It is the Hour of the Wolf. Your hour.

But first, our most intrepid hero must be introduced.

Who Are You?
[] Name
[] Gender

You are Kasled Leitfeld, a Child of Ulric and a victim of circumstance. Your village burned, your family slaughtered, and your life turned to ashes before your eyes; you want revenge on those who wronged you and justice for those who suffered.

What Did You Do In Roslas?
[] Hunter: Skilled in all aspects of hunting, you helped your brothers and sisters provide Roslas with food by tracking and capturing prey in the forest.
[] Merchant: Something of an oddity among your kind, you ventured out to the cities and towns surrounding Roslas to trade forest goods such as hides, herbs, and other goods at market.
[] Smith: Skilled in crafting and repairing metal items, you helped your people with the day-to-day requirements of life while occasionally dabbling in making weapons and armour.
[] Caravan Guard: A skilled fighter and very hard to kill thanks to your gift, you and others were often hired to serve as caravan guards for the rare few traders willing to brave the Forest of Shadows' many dangers in search of coin.
[] Healer: The closest thing to a doctor in Roslas, you did everything from delivering babies to creating healing poultices and tinctures to aid the sick.

Under What Sign Were You Born?
[] Dragomas the Drake
[] Grungi's Baldric
[] The Piper
[] Wymund the Anchorite

In Your Wolf Form, What Were You Most Known For?
[] Your strength of arms
[] Your speed of foot
[] Your keenness of sense
[] Your understanding of the world
[] Your control of yourself

prometheus110 · Dec 30, 2024

Name: Kasled Leitfeld
Class: Healer - a literate man who made a living doing everything from delivering babies to creating healing poultices and tinctures to aid the sick.

Passions
Mission: To get revenge on those who destroyed Roslas and justice for those who suffered.
Duty: To help those who are sick and injured.
Craving: Pleasures of the flesh

Kasled Leitfeld (Human) Kasled Leitfeld (Hybrid) Kasled Leitfeld (Wolf)

Stats
Body: 4
Coordination: 4
Sense: 3
Knowledge: 4
Command: 2
Charm: 2

Skills
+2 Dodge
+2 Fight
+3 Fascinate
+2 Graces
+3 Heal
+2 Languages (Classical)
+3 Lore
+1 Lie
+2 Parry
+1 Plead
+1 Run
+3 Stealth
+5 Student: Medicine
+5 Student: Plants and Herbs

Advantages
Transform
Regeneration (5)

Wounds Table

Roll To hit	Location	Wounds
1	Left leg	[o][o][o][o][o]
2	Right leg	[o][o][o][o][o]
3-4	Left arm	[o][o][o][o][o]
5-6	Right arm	[o][o][o][o][o]
7-9	Torso	[o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o]
10	Head	[o][o][o][o]

Dice Pool Table

Skill	Usual Stat	Dice Pool	Description
Dodge	Coordination	6 (2+4)	Dodge lets you (and only you) avoid attacks. This differs from parry in that you can't protect people by dodging attacks.
Fight	Body	6 (2+4)	A versatile skill that can be used to wrestle, punch, or use any hand-to-hand weapon, as long as its use is unsubtle and obvious. Anything that requires finesse, special training or an explanation can't be used with Fight. It's the crude Skill of hard clobbering, so weapons like whips, bows and lassos are beyond its purview.
Fascinate	Charm	5 (3+2)	Fascinate is the skill you use when you want to try and ingratiate yourself with someone or when you want to distract someone from something conversationally. It's a very open ended skill.
Graces	Charm	4 (2+2)	The skill that keeps you from looking like an idiot/making a fool of yourself. Even if you've never met someone before and have no clue about their culture, Graces makes you sufficiently sensitive to nuances of posture and expression that you're able to abort rude actions before completion– or perform them in a way that it's clear you intend no offense.
Heal	Knowledge	7 (3+4)	The healing skill. When used on the battlefield/as first aid, it can be used to quickly bind wounds, splint broken limbs, etc, but only removes shock damage. When used outside of those instances, it can remove one point of killing damage per day of rest. Notably, it can also be used to torture people, but we (probably) won't be doing that.
Languages (Classical)	Knowledge*	6 (2+4)	A weird one that won't come up, but it's the skill that determines if you're able to understand what someone is saying in classical/reman (I.E what's written in old doctor's books and such)
Lore	Knowledge	7 (3+4)	A catch all skill for knowing stuff that's useful as a fallback. Generally speaking, it's accompanied by a slightly higher difficulty than the skill you would normally use. E.G if you need to identify a poison but you don't have Student: Plants and Herbs, you could use Lore, but it would be harder to succeed.
Lie	Charm	3 (1+2)	The skill that governs your ability to bullshit people. Can be seen through with an Empathy roll, or another roll if it's more relevant (I.E a merchant can do a sense+scrutinize roll to see if you're lying about the quality of something you're trying to sell)
Parry	Body	6 (2+4)	The skill that lets you directly block someone's attacks. Unlike dodge, it does let you protect a third party. Note: You need something tough/hard to parry.
Plead	Charm	3 (1+2)	If you roll a success while pleading, the person to whom you plead feels really, really bad if they don't do what you want. That said, it's not a get out of jail free card given the number of demonically evil things in Warhammer.
Run	Body	5 (1+4)	This governs your ability to run further than the 15 feet (5 meters) you can run automatically each round. Each success adds another 5 feet (1.5 meters). Useful when chasing, being chased, etc.
Stealth	Coordination	7 (3+4)	The skill that lets you hide. Works kind of like dodge/parry, but for being seen/heard/smelled, etc
Student: Medicine	Knowledge	9 (5+4)	Like lore, but narrower. As such, it's either not going to have a difficulty threshold you need to meet or one that's lower than the one for lore.
Student: Plants and Herbs	Knowledge	9 (5+4)	Like lore, but narrower. As such, it's either not going to have a difficulty threshold you need to meet or one that's lower than the one for lore.
Regeneration (5)	N/A	5	A custom one. Once per round, roll your die pool and regenerate x damage where x is the number of successes you achieve in a roll. Heal shock first, then killing damage. Fire adds a difficulty threshold to the limb whose value is dependent on the severity of the burn. Damage that has been dealt with magic cannot be regenerated with this skill/trait (I.E you need to wait and let it heal naturally, if it heals at all).
Transform	N/A	N/A	The thing that lets you turn into a hybrid or wolf form

Stats
Body: 5
Coordination: 5
Sense: 4
Knowledge: 4
Command: 2
Charm: 2

Skills
+2 Bite [Width Killing, Width Shock]
Claws MD [Width Killing]
+2 Dodge
+4 Fight [Width Killing]
+3 Fascinate
+2 Graces
+3 Heal
+2 Languages (Classical)
+3 Lore
~~+1 Lie~~
+2 Parry
~~+1 Plead~~
+2 Run
+3 Stealth
+5 Student: Medicine
+5 Student: Plants and Herbs

Advantages
Armor Rating (1): For every point of AR, the armor stops one point of Shock damage and one point of Killing damage. (This is equivalent to wearing boiled leather all over)
Transform
Regeneration (5)

Wounds Table

Roll To hit	Location	Wounds
1	Left leg	[o][o][o][o][o][o]
2	Right leg	[o][o][o][o][o][o]
3-4	Left arm	[o][o][o][o][o][o]
5-6	Right arm	[o][o][o][o][o][o]
7-9	Torso	[o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o]
10	Head	[o][o][o][o][o]

Dice Pool Table
I've removed some stuff you straight up can't do as a wolfman (Dr Wolfman M.D is not a thing, alas), but I'm open to letting you do shit like find healing herbs and whatever. I'm not a cop.

Skill	Usual Stat	Dice Pool	Description
Bite	Coordination	7 (2+5)	A bite attack. Added separately from fight skill since it's a natural weapon
Claws	Coordination	5+MD (0 + 5) + MD	A claw attack. Added separately from fight skill since it's a natural weapon
Dodge	Coordination	7 (2+5)	Dodge lets you (and only you) avoid attacks. This differs from parry in that you can't protect people by dodging attacks.
Fight	Body	9 (4+5)	A versatile skill that can be used to wrestle, punch, or use any hand-to-hand weapon, as long as its use is unsubtle and obvious. Anything that requires finesse, special training or an explanation can't be used with Fight. It's the crude Skill of hard clobbering, so weapons like whips, bows and lassos are beyond its purview.
Lore	Knowledge	7 (3+4)	A catch all skill for knowing stuff that's useful as a fallback. Generally speaking, it's accompanied by a slightly higher difficulty than the skill you would normally use. E.G if you need to identify a poison but you don't have Student: Plants and Herbs, you could use Lore, but it would be harder to succeed.
Parry	Body	7 (2+5)	The skill that lets you directly block someone's attacks. Unlike dodge, it does let you protect a third party. Note: You need something tough/hard to parry.
Run	Body	7 (2+5)	This governs your ability to run further than the 15 feet (5 meters) you can run automatically each round. Each success adds another 5 feet (1.5 meters). Useful when chasing, being chased, etc.
Stealth	Coordination	8 (3+5)	The skill that lets you hide. Works kind of like dodge/parry, but for being seen/heard/smelled, etc
Student: Medicine	Knowledge	9 (5+4)	Like lore, but narrower. As such, it's either not going to have a difficulty threshold you need to meet or one that's lower than the one for lore.
Student: Plants and Herbs	Knowledge	9 (5+4)	Like lore, but narrower. As such, it's either not going to have a difficulty threshold you need to meet or one that's lower than the one for lore.
Regeneration (5)	N/A	5	A custom one. Once per round, roll your die pool and regenerate x damage where x is the number of successes you achieve in a roll. Heal shock first, then killing damage. Fire adds a difficulty threshold to the limb whose value is dependent on the severity of the burn. Damage that has been dealt with magic cannot be regenerated with this skill/trait (I.E you need to wait and let it heal naturally, if it heals at all).
Transform	N/A	N/A	The thing that lets you turn into a hybrid or wolf form

Stats
Body: 4
Coordination: 3
Sense: 5
Knowledge: 4
Command: 2
Charm: 2

Skills
+3 Bite [Width Killing]
+3 Dodge
+3 Fascinate
+2 Graces
+3 Heal
+3 Hearing
~~+2 Languages (Classical)~~
+3 Lore
+1 Lie
+2 Parry
+1 Plead
+3 Run
+4 Stealth
+5 Student: Medicine
+5 Student: Plants and Herbs
+2 Sight
+2 Scrutinise + Master Die (the main feature of a master die is that I can set its value after rolling the others in a pool, guaranteeing a success)

Advantages
Transform
Regeneration (5)
Movement (20)

Wounds Table

Roll To hit	Location	Wounds
1	Right Foreleg	[o][o][o]
2	Left Foreleg	[o][o][o]
3-4	Right Hind leg	[o][o][o][o]
5-6	Left Hind leg	[o][o][o][o]
7-9	Torso	[o][o][o][o][o][o]
10	Head	[o][o][o]

Dice Pool Table
I've removed some stuff you straight up can't do as a wolf (Captain Wolf is not a thing, alas), but I'm open to various things so long as you can argue it properly. I'm not a cop.

Skill	Usual Stat	Dice Pool	Description
Bite	Body	7 (3+4)	What it says. It's the skill that governs biting people
Dodge	Coordination	6 (2+3)	Dodge lets you (and only you) avoid attacks. This differs from parry in that you can't protect people by dodging attacks.
Hearing	Sense	8 (3+5)	Hearing helps you notice things that most others would miss/which are trying to stay quiet. I.E the drawing of a bowstring, someone sneaking behind you, etc.
Lore	Knowledge	7 (3+4)	A catch all skill for knowing stuff that's useful as a fallback. Generally speaking, it's accompanied by a slightly higher difficulty than the skill you would normally use. E.G if you need to identify a poison but you don't have Student: Plants and Herbs, you could use Lore, but it would be harder to succeed.
Run	Body	7 (2+5)	This governs your ability to run further than the 15 feet (5 meters) you can run automatically each round. Each success adds another 5 feet (1.5 meters). Useful when chasing, being chased, etc.
Stealth	Coordination	8 (3+5)	The skill that lets you hide. Works kind of like dodge/parry, but for being seen/heard/smelled, etc
Student: Medicine	Knowledge	9 (5+4)	Like lore, but narrower. As such, it's either not going to have a difficulty threshold you need to meet or one that's lower than the one for lore.
Student: Plants and Herbs	Knowledge	9 (5+4)	Like lore, but narrower. As such, it's either not going to have a difficulty threshold you need to meet or one that's lower than the one for lore.
Sight	Sense	7 (2+7)	The skill you use to notice things visually. Useful for identifying distant figures, finding something hidden, etc.
Scrutinise	Sense	7 +MD (2+5) + MD	This skill helps you analyse your environment. Useful for reconstructing events, tracking paths through places, etc.
Regeneration (5)	N/A	5	A custom one. Once per round, roll your die pool and regenerate x damage where x is the number of successes you achieve in a roll. Heal shock first, then killing damage. Fire adds a difficulty threshold to the limb whose value is dependent on the severity of the burn. Damage that has been dealt with magic cannot be regenerated with this skill/trait (I.E you need to wait and let it heal naturally, if it heals at all).
Transform	N/A	N/A	The thing that lets you turn into a hybrid or wolf form

Kasled Leitfeld's Inventory

Items of Note
- A healer's bag (Full)
- Two small bottles (empty, finely made)
- A small bottle of giant spider venom [unknown effect, unknown potency]
- A small peasant blade [Width Shock, 1 Killing]

prometheus110 · Jan 1, 2025

[X] Healer: The closest thing to a doctor in Roslas, you did everything from delivering babies to creating healing poultices and tinctures to aid the sick.
[X] Grungi's Baldric
[X] Your control of yourself

"Young Gunther has cut his hand while sharpening his knife after use. It is a shallow cut and short in length, but already, it has inflamed and become painful. He has also been afflicted with a plague of sternutation and coughing and has come to you for aid. What do you do?"

The old master's voice is whisper soft and as dry as yellow grass, the afternoon sun's light turned to crisp beams by the slats in his windows and painting stripes across his cabin's interior. Lying in a bed surrounded by bundles of dried sage and lavender, the craggy-faced man could be mistaken for asleep were it not for the gem-bright eyes that shine beneath heavy lids; the jade green waters of his gaze focused squarely and purely on you. Seated beside him and fussing over his pillows, Franziska—today's volunteer to aid the old doctor—gives you a sympathetic smile that makes it hard to concentrate.

Standing a few feet away, trying to keep your eyes locked on his and failing miserably, you clasp a hand behind your back and nod. As always, it is a mistake.

"Don't act like a chicken, boy," the old master interjects harshly. "And stop staring at Siska. Answer."

"What was he cutting?" You shoot back, the hitch in your voice making you squawk like a bird. Franziska doesn't bother hiding her amusement, heat flushing up your neck as she smiles broadly.

The master coughs, a loud liquid noise almost deafening in his cramped cabin, and nods.

"Good!" He declares, a warmth filling you. "You've remembered to ask basic questions."

The feeling vanishes.

"He was cutting Ragweed for the Richtus's. A crop has appeared recently, and they needed help cutting down its stalks before removing it."

Like thunder flashing across the sky, understanding dawns within you, and a proud smile spreads over your face.

"Gunther is allergic to Ragweed," you declare. "Like as not, the sternutation and coughing are a symptom of exposure and can be ignored."

If you were pleased that you knew the answer or just that you got a chance to show off in front of Siska, you couldn't tell. Either way suited you just fine. Pausing to let her properly appreciate your recently found eruditeness, her heart-shaped face adorned with interest, you stand tall and proud and continue.

"As for his cut, a poultice of yarrow or similar herb should suffice to ease his pain and prevent infection."

You stop and instinctively glance towards the cabin's roof, the old timbers time-worn, smoke-stained, and dark as night. "I would also tell him to return the next day so I can ensure the swelling has reduced and his cut is healing well."

Staring back at you with piercing eyes, the old master nods stiffly.

"An acceptable answer," he says. "Where would you find yarrow?"

Before you can reply, he turns to Franziska and says in a sweet voice. "Could you pass me a sip from my bottle, dear?"

Leaving you with a lingering look, the winsome girl retrieves the man's black-bottled tincture and carefully spoons a few drops into a mug of water. Within moments, the cabin's still air fills with the scent of ginger and anise.

Dimly, a part of you thinks it a bit ridiculous to do these tests when he trusts you enough to drink to the tinctures you brew, but the wiser part of you refrains from saying so. You've little need to press your neck to the blade; the master remains fit enough to do that for himself.

Taking it from her gratefully, your master drinks deep from the mug and gestures for you to continue.

"I grow enough in my garden to make a dozen poultices, but if we were to run out, once can find yarrow growing in meadows and fields and the outer edges of the forest. You can identify it..."

***

Frost crunches underfoot as you bolt through the forest, the smell of beast flesh burning hot in your nostrils despite the chill in the air. Overhead, flitting past, skeletal boughs groan under the weight of freshly fallen snow, the powdery flakes drifting idly from the sky to cover the earth in a stubborn slurry. The stench of beastmen is that of horses, goats, and other, worse, things, the almost metallic stench heavy in your mouth as you pant and gasp your way over twisting roots and swelling rises; what few items remain yours in the world in a bag clutched tight to your chest as you ran.

You wear Ulric's blessing like a cloak cast over one shoulder for the hunt, taking on what lupine aspects you need to scent the foe and nothing more. That a fully lupine form would be faster was obvious. Still, you couldn't bear the thought of leaving your things behind to fester and rot along with the rest of Roslas, and they might come in handy. And besides, in the cold light of the afternoon sun, you could see the trail of destruction the beastmen had left in their wake easily enough.

Like the herd they were, they had pushed their way through the Forest of Shadows with no regard for the world around them, branches broken, bark stripped bare, and earth churned to mud beneath their feet and hooves and trotters. It was as if some daemon had pulled a wicked blade through the land, the earth's black blood boiling out of the cut and forming the ragged edges of the path. Pausing for a moment behind a victim of their passage—a mighty oak whose limbs claw the sky with every gust of wind—you steady yourself against its damaged flesh and suck in one lungful of air after another, the burning in your chest easing but not vanishing.

Turning your gaze upon the scene, you pause as you spy a whiteness among the slurry that does not belong; the flatness of its colour against the sparkling slush a siren call.

Treading over to it, the cold ignored in your haste, you plunge a hand into the drivel and feel your fingers close around something hard and round, your extended nails scraping against its surface. Wrenching it forth in a spray of semi-liquid mud, you stare at it slackly before understanding sets in, a violent spasm sending the skull landing with a splash of mud. Keening in some mad combination of hate and disgust, you can only watch as the tooth-marked bone vanishes into the muck, its steady grin swallowed by the beast-made mire as it slips below, a glimpse of black the last all you see of it before it's gone.

Kill, the wolf growls with its not-words, Ulric's blessing a liquid gurgle whose rage warms your blood even as your sweat turns to frost. Hunt.

"Soon," you gasp as you clench your fist painfully tight, the spark of pain that blossoms a beacon that draws you back to the forest. "Soon."

Steam still spilling from your mouth, you make to continue your chase when a thought stops you cold. Turning back to where the skull landed, you wade over to its liquid resting place and plunge your hand into the well-churned mud once more, a bitter cold surrounding it as you feel for the macabre marker. A heartbeat later, your fingers close around a familiar hardness, and you pull at it once, twice, three times, the earth reluctantly releasing it with a liquid squelching sound.

Muddy tears streaming from its empty sockets, the tooth-marked skull stares at you in accusation.

Where were you? It seems to say. We needed you. Where were you?

The smell of Rosemary surrounds you in a delicate embrace as you hack away at stem after stem, the knife in your hand slick with plant juices and shining in the mid-afternoon light. Good for aches and pains, the teas and poultices you could make with it were ever needed by the people of Roslas, and you were more than happy to exchange them for flesh and greens.

Humming to yourself as you bind the wooden stalks in a coloured cord that once belonged to a girl named Franziska, you smile at the memory of her warm skin and dark curls. Your entanglement had finished two years and a skirmish with goblins ago—she had married, of all people, Gunther—but it had been a pleasant spring for the both of you. Nor could you find it within yourself to begrudge the moon-eyed fool his success in wooing the handsome Franziska; too long had the two of you known each other.

Your back creaking in protest, you rise from your stoop and carefully wipe the blade on your sleeve, wondering all the while who you might spend the next spring with: blonde-haired Ludmilla or fiery Sibylle—another of Ulric's Children so strong you were sure she could wrestle an ogre. As if in jest, an image of the huntswoman, Eleanor, pops into your mind before you banish it with a snort...

Your wolf snarls, and the skull's silent indictments wither before it.

Ignoring the memories that press behind your eyes and your own twisting gut, you turn the thing over in your hands until the scorch mark you saw earlier rolls into view, the evil black scar marring the bone's yellow-white.

Welcome to the very first roll of the game. As the One-Roll Engine system is likely new to many of you, I'll give you a demonstration of how it works.

Here, we have a skull that has suffered some damage marring it with a burn. We want to examine the damage to see if it is merely a burn from a mundane fire or something else. This kind of check could be performed with the scrutinise skill or the eerie skill (eerie in this case being Reign's catch-all "magical detection" skill) and is considered a static skill check since we're not being opposed by anything.

While Kasled has a base Eerie and Scrutinise skill of 0, his impressive grasp of his gift allowed him to borrow some of his Wolf form's scrutiny skill before this update started.

Static skill checks are made simply by rolling your dice pool against the target difficulty (if the check has a difficulty) and seeing if you have any matching sets of dice whose value is equal to or greater than the difficulty. If you have no matching sets of dice that meet or exceed the difficulty, you fail the check. If you have one matching set of dice that do, you pass. If you have multiple sets that do, you get to pick which one applies (this becomes very relevant during combat for reasons you'll no doubt see soon).

The pool of dice you roll (your dice pool) is determined by the value you have in the relevant skill plus whichever stat governs/is relevant to that skill. A die pool for anyone can never be larger than 10 die.

In this case, you're scrutinising the skull to see if it was burned by a wooden/chemical flame that would leave a distinct smell or look, so it's Scrutinise + Sense.

Sense (3) + Scrutinise (2) for a total dice pool size of 5
Rolled: (6 +5 +7 +2 +6) = 26
Pairs: 2x6

That's a pretty good success! As we don't have a difficulty threshold, all we needed to do to pass was achieve 1 matching set of dice and we did that. If this skull had been sitting in the water for days and days and the check had a difficulty of 7+, we would have failed to smell anything at all due to the water washing it away. However, it wasn't, so we succeeded.

While it didn't happen particularly fast, we've successfully scrutinised the skull and can tell that whatever burned it was not a wood or chemical fire. In fact, Kasled can smell a weird stink that raises the hairs on the back of his neck, so it seems that whatever burned the skull was some strange, bad magic.

Gingerly, a feeling of disrespect sweeping over you like a chill gust, you bring the skull to your eyes and examine the macabre remnant as closely as you dare. Large enough that it can only have belonged to an adult, a fact that you find yourself immediately grateful for, the skull has been gnawed on and chewed as if by a rabid dog, scratches and teeth marks covering the object and telling you of some frenzied feast in the dark hours of the night. Fighting the bile surging in your gullet, you bring the skull closer still and breathe in a lungful of air near the burn site, the expected scent-taste of charred bone filling your sinuses.

Letting out a confused noise as no other scent emerges, you are about to return the skull to its earthen grave when the faintest whiff of some unpleasant and indescribable smell prickles your nose; the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end for reasons you can't explain. Closing your eyes, you breathe in again, the scent redoubling in strength but still too faint to describe. Again, you breathe it in, and it is suddenly no longer so faint.

With the force of a tree collapsing, the stink hits you without warning. A student of herbs, plants, and medicine, you have exposed yourself and been exposed to countless odours from the astringent to the fell; Witch-hazel in full bloom and rank puss merely two of your myriad companions. Somehow, this stench is worse than all of those combined. It is sweet and bitter and sharp and cloying all at once. Like blood from a tongue freshly bit, it fills your mouth with itself, and the bile in your throat surges again as your eyes fly open.

Dark magic, you think as you jerk the skull away—an act of will required to push down the hot bile. Dark magic burned the skull.

You have never seen it used, but like any good godsfearing Ulrican, you have always been wary of it. If the Brayherd was using dark magic, that meant either it was led by a Bray-Shaman, or it held one within its ranks. Either option spoke poorly of your odds against the herd.

At the thought of facing a Bray-Shaman, the wolf within your blood stirs and growls. Ulric has no particular enmity for magic beyond the caution advised to all who live around an art that so often destroys the minds and bodies of men and dooms their souls to damnation. However, it doesn't mean you, he, or your wolf care for its use by things chaotic.

Gently placing the skull off the muddy trail, you whisper a quick prayer to Morr to preserve its owner's spirit from all things fell and an equally quick prayer to Ulric for the strength to avenge their death. Then, without ceremony, you set off again, snow and frost crunching underfoot as you tear between trees and over stones.

For a timeless moment, you run, the slap of shoes and solemn winter bird calls replaced by the thunder of blood in your ears and the rasp of your hungry breath. Then, all at once, the knotted ground suddenly dips before you, a curse escaping your lips as you slide to a halt mere feet from a stream's steep-sided banks. Blinking in surprise, you look left and right before growling as you spy the remnants of a great fire smouldering in the woods west of you. The beastmen had camped here and recently, too.

We're catching up, you tell yourself.

At the thought, the thing inside your soul seems to rise, satisfaction radiating out as phantom memories of ripping and tearing prod at the back of your mind.

Frowning at the flowing waters, polluted by waste and other things, you realise with a start that you know the stream from old, the once-crystal waters emerging from a spring deeper in the woods and flowing northwest towards the Middenheim-Erengrad road.

Doubtless, the beastmen had paused here to slake what thirst remained after plundering ale. The fire, too, was doubtlessly made so they could enjoy the fruits of Roslas' destruction. If you were minded to, you could venture near the smouldering embers and find bones aplenty, not that you were after earlier.

Still staring at the water, a dire thirst suddenly overtakes you, the pain in your throat as though a crystalline flower had bloomed within. As if in sympathy, your stomach growls and clenches. For a moment, you consider ignoring the sensations and pressing on. Then you shake your head. You're no good to anyone half starved and dying of thirst—killed before you could smash a single skull or tear out another throat.

Shaking your head to dismiss the crazed thought, you lope some meters upstream of the beastmen's temporary camp until the spring-fed waters run clear, then clamber down the mossy banks. Warily—your ears open for any hint of a threat, and your nose twitching for the stink of beastmen, spiders, or worse—you plunge a hand into the freezing stream and bring out a palm-full of water, drinking until you slake your thirst. Stopping before you overdo it, you retrieve a hunk of brown bread from your bag and wolf it down.

It's likely the last bread Enger Helshentz baked in his life and the best you've ever tasted; a few spots where the ashes of his bakery had polluted the bread unnoticed added a soupçon of bitterness.

Your austere meal finished, you wash your hands in the stream's waters and clamber up the slopes. Glancing skyward through the denuded forest canopy, you grin for the first time since yesterday as you spy a pink-orange tint creeping into the grey and white sky. Nightfall is coming, and with it, the hour of the wolf.

Eagerly, your nose filled with the stink of beast flesh, you follow the stream northwest towards the road, the stony ground near the waterway easing your path but doing little to hide the beastmen's trail of destruction. Several hundred meters down the trail, you suddenly veer from the stream as the beastmen depart its side with a sharp left turn. Not slowing your pace, you wrack your brain trying to decipher what target they could be going for.

Difficulty: 2
Knowledge (4) + Lore (3) for a total dice pool size of 7
Rolled: 3 +10 +2 +3 +6 +2 +3
Pairs: 2x2, 3x3

Using the 3x3 success since it's faster and still passes.

"Beeckerhoven," you mutter as the thought flashes through your mind a moment later, surprise curling your tone upward.

It is the only community of note to the west of Roslas and one from which the Beastmen could doubtlessly pull much plunder given its location on the Middenheim-Erengrad road. While there are countless smaller hamlets and homesteads in the same direction and towns both north and south of it, Beeckerhoven is the only one likely to satisfy their appetites for a time.

Are they large enough to take it? You wonder. Are they stupid enough to try, or do they have some plan reliant on bestial cunning?

Huffing at their behaviour, you continue your chase, the beastmen's musk prickling your nose as you draw ever closer. Your heart pumps sonorously, and you feel the sun dip below the horizon before you see it, the first chill gust of the winter night's air rolling over you and sending a shiver up your body despite the heat in your limbs. Glancing from side to side as you dodge around trees, you send another prayer skywards as the snow and frost start staining the colour of sunset, pinks, golds, and oranges blooming as sunlight filters through the trees' knotted fingers.

"The cold fire reveals all," you mutter to yourself.

With a sigh that rolls from ear to ear and the clatter of withered tree limbs, a mighty wind blows down from the west, the long gust carrying new smells to fill your senses. Stopping for a moment beside a toppled tree—the single long rent in its side too much like an axe blow for your liking—you close your eyes and breathe in deeply. Pushing past the musky smell of deer and squirrels and the rich scent of stored nuts and waxen honey vaults, you find the scent you're looking for coming from both the north and west before freezing as another hits you.

Tangy and familiar, underlined with a rich metallic taste, it tickles your nose and makes your heart ache. Suddenly, a painful stinging afflicts your eyes, and you bat away frozen tears.

Humans, the wolf spirit within confirms as you scent them among the beastmen. Bleeding humans, another breath adds.

Shifting from side to side, sniffing all the while, you feel your expression harden as you realise that the human scent hails from both groups of beastmen, one headed northeast and the other west. Prisoners. Feedstock. Damn it all.

Opening your eyes, you find the forest floor lit by the silvery light of a Mannslieb waxing gibbous, the shadows of a million skeletal branches now a cage above your head. Stalking half a hundred steps forward, you stop again as you come to a fork in the stygian path the beastman herd has carved in the forest, a thinner and less-trodden branch turning northeast and the other continuing westward.

The beastmen have sent out another raiding party.

Torn by indecision as to which to chase, you buy time by examining the tracks heading northeast, hoping that a clear view of their numbers might clarify the right move.

"C'mon, Kaz," you tell yourself as you examine the split. "How many of them are there?"

Sense (3) + Scrutiny (2) for a total dice pool size of 5
Rolled: 4 +6 +5 +9 +7
Pairs: None

Alas, Kasled has failed to determine how many beastmen are heading northeast on a raid with human prisoners/a human larder in tow. All he can tell for now is that the northeast group is noticeably smaller than the one headed westward.

Fortunately, given the comparatively slow speed of the beastmen, he has enough time to try again at no penalty, this time taking his time to examine the tracks for a +1d bonus to his dice pool.

Sense (3) + Scrutiny (2) + 1d (going slow in his investigation) for a total dice pool size of 6
Rolled: 9 +3 +8 +2 +2 +5
Pairs: 2x2

It's a success! Though not an amazing success, Kasled has learned that there is anything from 20-60 beastmen heading northeast. However, due to his low roll, he has no idea what kind of beastmen they are.

You move slowly and carefully over the much-churned mud as you examine the northeast trail, booted feet careful not to stray from what few safe areas you can determine. Eying the muck and broken branches, wishing to Ulric and Taal that you'd bothered to learn much hunting lore when you had the chance, you try to imagine what kind and size of force could so forcefully make their way through the Forest of Shadows. Slowly, painfully, you assemble a picture of what happened, your blood cooling as the scale of the brayherd grows and grows in your mind's eye.

Untrained in hunting and going off only those signs you can detect, you count anything from one to three score beastmen heading northeast, an able force considering the size of the towns in that direction. Meanwhile, you don't even bother attempting to count the number headed westward, the sheer size of that force having obliterated any sign you could read.

A newfound appreciation for the forces arrayed against you lying heavy in your heart, you make your choice and make it quick.

Article:

[] Northeast: Substantially smaller than the brayherd headed west, the northeastern beastmen will doubtlessly be easier to confront than the western brayherd. Better still, its small size will make it easier to rescue your kinsmen if they still live and avenge them if they do not.

[] Westwards: Larger and slower and doubtlessly helmed by the brayherd's leader, the brayherd headed west will almost certainly be holding more of your people prisoner. How you will rescue them will require some thought, however.

prometheus110 · Jan 2, 2025

[X]Northeast

Making your decision, you hurl yourself northwards, the moonlit trees around you blurring as you race after the beastmen raiding force. Your nostrils full of the scent of the chaotic creatures and their path through the forest as stark as lightning in a moonless sky, you barely have to think as you track them. Dashing past the gnarled trees and craggy rocks that fill the Forest of Shadows, the smell of the beastmen and their human captives grows stronger with every passing moment, your fingers flexing as your Ulric-born wolf prepares for a fight and your mind racing as you wonder where they are being taken.

A den? A part of you jabbers as you hurtle over a snow-covered gully, images of some grim cave in the woods flashing through your mind.

A larder? A slave pit? A herdstone?

Tearing past a fallen tree, you try to drive the morbid thoughts from your mind, only for them to multiply like vermin, a million formless, shapeless terrors forming in your mind's eye and assailing you with their foulness. Biting your lip at the self-inflicted psychic assault, you barely notice as the forest's shadows start to thin, a split-second glimmer of silver overhead all the warning you have before Mannslieb bursts into view. Rising high above the woods and shining radiantly, the pockmarked face of Manann's beloved waxes gibbous in the sky and casts its light upon the world. Despite the coldness of the night and the grimness of your task, the clarity of the moon's silver light seems to penetrate and purify your mind, all thoughts but those of finding your brothers and sisters vanishing without a trace.

Cloossee, your not-wolf growls in a wordless tongue, another breath filling your mouth with the scent-taste of blood.

Though not a tracker, you can tell it is correct, the frost covering the blood-black trail ahead of you not quite as thick as it once was, saplings still slowly oozing sap from their broken limbs, and the putrid smell of the beastmen's dung growing ever harder to ignore. Disgusted but encouraged, a fresh burst of energy fills your limbs, and your growing fatigue slackens as if another has taken up its weight.

Slowly, painfully slowly, the crunch of frost fades away, the squelch of still-liquid mud replacing it as you close upon your quarry. With every maddened footstep through the woods, the dense cage of barren branches thins, and the frozen oaks and pillar-like pines spread further apart. Soon enough, meadows and clearings appear interspersed among the trees, the light-filled bubbles of some other world invading the forest that has been your home for some twenty years.

All but blind to the changes, you halt at the edge of a cliff only a few metres tall and blink at the scene before you.

Standing like a titan among children—a throwback to the ancient trees lying within the forest's depths—a great spruce rises surrounded by smaller trees, its low branches wide enough to hold a house and its high branches seeming to scrape the stars themselves. Painted in the silver light of Mannslieb, the ground shines radiantly, and fawn spots larger than a man can leap smatter the frost-sprinkled ground. Still visible along the ground and tracking northeast, the beastmen's trail winds its way past the base of the cliff and under the spruce's sheltering branches, the broad path dwarfed by the tree's almost impossibly wide trunk.

Admonishing yourself for your tunnel vision, you huff once and half leap-half slide down the cliffside, a wave of scree accompanying you with a clatter. Landing with a splash of liquid mud, you huff and clutch your bag tightly, the clinking of your medicine jars cushioned by your herb bundles. Trudging through the muck towards the spruce, you are about to restart your mad dash when a familiarly musky smell reaches you from up ahead.

OOC: I found out that I could order roll results by value, which makes it a lot easier to see pairs.

Rolled: 1+2+2+6+10
Pairs: 2x2

For a long moment, the smell remains elusive, the answer to what it belongs to hovering on the tip of your tongue but refusing to come forth. Then, without warning, a memory rises to your mind.

The goblin gives a panicked screech as its spider mount tumbles out from under its legs, the snot-green gobshite rocketing over Axel's hastily thrown spear and slamming to the ground before sliding to a halt before you. Acting on instinct, you lash out with your borrowed blade and clip it about the head, the rising forest goblin falling to the ground dead with nary sound. Your heart thundering in your chest and your face cold as new snow, you glance around the battlefield and feel a surge of relief well up within you as you realise that the skirmish with the goblins is all but over; Sibylle, Axel, and Engerick tearing through what remains of the yellow hatted greenskins with ease thanks to their razor-sharp claws and crushing jaws.

Glancing around, you realise with a start that you've become separated from Roslas' scraped-together militia, your bag of healing goods nowhere to be seen among the corpses of goblins and the spiders they ride. About to chide yourself for getting separated and losing your bag, you stop as something prickles the back of your neck, and gooseflesh rises.

Suddenly, a powerful musky smell assaults you from behind, and you turn just in time to see an onyx and viridian blur hurtling towards you. Yelping, you raise your hands just in time to catch the leaping spider in the neck with your blade, a spray of ichor splashing across you as it bears you to the ground. Chittering and screeching in equal measure, its spiny legs scrabbling for purchase, the dog-sized spider snaps at the air with its fangs once, twice, three times, every bite accompanied by a piercing clack as the finger-sized needles strike empty air. One hand beneath its heaving thorax, you pull your blade from its body and give a wordless yell, throwing the spider aside with a roar, the hideous creature landing on its back and hissing furiously. A moment later, you're on your feet—your heartbeat thundering through your veins—and you snarl as the thing finally rights itself, hesitant steps sending it left and right as the handle of your knife gleams in its neck.

Distantly, you wonder if you have time to embrace Ulric's Gift before the spider charges...

And then an arrow whips past your ear faster than you can blink, a feathered shaft appearing in the spider's eye an instant later. Letting out one final shriek as its hateful life is cut short, the spider spasms and collapses, its eight legs curling tight towards its body. Relieved, you give a long sigh and turn to thank your saviour, pausing as you see the woodswoman, Eleanor, staring back at you with unblinking eyes, her bow held tight in her hands.

You banish the memory with a snarl and check the ground before you for confirmation, a brief scan revealing dimples in the mud and snow that your experience aiding Roslas' militia tells you can only come from giant spiders.

Arachnidis titanicus, a memory of the old master corrects; the phantom words bring a brief smile to your face. He was ever a pain in the arse.

"Thank Ulric he passed the year before," you say to yourself as you bring your eyes to the spruce, the shadows on its boughs as impenetrable as stone.

Lowering your bag to the ground and pressing your fists against the cold ground, you feel the first hints of Ulric's Gift emerge as you let the change wash over you.

Heat flares across your body as your bones warp and shift, your arms, legs, and chest lengthening and widening monstrously, and your fingers extending until they are twice as long as normal. An instant later, you feel your muscles writhe and become turgid, whipcord strings doubling in size, then doubling again, the whole mass surging and bulging as it shifts to cover you. Thickening and elongating, you watch with dispassionate interest as the ground races away, two feet in height and Verena alone knows how much weight added to your frame by Ulric's blessing. Suddenly, all over your body, a forest of tiny daggers sprouts, dark fur bursting through your skin like grass shoots through soil.

Steadily, your breathing becomes heavy, and you feel more than see your skull change shape. Like half-melted wax drawn by a wire, your face extends and broadens until it resembles a wolf's snout, the world around you shifting strangely as your eyes slide across your face before settling in place. For the briefest instant, your now prominent snout blocks your vision, and then, by some trick, Ulric makes it vanish between one blink and the next.

At least my clothes stayed intact this time, you think as you let out a sonorous growl, your tunic stretched over your long-limbed and broad frame. The less said about your trousers, the better.

Your eyes now the eyes of a wolf, the already bright night becomes almost as day; the once impenetrable shadows are now merely dark.

The spider does not disappoint.

No doubt recognising that it was detected, the vile thing leaps from the lower branches of the giant spruce and crashes to the ground. The size of a small pony, it hits the ground with a chitter you can hear from here and races towards you on eight spear-like legs. Jewel blue and screeching, the spider charges forward with wild abandon, the fat-bodied thing quickly picking up speed until it barrels towards you like a warhorse.

Combat in the One-Roll Engine is very different from some role playing game systems you may be familiar with. Instead of rolling for initiative and doing everything in that order, in ORE, all players and entities declare what they're going to be doing (E.G making one attack, making an attack and parrying, doing a called shot to the self esteem, etc), then roll their pools simultaneously, and work out pairs and which action is associated with what pair.

While this takes a bit of getting used to, it makes things go pretty quickly once you're used to it.

Round 1
Spider Charges and bites (for this attack, we use the dice pool for the spider's run skill which is 8d10 -1d10 as this counts as a multiple action)
4+5+5+6+7+7+10
Pairs: 2x5, 2x7

Kas dodge
10+2+3+4+7+9+9
Pairs: 2x9

The spider chooses the 2x7 for its charge attack, but Kas dodges thanks to his 2x9 dodge. As the spider wasn't doing a separate action and Kas wasn't trying to hit it back, the remaining pair was discarded.

Round 2
Spider lashes out with its legs
(1+3+5+6+8+10)
Pairs: 0

Kas does a multi-action to attack twice with fight (dropping 1 dice per extra attack from the dice pool of 9d10)
(2+3+3+4+5+7+8+10)
Pairs: 2x3

Spider takes Width + 1 (I.E. 2) killing damage to its left legs, losing one.

Round 3
Spider lashes with its legs again
(1+2+3+3+6+7)
Pairs: 2x3

Kas pulls back before attacking with his claws, taking his time.
1+3+4+7+10
Pairs: 0
Normally, this would be bad for Kas as he doesn't have a pair. Fortunately, he has a master die in his claw skill that he gets to assign after rolling but before sets are assigned, and he has a ten in his results...

1+3+4+7+10+(10 MD)
Pairs: 2x10

Kas hits first as his pair has a higher value and deals Width + 1 killing damage (I.E. 2 killing damage) to the spider's head. Being hit first, the spider loses one die from its pair and misses/deals no damage.

Round 4
Spider tries to bite
2+3+4+9
Pairs: 0

Kas tries to dodge and slap back
1+1+4+4+6+9
Pairs: 2x1, 2x4

Kas assigns the 2x4 to fight since he's already taken off a left leg and may as well keep going. The dodge result is useless.

Kas deals Width + 1 killing damage (I.E. 2 killing damage) to another of the spider's left legs, destroying it.

Round 5
Spider tries to kick again
1+2+5+6+9+9
Pairs: 2x9

Kas tries to end the fight by savaging the spider's head (he makes a called shot at the spider's head, drops one die from his fight pool, setting another to 10, and rolling the remaining 7d10 as normal)
2+3+5+5+6+6+10+(10 from called shot)
Pairs: 2x10,2x6,2x5

Kas could use any of his pairs if he wanted to, but we did get a result that would hit the spider in the head, and it would ruin the spider's attack, so...

Kas hits the spider's head for Width + 1 killing damage (I.E. 2 more killing damage), destroying it and killing the spider.

Ready for it, the wolf within you surging at the thought of combat, you leap to the side just as the spider throws itself at you, its questing fangs missing your matted hide with centimetres to spare before it slams past. Sliding in the well-churned mud as momentum carries it past, the bright blue spider struggles to heave itself around as you step closer, one wild kick after another failing to connect despite your impressive stature. Snarling in a mix of rage and disgust, you leap upon the meat-fat thing and slash at it with your claws, the finger-long razors cutting deep into the still-supple exoskeleton of one of the youthful spider's limbs and severing it in an instant.

Chittering at a frequency that stings your ears—its severed limb flailing back and forth and spraying a foul-smelling yellow ichor onto the frozen ground—the giant spider retreats a dozen paces and hisses. Growling a challenge that makes your heart sing, you charge towards the spider recklessly and slam a claw down onto its fanged head before wrenching free a gob of chitin and icor. Furious at the blow, the spider retaliates, a dagger-covered leg lancing forth and barely missing your left arm, the wind of its passage ruffling your pitch-black fur but doing little else.

Letting loose a liquid snarl, you pause as a shiver runs through the spider and leap left just as it lunges forward, scimitar fangs slashing through empty air and sending a spray of pale venom splashing against the ground. A heartbeat later, another treelike leg sails through the space where your head would have been if you lept right, a curtain of red descending over your eyes as you send a wild slash back. Staring into the spider's eight beady eyes, you feel the blow travel up your arm as another leg snaps beneath your hand, a shrill shriek emerging from the creature's horrid mandibles as yet more ichor covers the land.

"Diiiiieeeee," you snarl over teeth that could serve as daggers, a long streamer of drool spilling out as you flex your claws once more.

As if understanding your intentions, the sapphire spider frantically retreats towards the giant spruce, one leg lashing out after another as it tries to buy distance. Ignoring the danger of the thrusting limbs, you howl and dart after it. An instant later, you're amongst its stabbing limbs and attacking, five curved claws slamming down onto the spider's already weakened skull and piercing it with a soft sucking sound. Keening, the spider jerks and spasms beneath your claw, its six remaining legs scrabbling and sending streamers of mud into the air. Ignoring the vomitous yellow substance spewing from the wound and the equally nauseating stench that emerges, you stab your other hand into the wound and pull, a sound akin to that of a cooked joint of meat being pulled apart filling the clearing as you fairly tear the spider's skull in half. Giving one final chittering shriek, the now headless spider shivers one and then collapses, a greasy rainbow sheen covering the mud as ichor and venom spread across it.

Throwing your head up towards the moon, your heartbeat thundering in your chest and adrenaline singing in your veins, you breathe deep and…

Dice pool to resist howling
Command (2) * 2 from notable control over your wolf form + Charm (2) + 1d from Passion: To get revenge on those who destroyed Roslas and justice for those who suffered. (I'm futzing it a bit, but you don't want to alert the beastmen that you're coming) = 7d10

Rolled: 1+5+8+8+8+3+3
Pairs: 3x8, 2x3

The howl dies in your throat, an act of will allowing you to regain control over your body before you make a dreadful mistake and alert the beastmen to your presence. Ignoring the snarling of the wolf within you, you let out your breath in a long exhale and close your eyes, Ulric's Gift slipping away after a moment and the bulk of the changes wrought on your body sullenly reversing themselves. Breathing with human lungs and a not-quite-human sense of smell, you open your eyes to see the silvery moon still lighting the night, the beastman path just as visible as ever. Sparing the spider's ruined corpse one last look, your stomach churning at the devastation you wrought, you retrieve your bag from where it fell and spare the great tree from which the spider emerged a final glance.

Glinting in the moonlight, the start of what must be the spider's web hangs from the spruce's lower branches, the rope-thick strands covered in something slimy. No expert in spiders—giant or otherwise—the paucity of the web suggests it was a new arrival to this part of the woods. Commonly found deep inside the Forest of Shadows, you think it no accident that it chose the spruce as its nesting place; the smell of blood or the noise of so many beastmen pushing through the forest was as good as a dinner bell for the beast.

Grinning as the wolf within you agrees with a lazy yawn, you are about to continue the chase when the clink of glass within your bag gives you pause. Glance back at the spider's head and the venom leaking out from its fanged maw, you ruminate on the stories you've heard of such venoms.

Dice pool: Knowledge (4)+ Lore (3) = 7d10
Difficulty: 3
1+2+6+6+6+7+7
Pairs: 3x6, 2x7

Both beat the difficulty of 3, and you use the 3x6

Between living in the Forest of Shadows, battling spider-riding greenskins yourself, and hearing tell from others who have faced such things, you know for a fact that giant spiders have some of the most potent and terrible venoms among all animals. Some thicken the blood and make it like overcooked custard, others melt your very flesh, and yet more make a man's limbs spasm of their own accord or utterly refuse to obey his wishes; the former often breaking bones and the latter leading to suffocation and death if it doesn't simply stop the heart. What this one does, you cannot tell without a test subject, but you suddenly find yourself very glad that its attempts to envenom came to nought during your battle.

Still, watching the undoubtedly deadly venom leak upon the ground, a thought occurs. Though you don't know what the venom does, storing some in a spare bottle could be useful should you find yourself in need of a dose of poison, assuming you wish to spend the precious time required.

Article:

[] Extract the Venom: While it will take time, extracting some of the venom from the terrible beast may come in handy should you have the need/opportunity. You should stop and do it.

[] Leave it: Extracting the venom would take too long and allow the beastmen raiders more time to get to wherever they're going. You should continue the hunt.

Making good on your decision, you set off after the beastmen raiders, the forest blurring again as you race after them. Bypassing the spruce and the beginning of a sticky web—you very much do not wish to be caught like a fly—you return to the trail and continue your loping run with your chest heaving and pulse thundering. Despite the brief pause following your battle with the spider, you can feel the cost of your transformation weighing heavily on your body, fatigue dogging every movement and a dull ache spreading across your muscles. Though not yet spent, you understand the rhythms of your body well enough to know that you will need to rest soon if you wish to continue to chase as you have, the thought making you spit in disgust.

Not while they still need me, you think, focusing on the faces of those you need to avenge; your wolf spirit silent but encouraging nonetheless.

Sometime later—how long, you're unsure—something occurs that snatches your attention as effectively as a knife against your throat. Stopped against a blissfully spider-free tree, you suck down a lungful of air to regain the scent of the beastmen and prisoners, only to freeze as you realise that the odour trails have diverged. Still bearing northeast, the unmistakable odour of the beastmen lies heavy on your tongue, an almost visible glow leading you down the muddy path as their stink fills your sinuses and makes your hackles rise. However, diverging from the trail and heading more northerly, the faint scent of human sweat and blood tickles your nose.

"What?" You mutter to yourself, your wolf sharing your confusion.

Stepping away from the tree, you sniff again, the same odours leading in two directions. Turn this way and that—your confusion shading into concern—you range from point to point and repeat the action. To your surprise, the outcome doesn't change; your every breath confirms that the paths have diverged.

Did I make a mistake? You find yourself thinking as you take a few hesitant steps away from the beasts' path, fresh frost crunching underfoot. Were they prisoners?

Myriad possibilities popping into your mind, you turn your attention to the ground and pray that the feeling swelling in your chest is more than a fool's hope.

Dice pool: Sense (3) + Scrutinize (2)
Difficulty: 4
Rolled: 6+8+8+8+8
Pairs: 4x8

Okay, fuck me, I guess.

There, written in the frost and barely noticeable, you spot the tread of a boot pressed into the hard ground, the human footprint the first real hope you have of ever seeing another human. A short distance away, another bootprint lies half obliterated by the mark of a beastman's hoof, the points of the two feet lying in similar but different directions. Your attention fully focussed on the task, you spot a half dozen other prints leading away from the beastmen's path, the frost-hardened earth rendering them difficult but not impossible for your keen eyes to spot.

"They weren't prisoners," you laugh, the sound almost deafening in the still quiet of the moonlit woods.

Giddily, you continue. They weren't ever prisoners! The beastmen were chasing them and lost them!

Bubbling up like a pot left too long on the boil, a wave of laughter suddenly escapes you and rolls through the woods. Slowly hunching over from the pain of such frenzied laughter, the rolling giggles take on a maddened edge as you continue, a final dull croak ringing out before you shove your hand in your mouth.

Forcing yourself to calm, the metallic taste of blood touching your tongue where you broke the skin of your hand with your teeth, you unfold yourself and stare at the woods with fresh eyes. Though still a primaeval forest filled with threat and shadows, the trees in this part of the forest press less tightly together and loom less ominously overhead, almost as much light reaching the forest floor as darkness. Distantly but with growing insistence, you feel a sense of familiarity invade your mind, something about the sparseness of the trees and your northern journey sparking your mind.

Difficulty: 2
Dicepool: Knowledge (4)+ Lore (3) = 7d10
Rolled: 3+4+4+6+7+9+9
Pairs: 2x4, 2x9

Using the 2x9

You're near Varrel.

The thought hits you like a lightning bolt, the force of it sending you rocking on your feet.

Located far to the north of Roslas, you had only been to Varrel a handful of times over the years. Still, you had enjoyed it—and some of its inhabitants—plenty, and it had proven useful to know people there. Only a little larger than Roslas wa-used to be, Varrel was one of your home's closest neighbours and an eager buyer for the things only those willing to brave the forest's depths could provide.

"They must be running there for shelter," you say aloud, your wolf whining in agreement. "Do they even know they're being pursued?"

Facing towards the village, or where you suspect it lies, you narrow your eyes as if doing so can let you see through trees and try to imagine the lay of the land before you.

According to the memories of your visit the year before, most of the village's population lived either within or near the safety of its wooden walls, their proximity to the forest's edge fostering a healthy sense of preservation among them. Still, more than a few—woodsmen and hunters mainly, but some families—choose to live away from others, need or greed driving their actions and leaving them easy prey. More like than not, the beastmen had been heading to Verral to raid it when they stumbled upon the survivor's trail—if they had stumbled on it at all, you remind yourself—and were either continuing there or already raiding outlying steadings.

About to burst into fresh peals of laughter, you stop yourself as a sobering thought emerges. For the first time since you started your quest for vengeance, there's a chance of meeting survivors. Moreover, after trudging through the frozen forest, they are likely tired, injured, and perhaps even sick. On the other hand, now that you know that the survivors are on the way to Verral, you can turn your attention—and fury—on the beastmen themselves, either laying into them with tooth and claw or observing them and figuring out a plan.

Article:

[] Ignore the Beastmen: Now that you know there are survivors, the beastmen don't matter. You must follow their trail to Verral and find them there or on the way.

[] Chase After the Beastmen: Now that you know survivors are waiting at Verral, you can chase after the beastmen raiders with a lighter heart. Fighting them yourself or simply scouting their numbers; either works for you.

prometheus110 · Jan 3, 2025

Scheduled vote count started by prometheus110 on Jan 3, 2025 at 9:08 AM, finished with 16 posts and 12 votes.

6 people have voted
[X] Extract the Venom
- RwconHD
- Estro
- GAWR
- IofTheBunny
- focusonfuture
- 0t4n1z3r019
5 people have voted
[X] Extract the Venom: While it will take time, extracting some of the venom from the terrible beast may come in handy should you have the need/opportunity. You should stop and do it.
4 people have voted
[X] Chase After the Beastmen: Now that you know survivors are waiting at Verral, you can chase after the beastmen raiders with a lighter heart. Fighting them yourself or simply scouting their numbers; either works for you.
4 people have voted
[X] Ignore the Beastmen: Now that you know there are survivors, the beastmen don't matter. You must follow their trail to Verral and find them there or on the way.
- Estro
- GAWR
- IofTheBunny
- Fortebraccio
2 people have voted
[X] Chase after the Beastmen:
- focusonfuture
- 0t4n1z3r019
1 people have voted
[X]Northeast
- prometheus110

prometheus110 · Jan 4, 2025

[X] Extract the Venom
[X] Chase After the Beastmen

Wordlessly, you decide to extract the spider's venom and take it with you; the advantages of its lethality are bound to offer more than make up for the slight delay it will imposeStepping close to the ruined remnant of the giant spider's head—your stomach churning as you get a fresh whiff of the foul-smelling ichor leaking from its body—you root around in your bag of healing materials for one of your precious burgundy bottles and stare at the spider's fangs warily. As long as your finger, articulated like a dog's leg, and tipped with a spike of some glossy black substance weeping pale venom, the dead thing's fangs look ready to leap out and stab you; images of the fangs piercing your body flitting through your mind.

Shuddering at the thought, you approach with, you feel, understandable caution and press the lip of your bottle against the spider's fang.

Difficulty: 2
Dice pool: Knowledge (4) + Student: Venoms (0) + Taking your time (2)
Rolled: 1+3+5+8+9+10
Pairs:

Only to jump back with a yelp as the fang lurches out.

"Sigmar's balls!" You cry as you land with a splash, your hand flashing down to the peasant knife at your hip ready to offer a futile defence.

A moment later, you freeze in place, the last echoes of your unmanful yelp fading into the woods as you realise the spider is quite dead, its fang flexing back and forth out of some dying impulse embedded in its muscles. Relieved as the spider's blind motion stills with a final judder, you sigh long and low, the pounding in your chest fading with each moment.

Shaking your head at the thought of dying to something already dead, you take a faltering step towards the spider's corpse, ready to try again, only to frown as you spy something gleaming in the moonlight where you once stood. A second glance confirms it. Dropped as you lept backwards, your bottle lies shattered on the muddy ground, the grey edge of a stone peeking above the ichor-stained mud.

You curse the stone as a pain runs through your heart. "Villain!"

A parting gift from your master, Rience, acquired sometime in his still-foggy youth, the burgundy bottle was all but irreplaceable; no boy of the woods able to pay the king's ransom needed to replace it.

Cursing again as you kick the glittering shards aside, you retrieve another empty bottle from your bag and uncork it, pausing to eye the now-stationary fangs with suspicion.

"Bastard," you tell the spider's corpse as you gingerly approach its still fang. Raising the bottle, you try again.

Difficulty: 2
Rolled: 4+1+6+6+6+7
Pairs: 3x6

This time, the spider's wicked fangs remain stationary as you press the bottle against its envenomed fang, a fair flood of pale liquid spilling into the container. In moments, the bottle fills to the brim, a hasty retreat and a quick corking leaving you with a fair quantity of the substance. Without knowing the dosage, it's impossible to tell how much would be required to poison someone, but as sure as the sun rises in the morn, the light fluid will kill.

Restoring the palm-sized bottle to its place in your herb-filled bag, you spare the spider's ruined corpse—and the equally ruined glass shards in front of it—one last look before turning towards the beasts' trail through the woods. There is little question as to what you'll do, you realise.

"If they made it this far through the woods," you tell yourself, thinking of the refugees from Roslas, "then they'll be at Varrel and safe by now."

With those words ringing in your ears and a need for vengeance burning in your heart, you set off after the beastmen.

***

Fire and blood hit you with the subtlety of a club to the skull, the earthy fragrance of burning timber mixing with the metallic tang of spilt blood and the harsh stink of beastmen to produce a Pungent aroma that sets your nerves on edge. Hissing as you see a pillar of thick black smoke rising from behind the trees ahead of you, an orange glow filling the night sky and banishing Mannslieb's silver light, you slow your madcap dash and begin picking your way through the trees. Within you, Ulric's Gift stirs at the smell, a jaw within your soul opening wide to bare its teeth in expectation.

Consoling the wolf spirit within you with one part of your mind, another wonders. Have they encamped?

If they have, it would make your vengeance easier and harder to achieve, depending on if they were on their guard. A dose of poison in their food and drink would kill many raiders, while a sudden attack by your half-man, half-wolf form would set terror in their hearts. Either would sate your desires, though one thought brought more satisfaction.

Putting the thought aside, you push through bracken and branches with little regard for the scratches they leave behind, the heat of regenerating flesh warming you in the night's cold. Making your way through the undergrowth, the dull pounding of a lone drum meets your ears, the noise underscored by the crackle and roar of distant flames. Hurrying towards the sound, it takes you a moment to realise that the trail you have been following has steadily thinned, your passage through the woods growing harder and harder with every footstep you take towards the drumbeat until it's all but invisible. Trepidation rising, you follow the path towards the glow of the still-unseen flames with growing caution, the drumbeat growing louder and more insistent with every step.

Too big, you realise as you duck beneath a fallen fir tree. It's too big for a simple camp.

Your thoughts prove true.

Rising to your feet, you see a wall of fire burning past the trees before you, hungry orange flames licking the sky and sending up a shower of embers. All at once, the sounds of combat assault your ears, the braying cries of beastmen and the screams of men boiling up around you, an ice-cold dagger ripping through your heart. Hurrying forward, you press against a trunk and stare in wide-eyed fury as you see your prey for the first time since Roslas.

Seething like a river overfull, cloaked in darkness and illuminated by the raging flames, a half score of beastmen charge forwards with whoops and brays, spears and knives clutched tightly in their hands. Ahead of them, burning with a vengeance and smothered by smoke, something too small to be a village but too large to be a simple camp looms out of the darkness, the smattering of buildings surrounded by a palisade of rough-hewn logs. Following the beastmen's path with your gaze, you grimace at the field of clearcut stumps that confront you.

A woodcutter's settlement, you think to yourself as fresh screams ring out through the night. Poor bastards.

Your wolf agrees, a sudden fury and a desire to launch yourselves at the beastmen rising within you; your hackles rising in turn and your heartbeat spiking.

Previously, the desire to sneak up on the beastmen meant that your mission was working in your favour and giving you +1d10 to resist howling. However, this time, you're trying to resist the urge to kill beastmen as it's a stupid idea. As a result, you're getting a -1d10. And yes, passions can and do run at parallel or at cross-purposes, and the 1d10 bonuses can stack or counter each other.

Difficulty: 3
Command (2) * 2 from notable control over your wolf form + Charm (2) - 1d from Passion: To get revenge on those who destroyed Roslas and justice for those who suffered. = 6d10

Rolled: 1+1+1+3+3+2
Pairs: 3x1, 2x3

Due to the difficulty, only the 2x3 is valid. Fortunately, the 2x3 is valid.

You jerk toward the settlement instinctively, the siren call of revenge almost irresistible and dark fur already sprouting across your body. Despite yourself, despite your earnest wishes, you wrench yourself to a halt, your wolf snarling at the interrupting. Gasping and shaking from the effort, your lungs burning and your skin crawling—physically crawling—you push the changes down, the worms beneath your skin slowly stilling and the dark fur receding.

We need to know how many there are, you tell yourself, your wolf spirit disagreeing furiously. We're no use to anyone dead.

We're no use to anyone if we're dead, you repeat as you crouch down and cloak yourself in shadow.

Doing your best to ignore the beast caged in your heart and the smoke that stings your eyes, you peer through the darkness towards the woodcutters' settlement and try to make sense of the pandemonium.

Difficulty: 4
Pool: Sense (3) + Sight (2) (Borrowed from wolf form)
Rolled: 4+5+6+8+10
Pairs:

Trying again

Rolled: 3+4+9+9+10
Pairs: 2x9

Between the stinging smoke, the blazing fires, and the constantly shifting light, it takes longer to make sense of the world your eyes reveal than you'd like, the braying of the beastmen a blood-curdling bass rumble.

Surrounded by a circular wooden palisade whose roughly hewn trunks have been sharpened into tooth-like spikes, the woodcutters' settlement is in its death throes already, beastmen by the score clambering up its wooden walls or surging through torn open gates. Stomping and bleating as if enjoying good sport, at least twenty Ungors stand watching the burning buildings or pawing at the dead and dying that lay in the muddy paths between buildings, short spears and bows held in their hands and used to vicious effect on those who linger too long. Striding between them and shoving them out of the way when necessary, you count at least seven Gors bellowing challenges to one another over paltry goods as two minotaurs watch with bovine indifference.

Here and there, men still live, a group of ten with their backs against the western edge of the palisade clutching axes in trembling hands as they try to fend off a handful of Ungors and Gors that jab at them with spears and slash at them with battle axes. As you watch, one of the Gor's cuffs the Ungor beside it with the flat of its blade and it lunges forward, a man letting out a pained scream as the goatlike creature's hooked spear catches him in the gut. Stumbling to the ground in a splash of entrails, the man vanishes beneath the press of the beastmen's bodies as they surge forward a moment later, the men retreating against the wall that has now become their prison.

Difficulty: 6
Dice pool: Sense (3) + Scrutinise (2)
Rolled: 2+5+7+8+8
Pairs: 2x8

Just barely visible amid the firelight and spilling smoke, you see one man at the back of the press furiously working at the wall behind him, his hands busy doing something to the wall.

A door? A part of you wonders as the fell creatures continue poking and prodding at their prisoners, the sound of their braying laughter rising from the burning settlement as another falls. An escape hatch? A weakness?

Regardless of what the men are attempting to do, it's clear that nothing you can do can save the woodcutter's settlement from destruction. Already burning fiercely, it will burn down to the ashes even if every beastman within its walls died or left, those trapped within its walls burning with it if they don't succumb to the raiders first.

You'd have arrived sooner if you hadn't fumbled the bottle.

The unwelcome whisper spills into your mind like poison, a black blot spreading amongst your thoughts.

Was it true? You wonder. It was only a few minutes at most, but a few minutes can change everything in a battle. How many men would still be alive if you hadn't wasted time by dropping the bottle? How many would be alive if you hadn't tried extracting the venom at all?

Your wolf stirs, and the image of two yellow eyes narrowed in anger flashes into your mind. All at once, the self-doubt vanishes as the spirit creature reminds you that could-have-beens and what-ifs are not the preserves of wolves.

Clenching your fists painfully tight, you drive the toxic thought from your mind.

Muttering soft curses, you turn away from the men and count the beastmen raiders, hissing as the number approaches two score. While you are no soldiering man or mercenary, your memories of Varrel tell you that a force this size is more a match for the town's homely militia without a Child or two to aid them. Worse still, you do not doubt that Varrel will be the raiders' next target; their antipathy for civilization drives them on almost as much as their twisted love for the dark gods. Though it might be only a fraction of the size of the herd that razed Roslas, the animal strength imbued in the mutants by the forces of Chaos renders even the lowest beastman a deadly threat to most ordinary men.

Article:

What do you want to do?

[] Leave for Varrel. There is nothing more you can do here. Charging in to slake your thirst for vengeance risks dying without warning Varrel's inhabitants and leaves them defenceless against the raiders.

[] Distract the Beastmen. You might be able to save some of the woodsmen. Distracting the beastmen would risk death, but give their prey time to finish whatever they're trying to accomplish, and you may even get your claws bloody.

[] Write-in

prometheus110 · Jan 6, 2025

Scheduled vote count started by prometheus110 on Jan 5, 2025 at 4:13 PM, finished with 13 posts and 12 votes.

8 people have voted
[X] Distract the Beastmen
4 people have voted
[X] Distract the Beastmen. You might be able to save some of the woodsmen. Distracting the beastmen would risk death, but give their prey time to finish whatever they're trying to accomplish, and you may even get your claws bloody.

prometheus110 · Jan 8, 2025

[X] Distract the Beastmen. You might be able to save some of the woodsmen. Distracting the beastmen would risk death, but give their prey time to finish whatever they're trying to accomplish, and you may even get your claws bloody.

Staring at the burning woodcutter's village, you find your mind unerringly arrowing towards a single conclusion, your racing thoughts returning to their starting point every few moments. Try as you might, whatever excuses you can come up with, you find yourself arriving at the same inevitable conclusions. First, you have to help. And second, you don't have the luxury of a good plan.

Snarling at your own stupidity and the thought of getting your hands—your claws—on more beastmen, you hastily loosen the straps of your leather bag until it hangs limply off your shoulder before breathing deep and calling on the wolf inside your soul. Faithful as ever, it answers.

Within moments, you are not Kasled the healer, but the black wolf of the woods, your gemstone eyes gleaming a vivid yellow and your teeth bared and ready to tear. Taking one heaving gasp after another—every exhalation sending a cloud of steam out from between your vast jaws—you rise from your prostrate position on the ground with the surety of a mountain and throw your blunt wedge of a head towards the sound of screaming.

Killll, your wolf growls in its not-words, the very thought sending a pulse of energy through your flagging limbs, lightning flooding your veins.

Seizing the moment to drink in the night air, the stink of inhuman sweat on beastly hides fills your mind with the thought of rending flesh from bone, loops of saliva streaming from your mouth as your scimitar claws flex unconsciously.

You want to hunt, you want to kill, you want to rip, you want to tear, you want-

A scream suddenly fills the night, and you twitch your head in time to see one of the ungors leaning on its spear, a supine woodsman pinned to its end and clawing weakly at the haft. Beside it, another beastman cackles as it twists the spear, the sound rising over the man's dying wails until he finally breathes his last. As terrible as it is, the sound shakes you out of your bloodlust, the sheer wanton cruelty twisting your heart so hard it feels as if it might burst.

No, you castigate the wolf spirit firmly; a snarl your only reply.

You bite back. We'll kill, but not a hunt. We distract the beastmen, save the survivors, and then we escape.

Cowed, perhaps, or perhaps merely giving you enough rope to hang yourself, Ulric's wolf cedes to your will; a final head jerk is all it takes to drop the last of the blood-dimmed tide's veil from your eyes.

Your thoughts once more your own, you turn towards the distant palisade and look upon its rough-hewn spikes with no small wariness as you ponder their height. Twice as tall as you are even now, they are a substantial obstacle to threats such as, well, yourself, the sharpened stakes looking painfully sharp in the crisp moonlight. Glancing at the tips, you feel your muscles tighten despite yourself, your doctor's bag creaking as its leather straps strain against your bulk.

"Noo chooice," you half snarl, half growl between your teeth, the words daemonic in your shadowed hide.

The die is cast, Rience's shade agrees in a papery voice.

Black and terrible, your yellow eyes burning with an inner fire, you burst out of the woods and across the field of severed stumps as if the daemons of the north were chasing you. Gulping down lungfuls of air into your broad chest, you eat up the ground with your long-limbed stride as you race towards a carefully chosen section of the palisade—the nearest entrance a good distance away. Still distracted by the sport of killing, the beastmen standing behind it don't notice as you approach, and mere heartbeats are all it takes for you to cross the distance between the wood's edge and your goal. Rising like a giant from one of Old Nan's stories, the palisade suddenly looms before you, a quiver in your heart all you allow yourself before you redouble your efforts.

Your heart pounding, your breath heaving, you come to the first and perhaps hardest part of your cobbled-together plan and think a prayer to Ulric as you bunch your muscles.

Preserve me on this foolish course, oh, Ulric, and I'll be yours forever.

Difficulty: 5
Dice Pool: Coordination (5) + Athletics (0) + passion (1) = 6d10
Rolled: 7 +7 +2 +1 +3 +5
Pairs: 2x7

Without hesitating, you leap up and forward, your body's momentum and muscles' strength working hand in hand to hurl you into the air. A heartbeat later, you slam ten lethal claws into the hardwood posts and pull yourself over the edge in one fluid motion.

In your time aiding Roslas' militia in battle and hearing stories from bored caravan guards, you have heard tell of instances where time seems to slow, and a man's eyes and mind gain precious clarity, where the passage of time slows and moments stretch on and on until the world feels as if it will burst apart into a cloud of frozen instants.

You don't experience any of this.

This is our first introduction to the concept of unworthy opponents, which is Reign's way of handling group combat between PCs/important NPCs and NPCs who aren't otherwise notable (E.G town guards, skavenslave packs, etc). It has some very neat ideas behind it that make group combat easy to do, but I'll speak about it separately.

For now, the key points you need to know are: all enemies in a group of unworthy opponents have 1 hitpoint, their dice pool is always equal to the number of people in said group, the only actions they can do are attack and dodge (unless I intervene), and each group has a threat level from 1-4 (by default) that you need to meet or exceed in either the number of successes or height of the successes you attain during an attack roll. E.G a threat 2 group requires your set to be width 2 or greater (2x+) for you to hit it, while a threat 3 group requires your set to be width 3 or greater (3x+) or else be height 3 or greater (2x3+) for you to hit it. There's some other stuff, but it isn't that important right now.

Round 1

Kas
Is doing a display kill to try and frighten a bunch of Ungors into running away
Pool: Body (5) + Fight (4) + Passion (1) - Display Kill (-1)
Rolled: 1+1+1+5+7+8+8+8+10
Pairs: 3x1, 3x8. Uses 3x8 for a display kill on the Ungors.

Note: Display kills are you killing a dude in a particularly nasty way in order to scare his mates. They're easiest to do against unworthy foes since they're easy to kill, but can only be done at the start of combat/engagement as everyone's too busy not dying to notice it, otherwise.

Ungors - 1 - Size 10
Rolled: 2+2+3+3+5+6+8+9+9+10
Pairs: 2x2, 2x3, 2x9.

2x2 and 2x3 are attacks against Kas, 2x9 is being used to dodge.

Ungors - 2 - Size 10
Rolled: 1+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+9+10
Pairs: 2x1

Attack the woodsmen 1x

Gors - 1 - Size 2
Rolled: 5+5
Pairs: 2x5

Attack the woodsmen 1x

Woodsmen - Size7
Rolled: 2+2+4+6+6+9+10
Pairs: 2x2, 2x6

Both dedicated to dodging

Ernst
Pool: Coordination (3) + Passion: Survive (1)
Rolled: 7+3+9+2
Pairs:

cutting through rope

Note: Ernst needs to cut through a rope loop and push a bolt to unlock the escape hatch he's trying to open. The former requires a Coordination roll with a height of 6+, the latter takes a turn.

Round 1 Summary
With his 3x8 Kas display kills an Ungor in group 1 before any of them can react and the remaining 9 suffer a morale attack. By default, successful display kills generate a morale attack with a value equal to the highest out of a set's width or height (which is 8 here), but an 3x success adds Kas's command skill of 2 to the value meaning that up to 10 ungors run away from him and are effectively out of the fight.

The woodsmen, meanwhile, dodge the gors' and ungors attacks while screaming at Ernst to hurry up.

Round 2
Kas
Pool: Coordination (5) + Run (2) + Passion (1)
Rolled: 1+1+4+4+7+8+9+10
Pairs: 2x1, 2x4
Kas sprints without bothering to do anything more as everyone's trying to kill him already and his goal is to get as far from the woodsmen as he can. Runs an extra 10 feet this round.

Gors 1 - Size 2
Rolled: 5+5
Pairs: 2x5
Gors in group 1 attack the woodsmen 1x

Ungors - 2 - Size 10
Retreat from woodsmen to chase Kas

Woodsmen - Size 7
Rolled: 1+5+5+6+6+6+9
Pairs: 2x5, 3x6

Uses 3x6 to attack Gors, uses 2x5 to dodge. Rolled 1d2 to break the tie and the woodsmen won.

Ernst
Pool: Coordination (3) + Passion: Survive (1)
Rolled: 5+6+6+8
Pairs: 2x6

Cuts the knot!

Round 2 Summary
Kaz succeeds in sprinting towards a burning exit. As everyone's focus is on him except for the gors currently battling the woodsmen, they all move 15 feet closer. A wargor also appears from a burning building.

The woodsmen then proceed to kill one of the gors attacking them before it can strike and dodge the remaining gor's blow. Still screaming at Ernst, but a little less hostile about it.

Round 3
Wargor
Pool: ???
Pairs: 2x8, 2x9
Uses 2x9 to command ungors back into the fight. They regroup but can't act this turn.

Ungors (bows) - Size 10
Rolled: 1+3+3+6+6+7+8+9+9+10
Pairs: 2x3, 2x6, 2x9

Attack kas 3x hitting him in the arms and chest/back. Does 2 shock damage to each arm and 2 shock damage to torso after armour is taken into account.

Ungor spears - 1 - Size 9
Regroup, but are too panicked to do anything

Ungor spears - 2 - Size 10
Continue moving towards Kas but can't make it past the minotaurs (RIP bozos)

Kas
Pool: Body (5) + Fight (4) + Passion (1) - 2nd attack (1) - 3rd attack (1) = 8d10
Rolled: 1+4+4+5+7+9+9+10
Pairs: 2x4, 2x9
Runs without sprinting, but attacks gors 2x in the process.

Gors - 1 - Size 1
Breaks towards rest of group 1

Gors - 1 - Size 3 (they're the rest of group 1)
Merge with above to bring group to ⅘ strength

Gors - 2 - Size 5
Rolled: 1+3+4+10+10
Pairs: 2x10

Attack Kas and hit him in the head, forces him to slow (he drops his 2x4). Armed with roughly made battleaxes, the Gors are hitting for Width Killing damage and Width Shock Damage (in this case dealing 2 Killing and 2 Shock damage before armour). As Kas is effectively equipped with 1 point of light armour thanks to his werewolfism, this damage is reduced to 1 Killing and 2 shock damage to the head.

Light Armour acts kind of weird in that a body part with light armour drops all shock damage done to a body part to 1 point, then converts X points of killing damage to shock damage where X is the armour rating. I.E LAR (1) converts 1 killing damage to 1 shock damage, LAR(3) converts 3 points to 3 shock damage, etc.

Minotaur - 1
Minotaur - 2
Move towards kas but get blocked by gors in group 2

Ernst
Opens the hatch automatically

Woodsmen - Size 7
Start falling back towards Ernst

Round 3 Summary
The wargor rallies the ungors by threatening death. Kas, still running, gets clipped in the head by a gor's axe and takes 1K/2S, but immediately swipes at the nearest shape and rips out a throat from Gors - 2. At that point, the ungors with bows open fire hitting him in the arm and back doing 1K/1S to both arms and his torso

The other gor pack regroups, while the minotaurs move towards kas but get stuck behind their brothers.

Ernst opens the hatch, and the woodsmen begin falling back towards it.

Kas rolls 1+2+6+8+9 and regens… nothing.

Kas wounds at the end of round 3.
Roll Hit | Location
1 | Left leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
2 | Right leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
3-4 | Left arm | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
5-6 | Right arm | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
7-9 | Torso | [/][/][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o][o]
10 | Head | [X][/][/][o][o]

X represents killing damage while / represents shock damage. If a limb's wound boxes are full of killing damage, the limb has been removed/destroyed. If it's full of shock damage, it's some degree of temporarily non functional.

If your head is full of killing damage, you're dead. If your head is full of shock damage, you're unconscious.

Round 4

Wargor
Pool: ???
Pairs: 2x2, 2x7
Runs towards Kas and unsheaths his pitted and bloodstained blade

Ungors (bows) - Size 10
Group 1
Rolled:1+1+2+6+10
Pairs: 2x1

Group 2
Rolled: 3+6+6+8+10
Pairs: 2x6
Split into 2 subgroups at wargor's orders. One fires at Kas, one fires at woodsmen.

Ungor spears - 1 - Size 9
Rolled: 3+4+5+6+7+7+7+8+10
Pairs: 3x7
Moves towards kas and temporarily gets into range to attack. 3x7 success means they hit Kas' torso hit for 3K/1S before armour is taken into account and 2K/2S after armour

Ungor spears - 2 - Size 10
Advances as far as it can but is blocked by minotaurs

Kas
Pool: Coordination (5) + Run (2) + Passion (1)
Rolled: 1+2+4+5+6+6+7+8
Pairs: 2x6
Continues leading beastmen on a chase. Runs an extra 10 feet this round.

Gors - 1 - Size 4
Runs towards woodsmen but is too far to catch up

Gors - 2 - Size 4
Rolled: 4+9+6+9
Pairs: 2x9
Moves to block kas and attack. 2x9 hit deals 2K/2S to Kas' torso before armour and 1K/2S after armour.

Minotaur - 1
Advances as far as it can but is too slow and blocked by gors

Minotaur - 2
Advances towards kas but out of range

Ernst
Escapes through hatch

Woodsmen - Size 7
Rolled: 1+2+3+3+3+6+9
Pairs: 3x3
Spend 3x3 to dodge and start moving through hatch. 2 escape through the hatch, but 4 others are stuck behind a big guy currently trying to wriggle through.

Round 4 Summary
Wargor sprints towards kas and draws his weapon, but fails to catch him; instead orders his bow ungors to split fire between kas and the woodsmen. The gors, meanwhile, slice Kas' chest with their axes for 1K/2S, the ungors stab him in the back for 2K/2S, and the bow ungors pepper his left leg for 2S. Both minotaurs remain frustrated by their allies.

The woodsmen start slipping through the escape hatch, but the bow ungors pepper them with arrows at just the right time and kill two despite thier 3x3 dodge set. This is because dodge sets need to be at least as wide and at least as high as attack sets pitted against them to work.

Kas rolls 2+5+6+8+8 and regens two head shock. Trust me, you don't want head wounds at all as it's super easy to get knocked out if someone is well equipped and you don't have good armour.

Kas wound boxes at the end of round 4.

Roll Hit | Location
1 | Left leg | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
2 | Right leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
3-4 | Left arm | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
5-6 | Right arm | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
7-9 | Torso | [X][X][X][/][/][/][/][o][o][o][o][o]
10 | Head | [X][o][o][o][o]

Note: Killing damage (X) replaces shock damage (/) on your wounds table as you receive it. This is why you only have 4 shock damage in your torso despite starting the turn with 2 and receiving an additional 4.

Round 5

Wargor
Pool: ???
Pairs: 3x7, 2x7
Runs after Kas. Gets an extra 10 feet but is at a disadvantage since he started behind.

Kas
Pool: Coordination (5) + Run (2) + Passion (1)
Rolled: 1+1+1+2+4+4+5+9
Pairs: 3x1, 2x4
Runs and gets extra 10 feet.

Ungors (bows) - Size 10
Group 1
Rolled: 4+5+8+10+10
Pairs: 2x10

Group 2
Rolled: 2+5+7+8+8
Pairs: 2x8
Group 1 shoots at kaz and hits the back of his head for 2 shock after armour, group 2 shoots at woodsmen

Gors - 1 - Size 4
Chases woodsmen, is too far

Gors - 2 - Size 4
Moves to chase

Minotaur - 1
Minotaur - 2
Chases kas

Ernst
Escapes into woods

Woodsmen - Size 5
Rolled: 1+5+7+8+10
Pairs:

Run to edge of woods

Round 5 Summary
Kas continues to lead wargor and others on a merry chase, but the bow ungors shoot him in the head for 2S, nearly knocking him out and kill two more woodsmen leaving a total of 5 (including Ernst). Fortunately, both Kas and the woodsmen are now out of range of the bows.

Kas rolls 1+2+2+5+8 to regen and gets a 2x2. I make him regen 2 head shock (again).

Kas wound boxes at the end of round 5.

Roll Hit | Location
1 | Left leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
2 | Right leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
3-4 | Left arm | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
5-6 | Right arm | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
7-9 | Torso | [X][X][X][/][/][/][/][o][o][o][o][o]
10 | Head | [X][o][o][o][o]

Round 6

Wargor
Pool: ???
Pairs: 2x4
Runs after Kas but fails to catch him

Kas
Pool: Coordination (5) + Run (2) + Passion (1)
Rolled: 2+3+4+7+7+7+9+9
Pairs: 3x7, 2x9
Runs with 3x7 for an extra 15 feet.

Round 6 summary
Kaz escapes into the woods with severe wounds, the remaining beastmen fall back, and the wargor stands outside the ruined gate bellowing challenges.

Kas rolls 1+3+6+8+9 for regen recovering… nothing.

Kas wound boxes at the end of round 6.

Roll Hit | Location
1 | Left leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
2 | Right leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
3-4 | Left arm | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
5-6 | Right arm | [/][/][o][o][o][o]
7-9 | Torso | [X][X][X][/][/][/][/][o][o][o][o][o]
10 | Head | [X][o][o][o][o]

Fortunately, as he's left combat and had a chance to catch his breath, half the shock damage Kasled has taken fades away. However, as I'm mean, I'm rounding down.

Final Wound Tally
Roll Hit | Location
1 | Left leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
2 | Right leg | [o][o][o][o][o][o]
3-4 | Left arm | [/][o][o][o][o][o]
5-6 | Right arm | [/][o][o][o][o][o]
7-9 | Torso | [X][X][X][/][/][o][o][o][o][o][o][o]
10 | Head | [X][o][o][o][o]

Quick as a flash, you sail over the palisade and come down hard, all Ulric-knows-how-many-stones of your body slamming to the ground and scattering the pack of torturous ungors standing with their backs to the wall. Acting more on instinct than rational thought, you don't hesitate as the monsters spring away on impulse, instead snatching up the nearest of the squealing, braying beastmen—a goblin-faced, goat-legged thing wearing a string of human fingers about its neck—and wring it by the neck. For a bare instant, the ungor twitches as your claws punch into its brain, and then, with a howl that shakes the timbers, you tear its head from its shoulders, an arterial spray drenching the living and the dead with hot blood.

For a heartbeat, silence reigns save for the hungry crackle of flames as man and beast stare at you, the pounding drums hushed by your act. As if entranced, the beastmen raiders, even the ones pressing the woodcutter back, stop and stare through the ever-shifting smoke curtain draped over the settlement, your old plan of clambering back up the wall falling from your mind as you spot a hole in the eastern wall.

The better to lead the beasts away, you tell yourself as a kernel of doubt sprouts in the back of your mind.

And then the stillness shatters as the ungors screech in fright, a glimpse in the corner of your eye revealing gors and minotaurs rushing towards you against the fleeing tide.

"Kill. You. All," you lie with a huff before throwing the headless corpse into the drums and shattering them with a crash. Turning on the spot, you do what you've done since Roslas and run.

Bashing aside a pile of shattered barrels with barely an effort, you fairly leap towards the perforated eastern wall as you hear the braying mass charge behind you, flames and embers pouring into the air in vast sheets and lending the night hellish glow. Between one footstep and the next, you curse as you see the tell-tale signs of frenzied axe work on the wall's still-distant timbers, little effort required to imagine how easy it would be for the raider's musclebound minotaurs to deliver the same blows to you. An instant later, the thought vanishes as a victorious cry rises from human throats, a deep-pitched and bestial scream echoing from the West as the number of beastmen afflicting the world drops by one. Grinning wolfishly at the noise, you let out a howl that rattles bones and bashes eardrums before jolting right, quicksilver fast, as a gor larger than any you've seen before barrels out of the smoke, a single step seeing you dodge past the monster so close you can see its bullish face transform into a hateful sneer.

"Snrt," you hear the thing roar as it vanishes behind you. "K-k-kill him!"

Then the creature vanishes as the pall of smoke swallows you whole, the brown-black fog burning your throat and stinging your eyes, its sheer heat prickling your skin.

"Fight!" The voice brays again. "Fight or d-d-d-diiiiiiie."

Tearing through a blazing tent with a great rip of tearing canvas, you almost think the leader-beast too late. An instant later, some instinct flares, and you twist just in time to see a black-edged axe sailing toward you, pain splitting your skull as it strikes true and sends a brace of stars flashing across your vision. Rebounding off the blow, surprised, blood rushing down your snout, you give a low growl and lash out with your scimitar claws. A thud follows, and a sound like ripping cloth fills the air as a throat appears in your hand as if by sorcery, its ram-headed gor owner dropping out of the smoke and clutching its ruined neck in vain. A moment later, it too vanishes as your sprint continues, a hoarse whinnying cry making your fur stand on end.

Not stopping to see what made the noise, you reorient yourself toward the nearest glow and charge forward, a sound like leather on flesh snapping past your ear a second later. Before you can do much more than wonder at its source, you have your answer as a dozen star-bright flares of pain suddenly erupt across your back and arms as arrows pierce the air and then you. Yelping, you stumble for a split second before catching yourself, luck more than anything allowing you to regain your footing.

"Go," you swear you hear a man shout as you continue your madcap dash through the blaze, the crackle of the flames almost overwhelming his words. "Go through!"

Praying that the beastmen are still chasing you but too scared to look behind you, you choose that moment to zig, an arrow whipping past your head and sailing into the night a heartbeat after. Laughing at your luck, the sound rendered horrible by your twisted throat, you almost miss it when swirling shadows step in front of the still-distant glow. Almost.

With a wordless cry, a mass of figures burst from the inky smoke, a forest of spears and a fistful of axes soaring towards you. Like a boar, you spear yourself, sheer momentum pushing the spear into your chest and driving the axe heads deep. Then, like a boar, you barrel through the mass of shrieking gors and ungors, the crack of broken bones filling the air as mass and speed conspire to render you unstoppable. Ripping the spear out of your chest with a roar, you toss it blindly into the smoke and then yelp as another arrow thunks into the meat of your thigh.

I'm not, you concede as you cut left, cut out for bait.

Then the smoke clears, revealing your goal: the smashed open palisade wall laying bare before you, beckoning you onward. Casting a glance over your shoulder, a savage laugh escapes your lips as you see the last of the woodcutters wriggling through a hole in the palisade wall, a pack of gors slipping on the remnants of their victims as they desperately try to reach them.

They're free! You think as you race through the blazing portal and into the open land beyond, the oppressive heat vanishing as swiftly as the sunset as cold air washes over you and the forest's protective embrace looms ahead. They've only gone and done it. Ulric, I-

Something slams into the back of your head with the force of a falling tree, a steel claw piercing your skull at the base of your neck, your vision blurring. Convulsing, your stomach churning at the pain, you stumble halfway to the ground before catching yourself and clapping a hand to the back of your head, the coarse grain of an arrow suddenly between your fingers. Without thinking, without stopping, you wrench it free with a scream and drop it behind you, the steel claw vanishing as you feel the wound knit close, the trees closing around you as the settlement vanishes.

Fools, you think, as the beastmen follow, a bitter kind of glee filling your thoughts as you lead them deeper into the woods and away from their erstwhile prey.

How long they chase you, how long it takes for them to spend themselves and grow exhausted, you cannot say, but it takes quite some time before the last of their shouts and roars fade to nothing. Slowing to a halt in an unfamiliar patch of trees—your many wounds healed, though sore—you cock your head askance and listen for the sounds of pursuit for a long while before accepting that you've lost them. Panting, your body shaking with an admixture of adrenaline and exhaustion, you feel your changes slink away as you lean against a fallen log, your lupine form receding and leaving you draped across its age-greyed timbers.

"Thank you," you gasp between breaths as you press your forehead against the log's surface, the words directed both within and without as weariness cradles you in its soft embrace.

Closing your eyes, you repeat the words, your wolf stirring lazily but remaining silent.

Huddled against the tree's moss-covered surface, you earnestly consider staying put until the End Times, the fuzzy greenery invitingly soft beneath your touch and the air's chill growing less bitter with every passing moment. However, just as you feel yourself begin to nod off, a terrible burning stings the back of your hand. Startled awake, you jerk back with a stifled cry and blink at the white blur upon your hand, rheumy eyes resolving the formless thing into a perfect snowflake. Brushing it away with a curse, you look up at the darkening sky and let out an irritated yowl as you see an army of snowflakes wafting gently down, another shining crystal landing on unprotected skin and sending a cold fire racing up your arm as its chill touch invades your body.

As before, your wolf spirit doesn't speak, but a need for warmth and shelter flickers to life within you, hazy memories of Varrel rising, unbidden, to your mind.

Groaning as you realise it's right, that you'll die if you stay here, you push yourself to rise onto unsteady feet and try to change your form once again. An instant later, you let out a gasp as a wave of nausea strikes you, your temples pounding in time with your heartbeat and a sudden shake coursing up your body. You don't need to be a healer to know that you've pushed yourself too far, too fast; your marathon pursuit of the beastmen and the battles you've fought brought your body to the edge of its capabilities.

Barely forcing down the urge to vomit, you lean against the traitor log for a moment to catch your breath before forcing yourself to start shuffling north, each swing of your leaden limbs requiring an act of will to push yourself forward. Slowly at first, sheer exhaustion hampering you at every turn, you pick your way towards where foggy memories tell you Varrel lies, one footstep after another restoring a measure of warmth to your much-abused body even as the snowfall quickens around you. Picking up speed as your body warms, your muscles unlocking as if ice were melting within them, you ignore the searing pain that rises from within them and pull tight the remnants of your shirt against your chest, a breeze sending blades of icy cold through the gashes and holes the beastmen left in its once handsome fabric.

"Bastards," you mutter to your wolf, a confused agreement meeting you.

It was a good shirt, a hidden part of you adds.

Thereafter, silence reigns as the challenge of trudging through the falling snow grows more imposing, the yielding ground swallowing your feet at every footstep and draining your energy like no other ground you've ventured across. Several times, a warning from your wolf spirit alerts you just before you fall; its silent cries allow you to catch yourself just in time to stop a tumble as you make your way north. Steadily, the snow continues to fall, cruel winds stirring the flurries this way and that, and every gust robbing you of a little more warmth. Hunched over against the cold and shivering wildly, the world contracts to a point as your focus turns to survival, every sound but the slow thump of your heart and the quiet rasp of your breath vanishing from your mind. On and on it goes as you progress, the snowfall growing steadily heavier and the winds growing steadily worse until all before you is a haze; the moon Mannslieb nowhere to be seen and its silver light vanished from sight.

Reduced to a mindless advance, all about you dark and misty, you almost miss it when the first orange glow peeks through the haze of snow; the flickering beacon describing the trees around you with the absence of its light and sending a pulse of fear through the iced-over channels of your mind.

The beastmen, you think slowly, your mind turgid and unwieldy from the cold. I must have gotten turned around and continued the way I came.

Prodding the beast within for answers, it takes you a moment to realise that you're still walking, your legs taking on a life of their own as another beacon joins the first, then another, and then another.

I must still be far, you think to yourself, almost conversationally, as you continue. For those fires to seem so small, they must still be a goodly distance away. I'll soon be killed.

In truth, the prospect did not seem so terrible. Between the cutting frost and the feeling in your limbs that now went beyond exhaustion, beyond words, a final rest in Morr's Underworld or an eternal hunt by Ulric's side had its appeal. Though if you had a choice, the sleep of cold after saving the innocent seemed a kinder way to it than a beastman's axe or a dread wizard's spell.

Finding yourself chuckling for reasons you can't quite work out, you fall headfirst into the snow without warning, the crunch of frost breaking beneath your body the only sound to reach your ears. Pushing your head through the snow, its bitter sting now a lover's kiss, you gaze at the still distant fires and wonder what will kill you first: beastmen or exposure. The axe or the cold. Still pondering the question as the darkness closes in—the idea of a world beyond the confines of your mind fading to nought—you don't notice when the wind shifts towards you, freshly baked bread the last thing you smell before unconsciousness claims you as its own.

Article:

Kasled is a man who has seen and done much these past few days. As he lays in the snow, passing into unconsciousness some distance outside Varrel, what does he dream about?

[] The Beastmen
Blood and smoke. Hoof and horn. Something evil breeds in the Forest of Shadows, and its evil seeps like glistening oil.

[] The Elector-Count
Cold stones. Colder hearts. A white flame gutters low, and a child and its mother scream as one.

[] The Survivors
Hope and terror. Safety and danger. Braying herds shake the walls and spill steaming blood on the snow; hungry eyes turn north to a familiar town.

prometheus110 · Jan 10, 2025

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prometheus110 · Jan 18, 2025

[X] The Elector-Count

The forest stretches out as far as the eye can see as you rise on invisible wings, trees both venerable ancients and supple valets rendered minuscule by your height and shrinking with every passing moment, the sea of skeletal branches and clawed limbs below you forming grasping hands reaching up as if to cast you down. Lit by the sun fixed in the sky, the forest is dreamlike as you continue your ascent; no fear from your sudden predicament percolates through your breast despite the impossibility of the events. Silently, wordlessly, the logic of a dream compelling and soothing you in equal measure, you rise higher and higher until the forest below becomes a painted floor, all detail lost to the grandeur of your altitude.

Calmly, you look down, and the ground beneath your feet turns transparent as your eyes settle upon it, your gaze penetrating wood and loam and soil and stone; through the buried graveyards of vanished species, down through the hellish glow of some substance you have no name for, and then on again. Still staring downwards, you look up through stone and mud, through oceans whose surfaces churn with grey peaked waves and lands adorned with inverted beasts that waddle and croak and roar, and creatures that walk as men do but resemble lizards; through the star-pierced mantle of night and into the endless dark. Dizzyingly far below, floating languidly, constellations you've never seen before shine on men and elves and dwarves and other beings, a glance revealing the dome of the sky shading from peerless blue to sable-black as if it were all just a painted sphere. Unhurried, you look for Mannslieb and find it by its familiar face, the celestial body backlit by the milky glow of the great band encircling the mortal world.

Turning away from the sight—acceptance of the impossible flowing through you—you look to the west at the behest of some unvoiced thought, over screeching beastmen, fractious goblins, and shadows that, even as you are, you cannot and will not peer into. Dimly, a tug comes from over the greatly extended horizon, and all at once, you begin to move through the sky, the ground slipping past beneath your feet as if you are nothing more than a passenger in your own body. Despite this, no panic blossoms in your heart, an imperturbable stoicism holding fast your heart.

On and on, you soar, some unseen hand guiding your motion through the air until the forest below thins to reveal snowy ground that, in turn, gives way to fenced-in fields and walled villages. Without warning, a road appears ahead of you, the dark line cutting a path through the pale expanse of snow from horizon to horizon, backstopped by the rising Silver Hills; some hidden insight telling you Salzenmund lay mere leagues away. Suddenly, your flight shifts south, and the rolling peaks retreat below the dark line of the horizon once more, all knowledge of Salzenmund vanishing from your mind along with them. Turning to face your fate, the land beneath you blurring from your speed, you feel a muted sense of wonder burst to life in your heart as the horizon line thickens and swells in a matter of moments, a vast plateau leaping up from the mortal earth and rising to meet the sky.

Fauschlag, some nascent knowledge whispers as you hurtle towards it. First Strike. Ulricsberg. Middenheim.

Crowned by leaping towers and bedecked with clinging spires, dark specks swarming all over it, the truncated mountain rushes closer and looms larger with every passing moment, your approach a headlong plunge towards the steep-sided walls of a flag-topped tower. As the sparrow does to the farmer's fields, you all but dive towards it, a thrill of fear traipsing up your spine as the specks resolve first into dots and then into people, the bustling, swarming populace of the City of the White Wolf carrying about their lives as you descend towards them faster than an arrow. Helplessly, some strange force keeping you from looking away, you can only watch as the building grows ever nearer and nearer and nearer and-

There's a flash of black and a brief impression of resistance as you plunge through the building's bricks unimpeded, an instinctual blink clearing your vision and revealing you to be standing at the centre of a well-appointed room; dark timbers surrounding you and a fire crackling merrily in an impressively carved fireplace, the yellow-black hide of some spotted beast hanging from the wall below a pair of crossed handguns, and countless paintings hanging from the wall. Another blink reveals that you are not alone; two men seated in oaken armchairs and steadfastly ignoring you, one reclined and the other fidgeting in place.

No, you think through your dreaming stupor. They aren't ignoring you; they cannot perceive you.

Difficulty: 2
Dice pool: Sense (3) + No Relevant Skills (0)
Rolled: 4+9+9
Pairs: 2x9

Free to examine them up close, you immediately mark the fidgeter as not belonging to these well-to-do surroundings; the man's clothes, though better than any you can afford, well-worn and besmirched by the signs of amateurish repair, their practical cut out of place in the building's rich interior. Likewise, you note the signs of life harder than any mere merchant would experience, the callouses on the man's palms and fingers and his wiry figure speaking of days spent doing manual labour. Young, brown-eyed, and dark-haired, the impression is only helped by the furtive glances the fidgeter gives the room's contents, a hunger burning behind his eyes as if fighting the urge to grab what he can and run.

Meanwhile, seated in stark contrast, the other man is exactly what you would picture if ever you were asked to describe a merchant prince, his healthy figure filling up the handsome chair and hard grey-blue eyes flashing beneath a steel grey beard. Wearing a burgundy doublet adorned with golden buttons and white pants so bright they seem to shine—a black velvet cloak and hat hanging from a coat rack in the room's corner—the larger man exudes wealth and confidence, his stillness disconcerting next to his partner's constant motion. As you watch, he gestures vigorously and, without a sound, a smartly dressed manservant appears beside him as if from nowhere to deposit an ivory pipe into his hand—the servant's face turning to the light and revealing a fine-boned man whose blonde hair shines like gold and whose blue eyes seem to glow with an inner light.

Taking a draw as the manservant withdraws—the pipe's grey smoke twisting sinuously in the air and the haze deepening—the large man speaks, his voice as large as his figure.

"Speak, man, and speak quickly." He says thunderously, his accent well-mannered and distinctly Nordlandish, a pall of smoke spilling from his lips.

"All is proceeding as you have commanded," the indistinct figure opposite replies a shade too quickly, his local accent strained by his nasal voice.

"Oh?" the subject of his deference responds, a quiver sweeping through the man at his arch tone.

"...M-mostly, I mean, sir. There is a man in the watch—higher up than we can afford—he has begun to ask questions."

"I see," the merchant says as he takes another puff, a curlicue of smoke winding its way over to the other man; the acrid tobacco smoke assaulting your sense of smell with stinging pain.

"Kill him."

Shuddering in place—from shock or to avoid coughing, you cannot tell—the wirey man manages to gasp out. "Kill?"

"I did not stutter, did I?"

"B-b-but we cannot," the brown-haired man sputters, his hands spasming in his lap like two spiders fighting. "The low kings- the watch will- the Graf find out. It will risk your cargo."

Pausing to take another puff from his ivory pipe, the finely carved figures of men, women, and beasts dancing as smoke throbs through the air, the burgundy-clan merchant lets out a long sigh and sinks further into his chair.

Watching from beneath his beard, his eyes unreadable as they track over his counterpart's face, the merchant's voice drops to a low rumble. "You think me brutal, do you not?"

Wordlessly, the wealthy man's counterpart stares, his eyes bulging and Adam's apple bobbing furiously.

"Well, I am," he concedes lightly before the other can reply, a hard smile crossing his face. "To my enemies, I am the image of a chaos-spawned devil. However, to my friends—friends such as yourself—I am as just as Verena, as generous as Rhya, and as unyielding as Ulric. Mastering this dichotomy is how I came to afford-"

He gestures to his surroundings, the pipe in his long-fingered hand carving a trail in the air.

"All that you see around you, starting from where I did. In this business, one needs to master both sides of oneself to succeed."

Finding himself on steadier ground, his partner swallows loudly and speaks again. "This, ahh, business?"

"The business of making crowns, man!" The merchant replies with a huff, a sharp gesture spilling ashes in the lap of his ire's target. "No one, not the lowest criminal or the highest noble, will get in the way of making money without answering for it, my good man."

"Besides," he adds a moment later. "My little songbirds tell me we needn't worry about the count's eye much longer if things continue."

"We don't?"

"No. It seems Bertholdt and his whelp have other matters on their minds than the fate of a single watchman—no matter how high he may be. I know not what distracts them, but it is a blessing from Haendryk nonetheless."

"And the low kings?"

"Are of no concern to you."

Dismissed by the man's words, you once again begin to move, the fog of dreams settling over you as you rise on invisible wings. Mere moments later, you drift through the ceiling and leave the pair behind, the harsh stink of tobacco holding in your nose for a heartbeat. Unlike before, you do not suddenly appear at your destination. Instead, you float up, unhurried, through floor after floor and building after building, vignettes of city life crossing your vision as you ascend Middenheim's quite literally stratified society. Here, filthy children play in the cobbled streets; there, washerwomen scour stains from dirtied clothes; elsewhere, boisterous merchants hawk goods out of shop windows, each one a glimpse of another life as you pass by invisible.

Drifting through the streets, you blink as the figures around you accelerate in their motions, men, women, and children blurring into phantoms as they rush through the streets. A heartbeat later, they vanish from your sight altogether, and the quality of the light dappling the still streets starts to change. Looking skyward, you watch in wonder as the sun leaps from horizon to horizon, the cycle of day and night flashing by even as the nights grow longer before your eyes. As quickly as they began, the flip-flopping days come to a lurching halt, people snapping back into focus as you drift over the streets, snowbanks piled high on the cobbles, and mid-winter sunlight pouring down from above.`

Unresisting, you continue your dreamlike flight almost lazily, the lives and buildings you glimpse growing richer as you venture towards what can only be the Graf's palace. Unhurriedly, you float through the court's grand walls without resistance, the arcane sigils hidden beneath their surfaces—invisible to others but visible to you—remaining cold as you float by bored soldiers, harried staff, and exquisite statues. As you approach what you somehow know to be the heart of the palace, you notice that the faces of the workers unwittingly rushing past you gradually turn drawn and pale, a subtle but electric tension filling the air and raising gooseflesh. Your glacial thoughts lingering on the passing staff, it takes you several moments to notice the gilded doors that loom ahead of you and the steely-eyed men guarding them, their black lacquered armour gleaming darkly and the wolves draped over their shoulders snarling silently.

White Wolves.

The thought strikes like a drop of meltwater on the tongue, a crystal-cold clarity emerging from within your fogged mind and weakening the cloud's hold. Shaking your head as if to clear water from your ears, you almost miss it when you pass between the armoured knights and through the doors into darkness. As your eyes adjust, you realise you're floating in a bedroom large enough to fit your old cabin three times over with room to spare despite the blanket-covered furniture scattered about the place. Illuminated by a solitary candle placed on the dresser and dominated by a shadow-clad bed, the apartment's air feels foreboding and unwelcoming; no hint of the sunlight outside is allowed to penetrate the room's heavy curtains.

Before you can wonder what you're doing here, a quiet whimper pierces the still air and the shadows on the bed stir. A moment later, quite literally, you find yourself standing beside the bed, the shadows resolving into a supine woman, her swollen belly visible beneath sheets and her face pinched tight. Unbidden, a shade of shame creeps through your mind despite your fogged mind as you look down at the sleeping woman, the wrongness of your unwilling voyeurism needling your soul. Silently urging your legs to carry you elsewhere, you moue through the much-reduced fog as you remain resolutely still, a subsequent attempt to turn away leading to similar results.

Then, just as you start to consider screwing your eyes shut, another moan splits the air, and compassion compels you to look; your eyes settling on the splotched face of a woman in pain. Pushing past your discomfort with some difficulty, you lean over the richly dyed blue and red sheets and peer through the dark toward the unknown woman, the Rience-trained part of your mind taking careful note of every drop of sweat that prickles her brow, every dark spot of blood beneath her nostrils, and every leaping heartbeat visible in the jolt of the vein on her temple.

Difficulty: 5
Dice pool: Knowledge (4) + Student: Medicine (5)
Rolled: 2+4+4+5+7+8+8+8+10
Pairs: 2x4, 3x8

With a lurching heart, you realise you've never seen these symptoms in this combination before. You have, however, heard of them.

Though by no means well versed in women's secrets—their hardwon scraps of knowledge jealously guarded—your medicinal herb garden granted you a unique relationship with Roslas' midwives and wise old women. Needing a variety of plants for their own medicines, knowledge of things ordinarily left unspoken had passed between both parties during chatter both idle and vital alike.

Named Hard Pulse by the black-clad women who swooped and tittered around Roslas like crows, it is a vicious beast that afflicts the heavily pregnant with all manner of ailments; nosebleeds, facial flushing, headaches, and weakness were some of its kinder symptoms. Many months pregnant, this woman—whoever she was and whatever she meant to the Graf—was struggling in its grasp. Watching her toss in bed as dispassionately as you can, your shame vanishing beneath the weight of your duty, you note with some irritation the weals running up and down the woman's arms, the familiar sign of bloodletting rankling somewhat.

Almost the right idea, you think, examining the wounds. But excessive. The body has already expelled excess blood and brought the humours into balance. What this woman needs is rest and relief from pain, not this ill-thought-out re-destabilisation.

Pausing your examination, you trawl through your memories of the scant times you'd seen this same illness before nodding. Valerian and Graveroot, you think with some hesitancy. In her state, the latter herb must be prepared as a draught and heavily thinned with water to avoid harming the babe growing within her. Still, it would grant her much-needed respite.

"Phlebotomists," you mutter scornfully.

The woman's eyes snap open.

Bloodshot and raw, the grey-blue pools bore into you with a fury, and you jump backwards almost instinctively. Raising your hands as if to ward off a blow, an apology already on your lips, you freeze as you realise that it's not you that she's looking at.

"Boris," she says in a ragged whisper, her voice almost spent.

She wets her chapped lips and tries again. "Boris."

Shocked at her awakening, unsure if she can see you, you do nothing as something stirs beneath a nearby pile of blankets, a yawning boy—no, you correct yourself as you peer at him, a man—appearing in a riot of orange hair. For an instant, the man's face, Boris's face, remains smooth and unmarked, his handsome visage full of youthful vigour and two warm brown eyes glittering in the candlelight. Then he catches sight of the woman, and pain writes itself into his expression, a burst of motion bringing him kneeling to her side, his feet bare despite his other finery and silent on the polished stone floor.

Gingerly, Boris presses his lips against her sweat-slicked brow. This time, you look away. Some things should be private.

"Maria," you hear him whisper as he clasps a wasted hand in a meaty paw, his voice soft as summer rains. "Maria, my love."

Ashamed of witnessing this moment, it brings no small relief when you feel the fog of dreams cloak upon your mind—its removal seemingly no longer required—and the ground beneath your feet drifts away. In mere moments, you ascend through the bedroom's ceiling and the room beyond that before punching into the air above the palace, sprawling many-levelled Middenheim stretching out before you and surrounded by a ring of clear land flanked by primaeval woods; the mighty roads through the dark forests rendered into thin lines by the twin vipers of distance and scale. Waiting patiently, you find yourself rewarded when the quality of the light shifts and the now-familiar turning of the sun resumes, the blazing spit of fire becoming a lightning-like line etched into the sky. However, this time, Soll's chariot does not stop after a few moments, the strange passage of days instead stretching on as it continues its maddeningly swift journey through the sky.

Watching, you see for the first time in your life as the field of snow stretching over the land swells and contracts as snow falls, melts, and falls again; the image of a great and terrible ice beast breathing in and out popping into your mind. Almost imperceptibly, the gradual rise and fall take on a new dimension as progressively shorter melts follow each building up, the days slowly but surely growing longer until it is early spring. As soon as the thought springs to mind, black dots suddenly swarm down the rods and head for the city, first small dribbles, then whole floods arriving at its gates, your mind slowly ticking over as you struggle to interpret the strange sights assailing you.

Now what? You ask yourself as the vast majority of dots congregate at the base of Middenheim's sprawling bridges, the arc of light above you dimming until the Soll stands unopposed.

On cue, a roar rolls up from nowhere. Looking up from the swarming dots, their motion still inscrutable, you frown despite the soft gauze covering your mind as a black mass appears at the edges of the ancient woods and spills into the plain like blood from a wound. Ever onwards, the sweeping tide comes, its numbers without end and its members so densely packed that not a blade of grass is visible beneath their feet. As it approaches, the thunder accompanying the army shifts in volume and intensity, the wall of noise assailing your ears remorselessly even as its elements become as distinct as instruments, your heart freezing as you finally recognise the sounds.

The clatter of weapons clutched in claws.

The thunder of hooves on stone.

The howl of blood-drunk beastmen.

***

You awake with a start, a rain of half-remembered horrors and fleeting visions falling from your eyes as you force your eyelids apart. In fits and starts, consciousness returns, a soot-stained roof resolving before you and revealing your supine posture, your healer's bag lying beside you and fatigue still permeating your mind despite your rest. Lying there, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for your eyes to adjust to the dark, sensation returns in the form of a pleasant warmth suffusing your limbs, your unhurried thoughts interrogating the scraps of dream you retain while your wolf lies quiescent.

Why did I dream of those things? You wonder glacially, maintaining your stolid vigil. As memories of beastmen and merchants fill your mind, you frown. What did I dream of?

Unsurprisingly, the world does not answer your questions. Instead, the sound of early morning life rises to greet your ears, the soft babble of passing voices mixing with the thunk of someone chopping wood and mournful dove cries. Still half asleep, you speak before you can stop yourself. "Roslas."

"Ehh, what's that?"

The woman's voice pierces the quiet sharp as a gunshot, her age-wearied tone sending a jolt of surprise through your body and kicking your mind into alertness. Startled by the unseen speaker, you make to prop yourself up only for the dull warmth pervading your body to turn to claws of steel and curl through your muscles, the involuntary gasp that escapes your lips more a horse's nicker than a wounded man's cry. Seemingly no stranger to such things, the voice rings out again.

"Wait!" It commands unnecessarily, your brief foray seeing you crash back down atop the straw bedding.

Floorboards begin to creak as the speaker approaches, a turn of your head revealing a bony old woman standing only a few feet away; her timeworn face narrow and her flinty eyes hard.

Gods save me, you think as recognition sparks, the familiar figure clutching her shapeless shawl tight as she stomps closer.

"Well, s'not bloody likely, is it?" She replies behind a curtain of stringy hair, her gruff words and thick accent sending a grimace across your face as you realise you must have spoken aloud.

Unphased, she continues. "If the gods'll save anyone, I doubt it's gonna be a wastrel like yerself, don't ye think?"

You needn't bother answering her question. Accidentally doing so was a beginner's mistake, and the ancient woman—old enough that no one still alive could recall her last name—had already delivered enough tongue-lashing to last you a lifetime. Not wishing to ensure another, you do your best to nod before glancing down to see your clothes—though torn and pierced—were still there.

"Irma."

"Kazimir."

You grunt. "Kasled."

Rolling her eyes, Irma waves a wizened hand through the air. "Whatever."

Making to rise as she tromps closer—her heavy boots thudding on the wooden floor—you freeze as Irma plants a hand on your shoulder and pushes down. Still exhausted despite the cradle of unconsciousness, your limbs still shaking, you find yourself unable to resist the pressure exerted by Varrel's herbalist, the strength of one bony arm sufficient to press you against the mat roughly.

"Sit down, child," she commands in a rasp. "And stop moving, lest I give ye something to complain about. The state ye were in, it's a wonder ye awoke at all."

Ignoring her words, you return your gaze to the ceiling and grunt again. "I'm in Varrel."

"Yes, boy," she replies as she kneels beside you, her tone arch. "And I'm a herbalist. Ye've met me before. Try to keep up, will ye?"

Pausing only to gesture sharply, she speaks again. "Palm."

Sparing the woman's outstretched hand a sidelong glance, you allow her to grab your arm and raise it towards a flickering candle without protest, heat prickling your skin as she examines the broad limb for Shallya-knows-what. Ignoring the urge to snap at her for her terrible manner, you allow her to peer at your palm with beady eyes and wait without patience as they flick from side to side.

Why could this town not have a proper healer? You ask yourself as Irma mouths something under her breath, the woman biting her inner lip and glaring at your palm.

The closest thing Varrel has to someone like yourself, the old crone's methods were strange and set your nerves on edge as few other things did. In any other town, you thought, she'd be one of those doddering old codgers who lurk on the outskirts of town and mutter under their breath about spoiled milk while giving passersby the evil eye. In Varrel, however, her bitter remedies, foetid unguents, and sharp tongue had kept generation after generation of Nordlanders alive despite the dangers of living so close to the Forest of Shadows; her personality a torment they were willing to inflict upon their neighbours in exchange. As Roslas' only healer, you'd often been forced to interact with her during your occasional visits and thus been the target of her ire many times.

"Ye'll live," she says after what feels like an age, something uncomfortably close to disappointment poisoning her tone as she stands with an ease that belies her age.

"Though," Irma adds, plucking a coarse black hair from her sleeve, "ye should spend less time with dogs. You'll get fleas."

Within you, your wolf perks up, its hackles slowly rising as it stares through your eyes.

She doesn't know; you comfort it, not hiding your long-suffering tone. Rest now. There will soon be need enough for your teeth and claws.

Cooing as it returns to dormancy, you swallow thickly. "What happened?"

She shrugs. "How should I know? Ye're the one who nearly up and died."

"Now get up," she adds before you can reply. "You're taking up half my floor, and I don't want to waste it on rakes like ye."

Refraining from answering back, you obey, a huff escaping you as you gingerly rise to your feet, vertigo assailing you for an instant before fading away as you steady yourself against the rough timbers of the cabin wall. Shutting your eyes and pressing your thumb and forefinger against the bridge of your nose, you suck down a lungful of air to steady yourself before a coughing fit bursts through your chest as you catch a whiff of something pungent and malodorous. Covering your cough, you look up to see Irma standing by a cauldron in the centre of the single-room cabin, the black steel pot squatting over a stone-enclosed fire and white steam pouring from its bubbling contents. Illuminated by the crackling flames and what little muted sunlight makes it into the cabin's interior through gaps in its walls, the cantankerous woman looks positively malevolent.

Ever tactful, you decline to comment and instead peer into the cauldron.

Difficulty: 6
Dice pool: Knowledge (4) + Lore: 3
Rolled: 4+9+9+9+10+10+10
Pairs: 3x9, 3x10 <- Using this to identify the substance

Jesus, okay. Dr. Werewolf strikes again, I guess.

"A healing unguent?" You ask as Irma stirs the yellow paste with surprising vigour, the beeswax base spitting and frothing as she beats a half-dozen different herbs into the mass with a wooden spoon and mutters under her breath.

And a powerful one, too, you add silently as another inhale brings tears to your eyes, the woman unbothered by the stench though she stands amidst the steam.

"Aye," she says flatly. "Good nose. We've a mighty need ever since yer lot arrived the other night."

At her words, the last of sleep's shroud drops away, memories of your desperate chase and the subsequent battle in the woodcutter's camp arising to replace it in your thoughts. A heartbeat later, you find yourself swaying on your feet, Irma peering at you suspiciously.

"Ye ain't gonna fall again, are ye?"

She pauses her frantic stirring to add a pinch of dark powder from a pouch tied to her belt, the substance streaming from her fingers and staining the bubbling wax a deep red.

"If ye do, I ain't gonna catch ye."

Forcing yourself to stop, you pump your head up and down, the gallinaceous motion the closest you can get to a nod.

"Good," she replies as she returns to the cauldron. "Now, if yer not going to fall, ye'd best make yerself useful and grab the Gesundheit."

Flicking her eyes to the wall beside you, you follow her gaze and let out an interested hum in spite of yourself. Hanging from wooden bolts crudely sunk into the timbers sat a host of herbs, dried and fresh alike, whole seasons visible in the spread of green leaves and parched flowers.

Difficulty: 3
Dice pool: Knowledge (4) + Student: Plants and Herbs (5)
Rolled: 1+3+3+3+4+4+5+6+9
Pairs: 3x3 <- using this to gather herbs without embarrassing yourself, 2x4

"Where are the others from Roslas?" You ask as you pluck the dried herbs from the wall; a single glance is all you need to tell their suitability. "And How did I get here? And when?"

"Woodsmen found ye freezing outside the walls last night," Irma states as she takes the proffered plant matter and examines it, a half-hearted 'least he knows his herbs' rising above the boil before she tosses the pale leaves into the mix.

"They'd been attacked by beastmen," she continues, her voice resuming its normal stridency. "Belike the same ones that attacked yer town—and escaped when they started fighting among themselves. They're over at the tavern; ye should thank them."

"And the others?" You repeat insistently. "Where are they?"

"They're at the church. Ye know where that is at least, yeah?

You nod mechanically, your thoughts already turning towards the last remnants of your home.

Irma shrugs as she taps her wooden spoon on the cauldron's rim to clean it, a loud thunk ringing out with every strike.

"There's a few of them that're injured; cuts, bruises, broken bones." Another wave. "S'why I'm making this. Yer girl's leading them, she'll know."

You freeze stock still. My girl?

Something of your thoughts must have shown on your face as old Irma shrugs.

"The girl leading the others," She repeats by way of explanation. "She said ye'd get here soon enough. I figured she was yers, and ye'd gone and died, driving the poor girl to madness with grief."

Irma sniffs. "Sounds like ye."

Ignoring the querulous woman, you try to think of who she could be talking about. Truth be told, despite your history, you can't think of a single woman who might have harboured feelings for you before the Brayherd came. After it attacked—

You shudder and drive the thoughts out.

"There's no girl," you say with iron finality.

"Still, ye should go..." Irma trails off.

"There's no girl," you repeat, a hint of defensiveness creeping into your tone.

The herbalist shakes her head and resumes stirring, an awkward silence descending over the both of you, its veil underscored by the scrape of her spoon and the crackle of flame. As the seconds pass by painfully slowly, Irma finally breaks the silence by clearing her throat with a wet rattle.

"If yer gonna stand there like a lummox, I'm gonna start charging ye rent, boy."

"That is," she adds, "if ye got the coin for it."

'Coin?' You mouth before understanding blossoms, your hands clutching for your belt only to meet empty air; what wealth you had somewhere back in Roslas' ruins.

Ahh.

"How, uh," You falter as you try to find the words. "How much do I owe you? For the room and salves, I mean."

The woman's eyes, alight with some queer thought, search your face before vanishing as she shakes her head. "No salves or potions. Ye were exhausted, not injured. Ye needed to rest somewhere warm and without others fussing over ye. Pass me a few coins, and that'll settle debts."

You spread your hands wide and lend the herbalist an awkward smile. "I may have something in my bag. It won't be mu-"

"Ye don't."

Fighting the urge to lend Irma a leery look, you sigh and begin to speak, only for the withered woman to interrupt you with a gesture.

"Kasled," she says plainly. "Just take yer bag and get gone."

Article:

[] Meet with the Woodsmen.
You saved them, and it seems they saved you. Dutiful to a fault, it is only fair that you should visit to thank them and maybe talk about the beastmen.

[] Meet with the Refugees.
Perhaps Roslas' only other survivors, the only thoughts running through your mind are to meet with them and find out who lived, who died, and who this girl is that Irma keeps talking about.

Hour of the Wolf (WHF)

Hour of the Wolf

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