Long ago, when man first began to walk the earth, the wolves had hunted the prey of the world since it's found. Though men had intelligence, the wolves had cunning. While men had weapons of stone, the wolves had their own teeth and claws. They possessed strength and endurance beyond all other creatures.
As men spread throughout the earth they built villages and towns on territory owned by the wolves, feeding off the same prey.
Soon, starvation threatened them all.
Men started to hunt and kill the wolves whenever they saw them.
Fenris was happy to let this continue. At this time, men were not strong enough to destroy whole packs of Wolves. The weak of the pack died and the strong bred, making the pack stronger. Soon, men learned the art of farming and a balance was restored. Man cultivated his fields and tended his flocks. The wolves had their prey. Both prospered.
However, this did not last.
A famine struck, forcing man to hunt, to compete with the wolves. Once again man took food from the mouth of the wolf-clans. In retaliation, the wolves began to prey on the cattle of men to survive. Men began to set traps for the wolves, to skin and kill them. Even after the famine passed and mankind returned to his farms, wolves hid from men. Hunting only in the deep forests and on plains far from mankind's villages.
One village, Fulbeck, continued to hunt the Wolf. Not for food, not for clothing and not to protect themselves. They hunted and killed for fun, for their own amusement. As the men of this village slaughtered a whole pack, a lone dying wolf-mother howled to Fenris, demanding vengeance for herself and her slain cubs.
Fenris was incensed by the slaughter and granted the She-Wolves final request.
As the men and women of Fulbeck slept at night, as a full moon watched over their flocks, Fenris howled. The people awoke in a panic, never had they heard such a primal scream full of anger and mourning. They ran around screaming in terror, seeking to drown out the sound. Try as they might nothing could stop it. They fell to the ground, rolling and trashing in pain as the unholy howl of Fenris tore at their minds.
They were going mad, the world was spinning, falling, filled with horrors too unspeakable to mention. Men chased them with spears, trapped them in pits, caught them in snares and stripped their skin from their bodies.
As that terrible night wore on the screams of the people began to change. Gone was the shrill shriek of men and women in torment. All that was left was the deep, terrible howl Fenris had unleashed, echoed and magnified many times in an unholy, blood chilling chorus.
The people of Fulbeck were no more. Fenris had changed them, remade them in his image.
They had become wolves.
No ordinary wolves. They were larger, more fearsome and stronger than any wolves had had exixted before them. The people-turned-wolves let out one more long, lingering howl so anguished and forlorn that the howl of the wolf is now burned into the minds of all men as something to be feared and dreaded.
As that howl echoed and died on the night air, the people-turned-wolves ran toward the forests to live and hunt. To protect their brother wolves from men such as they once were. Men who would break the laws of nature and kill for no reason.
Take care as you trek the forests of Lothissen. For there the Forest Wolves, the Sons of Fenris, still hunt.
There they pay the price for killing the favoured of Fenris.
There they keep the sons of men from taking the last bastion of the wolves from them. |
