The WereWolf

Music playing "here comes the sun"

Upon our visit to the easternmost states of Prussia in the continuance of our search for the fled heretic Malthius, we noticed a particular tendency amongst the people that dwelled there towards a fear and belief in the supernatural that seemed ill at odds with the more sophisticated and sceptical attitudes that are so prevalent in the countries of civilised Europe, just a few day's ride from the Russian border where we now stood. Amongst the romany peoples that we had accompanied as travelling companions on this voyage there had been many fireside tales offered as cautionary fables to those unaccompanied to travelling through such potentially hazardous areas. However when Balthazar prompted me to recount the incident involving our encounter with the diabolic necromancer in venice, our gypsy companions seemed to regard us with an altogether more respectful near reverence as I described the way in which the pious courage of Balthazar had defeated the evil which Malthius De Courcy had inadvertently summoned while dabbling in the black arts in his heretical and vain search for power that no mortal man can ever command or hope to deserve. It seemed that the rogue monk was known to them for unbeknownst to us it seems that the heretic Malthius had in fact acquired a number of his lesser grimoires on necromancy and summoning magicks from an ancient pagan temple that lay within the region known to these people. There had been much mythologising of this acquisition amongst the local villages with seemingly each of our companions relaying to us a more darkly fantastic tale of devilry than the last with all agreeing that the mystical battles fought between the venetian necromancer and the grimoire's previous owner was a spectacle that few who lived there wished to see again. It was a very old woman amongst our group who told the most fantastic yet chilling tale of this battle, and her tale was so chilling that both Balthazar and myself agreed that at the very least it warranted further investigation of these pagan ruins where the grimoires had been located. The temporary magics of memory fail all too fast when attempting to recall exact words even for one as skilled in chronicling such as myself, and yet I will attempt my best to relay this tale as accurately to you as possible as I first heard it and without the additional benefits that our later discoveries would impart upon it. The tale went somewhat thus; When the heretic monk Malthius de Couercy first left Florence he did not as we had assumed travel westwards into Iberia but had rather traveled to the Romany lands of Hungaria and Slovenia for in his diabolic consultations he had learned of the existence of a very powerful and ancient conjurer who had constructed a temple to his own powers upon an ancient burial mound. It was claimed that this conjurer had discovered numerous ways of binding and summoning many different demons and spirits to his will. The secrets of these powers had been demonically transferred onto the skin of a hundred unrepentant murderers who had been detained by Moloch the conjurer until the writing was legible, whereupon all hundred men were skinned alive and thrown into the moat surrounding this temple of the profane to die, while their skins were dried and bound and made into the grimoire's that would later be stolen by de Couercy. However, it is said that of these hundred murderers who had been discarded like waste meat into the moat, one survived the agonizing pain of being flayed, the burn of salt-water upon raw, tender flesh in the moat, the cloying and inhumane death of drowning under the weight of the fleshy, bloodied masses that had until recently been your comrades. This mans name had been Erik Lars and he had been one of the bloodthirstiest pirates to have ever sailed the North sea. As a pirate Erik the Swift, as he preferred to be described was notorious for not only the slow deaths that he would inflict upon those who withstood him but also for his habit of drinking the blood of those he had slain in battle in a broth with his men, in the belief that by consuming the flesh of their enemies so too would a part of their souls be consumed by the pirates giving them a portion of their defeated enemies powers for themselves. It is not quite clear how such a man could summon the strength of will to escape such a fate as had befallen him but what is clear is that this Rogue, mutilated and close to death as he was, somehow managed to summon an almost superhuman force of will and divulge himself of the bloodied corpses that trapped him in the reeking shallow moat where he had been left to die. It is said that it took the pirate Lars six days to clamber his way through the decaying remains of his former comrades. In his desperation to avoid their fate and to gain his revenge upon the Sorcerer Moloch who had abducted and tortured him he had survived on a bestial diet of the blood and decaying flesh of the poor unfortunates who had been massacred in Moloch's diabolical search for power. On the seventh day after Lars's supposed killing Erik the swift at last managed to pull his deformed and mutilated carcass from the moat of the slaughtered and at last breathe the air of the land, uncontaminated by the fetid stench of decay that had cloyed his lungs for the week previous. As Erik shambled through the forest surrounding Moloch's temple the only thought that burned within his shattered and twisted mind was that of survival; he would recuperate his strength and then gain his revenge upon the being responsible for his disfigurement. As he forced his body beyond the obstacle of excruciating pain that racked his senses into motion apparently he became something greater than he had been previously. Whether it was the residual demonic energies that had burned themselves into his flesh after etching themselves upon his skin combined with the ambient magicks resident around Moloch's lair, or whether it was the week long feasting upon the dead flesh and dried blood of his comrades truly had given him a part of their combined strength it is impossible to say. perhaps it was simply the incredible will to survive possessed by the pirate that forced his transmutation into something greater than before; all that is certain is that by the time Erik the swift had reached the outskirts of the forest surrounding Moloch's lair he had been changed into something both wondrous and terrible to behold. To replace his missing skin it is said that Erik had destroyed and skinned a whole company of wolves that had been mystically placed within the forest by Moloch as guardians of his temple with only his teeth and his raw bleeding hands. He then stitched these skins to his flesh using twine and devoured the wolfen flesh raw. This hideous abomination was unnaturally strong and fleet of foot as though Erik had stolen not only the skins of the wolfpack but rather their combined talents as well. It is said by some that Lars had become a wolf in all discernible ways and means, yet a wolf with the intelligence, cunning and dexterity of a man; others say rather that he remained a man but had become so transfigured by his ordeal and his lust for revenge that he had simply managed to extend his own strength and viciousness beyond anything that could be described as humanity and that his hideous wolfen skin was but a reflection of the internal transformation that had occurred. Either way, Erik the swift had become the most vicious and elusive of the demons and monsters that are said to prey upon mankind; he had become a werewolf. The arcane power of his Wolf-skin allowed him a strength far greater than any mortal could hope for and his desire for survival that had bested death once now made him immortal by stealing the life contained within the blood of his victims. The nature of this transformation was such that during daylight hours and dark nights Erik was much the same in spirit and appearance as he had been before his abduction by Moloch; however when the moon hung full in the sky the beast that he had now become could not be concealed and the nature of the beast was evident. The old woman concluded her tale by warning against visiting these pagan ruins because when Malthius the heretic stole the grimoires and destroyed Moloch he had thwarted Erik's sole purpose for existence by robbing him of his chance for revenge. Some say that had the werewolf achieved his revenge his spirit would have allowed him the sweet escape of death; without it the damned creature desolately and futilely roams the forest slaying indiscriminately in his insane and unending quest for Moloch.

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