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On Werewolves - Seperallis - 09-14-2016 The Werewolf Myth A Treatise on Lycanthropic Myth and History By Daloghulir av Välsignadvagga Written circa SY 3215, as chronicled & interred in the library of the College of Mages, Sidgard. Many times have I been asked by the wayfarer on the roads, having known of my travels and exploits, "Daloghulir, masterful chronicler and dauntless adventurer, in all your days wandering the lands and cataloging their boundless inhabitants, what is the most astonishing thing you have discovered?" Here I shall tell you as I tell these wayfaring souls, dear reader, that the most astonishing thing I have unearthed in all my many decades of traversing the boundless limits of Andlosheim is no place or thing, as many expect, but a vast display of knowledge from lands beyond and known to very few within the Storslagen, if at all, and among all these facts and records stands none more controversial nor more fascinating than the truths I have uncovered about the Myths of the Werewolves. A Summation Of Myths Before I begin, I shall detail the common myth and its history, as known within my home, and the vast majority of places where humanity has settled and made the lands theirs, so that even one who has not heard these facts and myths may know. As the Myth goes, long in the past when still many of the Ayohim were still young, Veohr, God of Pestilence, still had many agents that roamed the lands and served secretly in his name, for secrecy was required as it was their job to serve as the vessels for Veohr's touch to bring the culling influences of disease to the lands, and for one's identity as an agent of Voehr to be discovered would surely forfeit that person's life to those less than happy about plague appearing in their homes. At the time, the lands were not partitioned into the kingdoms of today but were a patchwork of many small chiefdoms, petty self-stylized "kings" lording over a few small hamlets at most. One such chief, a man from north and west who styled himself as King Falulf, held lands on a large spit, which celebrated several long years of good harvest and fortune, but several settlements nearby recently began to suffer from plague. With news of the disease's slow encroachment, King Falulf grew worried and paranoid of the good fortunes of his lands being disrupted and appealed to his trusted sage for advice, which was given; while so ever long as the foreign disease might threaten his lands, the sage would appeal to the gods to protect the good fortunes of his lord. However, he also cautioned that such wide-reaching pestilence could only be acts of Veohr; with the Gods banished from the planes of Man, only Man himself could call the Gods to exercise their will in this world, and warned his King to be wary of any man whom even the rats feared to approach. Wary King Falulf was, too, as in his paranoia he immediately called a manhunt to find any such person and have them brought before him to be "questioned," which in this unenlightened period of time no doubt meant "tortured until confession." The endeavor found one man; various regional differences in legend-telling vary wildly at this point, giving all kinds of different names to the man, and describing a myriad of different methods by which King Falulf ordered the hapless man suffer until he confess the "truth" that he was an agent of the God of Pestilence, though the most common telling has the man tied to a stake and his back repeatedly branded with fire between rounds of lashings. Certainly not a pleasant experience. By the second day of this treatment, the poor man's body slumped against the stake on the verge of giving out, when the King asked one more time if he was sent to ruin his land's fortunes, and once more the man denied this, stating that the King's fortunes were safe, but that the King was another matter, who would meet a curse fitting of his name for assaulting Veohr so...and then he died. Four months later on a hunt, King Falulf was assaulted by a rabid-looking wolf far larger than were known to be in the area. His men drove off the beast, and the King escaped with his life, but the bites and scratches left their mark; the King became sickly, before transforming into a wolf-like beast and attacking his own family in his home. No one died from the attack before King Falulf's own men-at-arms dispatched him, and life went back to normal, until the next full moon, when those wounded by this first "werewolf" became werewolves in kind. And the pestilence continued until modern day. That is, of course, the legend known through human lands, with some variation. Many other lands have their own versions of the werewolf myth, but regardless of the specifics of their creation, all werewolf tales share similar traits: shapechanging, an inhuman bloodlust, incredible strength and resilience, and a terrible accursed ability to create more of their own kin through their bites and scratches. The Myth As History The job of a chronicler is to write the histories by distinguishing the fact from the fantastical and recording the truth of events, so what truth, if any, is there to the myriad werewolf myths? Quite a fair amount, as it so happens. First is the ancient God of Pestilence, Veohr, references to whom are lysted in the Grexucron and other listings of the Old Gods, but little is known about him beyond his domain, and this god has long since gone dormant, disappearing from pantheons with the last known mention of him appearing some forty-one hundred years ago. In those days, pestilence and disease were seen less as the deadly machinations of evil entities as they are now, but instead a more purifying, if merciless, force that removed the weak and incapable so that the survivors might be stronger and survive, and the deities of such domains commanded a devout and sizable, if not overly large, following. However, as living conditions improved across much of the known civilized cultures of Andlosheim and resources became more plentiful or easier to obtain, the usefulness in and viewpoint of disease as a momentary hardship necessary to ensure the continued survival of the group, weak as it was even then, fell even further out of fashion. Nowadays, while Gods with similar domains do exist and are worshiped, most - like Veohr - have been dropped from the common pantheons, and their idolation is limited to insignificant fringe cults. Second, there does exist a written record of a "King Falulf" from the northwest coast of what is now Sidgard, a short account of a battle between he and a local rival, who is widely regarded as the same Falulf from the myths. This Falulf also had three sons known as the Wulfssons in local idioms, which would be a rather convenient coincidence; what happened to them isn't known or recorded, but given that subsequent rulers in the area were not of King Falulf's family and no record of conquest exists, it's likely the family was run out of power for some reason...likely for being "werewolves." The Myth As Legend There, however, is where nearly all of the similarities between werewolf myth and reality ends, for werewolves do not exist. At least, werewolves do not exist as most people believe they do, as shape-changing killers of the night, bound to the moon and spreading their terrible disease through assaults on local populations, terrorizing villages and razing livestock. Consider this: were werewolves so, were they to exist as they do in myth, why has civilization not been toppled by such a disease as Lycanthropy? The countryside would be overrun with packs of roaming werewolves, as any outlying villages, with their lack of defenses, would be easily ransacked and destroyed, their inhabitants murdered as anyone not immediately killed in the assault would slowly become one more of the pack. With no protection and no cure, anyone sent to deal with them would become one of them, go back to their own barracks, town, or city, and the cycle would start again with the new werewolves. This has obviously not happened, villages are not being overrun and destroyed daily by roving bands of werewolves. Consider again, along this line of thought, that there are no werewolves in captivity. Surely if werewolves were a real phenomenon, someone, somewhere, would have been able to capture and contain one for study; even maybe an afflicted soul might turn himself in for the hope of being studies and a cure found for his affliction. Oh yes, there are those who are similar to werewolves, such as the clans of shapeshifters from the East Weald and beyond, and the myriad different beastmen (especially beyond our shores); none have been found to be anywhere similar to the unexplainable phenomenon of the werewolf, which is neither a magical discipline nor a race, but always a savage diseased affliction. Why are sightings always so vague, surrounded by phantasmal stories? Why are their effects found, but never the beasts? In all my travels these questions persist, the circumstances always the same, with no substantial answers. None of this is to say that, at some point in the past, werewolves as they are popularly known and described did not exist. It is entirely possible that, in the far past before the age of man, when the Old Gods still freely roamed the lands creating, destroying, shaping, molding the fabric of what we now think of as "reality," that some lycanthropic disease did exist. Perhaps it was created by Voehr, perhaps some other god, but their absence from the world would cause any impressively disruptive supernatural disease like Lycanthropy to wither and die in its own course. Any such declaration would simply be conjecture, though, as we lack any clear evidence. With an absence of evidence for the case of Lycanthropy, and my own personal findings as presented, I can truly say that the most astonishing thing I have uncovered in all my travels is that which I failed to find: any undeniable trace of the existence of werewolves.