#librettowrites

Each creed in history has its beginnings. Of all the faiths and orders of Idune that were created since the beginning of man, The Hunter’s Mantle is the strangest of all. Its origin is far romanticized from the truth, and the de facto founder is long gone.

The Author is named as such for what he did. He wrote about the Darkness. Indeed, he was among the first few to fight it with full force. He scrawled down his days hunting in the wilderness. These were the early days, when the Darkness was still advancing and the terror unleashed was still very fresh. He wrote at length and documented the habits and behaviors of dozens of beasts, and his own pointers for how best to slay them. Through reading it, you could learn that the Author was an old farmer. So old, that his favored weapons were his Sickle and Awl, as broadswords were too heavy, and his eyesight too feeble for bows. His motivations for why he started this crusade of the damned is unknown, but that doesn’t mean the youngest of hunters haven’t supplemented their own fantasies and myths as exposition.

Today, the Journal has been rewritten so many times it is now unrecognizable. In fact, it is the most pored-over piece of literature in all the remaining kingdoms of man. Though The Hunter’s Mantle is more of a kinship in shambles, this book has almost become a holy scripture. The Author, like some demigod sent from elsewhere to deliver inspiration and the lust for battle to the hearts and minds of young folk everywhere. The Author indeed, is the shining light in the Darkness.

Wall King Geir, the young nobleman who usurped the throne during the earlier years of The Emergence, denying the birthright from Tor’s kin. It was he who ordered the heightening of the walls of Tor’s Claim. He was responsible for the flourishing of the Cleric’s Guild. To a lesser extent, it was also he who enabled the formation of The Hunter’s Mantle, if only through lack of compassion for his people in outlying duchies.

 The commoners and peasants all over carry a bitterness in their heart for their King, but none moreso than the Mason’s Guild. Denied compensation and threatened with exile for treachery, they were put to work. Blood and sweat spilled on those ashen stones, with only the fear of the encroaching darkness to carry them on in their work.

In the tainted groves where darker fey creatures linger, strange stone constructs stand in stoic congregation. They are inscribed with a runic script, incomprehensible even to learned scholars, and their natures are ever more mired in obscurity.

Of the many creatures that emerge from those forsaken mists along the Breach, the Gluk are of the more unpredictable sort. They are delicately intertwined with the ethereal fates of men, as if they were messengers of the divine...

But their actions insist otherwise. They are among the rare few creatures of the Darkness that frequently slip past the borders of the Frontier into far-flung provinces, such as Sveir or Jolland, sometimes even appearing within the walls of Tor’s Claim itself!

What is their motive in all this? These creatures themselves do not let on as to their intent. It’s common lore that great fortune is brought by a Gluk watching over the fortunate person in question, but the Gluk also hunt folk who have seen their own destiny, by ritual or revelation. 

Their curious collar that sits round their neck seems to betray them, showing skilled loreseekers a Gluk’s current mood. If the stone collar has swiveled around so that the prongs face up, their jaw cannot open. As such, it is a common icon of luck, with Gluk Collars painted in areas with much misfortune, in the hopes that it may lift the heinous curse that has tainted the land.

Should you go into the woods looking for the Wealdfolk, you should know that they have many sinister tricks and traps set about, to catch up any unwary travelers.

The Wealdfolk are reclusive, but not of their own will. They are shunned and hunted, like animals and monsters alike. Their only sanctuary lies along the length of the Frontier, as they live the lives of nomads and vagrants. In this darkened woodland, they made the best of their dim fate through striking deals with the ill-warped deities of the forests. Immersing themselves in the darkness, they have become one with it. The Dark is a way of life to them, as simple as death.

And forth from these rituals, come the Fey Watchers. Bound in service to the people of the Weald, they protect the territories and tribes in return for bloody sacrifices and sacral bone. The Fey draw some form of power through the bones of men; and so decorate themselves in headdresses, shackled together with the skeletons of their offerings.

The folk of the cloth and Candle are a reclusive and fearful sort; The emergence of the Darkness brought a strong faith in all things ethereal, divine and powerful, to shield the common man from the nightmares that lurked in the void. The Cleric’s Guild was birthed by such strong desire for light, and the Hunter’s Mantle was birthed by a desire to combat the dark.

Despite being two halves of a same whole, The Cleric’s Guild and Hunters of the Mantle are disdainful of each others’ methods.

The Clerics aim to shy away far from The Breach, whereas Hunters charge headlong into those swirling eddies of tar and pitch along the Frontier. 

Adelaide was an exception made clear from her very childhood; She was raised up in Blanc during the last years of its monarchy, and witnessed firsthand the slaughtering of her kin at the hands of the Duc Blanc. This trauma urged her to take up the Candle, undergoing mentorship in the fortress of Tor’s Claim.

Late at night, when all is calm, one might catch a set of unsettling eyes glinting from a nearby treetop. They are the Nycta, and they wait for your moment of weakness.

It is a common mistake for travelers to confuse these hideous winged beasts with Owls, as that is exactly what they mean to disguise themselves as. Their malintent is what differs them from their Raptor alias, however. They lack tailfeathers, and bear eyes with no pupils.

When their false visage falls away, their truer nature becomes readily apparent in the form of multiple eyes, and a large toothy maw that unhinges at what is assumed to be the neck.

Fortunately, they are defined by their cowardice. They intend to wait for the right moment to strike, when their prey is weakened.

And then their dark intent surfaces.

They swoop down from their perches, grinning all the while. Staring deep into the eyes of their victim, they slowly begin to unhinge their jaw, taunting and intimidating them, with the most grotesque of guffaws. They torture their prey for hours, before finally devouring them whole and claiming their essence of fear.

They say that for each victim a Nycta steals away, another eyeball is there to stay, ripping apart the mask they hide themselves with, to force the white bauble to the surface.

Gasthael is surely a strange character. He showed up in the small frontier town of Smolder one day, claimed a home for himself, and has been selling goods and wares to travellers and hunters ever since.

No person has ever dared ask him of his origin, as his deathly cool demeanor can suddenly be replaced by hysterical mania, bursting out laughing at his own jokes, while any jest from patrons goes by unnoticed. 

Whispers in the receding corners of the local tavern say that he may dabble in darker arts, like those of the Wealdfolk, but as his presence brings Smolder protection through the Hunters that pass through, he is tolerated for the time being.

His gait and the way he carries himself is disturbingly animated for a man his age, almost like a slithering snake. People describe a social conversation with him as being trapped in a room with a particularly grotesque insect that one does not want to approach. His aloofness is almost frustratingly disorienting.