Old Sarkorian Book

Note · 10 gp · Weight 0

"In the western mountains there dwelled a clan whose name is no longer spoken today. They were a brave and hardy people who would go down into the deep caves and return laden with glittering ore. The clan flourished: it had all things in abundance, including food and honey, because their neighbors gladly bought the things they forged from the underground ore. Trouble came to the clan on the last day of Calistril, when the mountain passes were ready to shake off winter's icy grip, like hounds waking from a long sleep. Clamor and clouds of dust rose up from the caves that night. Once the dust had settled, the miners went down to look, for they were brave people who feared neither darkness nor falling rocks. But what they found was not darkness or a cave-in. What they found was the Pack. The Follower, whose true name had been forgotten generations before, was of clan blood. The Follower was a despicable sorcerer, a degenerate who had turned his back on his ancestors. He had loved the Daughter of the wise clan Patriarch most ardently, but her heart had held no warmth for him. The Follower had stormed into the dark depths of the caves, seething in his resentment, and with much wailing and berating, plotted his revenge. That is where the dread Pack found him, following the scent of profane magic and vice. The Pack devoured him, and in so doing, tasted human blood for the first time, and discovered it was to its liking. The Pack killed the miners who descended into the caves, and thereafter it began venturing up the surface each night to devour one of the villagers before dragging the carcass back to the caves to gnaw on the bones. The wise Patriarch called the clan together in the long house and spoke, then the elders of the clan spoke, then the warriors, and then anyone could say their piece. The ancestors had revealed to the Patriarch that the clan was being punished by the gods for failing to recognize the degenerate sorcerer in their midst, and that no deity would intercede for them now. Lamenting their fate, the clan left their homes, the ancestors' carved images, and their temples to the gods, and fled. That caravan of grief made its way in silence, but not all the clan was represented among its number. Only women, children, and decrepit elders did it contain, for the strong men of the clan had remained behind. Many days they sat in the long house, sharpening their weapons and praying. Each night, one of the men would go down into the caves to satisfy the Pack's hunger with his own flesh. When all the men were dead and the Pack's hunger drove it to the surface, the caravan was already long gone, and the monsters could not pick up their trail. The caravan traveled day and night without rest until it reached the steppe, the very edge of their known world, whence the peaks of their beloved mountains could no longer be seen. And there they settled, living threadbare, meager lives, because they did not know how to rear animals and live the nomadic life that required, and because they had no strong warriors among them. The clan quickly dwindled — the old died, and the young found husbands and wives in other clans and left to join new households. Years later, during one of the harsh steppe winters, the clan Patriarch fell sick and died in the arms of his Daughter, and no one could recall the location of that house where the clan had once resided in such freedom and dignity." The final pages of the book have been roughly torn out.