HOME | DD

Description
The horses were lost. "Swallowed by the Fogs" Swiftfang explained. An unfortunate event, but the party still had most of their supplies.
It was decided that the pack would lead the party to the base of the Mountain of Dreams and to the path that would lead to the home of "the Unnamed". The trip took until the sun was high in the sky.
The pack left once the party began to follow the mountain trail. The farewells were friendly. Swiftfang warned the party that they should rest on the mountain and leave the next day, after the Fogs had cleared.
The same wolf shouldered roughly past Spinel as it left, and when Spinel looked back at it, its predatory grin set a chill down his spine. It winked in a way that seemed almost to threaten him. Spinel nodded curtly but politely, then turned away.
Fernweh, having seen the two exchanges, chuckled. Putting a wizened arm over Spinel's shoulder, he quietly said, "Boy, ye're nervous f'r naught. That's th' way they greet their rivals. Ye've made an enemy o' a friend, ye have. That one'll fight ye at every chance when there's naught but game t' be made, but when th' fire's on, that same one'll gladly die at yer back.
"It's their way, an' odd t' ye, t' be sure. But know th' Wolves're a fightin' breed, an' they fight f'r pleasure as much as f'r pride."
He spun away and laughed. "Be glad ye met with a male. Had he been a she, ye'd be bound t' her 'til ye left her a few clutches o' yer seed runnin' th' plains. An' then ye'd be free only 'f ye count it a freedom t' travel with th' Pack."
More seriously, he added, "An' they don't sink their teeth into ye unless they consider ye worthy o' th' task, an' it looks he'd seen ye so from th' offset. Rare honors f'r one as thin on years as yerself. I ran with a Pack f'r sixteen years without gainin' th' Bite. O' course," he ended with a twinkle in his eye, "I found a way t' get one eventually!" He revealed a ring of tooth shaped scars similar to those Spinel had gained by bending down and letting his faded pants slip down to his thighs.
Selice, having come into the conversation at the tail end, cried out in surprised indignation. The stone she had been observing let fly and--quite without her deliberation--hit the old wanderer dead in the center of his Bite. Fernweh leapt up in comical pain, and moved to lead the group, massaging the pain from his now covered rear. The others' laughter followed him to Inlé, who had not seen the spectacle, and did not care either way.
The path was not difficult, and the party easily climbed the Mountain of Dreams to the lonely shack they sought.
"Eremite," Inlé called. Spinel was still somewhat unnerved by the way Inlé could call for someone without raising his voice. It seemed that he could just let his voice travel without a care for distance or other noise. There was some trick, Spinel decided, that allowed Inlé to choose who would or would not hear his voice, and it mattered not at all their arrangement around him.
"Eremite, I have come with a message for you."
No noise came from the shack. Nothing moved, nothing stirred.
Inlé repeated himself, "Eremite, I have come with a message for you."
Still there was nothing. Spinel began to wonder if the eremite was not around or, worse, had died up here alone.
"Eremite ..." Inlé began a third time, but a cracked rasp cut him off.
"Fine, fine. Give it and leave, then," a voice croaked from within the shack. It was not a well-tuned voice; likely it had been some time since its last use.
"It is a scroll for you. Would you take it?"
"Just throw it this way." A hand sprang from a hole in the wall. "And then leave."
"As you say." Inlé placed the scroll in the eremite's grasp, then turned to leave. The others turned to follow, but none had gotten more than a handful of steps before they were stopped.
"Wait!" the Eremite rasped. "This is from the goddesses of magic. Stay, I may have been a bit ..." The eremite's words trailed off for a moment.
Muttering half to himself, the eremite said, "Hastled? No, no. Hastate? No ... oh, bother ... Hasty!
"I may have been hasty in shooing you out. Come inside, it's too bright by two to be out there."
"There won't be room," Selice said without thinking.
A dark eye came to the hole the arm had stretched from. It focused on Selice before saying, "Remember, girl. Things are not often what they are seen to be. It is rare for a thing to simply be what it looks like and nothing more. This truth that we accept in waking is how much more true in dreaming? So much more on this Mountain of Dreams."
The eye pulled back. "Shoes off at the door, mind. I may be solitary, but I am hardly ... barbital, barberry, barbarous!"
The party followed Inlé into the small shack, and Selice found it was, in fact, far larger inside than out. The walls that seemed barely too far apart for her to touch with outstretched hands outside seemed minutes apart within. The grass carpet was more lush than outside, and the ground beneath was soft and cushioning. The springy softness of the grass and ground seemed to pull the fatigue from Selice's feet, and she was glad to have her shoes off. The room was dim, but light enough for one to see slipped listlessly through gaps in the ceiling far above. A hundred of the shacks seen outside could have fit inside this one with room to move between them.
Awe is a simple emotion. It is something one often feels in small doses, a tempered version of wonder. Some even touch wonder undiluted on rare occasion. But few let pure wonder do more than touch their lips. The draught of wonder--raw, pure, and powerful--that Selice drew in this dwarfing, little, extravagant shed almost knocked her flat out on the cushiony ground.
And seated in the center of this area, as though he had not moved since before the party had assembled in Briqueward, was the eremite. His skin was pale as moonlight, but seemed weathered as if he spent too much time under the sun. Moon-baked, one might say. His hair was long and matted into a coarse, somehow glossy, jet lock down his back, and his eyes were pools of the same jet gloss. He was unshaven, though his beard seemed only to grow in patches below the temples and under the chin. The patches on the side wove back into the rest of his hair, and the three fistfuls under his chin hung like a black wattle. His chest was bare, his legs covered in pale leather. He sat cross-legged, the soles of his bare feet cushioning his palms.
Inlé strode calmly toward their host, alone in an oblivion he must, to Selice's thinking, wear about him like his robes.
"Come," the eremite called. "Sit here. Join me."
Inlé sat across from the eremite, flanked by Selice and Arrats. The circle was closed by Spinel beside Selice, and Fernweh beside Arrats. When they were settled, the eremite briefly looked each of them over momentarily. With a knowing smile, he began.
"You do not know me, though I know some little of each of you. The realms of Dreaming are open to me to a large degree, though I am hardly master of them. I see in each of your eyes those dreams you have shaped of late, and I know you for them." He nodded at each person around the circle as he made mention of them. "A high knight, a crown princess," he hesitated at Inlé, "a messenger, an Archcardinal, and one of the Eldest Mortal." Selice saw a spark of recognition on Arrats' face as Fernweh's title was given. But it vanished the next instant when the old man cackled.
"A messenger! Ye know all our lines but Inlé's, eh? An' so specific at first, boy. Ye should not try namin' a thing when ye don't understand it." He grinned toothily. "But ye'd not be th' first, nor will ye be th' last t' find him a puzzle."
The eremite shrugged. "Your 'Inlé' does not dream. I had naught to work with but the actions I witnessed myself."
Arrats smiled wryly, "He doesn't sleep much either. It's been nearly two weeks since he and I began traveling together, and he's slept perhaps four times. Once was collapsing from exhaustion. You claim an affinity with dream. Is inducing natural sleep within your capacity?"
"You would have me force him into the Dreaming? No, I cannot. I can enhance rest, but not sleep. But the Dreaming is closest to our world here. Dreams are most vivid upon this mountain. If there is anywhere that one could rest and dream fully, it is here, in my home. For that reason, I rarely leave. It seems, though, that I must make an unexpected trip."
Inlé spoke, "And are you prepared for such a trip?"
"I am," the eremite answered. "But not today. It is too late in the day for us to begin. We would be lost in the Fogs by morning. We may as well stay here and set off after a sleep. We would reach the foot of the mountain as the Fogs dispersed, tomorrow. And then a full day between us by nightfall.
"Of course," he shrugged, "there is little to be done until it is time for sleep. Unless you are interested in story. Here on this Mountain of Dreams, story is a powerful thing, as they gather and grow for ever, the grasses of this mountain."
The eremite pulled a single stalk of grass and rolled it lightly in his fingers contemplatively. He stared at it for long moments before looking up at the young pair to his right. "Would you hear a tale, princess? One of love and daring and of the past?"
"I would," Selice said. "Do you know many?"
The eremite gestured at the lush ground around them. "The grasses of this mountain, princess. I do not know many stories, I know most. Not all, perhaps ..." He looked at Inlé briefly. "But very few escape this lodge for long."
Popping the stalk of grass into his mouth, he chewed it lightly. "This particular story may have some ... relatival, relevé, relevance! to this gathering, though perhaps not. With a pair of Bitten, you must be powerful warriors. One is fresh-Bitten, and does not know all it entails, but the elder has had his Bite for some time. This story, then, is for the benefit of the young. I dare say it should entertain you all, and perhaps even the Archcardinal does not know this story. It is old, of course. More than four Holy Winters gone, in the most recent, in fact. And spanning five in all."
The eremite paused then, chewing the stalk in his mouth, and swallowing it. "You may want to get out whatever foodstuffs you will wish to eat. This tale is a long one."
Food was laid out, and the eremite began his tale.
"This happened a long time ago," the eremite began. "That is important to remember, because this world has changed in so many ways that this would be impossible now. It was almost impossible then." He closed his eyes, and no longer opened them.

This story happened a long time ago. A Holy Winter had fallen over the land. The gods were silent. For many, this changed very little. Magic continued to work, for in those days the magics used were internal. They were not so powerful as those magics we now use, but neither were they relied on as they are now.
The clerics and the oracles of the time were in a panic, for at the time, a Holy Winter had not occurred in living memory. And at the time, living memory was deep in a way that is lost in our time. Twelve hundred years it had been since the last great Winter, and those who knew the Winter had come--for indeed, many did not realize--those who knew were filled with fear and trembling.
The future was uncertain. Divination of every sort failed, and there were no prophecies to guide them. Without any hope for the future, clerics grew more frantic, more fanatic, more futile in their attempts to gain the ears of their gods. To no avail, though, for the gods were dead enough. All hope lost, many clerics sacrificed their own lives upon the altars of their gods. This despair lasted for five years. After that, there was only resignation.
The gods, of course, were not un-busy themselves. When a god dies, he does not simply release his spirit as do we mortals. First he must throw off the robes of immortality, and this requires a descent into the mortal realms. Time is, of course, a concept the immortals, and nothing more. Except in the form of deep time--that long period where a man can be born, live a long life, and die without so much as a heartbeat passing by the god's scale--many of the gods had trouble thinking. The scale was too small for some, and so hurrying to mortality meant half a decade's time by their reckoning. After all, they still had to maintain their responsibilities to enough of a degree to keep the world active.
Now in those days, a god cared only for one thing. No god ruled more than an aspect of the whole of something. Ten gods there were for the sun alone! Every type of tree, every kind of animal, every race of man, had at least one god dedicated to it. Most fell under the protection of more than one god. A god to guide the man. A god to guide the family, and thus, the man. A god to guide his people, his nation, his race. Five gods for guiding a single man. A god to protect the eyes of men, a god to protect their sight. Often it was that the gods overlapped one another.
They met on a wide field, all of them together, and divided themselves into factions determined by the politics of the gods, which we mere mortals cannot fathom. In some of these factions, twin gods were turned against one another. In the end, forty different god-armies stood pitching camps all about the edge of the field. But though they were many, gods they still were. The ensuing battles were long and fierce. The divine energies could be seen, heard, and felt rocketing through the air all about the world, so that mankind became afraid. Some of the gods fell, but not many. Too evenly matched were the factions to fall one to another, and when an ally fell, he was guarded until he could rise again.
The divine energies settled over the world, and some few mortals were touched by this magic. Fewer still of these were able to more capably draw this power into themselves. As they grew stronger, these precious few sought one another out. Only mere handfuls of these mortals existed, and they went unnoticed by the warring gods. These mortals are now known in legend throughout the world. They called themselves the Chosen, or the Usurpers, for usurp they did.
When they found themselves strong enough, this handful of mortals rose up and went to war with the gods. The gods were many but divided, the Chosen precious few and united. What their goals were, at first, who now can say? Some believe they planned to return the gods to their own realms, or destroy the gods and live on without their meddling. Others believe that what happened had been planned to happen exactly as it did.
The Chosen, powerful with the collected magics of the old gods, reached the field and pitched camp directly in the center of the field. They set themselves where the gods warred each day, so that the gods could not ignore them. But gods are powerful in a way that mere mortals cannot even conceive. To the gods, the mortals were nothing more than a change in scenery, and they returned to their battles without so much as second glances at the Chosen.
This allowed the Chosen to determine how best to attack the gods. They watched the gods war, and learned from them. Tactics, melee, single combat, factional variation, all were observed, noted, and explored. The Chosen learned how best to undermine their enemies' defenses, and how best to keep their advantages when they had them. Only then did they attack, and their success speaks for the effectiveness they had learned.
The Chosen became the new gods. After the long, dangerous war where most of the mortals and many of the gods were killed, a peace was made among them. Very few of the old gods were much more than glorified spirits now, their energies wasted and absorbed. But very few of the new gods had the knowledge, the wisdom, or the experience to control properly all they had earned. The old gods became servants and advisors. Having little power, they were rarely worshipped any longer, if at all, and then namelessly. The goddess of nature had a full court of forest spirits, animal guardians, and the like. Lord Sun had a handful of retainers to aide in his progress across the sky each day. And so too, the other gods.
Save Moon. Moon had no retainers. Moon had no servants. Neither advisors nor aides. The gods who had held the aspects of the old moon were, like the new Moon, stoic and battle-ready. Each moon god, though few in number--a mere seven--fought fiercely and valiantly, singular among their peers in having killed more gods amongst themselves than all the armies combined before the appearance of the Usurpers. A paltry few in the resulting massacre, but that they could steel themselves to do such revealed a resolve and conviction that terrified the other gods.
When the Chosen moved to attack, the moon's aspects were the first of the old gods to turn their attention to the 'distraction' and the last of them to fall to it. Moon killed them in single combat, proving the superior of each in turn. And with each aspect falling, Moon was given a blessing and a curse. The aspects each kissed Moon with their last breath after whispering of things to come. Even knowing the curses Moon would take on, the Chosen mortal pressed on, certain that the deaths of the aspects would end the resistance of the old gods.
And it did. Moon ended the war, leaving some of the old gods alive and able to continue as aides to the new gods. But in doing so, Moon had sacrificed all the power from the old moon and only Moon knows what else. Not even the other gods know Moon's curses in full, for Moon keeps counsel with none but Moon ...

"What does this have to do with the Bitten?" Selice interrupted.
The eremite paused as he considered the interruption.
"Listen and learn, girly," Fernweh said solemnly. "That was only a build-up. Th' Teller must first explain th' world before ye can understand th' story he wields."
"Quite so, sir," the eremite agreed. "May I continue?"

Now, Moon was alone, and had all the power of seven fierce gods. This made Moon powerful. This made Moon mad. For example, none now remember or know the sex of Moon. Some say he was first a mortal man, some that she was woman. Others claim Moon had no gender until Moon decided to wear both as mortals wear baubles. Whatever truth there is to this, Moon is man and woman always.
But man or woman, she was still alone. And learning his abilities. When all the other gods had formed their courts and had withdrawn from the mortal world, Moon remained on the world. She need only use a seventh of his power to keep her namesake in motion, and the other six portions were his to wield as she saw fit. So he wandered the world to build her own court.
Among the thirianthropes are the tales of Moon's collection of his court. They call them Moon's Beasts, or Moon's Lovers, and they are the progenitors of the thirianthropes. Of these, the lycanthropes are those most closely tied to Moon, as they hold the possibility of more than one progenitor. Or rather, Moon holds them as favorites for her own reasons.
The story of Moon's Lovers is simple. Moon has all the malleability of his namesake, and in the early days of her madness, she rarely held any form long. Finding creatures that fit his current form, he would approach one, mount it, and it would bear his children soon afterward. Being the lover of a god had other effects on the beasts, of course. They grew powerful of body and mind, sentient, and long-living. And when they reached the end of their mortal lives, Moon swooped down and brought them up to his home to live in his courts.
Many, many beasts birthed Moon's children. Bear, ox, owl, lion, snake, rabbit, deer. And others. Always, Moon came as the male. Always, Moon stayed long enough for the dam to be bearing, never long enough to see the children born. Moon would visit, on occasion, but never long. He did not tend his children, for they could grow on their own. He did not visit his brides, for they must learn to be strong themselves.
Wolf was the exception. When Old Wolf had grown too old to lead his pack, he had been forced out. But Old Wolf lived on despite. Now, wolves are social beasts, and cannot live in solitude. Somehow, though, he lived on. And the hunger and the solitude drove him mad. Old Wolf was already beyond the given age for such beasts, when he came across Moon. She had taken the form of an old wolf bitch resting in a clearing after a kill when Old Wolf, he found her. She was mad with divine power and loneliness, and he with age and solitude.
Some say he attacked Moon, mounting her before she was aware of his presence, others that he moved for her kill first, and they coupled after he feasted. In time, Moon birthed the first litter of lycanthropes--the werewolves. Moon and Old Wolf raised the First Pack until the Pack could get on on its own. Then she took him up to her palace to join her other lovers.
The werewolves remain the most loyal and most loved of Moon's many children. They follow her and worship her nearly to the exclusion of all other gods. And she grants them more of her power than any of her other children. Moon still walks the world as often as she walks through her courts. Her most common form now is that of a werewolf woman, and she walks among the Clans of the Wolf more often than among any of her other children.
The lycanthropes, of all her children were most strongly favored with her blessings and so were most powerfully afflicted by her curses. None know all of the curses placed on Moon, but the madness is one. Lycanthropes are often called the Moon-mad, because the madness of Moon and Old Wolf was passed on to their children. Some go mad under the moon when it is full or when it is gone. Some go mad when they are around a thing they love too much. Some go mad in battle, or in love-making. All go mad. And to the lycanthrope, all things are maddening.
The Pack is not only a social group and a family. The Pack keeps its members sane, each member bearing the madness so it can disperse more easily, that they do not destroy themselves. Alone, a werewolf usually goes mad within two weeks. Within five, he is irreparably damaged, but savable. After two months, a werewolf is permanently mad, and after five, he is completely beyond saving. Werewolves consider those few so damaged to be already dead. The lycanthrope has become a feral thing whose only hope is that he die before he finds and kills all he loved in life. Those so driven mad are called the Lost, and are likely to die within a year of becoming Lost. Their madness consumes them mind, body, and soul.
This horror is balanced by blessings, though. In their human form, lycanthropes' senses are far beyond those of a human, and they tend to be stronger, swifter, and more cunning. Their ability to transform from man to beast is another blessing, shared by all of Moon's children. Moon's children can, with practice, control these transformations. Her wolf children are doubly blessed, as they control their transformations naturally, and can grow to change into other forms as well. And then there is the Bite.
Old Wolf, inspired, perhaps, by Moon's deception in appearing as another wolf, though she once was human, determined that, in a sense, not all of his children would fall from his seed. The Bite was a way of inviting others who showed a special sort of promise to be treated as pack-mates. For the Biter, the Bitten is a second vessel for his soul. Lover, boon friend, or rival, the Bitten is someone who can stave off the madness of the Biter as not even another lycanthrope would. The Bitten are treated as a loose, individual Pack by the Clan of the Wolf, and have all the social benefits associated with such position.
But even as the moon has a bright side, so too it has a dark one. The Biter, if driven mad in the presence of the Bitten, is almost certainly Lost. The madness is stronger, as well, warping the very world around them in some cases, creating changes in the world that not even the new gods could have planned for. Some say Moon loves these changes, others that he is horrified by them. Either way, Moon does not forbid the Bite, and the other gods do not often try to correct the changes made by her wayward children.
The Pack of the Hidden Moon is the Pack who least often interact with other mortals. Theirs is one of the oldest Packs, and one of the most tortured. Their founder was of the First Pack, and he was the first to Bite as well. These both are points of pride for the Hidden Moon, as they are the only Pack able to trace back to the First Pack without any change to their Pack, meaning that other Packs have divided into multiple Packs descended from the same forebear, or new Packs descended from more varied stock. Descendants of Hidden Moon's forefather, Fang, are only found in Hidden Moon.
They are proud of their heredity, and are most likely to invoke the Bite despite their isolation. This is not to say that they Bite more often than others of the Clan, but that considering their isolation, they seem to draw only those who fit the image of their ancestors' ideals most powerfully. And of this, too, they are proud.
But Fang was also the first of the Lost, as many of the other Packs are quick to point out. The Hidden Moon do not deny this, but they do not speak with open pride of this portion of their originator's tale. He was lost on this very mountain, killing his lovers, both a werewolf lover and his Bitten. But Fang was no mere werewolf. He was the son of a god.
His madness seeped out of him and polluted the mountain and the lands around it. A fog spilled off of the mountain and settled at its base. Nightmare beasts sprung from his mind and began to spread to the world. Fang's children saw the beasts and tried to destroy them.
The Hidden Moon was unable to eliminate all of these beasts, but they were able to contain them in the mists. And then the sun rose and the mists cleared. The Pack of the Hidden Moon believed they had succeeded against the beasts. But, before dawn, the blanket they now call the Fogs of Unrest rose again. And with it came the nightmares not only of Fang, but of those werewolves who had rested where the Fogs had risen up.
The Pack fought until the mists cleared again, then retreated. This cycle has been repeated ever since. The Pack knows where it is safe to sleep, and over the generations have developed an affinity for the Dreaming. They can smell nightmare as a hunter smells blood, and they fight whatever beasts rise from the mists. Many of these beasts have been slain, though some have evaded capture for centuries, and a precious few still remember the first rise of the Fogs.
Though the territory they protect is one of the smallest for so developed a Pack, this is because the dangers of the Hidden Moon's territory is likely the most dangerous. The Pack of the Hidden Moon takes pride in that, though they are ever few, and though their dangers are as varied as the Dreaming, never once has any problem from their territory spilled over into another territory. What's more, whatever troubles have found their way into Hidden Moon's territory from another Pack's lands has never left without being taken care of.
The only thing that has been beyond the Hidden Moon's power is Fang. Fang was never found after the Fogs of Unrest rose from the ground on that first day. The Pack searched the mountain and the Fogs, but never found him again. Some say he became one with the mists, consumed in their making. Others believe he fades with the Fogs each morning, but has retained enough sanity to avoid his children, who he still loves even in his insanity. Still others claim he somehow escaped the Mountain in those first nights while the Pack was unused to guarding the Fogs. How easy, they argue, it would be to scent another Wolf and ignore it when you fight monsters without names. However Fang disappeared, he has never sprung up again in story.
The Pack of the Hidden Moon still honors their primogenitor, with each leader adding the fang attribute to their name. Theirs is the only clan who uses fang in names at all, as the others consider it ill luck. But none of Hidden Moon's leaders has been Lost since Fang. In fact, very few Hidden Moons succumb to the madness that is inherent to the children of Moon. That is not to say that they do not go mad from time to time, but that their madness rarely damages them as it does their brethren.
Unlike in the other Packs, a pack-mate who has succumbed to madness is sent into the Fogs for a few days. While other Packs restrain their mad mates and force them calm, the Hidden Moon releases them entirely. Often, a Hidden Moon warrior will return within a few days, while younger members return in less time, once more sane. They claim that the madness leaves them as nightmare beasts leak from them and, when they have destroyed their nightmares, they are sane once more.
Rival Packs claim that the Hidden Moon are all constantly mad, but are just able to conceal their madness. These packs claim the Hidden Moon deals in atrocities that they cover up by blaming the creatures of the Fogs. Hidden Moon pointedly ignores claims of cannibalism, child sacrifice, and other acts of equal or greater derangement. These are the things of their own nightmares, and they destroy them nightly.
To date, the Hidden Moon has ever chosen their leader based on a variety of qualities and, unlike most other Packs, their challenge, when one is made, takes a full lunar cycle, that Moon and Old Wolf may watch and grant favor in each quality. If a pack-mate believes they could do better than their leader, they stake their challenge, and they have until the next night Moon hides her face from the world to remove their challenge if they so choose.
The leader of Hidden Moon is not necessarily the best warrior, nor the wisest, nor the most subtle. They need not be best in any way at all. They need only be better overall in the twenty-eight tests of challenge. This means that the pack-leader must be strong, swift, subtle, wise, social and many other things, but their pack-mates may be superior in some ways.
Longfang, pack-leader during the first Holy Winter after Moon's ascension, kept himself as pack leader by challenging others, instead of having challengers coming to him. In that way, he found the best qualities of each in his Pack and, being himself one of the wisest, placed them in positions where they used their strengths when a pressing need arose, but were forced to strengthen their weaknesses at the same time.
This golden age of the Pack lasted for six years, enduring the four year Winter by a year. Longfang's challenges were constant, and though he faced as many as four others during each challenge, he took only one month to rest each year. His pack-mates honored this respite, and never challenged him during that month. They knew that even their leader needed rest.
Longfang never once lost a challenge. And though each of those who challenged or were challenged by Longfang understood they would likely not defeat him, all tried their hardest and few begrudged their losses. But constant as his challenges were, Longfang refused to rest any time where work was required. He Hunted the Fogs with the warriors, tended the pups with the young mothers, prepared food with the elders, built and repaired what things needed work, and told tales to the younglings as often as would have been his task were he still a warrior. He was too good a leader and too good a man, and that was his downfall.
On the first morning of his month of rest that would begin his seventh year of leading the Hidden Moon, an attack of the First Formed--those beasts sprung from the mind of Fang himself--forced every warrior in the Pack to fight the beasts off. The battle succeeded in pushing the First Formed back until the mists began to fade. But when the Fogs of unrest had lifted, Longfang strode away from the rest of the warriors, falling a few paces from them. The madness had taken hold of him, he told the others, and he would wait behind until the Fogs next rose.
None argued against this, knowing Longfang to be quite sensitive to the madness in himself. Though it had not consumed him, Longfang was as prone to bouts of madness as any werewolf was. Longfang was adept at sensing the madness and so tended to leave into the Fog-Land before others noticed the madness in him.
The next morning, the First Formed attacked again. The warriors who rose to defend were surprised to see the now obviously mad Longfang tearing at the rear of the nightmare army they faced. Though he was normally quite skilled as a warrior, that night his battle-fury was so strong that they say the nightmares quailed at his approach. He fought with a power none of his Pack had ever before seen, nor ever saw again.
Alone Longfang fought, pushing deeper into the ranks of the enemy, growing ever closer to the other warriors. Without realizing, Longfang forced his way into a circle of First Formed. There they halted his advance. Longfang fought a handful of the most powerful nightmares alone for the remainder of the Fogs' duration that day, though his loyal warriors tried as best they could to reach him. To no avail.
When the Fogs lifted and the battle was ended, the warriors rushed to their leader's side, where he lay in a pool of blood and sweat and the residue of nightmare. Not even he could say how many nightmares he'd destroyed that night, but Longfang knew he had reduced the ranks of the First Formed by three--a feat never before achieved by a gang of warriors in a single night. They had only ever killed one of the First Formed in a night, and that had been a point of great honor. A gang who had killed a First Formed had a feast held in their honor. It was a rarity to be able even to hold one at bay with less than ten warriors.
Longfang was carried to the encampment despite his arguments. He claimed that there was still some small amount of madness within him. None of his warriors, having seen him the night before, could disagree. But their love for their leader was stronger even than their bonds to tradition, and he was taken to their camp.
The regenerative capabilities of the thirianthropes is phenomenal in comparison to other races. But even among the Clans of the Moon, the lycanthropes' ability to recover from even fatal wounds is singular. Atop this, the healers of the Hidden Moon can heal or cure injuries and maladies both natural and nightmare. Very few warriors die of any wound that allows them to return to their home still breathing. Most are able to walk back unaided after some rest. Those few injuries that a warrior cannot regenerate without aid are still unlikely to kill, as even they can be resisted until healing is available.
Longfang's injuries were many, and much of what remained intact had lost the form it should have. The Pack wept at the sight of their leader as every healer worked furiously to fix him. The efforts of the healers that day are sung as often as the splendor of their leader's fight that dawn. But when the healers had reached their limits, Longfang still was barely healed. He did not recover and, though his body appeared to have been pulled back together, after hours and hours of effort, he appeared more like a doll being restored than a warrior of unsurpassed ability.
Somehow, despite his wounds, Longfang lived still. He called for his wife and his son and, when they came, took each in hand. He smiled and closed his eyes saying, "Even in the grip of the madness, my love for you burned bright. Without you, there was nothing of me. That you live proves I have never failed. May my love ever shield you." His last breath spent, Longfang died.
His death caused a silence in the Fogs of Unrest. A full month lasted in which no nightmare beast rose from the mists. Even the First Formed honor the death of so great a warrior. Perhaps this is because of their ties to the Pack of the Hidden Moon, where honor and loyalty are the most praised traits.
Since that time, Longfang's heirs have been warriors of few words who bite only those who show a particular madness in battle. They are loyal warriors, even beyond the high standards of the Hidden Moon, and are known to surpass themselves in death-rages that transcend their mortal power. Theirs is a madness tempered by love, and none have killed those they loved even in madness. They refuse to take the position of pack leader, being susceptible to short but wild bouts of madness. Longfang's sensitivity to madness has carried on in his children, and they have a stronger connection to the Dreaming. Their dreams conjure new beasts in the Fogs even if they merely rest within its bounds. Any stray thought can conjure a monster, if thought by Longfang's heirs.
Three of Longfang's heirs have been Lost since his death. Despite this, they were of no danger to the Pack. They wandered into the Fogs, destroying more nightmare beasts than even their twisted minds may have conjured during their lives. And their connection with the Dreaming became stronger with each day they spent Lost until they vanished into the Fogs for ever. They are the only Lost who were not hunted, for their own Hunt was seemingly aimed at the First Formed who killed their ancestor. And the First Formed seem to avoid these warriors particularly. The First Formed have lived long, and their memory is equally long.

"And that, as they say, is that," the eremite said.
"But what does it all mean?" Selice asked. "What does the story have to do with us?"
"With you, princess? Nothing. Except that you have seen the Hidden Moon's current pack leader and his personally selected gang. His dozen warriors each could lead another Pack if they chose to leave the Hidden Moon, and songs would be sung the world over if they chose to wander from this land. But few will leave for longer than it takes to visit the World Tree.
"Now," the eremite continued, "two of your number have been Bitten. Your young knight, princess, has been Bitten so recently that only a Hidden Moon could be the Biter. More, he carries the scent of Longfang's current ... sciolist, scintilla, scion! The elder of the Bitten has outlived his Biter, but it was a prestigious beast who bit him."
"The one who bit me," Spinel said. "Do you know his name? Or anything else?"
The eremite chuckled. "Curious? He is called Silentstride, for he can sneak up on his own shadow without it noticing. His power as a warrior is also quite phenomenal. The warriors of Hidden Moon fight one another in simple combat to test their strength, and Silentstride has rarely lost, even against as many as three opponents.
"Once he and three other Hidden Moon warriors competed in the Clan of the Wolf's battle tournament at the World Tree. Hidden Moons have since been banned from competition. That was Silentstride's first year as a warrior, and he has only grown in the following decade. Two years ago, when he had seen his second decade in full, Swiftfang took him into his gang. It is a rare thing to see the one without the other now."
"So he is young, then?" Selice asked. "I could not tell their ages."
The eremite laughed raspily. "He is the youngest in that gang by a decade. At twenty-three, he is still quite young."
"Twenty-three?" the knight echoed. "He's my age."
The eremite smiled. "Little wonder he bit you, then. I sense much similarity between yourself and Longfang. When you are older, you will be a knight without peer. If you live long enough to reach your potential."
"An' yer sure o' me Biter's death?" Fernweh asked with a pained look. "True, I haven't seen or heard o' her in years, but I'd hoped ..."
"She left this world the year the princess was born." There was no pity in the eremite's eyes, but there was a sort of pained tone to his voice. "Her last dream was of you, though."
"Ye c'n tell such things?"
"The dreams of the werewolves are stronger than most mortal dreams. Since they are descended of Moon, daughter of Dream, and heir to the Dreaming, they are easier to pick out in the Dreaming.
"What's more, her scent and pattern remain on the Bite for ever. With that, I can find her in the Dreaming. That scent has been gone these eighteen years, but her last dream was strong enough to draw my full attention.
"If it is any consolation, she loved you entirely."
"Did she get herself Lost with me gone?" Fernweh asked quietly.
The eremite paused. "No. You saved her from that fate."
"Well that's good then," the old wanderer sounded his age. "I'll have t' see th' Pack an' visit her Last Stand."
The eremite continued telling his stories long into the night.

"In all my years, I have never known someone so impatient as you," Arrats called to Inlé in frustration.
Everyone had woken a few hours ago to find him gone. After quickly packing their things, the five travelers followed the path down to the edges of the Fogs. Where Inlé stood impatiently an arm's length from the thick mist.
He turned to face the others. "I find solitude fulfilling on occasion. The eremite's abode, spacious as it is, was too crowded for my tastes."
"With only six of us?" Arrats cried. "You're impossible!"
"There were more than six in our company, madam. That their physical presence was not about does not mean that their true presence was also absent."
"True," the eremite agreed. "Sometimes the dreams and stories are too much for myself as well."
"An' how often do ye leave th' shack?"
"About annually. I visit the World Tree behind the Pack of the Hidden Moon. That would likely have been in a few weeks' time this year."
"It seems you may lead them this time," Inlé said. "We head in the direction of the World Tree at the moment."
The mists began to disperse, and Inlé walked on without looking back. The others followed quickly behind him.

Description
The horses were lost. "Swallowed by the Fogs" Swiftfang explained. An unfortunate event, but the party still had most of their supplies.
It was decided that the pack would lead the party to the base of the Mountain of Dreams and to the path that would lead to the home of "the Unnamed". The trip took until the sun was high in the sky.
The pack left once the party began to follow the mountain trail. The farewells were friendly. Swiftfang warned the party that they should rest on the mountain and leave the next day, after the Fogs had cleared.
The same wolf shouldered roughly past Spinel as it left, and when Spinel looked back at it, its predatory grin set a chill down his spine. It winked in a way that seemed almost to threaten him. Spinel nodded curtly but politely, then turned away.
Fernweh, having seen the two exchanges, chuckled. Putting a wizened arm over Spinel's shoulder, he quietly said, "Boy, ye're nervous f'r naught. That's th' way they greet their rivals. Ye've made an enemy o' a friend, ye have. That one'll fight ye at every chance when there's naught but game t' be made, but when th' fire's on, that same one'll gladly die at yer back.
"It's their way, an' odd t' ye, t' be sure. But know th' Wolves're a fightin' breed, an' they fight f'r pleasure as much as f'r pride."
He spun away and laughed. "Be glad ye met with a male. Had he been a she, ye'd be bound t' her 'til ye left her a few clutches o' yer seed runnin' th' plains. An' then ye'd be free only 'f ye count it a freedom t' travel with th' Pack."
More seriously, he added, "An' they don't sink their teeth into ye unless they consider ye worthy o' th' task, an' it looks he'd seen ye so from th' offset. Rare honors f'r one as thin on years as yerself. I ran with a Pack f'r sixteen years without gainin' th' Bite. O' course," he ended with a twinkle in his eye, "I found a way t' get one eventually!" He revealed a ring of tooth shaped scars similar to those Spinel had gained by bending down and letting his faded pants slip down to his thighs.
Selice, having come into the conversation at the tail end, cried out in surprised indignation. The stone she had been observing let fly and--quite without her deliberation--hit the old wanderer dead in the center of his Bite. Fernweh leapt up in comical pain, and moved to lead the group, massaging the pain from his now covered rear. The others' laughter followed him to Inlé, who had not seen the spectacle, and did not care either way.
The path was not difficult, and the party easily climbed the Mountain of Dreams to the lonely shack they sought.
"Eremite," Inlé called. Spinel was still somewhat unnerved by the way Inlé could call for someone without raising his voice. It seemed that he could just let his voice travel without a care for distance or other noise. There was some trick, Spinel decided, that allowed Inlé to choose who would or would not hear his voice, and it mattered not at all their arrangement around him.
"Eremite, I have come with a message for you."
No noise came from the shack. Nothing moved, nothing stirred.
Inlé repeated himself, "Eremite, I have come with a message for you."
Still there was nothing. Spinel began to wonder if the eremite was not around or, worse, had died up here alone.
"Eremite ..." Inlé began a third time, but a cracked rasp cut him off.
"Fine, fine. Give it and leave, then," a voice croaked from within the shack. It was not a well-tuned voice; likely it had been some time since its last use.
"It is a scroll for you. Would you take it?"
"Just throw it this way." A hand sprang from a hole in the wall. "And then leave."
"As you say." Inlé placed the scroll in the eremite's grasp, then turned to leave. The others turned to follow, but none had gotten more than a handful of steps before they were stopped.
"Wait!" the Eremite rasped. "This is from the goddesses of magic. Stay, I may have been a bit ..." The eremite's words trailed off for a moment.
Muttering half to himself, the eremite said, "Hastled? No, no. Hastate? No ... oh, bother ... Hasty!
"I may have been hasty in shooing you out. Come inside, it's too bright by two to be out there."
"There won't be room," Selice said without thinking.
A dark eye came to the hole the arm had stretched from. It focused on Selice before saying, "Remember, girl. Things are not often what they are seen to be. It is rare for a thing to simply be what it looks like and nothing more. This truth that we accept in waking is how much more true in dreaming? So much more on this Mountain of Dreams."
The eye pulled back. "Shoes off at the door, mind. I may be solitary, but I am hardly ... barbital, barberry, barbarous!"
The party followed Inlé into the small shack, and Selice found it was, in fact, far larger inside than out. The walls that seemed barely too far apart for her to touch with outstretched hands outside seemed minutes apart within. The grass carpet was more lush than outside, and the ground beneath was soft and cushioning. The springy softness of the grass and ground seemed to pull the fatigue from Selice's feet, and she was glad to have her shoes off. The room was dim, but light enough for one to see slipped listlessly through gaps in the ceiling far above. A hundred of the shacks seen outside could have fit inside this one with room to move between them.
Awe is a simple emotion. It is something one often feels in small doses, a tempered version of wonder. Some even touch wonder undiluted on rare occasion. But few let pure wonder do more than touch their lips. The draught of wonder--raw, pure, and powerful--that Selice drew in this dwarfing, little, extravagant shed almost knocked her flat out on the cushiony ground.
And seated in the center of this area, as though he had not moved since before the party had assembled in Briqueward, was the eremite. His skin was pale as moonlight, but seemed weathered as if he spent too much time under the sun. Moon-baked, one might say. His hair was long and matted into a coarse, somehow glossy, jet lock down his back, and his eyes were pools of the same jet gloss. He was unshaven, though his beard seemed only to grow in patches below the temples and under the chin. The patches on the side wove back into the rest of his hair, and the three fistfuls under his chin hung like a black wattle. His chest was bare, his legs covered in pale leather. He sat cross-legged, the soles of his bare feet cushioning his palms.
Inlé strode calmly toward their host, alone in an oblivion he must, to Selice's thinking, wear about him like his robes.
"Come," the eremite called. "Sit here. Join me."
Inlé sat across from the eremite, flanked by Selice and Arrats. The circle was closed by Spinel beside Selice, and Fernweh beside Arrats. When they were settled, the eremite briefly looked each of them over momentarily. With a knowing smile, he began.
"You do not know me, though I know some little of each of you. The realms of Dreaming are open to me to a large degree, though I am hardly master of them. I see in each of your eyes those dreams you have shaped of late, and I know you for them." He nodded at each person around the circle as he made mention of them. "A high knight, a crown princess," he hesitated at Inlé, "a messenger, an Archcardinal, and one of the Eldest Mortal." Selice saw a spark of recognition on Arrats' face as Fernweh's title was given. But it vanished the next instant when the old man cackled.
"A messenger! Ye know all our lines but Inlé's, eh? An' so specific at first, boy. Ye should not try namin' a thing when ye don't understand it." He grinned toothily. "But ye'd not be th' first, nor will ye be th' last t' find him a puzzle."
The eremite shrugged. "Your 'Inlé' does not dream. I had naught to work with but the actions I witnessed myself."
Arrats smiled wryly, "He doesn't sleep much either. It's been nearly two weeks since he and I began traveling together, and he's slept perhaps four times. Once was collapsing from exhaustion. You claim an affinity with dream. Is inducing natural sleep within your capacity?"
"You would have me force him into the Dreaming? No, I cannot. I can enhance rest, but not sleep. But the Dreaming is closest to our world here. Dreams are most vivid upon this mountain. If there is anywhere that one could rest and dream fully, it is here, in my home. For that reason, I rarely leave. It seems, though, that I must make an unexpected trip."
Inlé spoke, "And are you prepared for such a trip?"
"I am," the eremite answered. "But not today. It is too late in the day for us to begin. We would be lost in the Fogs by morning. We may as well stay here and set off after a sleep. We would reach the foot of the mountain as the Fogs dispersed, tomorrow. And then a full day between us by nightfall.
"Of course," he shrugged, "there is little to be done until it is time for sleep. Unless you are interested in story. Here on this Mountain of Dreams, story is a powerful thing, as they gather and grow for ever, the grasses of this mountain."
The eremite pulled a single stalk of grass and rolled it lightly in his fingers contemplatively. He stared at it for long moments before looking up at the young pair to his right. "Would you hear a tale, princess? One of love and daring and of the past?"
"I would," Selice said. "Do you know many?"
The eremite gestured at the lush ground around them. "The grasses of this mountain, princess. I do not know many stories, I know most. Not all, perhaps ..." He looked at Inlé briefly. "But very few escape this lodge for long."
Popping the stalk of grass into his mouth, he chewed it lightly. "This particular story may have some ... relatival, relevé, relevance! to this gathering, though perhaps not. With a pair of Bitten, you must be powerful warriors. One is fresh-Bitten, and does not know all it entails, but the elder has had his Bite for some time. This story, then, is for the benefit of the young. I dare say it should entertain you all, and perhaps even the Archcardinal does not know this story. It is old, of course. More than four Holy Winters gone, in the most recent, in fact. And spanning five in all."
The eremite paused then, chewing the stalk in his mouth, and swallowing it. "You may want to get out whatever foodstuffs you will wish to eat. This tale is a long one."
Food was laid out, and the eremite began his tale.
"This happened a long time ago," the eremite began. "That is important to remember, because this world has changed in so many ways that this would be impossible now. It was almost impossible then." He closed his eyes, and no longer opened them.

This story happened a long time ago. A Holy Winter had fallen over the land. The gods were silent. For many, this changed very little. Magic continued to work, for in those days the magics used were internal. They were not so powerful as those magics we now use, but neither were they relied on as they are now.
The clerics and the oracles of the time were in a panic, for at the time, a Holy Winter had not occurred in living memory. And at the time, living memory was deep in a way that is lost in our time. Twelve hundred years it had been since the last great Winter, and those who knew the Winter had come--for indeed, many did not realize--those who knew were filled with fear and trembling.
The future was uncertain. Divination of every sort failed, and there were no prophecies to guide them. Without any hope for the future, clerics grew more frantic, more fanatic, more futile in their attempts to gain the ears of their gods. To no avail, though, for the gods were dead enough. All hope lost, many clerics sacrificed their own lives upon the altars of their gods. This despair lasted for five years. After that, there was only resignation.
The gods, of course, were not un-busy themselves. When a god dies, he does not simply release his spirit as do we mortals. First he must throw off the robes of immortality, and this requires a descent into the mortal realms. Time is, of course, a concept the immortals, and nothing more. Except in the form of deep time--that long period where a man can be born, live a long life, and die without so much as a heartbeat passing by the god's scale--many of the gods had trouble thinking. The scale was too small for some, and so hurrying to mortality meant half a decade's time by their reckoning. After all, they still had to maintain their responsibilities to enough of a degree to keep the world active.
Now in those days, a god cared only for one thing. No god ruled more than an aspect of the whole of something. Ten gods there were for the sun alone! Every type of tree, every kind of animal, every race of man, had at least one god dedicated to it. Most fell under the protection of more than one god. A god to guide the man. A god to guide the family, and thus, the man. A god to guide his people, his nation, his race. Five gods for guiding a single man. A god to protect the eyes of men, a god to protect their sight. Often it was that the gods overlapped one another.
They met on a wide field, all of them together, and divided themselves into factions determined by the politics of the gods, which we mere mortals cannot fathom. In some of these factions, twin gods were turned against one another. In the end, forty different god-armies stood pitching camps all about the edge of the field. But though they were many, gods they still were. The ensuing battles were long and fierce. The divine energies could be seen, heard, and felt rocketing through the air all about the world, so that mankind became afraid. Some of the gods fell, but not many. Too evenly matched were the factions to fall one to another, and when an ally fell, he was guarded until he could rise again.
The divine energies settled over the world, and some few mortals were touched by this magic. Fewer still of these were able to more capably draw this power into themselves. As they grew stronger, these precious few sought one another out. Only mere handfuls of these mortals existed, and they went unnoticed by the warring gods. These mortals are now known in legend throughout the world. They called themselves the Chosen, or the Usurpers, for usurp they did.
When they found themselves strong enough, this handful of mortals rose up and went to war with the gods. The gods were many but divided, the Chosen precious few and united. What their goals were, at first, who now can say? Some believe they planned to return the gods to their own realms, or destroy the gods and live on without their meddling. Others believe that what happened had been planned to happen exactly as it did.
The Chosen, powerful with the collected magics of the old gods, reached the field and pitched camp directly in the center of the field. They set themselves where the gods warred each day, so that the gods could not ignore them. But gods are powerful in a way that mere mortals cannot even conceive. To the gods, the mortals were nothing more than a change in scenery, and they returned to their battles without so much as second glances at the Chosen.
This allowed the Chosen to determine how best to attack the gods. They watched the gods war, and learned from them. Tactics, melee, single combat, factional variation, all were observed, noted, and explored. The Chosen learned how best to undermine their enemies' defenses, and how best to keep their advantages when they had them. Only then did they attack, and their success speaks for the effectiveness they had learned.
The Chosen became the new gods. After the long, dangerous war where most of the mortals and many of the gods were killed, a peace was made among them. Very few of the old gods were much more than glorified spirits now, their energies wasted and absorbed. But very few of the new gods had the knowledge, the wisdom, or the experience to control properly all they had earned. The old gods became servants and advisors. Having little power, they were rarely worshipped any longer, if at all, and then namelessly. The goddess of nature had a full court of forest spirits, animal guardians, and the like. Lord Sun had a handful of retainers to aide in his progress across the sky each day. And so too, the other gods.
Save Moon. Moon had no retainers. Moon had no servants. Neither advisors nor aides. The gods who had held the aspects of the old moon were, like the new Moon, stoic and battle-ready. Each moon god, though few in number--a mere seven--fought fiercely and valiantly, singular among their peers in having killed more gods amongst themselves than all the armies combined before the appearance of the Usurpers. A paltry few in the resulting massacre, but that they could steel themselves to do such revealed a resolve and conviction that terrified the other gods.
When the Chosen moved to attack, the moon's aspects were the first of the old gods to turn their attention to the 'distraction' and the last of them to fall to it. Moon killed them in single combat, proving the superior of each in turn. And with each aspect falling, Moon was given a blessing and a curse. The aspects each kissed Moon with their last breath after whispering of things to come. Even knowing the curses Moon would take on, the Chosen mortal pressed on, certain that the deaths of the aspects would end the resistance of the old gods.
And it did. Moon ended the war, leaving some of the old gods alive and able to continue as aides to the new gods. But in doing so, Moon had sacrificed all the power from the old moon and only Moon knows what else. Not even the other gods know Moon's curses in full, for Moon keeps counsel with none but Moon ...

"What does this have to do with the Bitten?" Selice interrupted.
The eremite paused as he considered the interruption.
"Listen and learn, girly," Fernweh said solemnly. "That was only a build-up. Th' Teller must first explain th' world before ye can understand th' story he wields."
"Quite so, sir," the eremite agreed. "May I continue?"

Now, Moon was alone, and had all the power of seven fierce gods. This made Moon powerful. This made Moon mad. For example, none now remember or know the sex of Moon. Some say he was first a mortal man, some that she was woman. Others claim Moon had no gender until Moon decided to wear both as mortals wear baubles. Whatever truth there is to this, Moon is man and woman always.
But man or woman, she was still alone. And learning his abilities. When all the other gods had formed their courts and had withdrawn from the mortal world, Moon remained on the world. She need only use a seventh of his power to keep her namesake in motion, and the other six portions were his to wield as she saw fit. So he wandered the world to build her own court.
Among the thirianthropes are the tales of Moon's collection of his court. They call them Moon's Beasts, or Moon's Lovers, and they are the progenitors of the thirianthropes. Of these, the lycanthropes are those most closely tied to Moon, as they hold the possibility of more than one progenitor. Or rather, Moon holds them as favorites for her own reasons.
The story of Moon's Lovers is simple. Moon has all the malleability of his namesake, and in the early days of her madness, she rarely held any form long. Finding creatures that fit his current form, he would approach one, mount it, and it would bear his children soon afterward. Being the lover of a god had other effects on the beasts, of course. They grew powerful of body and mind, sentient, and long-living. And when they reached the end of their mortal lives, Moon swooped down and brought them up to his home to live in his courts.
Many, many beasts birthed Moon's children. Bear, ox, owl, lion, snake, rabbit, deer. And others. Always, Moon came as the male. Always, Moon stayed long enough for the dam to be bearing, never long enough to see the children born. Moon would visit, on occasion, but never long. He did not tend his children, for they could grow on their own. He did not visit his brides, for they must learn to be strong themselves.
Wolf was the exception. When Old Wolf had grown too old to lead his pack, he had been forced out. But Old Wolf lived on despite. Now, wolves are social beasts, and cannot live in solitude. Somehow, though, he lived on. And the hunger and the solitude drove him mad. Old Wolf was already beyond the given age for such beasts, when he came across Moon. She had taken the form of an old wolf bitch resting in a clearing after a kill when Old Wolf, he found her. She was mad with divine power and loneliness, and he with age and solitude.
Some say he attacked Moon, mounting her before she was aware of his presence, others that he moved for her kill first, and they coupled after he feasted. In time, Moon birthed the first litter of lycanthropes--the werewolves. Moon and Old Wolf raised the First Pack until the Pack could get on on its own. Then she took him up to her palace to join her other lovers.
The werewolves remain the most loyal and most loved of Moon's many children. They follow her and worship her nearly to the exclusion of all other gods. And she grants them more of her power than any of her other children. Moon still walks the world as often as she walks through her courts. Her most common form now is that of a werewolf woman, and she walks among the Clans of the Wolf more often than among any of her other children.
The lycanthropes, of all her children were most strongly favored with her blessings and so were most powerfully afflicted by her curses. None know all of the curses placed on Moon, but the madness is one. Lycanthropes are often called the Moon-mad, because the madness of Moon and Old Wolf was passed on to their children. Some go mad under the moon when it is full or when it is gone. Some go mad when they are around a thing they love too much. Some go mad in battle, or in love-making. All go mad. And to the lycanthrope, all things are maddening.
The Pack is not only a social group and a family. The Pack keeps its members sane, each member bearing the madness so it can disperse more easily, that they do not destroy themselves. Alone, a werewolf usually goes mad within two weeks. Within five, he is irreparably damaged, but savable. After two months, a werewolf is permanently mad, and after five, he is completely beyond saving. Werewolves consider those few so damaged to be already dead. The lycanthrope has become a feral thing whose only hope is that he die before he finds and kills all he loved in life. Those so driven mad are called the Lost, and are likely to die within a year of becoming Lost. Their madness consumes them mind, body, and soul.
This horror is balanced by blessings, though. In their human form, lycanthropes' senses are far beyond those of a human, and they tend to be stronger, swifter, and more cunning. Their ability to transform from man to beast is another blessing, shared by all of Moon's children. Moon's children can, with practice, control these transformations. Her wolf children are doubly blessed, as they control their transformations naturally, and can grow to change into other forms as well. And then there is the Bite.
Old Wolf, inspired, perhaps, by Moon's deception in appearing as another wolf, though she once was human, determined that, in a sense, not all of his children would fall from his seed. The Bite was a way of inviting others who showed a special sort of promise to be treated as pack-mates. For the Biter, the Bitten is a second vessel for his soul. Lover, boon friend, or rival, the Bitten is someone who can stave off the madness of the Biter as not even another lycanthrope would. The Bitten are treated as a loose, individual Pack by the Clan of the Wolf, and have all the social benefits associated with such position.
But even as the moon has a bright side, so too it has a dark one. The Biter, if driven mad in the presence of the Bitten, is almost certainly Lost. The madness is stronger, as well, warping the very world around them in some cases, creating changes in the world that not even the new gods could have planned for. Some say Moon loves these changes, others that he is horrified by them. Either way, Moon does not forbid the Bite, and the other gods do not often try to correct the changes made by her wayward children.
The Pack of the Hidden Moon is the Pack who least often interact with other mortals. Theirs is one of the oldest Packs, and one of the most tortured. Their founder was of the First Pack, and he was the first to Bite as well. These both are points of pride for the Hidden Moon, as they are the only Pack able to trace back to the First Pack without any change to their Pack, meaning that other Packs have divided into multiple Packs descended from the same forebear, or new Packs descended from more varied stock. Descendants of Hidden Moon's forefather, Fang, are only found in Hidden Moon.
They are proud of their heredity, and are most likely to invoke the Bite despite their isolation. This is not to say that they Bite more often than others of the Clan, but that considering their isolation, they seem to draw only those who fit the image of their ancestors' ideals most powerfully. And of this, too, they are proud.
But Fang was also the first of the Lost, as many of the other Packs are quick to point out. The Hidden Moon do not deny this, but they do not speak with open pride of this portion of their originator's tale. He was lost on this very mountain, killing his lovers, both a werewolf lover and his Bitten. But Fang was no mere werewolf. He was the son of a god.
His madness seeped out of him and polluted the mountain and the lands around it. A fog spilled off of the mountain and settled at its base. Nightmare beasts sprung from his mind and began to spread to the world. Fang's children saw the beasts and tried to destroy them.
The Hidden Moon was unable to eliminate all of these beasts, but they were able to contain them in the mists. And then the sun rose and the mists cleared. The Pack of the Hidden Moon believed they had succeeded against the beasts. But, before dawn, the blanket they now call the Fogs of Unrest rose again. And with it came the nightmares not only of Fang, but of those werewolves who had rested where the Fogs had risen up.
The Pack fought until the mists cleared again, then retreated. This cycle has been repeated ever since. The Pack knows where it is safe to sleep, and over the generations have developed an affinity for the Dreaming. They can smell nightmare as a hunter smells blood, and they fight whatever beasts rise from the mists. Many of these beasts have been slain, though some have evaded capture for centuries, and a precious few still remember the first rise of the Fogs.
Though the territory they protect is one of the smallest for so developed a Pack, this is because the dangers of the Hidden Moon's territory is likely the most dangerous. The Pack of the Hidden Moon takes pride in that, though they are ever few, and though their dangers are as varied as the Dreaming, never once has any problem from their territory spilled over into another territory. What's more, whatever troubles have found their way into Hidden Moon's territory from another Pack's lands has never left without being taken care of.
The only thing that has been beyond the Hidden Moon's power is Fang. Fang was never found after the Fogs of Unrest rose from the ground on that first day. The Pack searched the mountain and the Fogs, but never found him again. Some say he became one with the mists, consumed in their making. Others believe he fades with the Fogs each morning, but has retained enough sanity to avoid his children, who he still loves even in his insanity. Still others claim he somehow escaped the Mountain in those first nights while the Pack was unused to guarding the Fogs. How easy, they argue, it would be to scent another Wolf and ignore it when you fight monsters without names. However Fang disappeared, he has never sprung up again in story.
The Pack of the Hidden Moon still honors their primogenitor, with each leader adding the fang attribute to their name. Theirs is the only clan who uses fang in names at all, as the others consider it ill luck. But none of Hidden Moon's leaders has been Lost since Fang. In fact, very few Hidden Moons succumb to the madness that is inherent to the children of Moon. That is not to say that they do not go mad from time to time, but that their madness rarely damages them as it does their brethren.
Unlike in the other Packs, a pack-mate who has succumbed to madness is sent into the Fogs for a few days. While other Packs restrain their mad mates and force them calm, the Hidden Moon releases them entirely. Often, a Hidden Moon warrior will return within a few days, while younger members return in less time, once more sane. They claim that the madness leaves them as nightmare beasts leak from them and, when they have destroyed their nightmares, they are sane once more.
Rival Packs claim that the Hidden Moon are all constantly mad, but are just able to conceal their madness. These packs claim the Hidden Moon deals in atrocities that they cover up by blaming the creatures of the Fogs. Hidden Moon pointedly ignores claims of cannibalism, child sacrifice, and other acts of equal or greater derangement. These are the things of their own nightmares, and they destroy them nightly.
To date, the Hidden Moon has ever chosen their leader based on a variety of qualities and, unlike most other Packs, their challenge, when one is made, takes a full lunar cycle, that Moon and Old Wolf may watch and grant favor in each quality. If a pack-mate believes they could do better than their leader, they stake their challenge, and they have until the next night Moon hides her face from the world to remove their challenge if they so choose.
The leader of Hidden Moon is not necessarily the best warrior, nor the wisest, nor the most subtle. They need not be best in any way at all. They need only be better overall in the twenty-eight tests of challenge. This means that the pack-leader must be strong, swift, subtle, wise, social and many other things, but their pack-mates may be superior in some ways.
Longfang, pack-leader during the first Holy Winter after Moon's ascension, kept himself as pack leader by challenging others, instead of having challengers coming to him. In that way, he found the best qualities of each in his Pack and, being himself one of the wisest, placed them in positions where they used their strengths when a pressing need arose, but were forced to strengthen their weaknesses at the same time.
This golden age of the Pack lasted for six years, enduring the four year Winter by a year. Longfang's challenges were constant, and though he faced as many as four others during each challenge, he took only one month to rest each year. His pack-mates honored this respite, and never challenged him during that month. They knew that even their leader needed rest.
Longfang never once lost a challenge. And though each of those who challenged or were challenged by Longfang understood they would likely not defeat him, all tried their hardest and few begrudged their losses. But constant as his challenges were, Longfang refused to rest any time where work was required. He Hunted the Fogs with the warriors, tended the pups with the young mothers, prepared food with the elders, built and repaired what things needed work, and told tales to the younglings as often as would have been his task were he still a warrior. He was too good a leader and too good a man, and that was his downfall.
On the first morning of his month of rest that would begin his seventh year of leading the Hidden Moon, an attack of the First Formed--those beasts sprung from the mind of Fang himself--forced every warrior in the Pack to fight the beasts off. The battle succeeded in pushing the First Formed back until the mists began to fade. But when the Fogs of unrest had lifted, Longfang strode away from the rest of the warriors, falling a few paces from them. The madness had taken hold of him, he told the others, and he would wait behind until the Fogs next rose.
None argued against this, knowing Longfang to be quite sensitive to the madness in himself. Though it had not consumed him, Longfang was as prone to bouts of madness as any werewolf was. Longfang was adept at sensing the madness and so tended to leave into the Fog-Land before others noticed the madness in him.
The next morning, the First Formed attacked again. The warriors who rose to defend were surprised to see the now obviously mad Longfang tearing at the rear of the nightmare army they faced. Though he was normally quite skilled as a warrior, that night his battle-fury was so strong that they say the nightmares quailed at his approach. He fought with a power none of his Pack had ever before seen, nor ever saw again.
Alone Longfang fought, pushing deeper into the ranks of the enemy, growing ever closer to the other warriors. Without realizing, Longfang forced his way into a circle of First Formed. There they halted his advance. Longfang fought a handful of the most powerful nightmares alone for the remainder of the Fogs' duration that day, though his loyal warriors tried as best they could to reach him. To no avail.
When the Fogs lifted and the battle was ended, the warriors rushed to their leader's side, where he lay in a pool of blood and sweat and the residue of nightmare. Not even he could say how many nightmares he'd destroyed that night, but Longfang knew he had reduced the ranks of the First Formed by three--a feat never before achieved by a gang of warriors in a single night. They had only ever killed one of the First Formed in a night, and that had been a point of great honor. A gang who had killed a First Formed had a feast held in their honor. It was a rarity to be able even to hold one at bay with less than ten warriors.
Longfang was carried to the encampment despite his arguments. He claimed that there was still some small amount of madness within him. None of his warriors, having seen him the night before, could disagree. But their love for their leader was stronger even than their bonds to tradition, and he was taken to their camp.
The regenerative capabilities of the thirianthropes is phenomenal in comparison to other races. But even among the Clans of the Moon, the lycanthropes' ability to recover from even fatal wounds is singular. Atop this, the healers of the Hidden Moon can heal or cure injuries and maladies both natural and nightmare. Very few warriors die of any wound that allows them to return to their home still breathing. Most are able to walk back unaided after some rest. Those few injuries that a warrior cannot regenerate without aid are still unlikely to kill, as even they can be resisted until healing is available.
Longfang's injuries were many, and much of what remained intact had lost the form it should have. The Pack wept at the sight of their leader as every healer worked furiously to fix him. The efforts of the healers that day are sung as often as the splendor of their leader's fight that dawn. But when the healers had reached their limits, Longfang still was barely healed. He did not recover and, though his body appeared to have been pulled back together, after hours and hours of effort, he appeared more like a doll being restored than a warrior of unsurpassed ability.
Somehow, despite his wounds, Longfang lived still. He called for his wife and his son and, when they came, took each in hand. He smiled and closed his eyes saying, "Even in the grip of the madness, my love for you burned bright. Without you, there was nothing of me. That you live proves I have never failed. May my love ever shield you." His last breath spent, Longfang died.
His death caused a silence in the Fogs of Unrest. A full month lasted in which no nightmare beast rose from the mists. Even the First Formed honor the death of so great a warrior. Perhaps this is because of their ties to the Pack of the Hidden Moon, where honor and loyalty are the most praised traits.
Since that time, Longfang's heirs have been warriors of few words who bite only those who show a particular madness in battle. They are loyal warriors, even beyond the high standards of the Hidden Moon, and are known to surpass themselves in death-rages that transcend their mortal power. Theirs is a madness tempered by love, and none have killed those they loved even in madness. They refuse to take the position of pack leader, being susceptible to short but wild bouts of madness. Longfang's sensitivity to madness has carried on in his children, and they have a stronger connection to the Dreaming. Their dreams conjure new beasts in the Fogs even if they merely rest within its bounds. Any stray thought can conjure a monster, if thought by Longfang's heirs.
Three of Longfang's heirs have been Lost since his death. Despite this, they were of no danger to the Pack. They wandered into the Fogs, destroying more nightmare beasts than even their twisted minds may have conjured during their lives. And their connection with the Dreaming became stronger with each day they spent Lost until they vanished into the Fogs for ever. They are the only Lost who were not hunted, for their own Hunt was seemingly aimed at the First Formed who killed their ancestor. And the First Formed seem to avoid these warriors particularly. The First Formed have lived long, and their memory is equally long.

"And that, as they say, is that," the eremite said.
"But what does it all mean?" Selice asked. "What does the story have to do with us?"
"With you, princess? Nothing. Except that you have seen the Hidden Moon's current pack leader and his personally selected gang. His dozen warriors each could lead another Pack if they chose to leave the Hidden Moon, and songs would be sung the world over if they chose to wander from this land. But few will leave for longer than it takes to visit the World Tree.
"Now," the eremite continued, "two of your number have been Bitten. Your young knight, princess, has been Bitten so recently that only a Hidden Moon could be the Biter. More, he carries the scent of Longfang's current ... sciolist, scintilla, scion! The elder of the Bitten has outlived his Biter, but it was a prestigious beast who bit him."
"The one who bit me," Spinel said. "Do you know his name? Or anything else?"
The eremite chuckled. "Curious? He is called Silentstride, for he can sneak up on his own shadow without it noticing. His power as a warrior is also quite phenomenal. The warriors of Hidden Moon fight one another in simple combat to test their strength, and Silentstride has rarely lost, even against as many as three opponents.
"Once he and three other Hidden Moon warriors competed in the Clan of the Wolf's battle tournament at the World Tree. Hidden Moons have since been banned from competition. That was Silentstride's first year as a warrior, and he has only grown in the following decade. Two years ago, when he had seen his second decade in full, Swiftfang took him into his gang. It is a rare thing to see the one without the other now."
"So he is young, then?" Selice asked. "I could not tell their ages."
The eremite laughed raspily. "He is the youngest in that gang by a decade. At twenty-three, he is still quite young."
"Twenty-three?" the knight echoed. "He's my age."
The eremite smiled. "Little wonder he bit you, then. I sense much similarity between yourself and Longfang. When you are older, you will be a knight without peer. If you live long enough to reach your potential."
"An' yer sure o' me Biter's death?" Fernweh asked with a pained look. "True, I haven't seen or heard o' her in years, but I'd hoped ..."
"She left this world the year the princess was born." There was no pity in the eremite's eyes, but there was a sort of pained tone to his voice. "Her last dream was of you, though."
"Ye c'n tell such things?"
"The dreams of the werewolves are stronger than most mortal dreams. Since they are descended of Moon, daughter of Dream, and heir to the Dreaming, they are easier to pick out in the Dreaming.
"What's more, her scent and pattern remain on the Bite for ever. With that, I can find her in the Dreaming. That scent has been gone these eighteen years, but her last dream was strong enough to draw my full attention.
"If it is any consolation, she loved you entirely."
"Did she get herself Lost with me gone?" Fernweh asked quietly.
The eremite paused. "No. You saved her from that fate."
"Well that's good then," the old wanderer sounded his age. "I'll have t' see th' Pack an' visit her Last Stand."
The eremite continued telling his stories long into the night.

"In all my years, I have never known someone so impatient as you," Arrats called to Inlé in frustration.
Everyone had woken a few hours ago to find him gone. After quickly packing their things, the five travelers followed the path down to the edges of the Fogs. Where Inlé stood impatiently an arm's length from the thick mist.
He turned to face the others. "I find solitude fulfilling on occasion. The eremite's abode, spacious as it is, was too crowded for my tastes."
"With only six of us?" Arrats cried. "You're impossible!"
"There were more than six in our company, madam. That their physical presence was not about does not mean that their true presence was also absent."
"True," the eremite agreed. "Sometimes the dreams and stories are too much for myself as well."
"An' how often do ye leave th' shack?"
"About annually. I visit the World Tree behind the Pack of the Hidden Moon. That would likely have been in a few weeks' time this year."
"It seems you may lead them this time," Inlé said. "We head in the direction of the World Tree at the moment."
The mists began to disperse, and Inlé walked on without looking back. The others followed quickly behind him.