Rolled 8, 5, 3, 15 = 31 (4d20)
>>5977114“Born this way,” Oncyth had replied.
“Then your whole family is… Like you?” you’d asked, surprised.
“Don’t know,” he’d replied, and when pressed added: “I don’t really remember them much. I think the first time the full moon rose, I must have…”
(Must have WHAT/ Run away? Been cast out? Slaughtered them all in a lupine fugue state? Oncyth wouldn’t elaborate beyond that, not on THAT subject.)
“Eventually met others like me—cursed ones, those who the moon transforms. Met an old one, once—older than most of us live, oldest one I’ve met… Besides myself, now, I guess. He said it’s an old curse—a curse in the blood, a curse that spreads like a disease. He says that those who first carried it were soldiers.”
“Soldiers?” you ask, fascinated in spite of the dire circumstances. “Soldiers in what war?”
“One of the old ones, between Light and Dark, Elf and Dragon,” he’d replied. “Those ones. They were servants of the gods, sort of like your ‘Paladins’ here… But I guess they failed, and in a major way.”
“And the Fairy Gods CURSED them and all their descendants, and anyone they bite… For failing centuries ago?” Pearce had asked, outraged.
“That can’t be right,” you’d agreed, because for all your disputes with the Bonum Chaoticum—the creators and honoured ancestors of your mother’s folk—you had NEVER Seen signs of such cruelty in them.
Oncyth had shrugged as best he could, simply replying: “That’s what he said. All I know is when the moon rises…”
He’d trailed off, as darkness settled in, the last rays of the sun disappearing through the branches of the grove where the three of you stood. It was the same one where you’d prepared to ambush Izirina’s ‘Nothic’ tutor a week before that night, now ironically repurposed for this new endeavour.
“I guess you’ll see,” Ocnyth had said, with a sigh that became a snarl.
Already-impressive musculature, lean in the elven way, ballooned out against the tightening bindings, forming the physique of a canid of ursine proportions—a black-furred wolf, thrashing, disoriented and agitated—almost rabid in its ravenous snapping and howling. Oncyth, in all his lycanthropic fury, would not long forget that he still had thumbs, though… or even if he did, you knew the rope wouldn’t hold him if his fury grew as his body had. The bright light of Holy Luna shone down, illuminating the mass of hairy muscle and directionless rage, for once bringing anything but purification and peace.
“Here goes nothing?” Pearce had quipped, rotating the head of his staff with a click and readying the sword within for a quick draw.
“Not nothing,” you’d replied, with all the confidence you could muster.
[Natural Philosophy roll to prevent Oncyth attacking anyone in his maddened state with magic and animal-handling skills; +1 DC for Arcana; DC 15 to <Calm>, DC 17 to <Free Senses>]
