Beast Fears Fire - Wolves, Intro and the Wolves of Crickton

Okay, getting something out of the way early.  The story of the wolves of Crickton is stolen for this, the dry run, because I liked the idea and I needed something to jump off from.  You can find the original inspiration here ; I reworked it to be a colonizer's narrative about the people who lived in Crickton before the Cricks.

Wolves
This is one of those stories that has fallen just far enough out of fashion that it's a discovery for a lot of modern Cricks and gains an aura of secret truth it probably doesn't deserve.  It goes like this:

The people who used to live in Crickton, back before the first eastward-settling Savels and wandering sea people met here, well, they were awful.  Boogeymen out of the dim past of Murren, these were the decadent and violent, the jaded and wicked.  We're talking golden cities caked in blood, a child in every blue-glazed kiln and a blue-glazed kiln in the center of every settlement, and even their wicked deities were afraid of them.

Then they, as a culture, as a group, decided that their wickedness could find no new outlets in their cities and settlements, so they walked away.  Put off their bloody-hemmed clothing, put aside their heavy ornaments and turned their back on fire and building, religion and philosophy.  They chose to become wolves, to abandon the land, and run with the pack, leaving the place empty for settlement by the sons and daughters of the swamp and the sea.

Some of their descendants remember, though.  They remember the things of humanity, and it fascinates, terrifies and repulses them.  So they come out of curiosity, but their ancestral memory makes them frightened and their natures make them kill.

And if you're not giving this story the side-eye, you really should be.  There's evidence enough against that just walking around in the settlements and cities of Crickton (not the least of which is the Murrenic contribution to the physiognomy and culture of modern Crickton and Murren settlements that have been where they are since before the Savels showed up).  There are the records of an indigenous resistance to the Cricks that leaned heavily upon warrior cults that venerated wolf spirits.  There's the fact that a story that tells you the previous inhabitants of your land left voluntarily and were evil anyway is awfully convenient for you if you're a colonizer.



Wolves [Disaster/Violence: 3 | Gang]

Impulse – Surround, Infiltrate and Kill.  Crickish wolves hunt in packs, pretty much like any wolf, using numbers and old-fashioned lupine tactics choosing easier prey over chancy propositions.  If there is any real difference between Crickish wolves and wolves of our world it's that Crickish wolves have much greater self confidence and the infamous Eurasian wolf attacks of history are kind of their go-to and baseline.

Harm – Injury 3.  This isn't terribly mysterious.  They surround you, hamstring you, pull you down.  Then things get bad.

Packs of six or more individuals count as a gang, and they always gang up, if they can, it being kind of their thing. 

Gang 'Em Style - When you are pursued by a gang of organized enemies or predators, face Disaster.On a Hit, you avoid them for the time being, but the Moderator can call them back on as a Soft Move.On a Hard Hit, choose 1.      You give your pursuers the slip entirely, and they cannot come back on unless you seek them out .      You can engage them as individuals.      You get a free Hit when you do engage them, though you will have to take them on as a Gang.On a Miss, inflict Harm as stated and the Moderator gets a Hard Move.Individual wolves are [Violence 2, Injury 1] .

Fire is a good way to convince wolves they do not want to tangle with you.  If you decide to face wolves down with fire, it counts as gear, dependent on size (D6 for a torch, D8 for being near a bonfire, anything more and you may have more important things to deal with than wolves).

Of wolf and man.
Travelers from abroad notice there is something about the wolves in Crickton, their aggression, their cunning, their lack of shyness about humans; something is not right with them.  Crick wolves in bountiful summers are what other wolves are in the leanest winter.

Hospices and municipal governments sponsor wolf hunts fairly regularly, to the point where wolf hunting is a legitimate (if not highly regarded) profession.  They pay bounties for raw pelts and then tan and sew them to make blankets, rugs and coats for the needy.  This makes Cricks associate wolf fur with poverty.  As such, they don't trade very well.