Journal 5: Scotland: Werewolves

The Werewolves of Scotland

While we were looking over the land, we heard somebody coming through the forest. We all hid, except Elspeth, who is physically incapable of being sneaky. A rather uncouth fellow came through the woods, carrying a wicked-looking pitchfork. It was hard to tell where his fur vestments ended and his body hair began. He was your typical wild-looking Scot. He saw Elspeth, and they struck up a conversation in the Scottish dialect, which is utterly incomprehensible. Billy Ray seemed to decide the fellow was okay, and joined them. This forced them to switch to the common dialect, so I could understand most of what they were talking about. At some point, Vrba also joined the conversation. The rest of us stayed hidden, including Erose, who managed to fall asleep in the clump of bushes in which she was hiding.

The hairy man, whose name is Fergus, is a hunter who lives in a nearby village (out a bit from the main town around the castle). The general area, and his village in particular, is being ravaged by a pack of wolves. These are not normal wolves, but some odd type of backwards werewolves. They're normally wolves, but turn into people when the moon is full--werepeople, if you will. They raid the villages and eat people. Fergus' daughter was eaten by them. The local lord, one Lord Northumbray, hasn't provided the people with protection from the wolves; in fact, he seems to be treating the people of Fergus' village rather poorly. At some point, the lord's tax collectors took all the money of the peasants in the area, and has since shown little interest in helping and protecting the peasants, as he should. Furthermore, the peasants are barred from owning weapons, which makes defending and feeding themselves very difficult. (The pitchfork, btw, was for self-defense. I'm not sure why he needed it, since he was also carrying a very long knife concealed in his furs.)

Fergus claimed to be very knowledgeable of the area, and to know "many secrets." Vrba got him to admit that among these secrets was a secret way into the lord's castle. The good news is that he is willing to show it to us--not surprisingly, the locals show little love for their lord. The bad news is that he won't show it to us unless we take care of the werewolf problem.

Fergus took us to his village; we set up camp in one of the abandoned houses. There were many of these; the town has shrunk considerably due to the wolves. Currently, only about five families live there, in a village which looked like it once held three times that number. We had some dinner, it wasn't much, but it was all those folks could afford. I entertained the villagers by playing some music on my harmonica, and telling some stories. On closer inspection, Fergus appears to be of mixed human and elvish blood, like many of the people in this country. Elspeth was quite taken with him, and was flirting outrageously. He didn't reciprocate--he seems to be happily married. I made my usual futile attempt to get her to go to bed with me. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

I sent Udo and one of our ranger companions back to Dave to tell him about the ship-building, so that he can get word to the right people back in Eldamar.

Fergus showed us around the local area. It's really quite pretty, full of hills and crags and narrow passes. One thing of interest was an old stone dock of elvish workmanship, located _________________. Apparently around 200 years ago, we sent a small force to assist the English royal family against a human who was trying to take the throne by force. I don't recall learning anything about this at the college, or from anybody I know who was alive then, so it was either very secret or very small-scale.

While we were sightseeing, we discussed the warship-building, and what it could imply. Vrba wants to burn the shipyard and all the ships. BRB and Erose were vehemently against that idea. I think it might be necessary, depending on what they are being built for. BRB called Vrba a "nimrod elf."

That night, the wolves attacked the village. Fire, silver, and magic weapons seem to be effective against them. They were incredibly quick and vicious. Two of them attacked me at once, but BRB scared them away by talking with them. We killed six, two ran away. One of the rangers was killed, and Hal was badly injured. Several of us were bitten in the fight--Me, BRB, Hal, and Rick (the one remaining ranger). I don't know if that was all of the wolves. Hopefully, they'll be wary of attacking the village for a while. Nobody could say if the wolf form of lycanthropy was communicable to people, so BRB and Elspeth gave us a round of disease-curing, just to be on the safe side.
AROOO!

Preparing to go to the Castle

We needed to gather information on what was going on at the castle, beyond "a bunch of lords there." We sent Elspeth into town to collect the local gossip. What we got was that there was a big party being held at the castle, and it would be going on for the next three days. So, this is our time frame for recovering the Amp. I can't help having a strong feeling that we are walking into a trap, but I, at least, don't have much of a choice. I need to recover the Amp, and I also need to find out why the Lord Chamberlain had Keef kidnapped. Finding out what the deal is with the ships would be a nice bonus.

Anyway, if we must walk into a trap, we should be prepared and aware. I'm dying my hair in the hope that if I look sufficiently different, I might not be recognised. We are going to try sneaking into the castle and posing as party guests, at least until we find the laundry, where we might be able to get servant clothes. Idea: use Joe the djin & Dingus the weasel to spy out the castle.