The world is not a safe place to be in. I do not speak of bandits on the high roads, infidels coming over the mountains, or even the rampage of untethered mercenaries. No. The danger I speak of, young men laugh at while old men whisper in their cups.
The world is as your grandmother always told you, filled with spirits and monsters that wish for your misfortune. They lurk in shadowed corners and make their homes in dark places no one will go. But do not forget. They are there. Waiting. Watching. And should you stumble upon them, willing to strike.
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The Ustrel
All faiths in the West, even the ancient pagan traditions, consecrate the birth of a child with a ceremony. It is those children that die before they can be consecrated that become the Ustrel. Like an unloving plague, they rise up nine days after their death to bring destruction to those who loved them best.
The Ustrel rarely appear to the eyes of men, preferring to remain invisible. If they were seen, these restless spirits take on a semblance of their former selves. Their skin a rotten blue-green, their sunken eyes a tarnished yellow, and clothed in rotting tatters.
These invisible horrors exist for one purpose, to destroy the community from which they sprang. They rise at night from burrows deep in the ground of the local graveyard and go forth to feed on the blood of livestock, and occasionally on any unfortunate that crosses their path. Each night they drain at least five creatures, man or beast, until the community is no more.
Destroying one of these monsters is no easy task. Their invisibility makes them hard to discover and when they are found they must be forced to burn in a luck fire. It is said that the only way to accomplish this is to thrust the unfortunate person or creature the Ustrel is currently feeding upon into the fire.
Urtag the Varg
My name was Urtag, and I was the Khan of Keszi, spreading my domain at the expense of Toloska, Voria, and the Empire, devouring Toloskan, Vors, Brav, and Malin alike. The men of the West trembled at the coming of my horde, women wept into the hair of their children. Their fields of grain where mine for the taking, their cities mine to burn, and their wealth mine to discard.
When I defeated a Vorish army at Ezer they called me cruel when I had the prisoners staked out in the sun. After I slaughtered the surrendering garrison of Nyek, 6,000 men all told, they called me merciless. When I sacked Yashku, burning every man, woman, and child they called me a monster. They do not know what a true monster is.
It was the winter of 514 that I learned what a monster truly is. When my people were crushed outside Beleg, and my horde defeated by the dog of Voria, my bodyguard and I fled into the mountains to the east. There we were harried by Vorish soldiers, Toloskan bounty hunters, and Katil assassins.
Surrounded by enemies, with no food and little shelter, I called upon our ancestors to show us the way to safety. To guide us through the mountains alive to our home. I was answered, but it was not my ancestors, but a different voice. A strong, seductive voice that showed me the way to my salvation.
Each night, with its whispers in my ear, I left the camp into the swirling snow. Each morning I returned with meat for my men, sustaining us on that long, cold journey home. They knew not what they ate for some time, until my supply of miners, bounty hunters, and Vorish soldiers ran out.
Soon I was forced to hunt my own men, slaying them in secret and adding them to the morning pot in the deep hours of the night. I explained disappearances away as snow sickness, mountain bandits, and the like, but in time my men grew wary of me. I suppose the change had already begun.
It doesn’t matter, not a one left those mountains alive. I am not even sure I truly left those mountains either. All I know is I hunger each night, with seductive whispers in my ear, and the promise of the new day. And though you will not admit it, you know I am out there.
In the deep night, huddled at your hearth, you boast of your deeds, claiming I am wild superstition. Until the hour grows late. Until the wind goes still. Until all you hear is your heart beating in your chest, for you know I am out there. Waiting. Watching. Hungering.