You are members of a tribe of people who dwell in a sequestered valley amid well forested mountains.
The winters are harsh in your land, but your fur-skin clothing and fur draped dwellings protect you from the bitter winds and snows, and the other seasons being rich and pleasant, your people, on the whole, rejoice in their home and celebrate it in festivals and hymns to Holl, the one god of your tribe.
Your people know some farming, and in lowlands of the valley a few hardy crops of squash, beans and corn are grown, but you mainly live by hunting and trapping game and by harvesting nuts and berries and the like, as well as fishing the streams and rivers and a few lakes in the region.
The rigorous life and hardy diet of your mountain fastness bear a proud and strong people, the Children of Holl.
Many many moons ago, more than can be now be counted by your crude time keeping, your ancestors were led here from the Burning Lands to escape the judgment of Holl upon the world. Their guide was a fanatical priest figure named named Arn. Arn was Hol's prophet, and the god told him of the mountain valley, as well as providing him with the charisma and wisdom to lead, guide and govern a new tribe whose origins, it is said, came from Holl making One of Many.
Arn died in course of time, but long after establishing the Children of Holl in their new home and raising up an order or priests, as well as beginning the building of an elaborate stone Temple to Holl in the cliffs of a distant mountain.
It is said to have taken three generations to see the completion of the temple of Holl. and much labor. Holl's priests were learned in secret studies that ensured a truly wondrous edifice to their god. For many moons, the priests governed the Children of Holl and a thriving and largely peaceful society flourished.
In course of time, others came to the mountains. New tribes of humans, but also strange beings who were like men but not men, some small, some great. There were early conflicts and struggles with the desperate people, people who knew not Holl. But the most significant incursions were by the Wolfen, a strange and terrifying race hitherto unknown to the children of Holl-- the Wolfen walked upright and were in bodily shape as a man, but covered with coarse fur, long brushy tails, and having wolve's heads.
They were abominations to your people, though some could speak the tongue of Holl's Children to the astonishment of your people.
There were many battles with the aggressive and warlike Wolfen, with great losses on both sides.
The Wolfen had all the forest senses and skills of a real wolf, but also cunning and iron smith skills like those of your people. They bore not only fang and claw but sword, knife and spear. And there were priests among them as well, ministers of a strange religion who, it is said, wielded Ancient Magic from before the Great Burning.
The greatest victory of the Wolfen, however, was the isolation of the
Temple of Holl from your tribe and the slaughter of the priests and
priestesses therein.They devoured everyone in the Temple and defiled and cast down its sanctums. With the near decimation of the Order of Holl, the knowledge of the priests and priestess was lessened when it died with it's greatest teachers, who, it is said, preserved nothing save through spoken learning. This knowledge included astronomical and numerical arts.
Yet Holl was with your tribe.
After a decade of intense warfare with ruthlessness on both sides, the Wolfen were brought to yield to demands of an end to the battles.
Your people were blessed by Holl with a secret weapon that led to this truce-- the Lost Wolfen.
It is the custom of the Wolfen to subject their cubs to an ordeal in very early childhood of a lone quest in the wilderness for a period of days during which the weaned cubs are commanded to survive by their own cunning, strength and devices before being returning to their home and being fully accepted into a Pack.
Many do not survive the ordeal--known among the Wolfen as the Quickening. These usually perish to wild animals, poison, the elements, or human hunters. The Wolfen do not mourn such unfortunates as they believe this affair is the means by which their goddess, the Moon, purges the weak and unfit from their ranks.
Early in the Wolfen/Man wars, questing Wolfen cubs were discovered by people of your tribe, lost and weakened in the mountain forests.
The more bloodthirsty of your people demanded the execution, and even the torture, of such Lost Wolfen. But the priests of Holl sternly forbade this, issuing prophetic words of Holl; these pitiful ones would become the salvation of your tribe.
They were to be rescued, raised and nurtured among humans.
In this way, Lost Wolfen became one with your tribe.
These Lost Wolfen became indomitable scouts and warriors. Although it was impossible to eradicate in them their native reverence for the Moon Goddess, they also became Children of Holl, and in course of time, some even became priests and priestesses to the god.
Confronted by the tenacity of your tribe combined with the Lost Wolfen advantage, the Wolfen were forced, after serious defeats, to agree to a peace.
Now comes the tale of your life time.
The lands of the Wolfen lie between your tribe and the ruins of the Temple of Holl.
The Children of Holl are not permitted to send re-builders or new acolytes to restore and populate the Temple, but small groups of pilgrims, including clerics, are allowed to pass through the Wolf Lands to the Temple and to return without violence, albeit being followed and watched by Wolfen scouts.
Lost Wolfen are hated by the Packs, but their tribal affiliation with the humans is honored in so far as pilgrimage is concerned.
Over time, the Temple has become a testing ground for certain brave Children of Holl.
Many perils are are said to lie within Holl's Temple, as well as treasures and artifacts.
To go and return grants one both wisdom and status, as ones having known the secrets of the Temple, though to speak of what lies within it's gates is forbidden, save among those who have made the pilgrimage and returned. Many who go never return...some return insane.
Now, you are of age to decide whether or no you will journey to the Temple of Holl and seek the secrets of the god and of the lost past of the Old Tribes, who were destroyed in the Great Burning.
What say you, Child of Holl?
Will you go? And with whom?
