Tale of the Red Stone

The **Tale of the Red Stone** is a bedtime story for hunter children that's based in history. Used as a warning, the story's moral changes based on the version told, and each hunter family has an altered version which preaches their beliefs. Regardless, almost every hunter knows some variation on the story, and none is known to be the "correct" one as the historical records of the incident it's based on are incomplete.

All variations of the story start in roughly the same fashion: A civilian, non-hunter man married a hunter woman from the Crowley line. So he could officially join the family, he took her name, and she taught him to be a hunter. He learned as best as he could, though as hunter skills are something usually taught from childhood, he was never good at it. Soon after his first hunt, his wife died in childbirth, leaving him alone with a hunter child, a baby girl, to raise. For a while, they lived a normal life, as since he was a weak hunter, both his daughter and him were largely ignored by the main family. He grew impatient, though, and decided to find his own mission. Desperately, he infiltrated a group of inhumans who lived nearby, gaining their trust. They convinced him to partake in a ritual they were holding, and planned to kill them during this. After this, things went rapidly wrong, with all variations somehow working in a mysterious and titular red stone, and the story ends with the death of the man and his daughter, as well as the death of the inhumans.

## Variations and Morals of the Story

### Listen to your parents

For many families, the story goes that for whatever reason (often to secure their trust or gain homefield advantage) the man offered to hold the ritual at his home. He warned his daughter not to interrupt. However, curious, she interrupted anyway, and was disintegrated by magic. In his grief, he was distracted, and was killed in the ritual along with the inhumans. This variation is almost always finished with some variation of, "and if you disobey your parents, you might turn to dust too."

### Magic is Dangerous

In this variation, usually told by families that warn against magic, the man became too hoodwinked and invested by the inhumans. He truly wanted to become one of them, and bring his daughter in as well. However, at the ritual, some element of the magic (usually the red stone, which is often characterized in this version as a devil's petrified heart) destroys them both, leaving the inhumans pleased until hunters (often of whatever family tells the story) show up and kill them all.

### Inhumans are Evil/Don't Reveal Your Hunter Status

Perhaps the simplest variation, this one says that the inhumans completely fooled the man into thinking they were good. Convinced of this, he publicly denounced his hunter ways, telling them about who he and his daughter were in a show of friendship, which they seemingly cheerfully accepted. They then kidnapped him and his child the next night, and performed a ritual upon the two which killed their bodies and trapped their souls in a red stone for all eternity, laughing and cackling as they did so. However, hunters showed up soon and kill most of the inhumans. Often told as a slumber party horror story between hunter children, this usually ends with the idea that one inhuman got away, and even now searches for hunters to steal the souls of.