Fleshcrafters (Origin)

Vâle was an ancient land, a green valley surrounded by icy mountains. Between the giant oaks blackened by age and the foot-high mosses lived the Umani, an ancient race of people who inhabited the land since the beginning of time. They lived in small huts and villages, but over the ages they had built 12 large fortresses crowned by the Palace of Kings on their sacred mountain Godwana. Those fortresses and temples where ruled by one of the big tribes of the Umani, each dedicated to another aspect of their cultur.

The tribe of seers, the Drogri, was the smallest and at the same time the one most respected. For thousands of years, the elders of the tribe have been blessed by whiteness and insight into the realm of time and fate. Old Magara was the thirteenth in this noble lineage of fortune-tellers, and each of her predictions was wise and kind. At the age of ninety-three, when winter broke over the green valley, the old woman fell ill. For three weeks she lay trembling in her bed, stammering while the land outside turned white. The snow billowed many meters high and people were rumbling that it would be the coldest winter old Vâle had ever seen.On the coldest day of the winter, thirty-three days after the first snowflake had fallen on the empty fields, the doors to the seer's chambers opened and she stumbled out.

Leaning on her cane and ignoring the questions of her daughters, she stood in front of the crackling fire and began to tell the assembled lords of her tribe the vision that plagued for three weeks. The faces of the gathering people turned pale and naked fear crept into their hearts as they listened to their seers harsh voice. A few days later, when she recited her story to Godwana council herself, the Lords were appalled. She told them of a large wolf, a huge beast with a blood-red fur that lived deep in the caves of the snow-covered mountains. When winter ended and the snow melted, it came down. At first it ate the cuttle, then it devoured the valets and workers and at last it feasted upon the screaming bodies of the nobles and lords. Everybody would be devoured by the beast and all that would remain of ancient Vâle would be a lonely howl.

Her narrative was so hideous that everyone congealed. Barely a day later, it had spread throughout the palace and across the surrounding villages. The citizens of the country became more restless and anxious day by day. It was the young king Haradron who finally stood up. When he heared about the fear and unrest that broke out among the people, anger seized him. He ordered the old Magara to renounce her vision and declare it a mere figment of her feverish imagination.

Confident of her power, she refused until a heatened dispute broke out. Guided by anger over her stubborness and refusal of the vision, the Lords quarreled against her. At last, Haradron rendered his judgement. He exiled the old woman and each of her children along with her entire court from Vâle. They were not allowed to return before the end of the summer. Knowing that the icy winter in the mountains would bring them certain death, the seer begged for mercy for her tribe. Since the old Magara still insisted on her vision, she was denied.

With the mocking comment that she would the first to satisfy the wolf, the king ordered her to be thrown out of the room. Before this happened, the old woman cursed the whole hall and every lord who sent her to certain death. Each of them would suffer beyond death. No matter what they did or aspired to, fear and despair should be the only thing they would reap.

Barely three weeks later, the entire court of the Drogri left their ancestral home. Soldiers took them to the icy pass and kept guarding it to make sure they would not return until the heat of summer molted the icy snow.

Without hope, the men and women made the strenuous climb to the surrounding mountains. Every day more and more fell victim to the unreal environment and the icy winds. Whether they froze in their sleep, were buried in the ice or crashed down a steep slope, the merciless winter took one after the other. After a few weeks there were barely more than thirteen of them left, including the old seers, who had miraculously survived. Upon the higest peak of this colossal mountain range they stumbled upon a hidden cave. Dreading the bitting cold, they sought to find refuge from it in its depths. Down in the the darkness they found an undescribeable monstruosity: The Body of a fallen god. Driven by famine and desperation the launched themselves at the corpse and started feasting upon the dead gods flesh. Soon after they came to realize that they could not stop their feasting of the Creators flesh, even thou their hunger was long since satiated..

After they had stuffed innumerable quantities of the cold-blackened meat into each other, they felt a strange pain in the depths of their guts.This did not just stem from her bulging stomachs. Something grew their insides, something alien.Their bodies began to swell and redden until they were unable to continue feeding. Eventually, each of them realized that something unfamiliar was maturing in them. Their condition was that of a pregnancy, only that they felt that these children were feasting upon their innermost vital forces. Each iof the Seers wore several children in their wombs, which matured to a hideous size. When these creatures finally awoke, their wearers were shaken by excruciating cramps as the monsters made their way to freedom through feasting and cutting through their entrails and skin. The howling that the newborn spit out could be heared in distant Vâle, at the foot of the mountains.

When winter came to an end and the last snow melted, the spring brooks washed a heap of gnawed bones into the valley's rivers. The following night descended the creatures that had grown out of the flesh of the banished seers into ancient Vâle. The first thing the farmers noticed was that their cattle gradually disappeared. As they searched the swamps and woods for them, they found nothing but shattered bones and shapes scurrying in the darkness. Over time, more and more of these creatures were spotted and the people gave them the name Scereba. It was not long before the first children and shepherds disappeared.

Over time, pain-filled screams from the depths of the woods became abundant, and the people realized that these ghulish creatures had come to enjoy devouring their victims alive. Unrest and panic broke out among the population and it was said that the red wolf had come to catch his prey. Shortly thereafter, soldiers patrolled the wild lands of Vâle. Wherever they pitched their camps, soon people stopped disappearing, even though eyes followed them each nigth.

It finally came the time of Midsummer. For a whole day and a whole night, the people of Vâle celebrated with big feasts and festivals. The biggest and most pompous festival was celebrated in the hall of the Agratû, the Umani hunters. Hundreds of people gathered at the gates of the great hall and drank and sang from morning to night. When the shadows of the night broke over the Agratû, one light after another went out in the great Hall of Hunters. As the last window turned black, a long, painful scream broke eachoed across the Hall and broke the music and songs. Startled, the people turned to the palace of their masters. At first they hesitated, but then the guards decided to disrupt the celebration of their lords and broke the gates to the hall. Inside, they found nothing but darkness in which a hoarse gasp resonated. Figures scurried into the shelter of the upper floors as the hunters entered the throne room of the Agratû. Slowly, the light of their torches peeled a hideous picture out of the darkness of the hall. Where the council's thrones once stood, a grotesque structure now rose. A huge meat sack, breathing and panting in a mute pain. Hundreds of people were conjucted here and formed into the macabre parody of a throne.The guards recognized that the eye- and noseless face of each of their former masters, whose mouth opened and closed, but could not express their own anguish by lack of vocal cords.

When they looked up, dozens of eyes glittered from the upper floors. For a moment the men were paralyzed with fear, then they rushed out of the hall and fled as if maddened into the celebrating crowd.

Shortly thereafter, the soldiers and bravest hunters gathered and stormed the great hall, armed with spears and torches. None of them left it alive. Shortly thereafter, the remaining agratu forces gathered and set fire to the great hall of their ancestors. They surrounded her with raised spears, anxiously waiting. The crack of burning wood and the galling gasps of their masters, who were burned alive, was the only sound that echoed through the night. Just before the great fortress collapsed, an inhuman shriek sounded from the top of the towering building. Glass and burning wood splinters rained down on the hunters as the Scereba broke out of the Hall of Hunters. Before the warriors knew what had happened to them, their line was broken and the ghoulish creatures fled into the darkness of the surrounding forest.

After this attack no sign of the Scereba was to be discovered, neither humans nor cattle disappeared any more. After a few months, the people believed that the spook was over.

Winter came early over Vale and though it was less cold than the previous one, the snow towered even higher until it was barely possible for people to leave their homes.

In the great fortress of the Brâtvich, the warriors of the Umani, the men and women were still on alert. Every day they patrolled the ramparts of their stone fortress and guarded the caves of the great mountain where their Hall lay. Although they never saw anything, the sound of teeth scraping over the cold stone of the mountain and breaking off at it could be heared in each room of the great fortress.

It took three weeks for the servants of the Brâtvich to locate the root of the noise in their masters great hall. When they opened the doors to their chambers they found them empty. In the hall, however, they found another throne that gasped in pain. On the top lay the Lord of Brâtvich, pierced by all the spears of his army.

After this terrible event, the Highborn panicked and tried to bring all remaining troops into their halls for their own protection. Without the Brâtvich, who supervised the distribution of the armed forces, hundreads died out on the snowy fields. In the end, the Krâtchniki, the keepers of the Born, managed to keep a large part of the troops in their strongholds.

Spring came in the late and the ice was thawing very slowly. The melting snow exposed the bodies of hundreds of farmers and citizens, who had stormed out into the freezing cold in panic, forever frozen in their last agony. The fortress of the Obertû, dedicated to livestock and agriculture, stood their silent and empty. It remained with the fewest warriors last year, and few expected it to survive the winter. The frozen corpses around the great walls conjured up evil expectations in the first scouts who ventured into it. To their surprise, the peasants still lived inside. They were taken to the main hall, where the largest of all living thrones rose, composed of the relatively large nobility of the Obertû. In the midst of its dreadful splendor, the Abhorrent King, the leader of the Scereba, sat on it in his corpulence. This time the farmers and servants had been spared and served his court of Scêreba. The servants served them timidly and brought them new flesh every day, from animals to men.

The Krâtnikis ordered to burn the Obertû Fortress, but Logudsch, lord of the only other house remaining, had other plans. He traveled with his court to the feast of the Obertû, relying on the growing intelligence of the monsters, and in the style of the nobles of Vâle, sought negotiations with the Abhorrent King. These were actually granted and Logudsch was invited with his entire court in his throne hall. Before the negotiations began, the Abhorrent King served his guests a great dinner. Each dish was a little mixed with the meat of his children, which he previously sacrificed.

When the nobility tasted it, unkowing of its secret ingrediences, they felt the same hunger that had taken possession of the Scêreba. They ate inhuman amounts of meat, and when their bodies could no longer bite, the Abhorrent King shut the doors of the hall. The next morning, he and his royal household left Scêreba on a new throne throne, which was not linked to his ancestral home and could move slowly if fed on a constant basis. On this terrible vehicle, they moved into the halls of Gôdrak, the hall of artisans. When the Abhorrent King arrived, he offered people the choice of serving them or being eaten by their former masters.

The Krâtchniki hid themselves in their fortress after receiving this message and kept a close watch on their mountain. There had been no further attacks from the Scêreba since their last victory. However, nobody who was sent by the Krâtchniki lords outside the line of sight of their festivals ever returned. The Scêreba, however, did not dare attack their fortress openly. Instead, they used hunger and isolation to weaken the festivals. The supplies of Krâtchniki were soon running out, especially since they could hardly be increased by the spring. The winter hit Vale again very hard and very early. This time, in addition to the cold and the snow, he brought despair over the Krâtchniki. Not only did they consume all supplies, they also ate all the animals inside the fortress. The nobility were now forced to eat their own farmers and servants. Their loyalty began as well as through their hunger and that consciousness that the Scêreba would spare most of them, to stagger dangerously. More and more fled from the fortress and into the arms of the freezing cold, hoping to find shelter with their mortal enemies.

Nêbun, the first-born son of the High Chief of Vâle, took advantage of the desperation of the hour and stole himself to the holy well of her Born. He broke the holy rules of his people and got drunk with the waters that formed the source of his people's life. He rose as the god-king and only thanks to his power was it possible that the entire population did not turn against their masters.

When the snow thawed and spring came to Vâle, he marched with all the warriors he had left, into the halls of the Godrâk, attacking them without warning. Only three Scêreba stayed at the festival at that time and could hardly resist this unexpected attack. Nêbun slew the first one to oppose him and captured the other two. He either expelled the peasants or forced them to join him in the Krâtchniki fortress.

When the Disgusting King heard of it, he gathered all the Scêreba, as well as all the people he deemed fit for battle, and marched up the Turnâ for the last blow. The gates could not stand this rush for long, even if hundreds died in an attempt to tear them down. The remaining people stormed the festivals, followed by the Scêreba and her king. Nêbun confronted him and his court in the Hall des Borns. He fended off the attacking monsters, and at last advanced to the hideous King himself, whom he tore from his horrible throne, although it had a preposterous fatness, and struck him with fury. When the other Scêreba saw this, they rushed together on Nêbun. He stumbled backward with the king and his whole court, and sank into the bosom of the people of Vale, who suddenly boiled and devoured all the screba, including their king and archenemy. The holy water splashed to the ceiling before simmering back into their pools and then slowly pulled into the depths of the mountain. To the horror of man, he lingered in the deep caves that were supposed to feed him forever. After four days, distant sounds resounded from the depths. Then, on the fifth day, the four Progenitors climbed out of the depths of the Born caves, saturated with the only thing that could satisfy their eternal hunger.