RP: Wind's Howling

*"Come the snow, predator and prey must both seek shelter."*
**RP: Wind's Howling** is a low-expectation, low-effort community roleplay started up by User:Ahalosniper as a first foray into giving a few of the numerous characters on the site a venue to interact and writers to collaborate in a low-pressure scenario. The RP is contributed to by each author adding a new, short section to the story, picking up where the previous author left off and posting their own characters' reactions to ongoing events, typically under a thousand words each. Ideally, RPs such as this will be a space to enjoy simply inhabiting The Witcher's world and telling stories in it for a while.

## Setting

Title
*Wind's Howling is set in the village of **Brackton**, a farming community in southern Kaedwen, during the troubled winter of 1272. Times are uncertain for these farmers; the nation's ruler, King Henselt of Ard Carraigh, died after marching his army into the Pontar Valley, and the Black Ones to the south have marched on their neighbors to begin the Third Northern War. Fortunately, heavy snows have ground the conflict to a halt until spring, though there's no telling when a marauding band from one army or another may appear down the road. As Aedirn has already fallen, deserters of its army or soldiers far from home with no other means of supporting themselves have already turned to banditry, and there's no telling when the reviled Scoia'tael who've rallied to Queen Saskia in the Pontar Valley might cross the river into Kaedwen.

The harvest last season was plentiful, at least, and the local lord has yet to exact his tithe in taxes or produce. This has left plenty of grain and potatoes in the town granary, prime for brewing barley beer or strong vodka in Tammon's Inn. Yet, the longer he goes unheard from, absent since the infighting for Kaedwen's crown began, the more worrying the prospect of not having his soldiers and their protection present becomes. Most able men of fighting age were called away for Henselt's campaign, and the village's plenty in a time of scarcity could make it a tempting target.

Worse still, shepherds from the outlying farms have run home in alarm after spying huge shadows among distant stands of trees, crying wraith or striga or fiend. This could be simple fright playing tricks on the mind, but what if hunger has flushed something from its den mid-hibernation? Even armored knights can prove no match for a beast, and without the clatter of armor patrolling between the huts, what's to stop a monster from stealing closer in the night?

For better or worse, the half-frozen wagon road leading through town has yet to close up entirely. Who may yet trudge into town, leaving sword by the door and good coin on the bar for a seat by the fire?*

## Rules

1. Participants are limited to **one character** apiece, at least initially. This is to promote close interaction and collaboration between writers, sharing a space rather than going on to essentially talk with themselves.
2. Characters can be brand-new characters or be preexisting characters brought in. The RP doesn't necessarily have to fit into their larger story, so consider this an AU if you have a character you really want to use, but couldn't normally take part. No canon expansions if they would've been dead or elsewhere, however. That would break real canon.
3. In their posts, other users are allowed to write dialogue for your character (because ending with multiple things to say and reply to back and forth just gets ridiculous), though if you feel that what they write is too far out-of-character or you have a particular response you want to make at a particular moment, you can certainly talk to the user and co-edit one anothers' posts.
4. You can add as many NPCs as needed, from denizens of Brackton to other travelers waiting in town for the snows to clear, but don't try to rope in a large number of your other characters in this manner. The focus should not too heavily be on them.
5. User:Ahalosniper will function as moderator of the RP, playing a variety of minor characters as required by whatever scene, whether villagers or monsters or other adversaries, and will strive to provide setup for other users to act upon. Posts can be revoked by the moderator if they are deemed not up to quality standards, but these standards will not be unreasonable. In fact, the less stress felt while writing them, the better. Do not try to make novella-length posts. Posts should be under 10,000 bytes, by far in most cases. Make them short so other users can read through easily, and don't try to out-compete one another on length and quality, raising the bar for other users.
6. Posts should be treated as going roughly in chronological order, though doubling back a few minutes or flashbacks where appropriate are permitted.
7. Try to stay grounded in what the world of *The Witcher* considers realistic. Magic exists, and users of it are not unheard of, but its use always comes at a cost, and should be sparing. Witchers, while adept combatants, have difficulty earning the trust of common folk. Every character should have as many flaws or drawbacks as strengths to keep things interesting. Threats, similarly, should be treated appropriately; the most famous witchers have slain great beasts only to fall to a farmer's pitchfork.
8. Do your best to ensure others have fun, and have fun yourself. Communicating outside the RP with other writers what you want out of a scene and how you want your characters portrayed helps everyone come out satisfied with the result, and talking out disagreements helps keep fights between characters from becoming fights between writers. If we're not having fun, there's not much point to doing it, so let's do everything we can to keep it enjoyable.

## Sign-Ups

Character applications take place on the talk page. Users submit a brief character profile to give collaborators an idea of who they'll be interacting with, and links to existing character pages can help expand out this impression.

## Prelude

Torchlight flickered weakly between the birches, creeping only so high up their slender trunks before the branches melted into the starless dark like trusses of an oppressively low roof. Pressed beneath it, the lights found so little purchase to cast upon that only a few rows of trees were visible in any direction, marking the worryingly near boundaries of human perception before all was hidden by night. Even the ankle-deep snow beneath the men's boots seemed more grey than white, soaking up more light than it gave. They trudged on, scattering clumps across the smooth crust as they kicked through.

All three held their torches high, as if to drive back the dark overhead with stabs of their meager flames, and cast frequent glances about and behind them. The man in the lead, fur coat hiked around the heavy set of his shoulders, divided his concentration between the woods and the ground before him, tracing a line between half-circle tracks stamped in the icy powder. He muttered idly to himself as they walked, breath coming out in a mist beneath the brim of a thatched hat.

Trusting in his comrade's footsteps, the second didn't notice a protruding root until it tugged at the foot he was already shifting his weight onto, and he stumbled bare-arms first into a frozen mound, torch cast aside as he tried to catch himself.

His yelp startled the others. Once they'd turned to see what happened, the leader cast rapid glances each way while the third, a wiry, brown-haired thing barely a year into manhood, dropped to his knees beside to see if he could help. The fallen man waved him off and brushed frigid crystals from the hair on his forearms.

"Plough me," he growled, teeth set. "Couldn't this wait till morning?"

"Mirabelle's the last good cow still milking anywhere near here." The man in the lead said, gaze fixed firmly away into the trees. "I'll not have her wind up a meal for wolves, Adas."

"Course not," Adas muttered to the turned back. "Rather feed 'em a couple piss-poor farmers."

The youth beside him, Jacek, slung a modest club at his rope belt to offer an open hand. Then, as if the hand itself hadn't been enough, asked "Need help?"

"*No*." Adas hissed, more harshly than he meant. He liked Jacek—the lad's energy outstripped his own for most every task from planting to harvest, but Jacek's earnest nature and honest face made resenting him difficult. He'd been too young last year, when the king's messenger had come to round up every able-bodied man in Brackton to march south on campaign. Not like Bercik, who owned the farm Adas and Jacek tilled, and had probably slipped the recruiter a weighty purse for a reprieve from conscription. "Where's my torch?"

Jacek looked about and shrugged. "Don't see it. Went out when it hit the snow."

Adas grunted an extra curse. "Never get it lit again now..."

"Take mine," the boy said, offering his fistful of light handle-first without a beat missed.

Adas hesitated, feeling the warmth soak into the stiff skin of his face as the flame drew closer, then shook his head. "Keep it. Just hand me my pitchfork."

Jacek complied with a nod, and Adas took the tool's long haft in both hands. It was no knight's sharpened steel, just a few pig-iron prongs on a long wooden stave, but all the better for it. It reminded him of the spear he'd carried in King Henselt's army, something to keep the fury of dwarven axes and contempt of elvish blades a good few extra feet from his body.

His grip on it redoubled as a frightful bellow split the still winter air. He and Jacek jumped to stand on either side of Bercik, gazes twitching this way and that, but nothing appeared within the reduced range of their two torches.

"That's Mirabelle." Bercik asserted. The awareness it was only a cow hadn't sunk in long enough to be a comfort when he added, "Something's spooked her."

"Something like what?" Jacek asked, his voice quivering like the mist of his breath.

"Wild dog if we're lucky." Adas looked his way to make eye contact, calm him down by showing no fear in his own face. Then he turned away to make sure he didn't see the more grave expression he presented to Bercik. "A Nekker if we're not."

"Need to find her before we'll know." Bercik said. His jaw was working, calculations going through his head like a merchant measuring a dowry prospect, all without a look to indicate a thought about the men who worked his land, Adas noticed. "Spread out. Call out if you see something, don't just run in."

"I won't." Adas promised with all possible sincerity when mingled with contempt, but stepped back to fan out right of Bercik. Like the man or not, Bercik paid his wage, scant as it was. And even Bercik had his better days. It was the cold bothering Adas more than ought else about this whole venture, and that would soon be driven off when they were treated to a warm mug in Tammon's Inn as thanks for leading the cow back so late at night. Adas would be sure to insist.

He nodded to the hesitant Jacek, who seemed to find it some small reassurance, and stepped right around one birch trunk as Bercik traipsed left. Before long, he'd fanned out far enough to be on the edge of Bercik's light, and he'd all but lost sight of Jacek except for the bobbing light of his torch on the far side.

Adas' grip shifted on his pitchfork, making a half-effort to keep a defensive stance up as he hugged his bare arms closer to his chest. His old sergeant would've cursed and screamed at him, soil lie light upon the poor bastard. A white-haired man had cut him near in two at Vergen, and most of his unit had met similarly gruesome ends either in the damn dwarves' city or on the march back home. Sometimes he wondered if he'd been meant to complete his long march home to Brackton, the only man the village had sent who'd ever returned, but the thoughts never lasted long. The thought of how much better being cold than being dead was a warming one by itself.

Picking his way through bramble he couldn't see at his own feet, sensing the terrain by the feel of short kicks through the snow, he realized shortly he was falling behind. Bercik's light had disappeared, and barely a glimmer of Jacek's distant torch reached the trees in Adas' eyesight. Chancing a loping, heavy gate, he hopped between the roots and brush and hoped he'd make up the difference before it earned him a pitch into the snow again. He didn't fancy being out alone on a winter night.

Straining his eyes to guess at the next safe footfall, he didn't see what caused the distant torchlight to falter, but he heard Jacek's terrified cry ringing through the skeletal trunks and felt instinctual fear chill him anew from the heart outward. Adas' head shot up in time to see the last of the orange glow on the birches die, and stopped everything, even his lungs for fear his next breath would drown out some telltale whisper of his own death approaching.

Nothing came. Snow compacted into ice beneath Adas' shaking boots, but all else was stillness in the cold air. Adas released his gasp as steam through the bristles of his beard and tried to peer toward the last place the light had been. Was Jacek alive to hear him if he called out? Would something else hear him if he did? Where was Bercik? If it knew he was there already, would calling out matter?

"*Help!*" another pitiful cry reached him, the distortion of pain unable to rob it of words this time.

"Jacek!" Adas called back, throwing away his own caution just to let the boy know he wasn't alone, whatever danger there was. "I'm coming!"

Adas rushed blindly into the dark on his new course, heedless of stance or obstacle this time. Low branches whipped at his face and arms while forest debris under the snow threatened to rob him of his footing, but he plunged through, pitchfork balanced like a spear in one hand. Thoughts of what Jacek might be feeling became Adas' own, gripped by the terrible fear of life slipping away alone in the cold and dark. He wouldn't let that happen over Bercik's stupid cow.

"Jacek!" he shouted again, allowing the dry chill to leave his throat raw in hopes of another answer to point his way.

None came, until an unreserved scream carried through the trees, drawing closer as if Jacek were running to meet him. Then to his astonishment, a dark, flailing shape, the source of the screaming, soared through the space above Adas' head just under the trees. He might have thought it a raven, were ravens the size of a man and flew by tumbling end for end. It crashed into a birch trunk, fell into the snow where its outline became more clearly that of a young man, and lay still. The sight brought Adas to a flabbergasted halt.

"Jacek?" Adas said, staring dumbly until the lack of an answer reminded him of what such violent, impossible motion must do to a body. All but forgetting his pitchfork dropped in the snow, Adas rushed over and rolled Jacek's form over to sit him up against the tree he'd collided with.

The lad was bloody, cuts and gashes evident where bruising hadn't already discolored his face and body, and Adas was fairly certain no shoulder should sit nor limb should bend as some of the lad's did. But for all that, Adas found as he leaned close, he still drew breath, at least for the moment. Little cover as he had, Adas still tore a strip from his thin tunic to run through the snow, crushing it in his hands to squeeze the caught crystals to wet the cloth, then started dabbing Jacek's face down with it, trying to get a better look at the worst of the damage. As he scraped, he barely registered the rythmic crack of twigs and snow being pounded to slush. Then something heavy and wet crunched to the ground not a dozen paces away. Slowing his ragged breath, Adas gingerly turned around.

Just around the tree's corner, a new trunk stood where it hadn't a moment before. Only it wasn't a reedy birch, but a pillar of muscle and snarled fur. The air shuddered under the trembling of wet lungs surely the size of bellows. Adas didn't dare to move, but his eyes crept up just so far as to know the top of whatever creature stood before him towered into the lower canopy, becoming no more than an indistinct shape of black on the black sky, though Adas feared the twinkle he spotted was no star, but a cold, cruel eye. He ducked so as not to meet it with his own.

His gaze returned down only to meet with Jacek's, eyes open and wide with fear, each breath shaking his body. He stared helplessly, as if held by some enchantress, over Adas' shoulder at the titan which had already half killed him. His mouth fell open, but before so much as a whimper could escape, a fur glove wrapped across his face.

The arm was Bercik's, approaching quietly for a man set so heavy. His torch was gone, and his free hand held a finger over his chapped lips.

Jacek twisted his neck as if to struggle, but Bercik clamped his glove down so hard Adas, had he the freedom to move, might have wrenched it free to keep him from smothering the lad. Whatever stood on the other side of the tree, it had taken a step away, a great paw lifting something from the snow--Adas' pitchfork. It turned the thing over, inspected the thing's points with the other paw. Then shattered its haft against the next tree when it seemed to prick itself. Adas shivered as the splintered remnant was cast to the ground, and not for the cold.

Two heavy tromps, and the figure lifted what it had set down before--the carcass of Bercik's milk cow--and heaved it up, though whether over a shoulder or in great teeth Adas couldn't see, and his mind was too restless to trust what his eyes might've interpreted. Then it turned and loped away between the trees, becoming one with the dark just beyond the next tree. The crack of branches in its path didn't recede for some time more, however.

When at last those had faded, Adas gasped in a breath held far too long. His voice came out a muted wail, "What *was* that thing?"

If Bercik knew, he didn't deign to an answer. "We have to get back. It'll kill us if it stumbles on us here again."

Adas looked back down to Jacek. He was mercifully unconscious again, though Adas couldn't tell if that was a good thing. "He might not last all that way. We should take him straight to the village, needs a proper healer."

"Might not matter," Bercik grunted, brushing the snow off himself as he stood, "but aye, we should make for the village. Need to see the ealdorman."

"To warn the town?"

"To take up a collection." Bercik asserted. "We need a witcher."