The Todenhorns

The **Todenhorns** are the first supernatural beings encountered by Peter Normal.

They were a family comprised of a father and his twelve sons who came to the settlement that would eventually be Duskerville from Europe (or possibly escaped from Europe as there were rumors one of the younger sons had committed murder) and took a stake on the land of John Stephen Flannagan after the American Revolution.

John Stephen decided to deal with the Todenhorns in court once a traveling judge made the circuit rather than confront them. At first, things were quiet and peaceful despite John Stephen's unwanted neighbors until he noticed his crops were not as bountiful as last year's harvest.

Though he had no proof, John suspected the Todenhorns were thieving from his gardens in the pitch black of night.

He confronted Old Man Todenhorn in a calm manner, requesting that they barter produce from him when he noticed Todenhorn's sons all stand by their father, facing John Stephen, which unnerved him though he managed to speak his peace.

In response, Old Man Todenhorn spoke, 'This is from the land. It is our land. They give us the land. We take what we want. Not yours.'

When nothing more was said, John returned to his home.

The Todenhorns kept to themselves and proved to be industrious as they managed to clear an entire field of trees and build a house within three weeks. They apparently had money, enough to buy good tools in town, which fueled gossip of robbery and murder back in Germany, or the Netherlands, or wherever it was they came from. They were also apparently hunters, given how much time they spent in the woods for long and odd hours.

Months after they built their house, a French Trapper uncovered the truth: While gaming in the woods, he happened across what appeared to be a church but unlike any he'd ever seen. The church bore no crosses or any signs of Christianity... instead, there were animal skulls and bones, and strange bindings of plants and flowers lining the walls. A wooden stump served as the centerpiece, with the walls having been built around it. On the stump was evidence of knife marks and what seemed to be burned sacrifices of plants or animals.

The French trapper was confronted by one of the Todenhorns, who threatened the trapper with murder unless he left, in the name of his family's old gods of the forest and of death. The French trapper escaped with his life and hurried to town to inform everyone that the Todenhorns were pagans.

The God-fearing people of the town refused to tolerate such heathens with dark beliefs, and a delegation of five men gathered that afternoon to deliver an ultimatum to the Todenhorn family: Leave and never come back, or suffer the consequences.

While John would have been glad to be rid of the Todenhorns, he begged the people to await the arrival of the magistrate, but was ignored.

The resulting confrontation led to a gunfight, with the Todenhorns shooting first, which killed two of the men from town. The three survivors claimed the father and hus eldest son fired first without provocationm but years later, one of them recanted and said it had actually been a shoving match that escalated too fast. Either way, two men were dead while the three survivors fled for their lives.

The three survivors returned to town, screaming about the madmen in the forest hauling off the two who'd died to be sacrificed to their demon gods.

By nightfall, a mob of fifty men pass John Stephen's house armed with torches and guns. John tried to reason with them but the mayor assured him 'justice would be done' and that all these men of this mob had been deputized. The mayor led the mob to confront the Todenhorns, demanding they surrender, only for the father of the Todenhorns to refuse.

What happened next, the townsmen claimed had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, as they'd brought along gallons of kerosene and that their intention had been to smoke the Todenhorns out of their house. Regardless, a fire broke out and even as the walls burned around them, Todenhorns refused to leave their house, even as they screamed while they were burned to death.

The next morning, the townsmen searched the remains of the house to find the thirteen Todenhorns' bodies charred and dead. They were buried altogether in the same grave with nary a headstone or prayer for mercy upon their souls.

The people of the town never spoke of what happened again, some tried to forget it ever happened, believing it was over and done with.

But it wasn't.

Only two weeks after the fire, John Stephen noticed he was still losing vegetables from his garden and feared he might have made a false accusation. So he decided to keep watch one night with his shotgun. Around midnight, he heard a rustle and went to investigate and found the thief to be a corpse, charred black with no eyes in his head.

John Stephen dropped his gun and ran for his house.

The next morning, he went to the Todenhorns' burned house and was horrified to find the grave appeared to have been dug up from the inside out, footprints leading away from the grave to the house, to the remains of a wardrobe that hadn't been completely consumed by the fire. The wardrobe had been enarly emptied, and Jon quickly returned home to move his family o his in-laws' cabin further away, and kept vigil of his garden for seven weeks. Though he never saw anything else, other than lantern lights in the nighttime woods, he eventually moved his family back and forbade them from going into the garden or to the field beyond it, and grew a hedge or rose bushes as a barrier for his young children, ordering then never to go past the flowers.

John shared what he'd seen to others but was merely laughed at and his story forgotten.

However, the townspeople noticed the Todenhorns' pagan temple was still standing and saw it as an affront to their religion (and a final reminder of their unbridled 'justice') and so sent two men to tear it down.

They never returned.

Days later, a search party of five men went looking for them, and they never returned either. (No one bothered to point outthe seven men who went missing had been part of the mob that burned down the Todenhorn house). Eventually, the matter was dropped and no one ventured into the forest near the property ever again.

## Volume 1: Dead Men

Two hundred years later, Dill Bodinksi accidentally blew up some watermlons in the garden and Seamus Flannagan offered a cattle to placate the Todenhorns so they would not seek retribution.

Alas, Peter and Dill explored the forest and entered the Todenhorns' pagan temple and barely escaped with their lives, something the Todenhorns would not let stand.

The Todenhorns eventually came to kill Peter and Dill, who worked together to lead the Dead Men to the oceanside cliff where they tricked them into falling to their demises, smashing into the rocks below.