[coronatiger]

Uncultured enemies
The Wild Hunt

At regular intervals, once every 30 years or so, a series of mysterious events occur. They always happen in rural areas, some distance from major settlements, but where they happen vary greatly; sometimes an area in Knurlkyth's neighborhood is struck, other times it happens in far-away lands, and the dwarves only hear about it months later.

The Wild Hunt usually starts small. Perhaps a farmer doesn't return home from the market, his cart found overturned in a ditch. Maybe the village's communal ox is discovered dead one morning, with no marks of violence on him, but somehow drained of blood. Often, the first incidents are declared accidents, suicides or "freaks of nature", and are only attributed to the Wild Hunt later.

As events escalate, investigators are brought in and start poking around. They invariably find animal tracks, like that of a pack of large dogs or wolves, territorial claw marks on trees, and large amounts of dead animals, sometimes butchered savagely, sometimes with no marks on them. Another commonly occurring clue is the witness stories: People who have seen dark shadows running across the fields at night. People who claim to have been chased through the woods by unseen hunters (hence the name) who disappear as suddenly as they appeared. Many chase survivors tell of voices urging the beasts on, but no human-like footprints have ever been found, neither bare-foot nor booted. Attempts to follow the tracks always fail; either the trackers simply lose the trail, or they fail to return.

At times, mages have been assigned to help the investigators. They quickly discover that any attempts to glean information about the Wild Hunt through magical means are blocked. One reported that it felt like running head first into a stone wall, except that it was the wall that came crashing into him. Other spells, such as healing, seem to work normally.

After three or four weeks, the Wild Hunt disappears. The tracks and markings vanish, and except for all the dead and missing people and animals, it was as if the Wild Hunt was never there. Even magical scrying finds nothing, not even the block that previously hindered the spell-casting.

The number of animals killed vary wildly, but the number of dead and missing people are always just above one hundred. Some scholars believe that the number always is 107, and that if the reported number isn't spot on, then there either are some incidents with other causes that are falsely attributed to the Wild Hunt, or some cases that are believed to have "natural" causes that in fact should have been laid at the Wild Hunt's feet (or paws). Other scholars think that the Wild Hunt has a fixed "target" number of kills (111 is a popular belief), and that it doesn't always reach its' target, because some people miraculously get away.

It has also been noted that the intervals of appearance may coincide with generation shifts in the unknown race that's behind the Wild Hunt.