Editing New Ways Old Grudges Werewolf BufordBane

==The Fort Buford Bane==

A long time ago, long before the horse came to the plains and man went everywhere on foot, there was a certain set of cliffs overlooking a section of slowly moving river that had always been bad. It was bad for men, anyway - animals loved it. Buffalo avoided it, but they were the only creatures that did, it seemed - you could always kill a rabbit or a bird, or if you went at the right time of day even an elk or moose. But you could only ever go by yourself, because whenever two people went to that part of the river, one didn't come back. If three or more went, then at least one man always died, and the rest were so consumed with arguing, fighting and jealousy that not only did they not kill animals, they were more inclined to turn their weapons on each other. As far as anyone could remember, even the oldest of the white-haired men and most wrinkled of the old women, these cliffs had been like this. But people went to them because there was always food to be had if you were good enough to get it, and winters were hard on the prairie. Plus, sometimes a man just wanted to have killed a bigger moose or elk than other men, whether out of deep rivalry or friendly competition. Werewolves never disappeared - even if a pack went to investigate the stories or the murders, nothing came of it, no foul odors other than spilled blood and viscera.

This all changed when the horse came.

Suddenly, man no longer had to be so desperate for food, and men who were no good at hunting buffalo on foot could become expert killers on horseback with work and practice, if they could get a good horse. This was great for men, who went from trying to chase buffalo over cliffs without being crushed in a stampede to being able to cut individual animals from a numberless horde and take them down. It was not so good for the bad cliffs. Unbeknownst to everyone, even the vast majority of werewolves, an ancient and dessicated evil had inhabited that patch of land thousands of years. When the sedentary tribe with horses became a mobile horse tribe, the evil was deprived of its sustenance - it had lived on the unthinking, murderous competitiveness it inspired in sedentary farming tribes. But it was unable to move because of an ancient spiritual wound inflicted on it by a powerful shaman, and in order to survive it had to lure men to it, playing on their basic need for food. The animals were easy for such a primal spirit and required little effort. But when man made a servant of horse and food of buffalo and no longer had to rely on the evil cliffs, he unknowingly sentenced the spirit to starvation. It would not go quietly.

One night, when the moon was missing from the sky, the rock face stirred, and boulders big as houses cracked and went tumbling down the slopes. The old farming village had been abandoned, and the last sentient being was long out of earshot when the monster rose from its rocky grave and bellowed its anger to the sky. The last sentient human, anyway. As the ancient evil unfolded wings that had been still and encased in rock for untold centuries, a distant werewolf pricked up his ears. The long grey wolf called War-Ender, a torn-eared veteran of many fights on the plains and a great warrior for his people, instinctively knew that something gravely dangerous had just stirred.

Unfortunately for War-Ender and the Uktena, they were unable to put at end to the nameless beast with lance and claw. They tracked it and they tried to fight it, but every time a pack found it, it did something to tear the pack apart and set it to fighting one another - and if two packs were sent, even their totems started quarreling and arguing. It was a puzzle that no werewolf was able to solve for many years, especially after the white werewolves came. When it was not getting werewolf packs to tear themselves apart, it was egging on fights between tribes and friends, and spared no white man when they came to the prairie either. Where once it was Lakota against Mandan, nomad versus farmer, it became churchman versus hunter, Norwegians and Germans against Anglo-Americans, and newly arrived Eastern would-be homesteaders set to clashing with people whose families had fought the Indians and crept across the plains in fits and starts. The best the werewolves could ever do was to try to banish it, though this consumed a lot of power and some said was only a bribe, rewarding the evil spirit more than anything else.

It was not until the final days of the Indian Wars in the northern plains that an Uktena loremaster called Travels the Distant Paths had a vision in a dream. War-Ender, the long-gone old wolf, appeared and told the loremaster the secrets it had taken him centuries to acquire, both on the material plane and as an ancestor-spirit, ceaseless in his fight to contain the monster War-Ender had taken to calling the Fire Stoker. It would require great sacrifice, but not in battle - in fact, if a drop of new blood was shed, the whole thing would come crashing down. Travels the Distant Paths knew that the Lakota war going on may be the Uktena's last good chance to corral the Fire Stoker and trap it back in the Earth.

The whites had built a fort out on the prairie like they always did, someplace to harass the Indians and protect their own. The white werewolves were here too, protecting their own as best they could from both the locals and Wyrmish entities they had either brought with them or turned loose in their ignorance. But the white werewolves had no memory of what it was like to face the Fire Stoker - these werewolves were Get of Fenris, proud and boasting and with no memory of the packs of white werewolves who had gone hunting the monster and never returned. They knew the Indian Wars were ending and with them the dominance of the Uktena and Wendigo over the land that had been won by the Fenrir and the other European tribes. Surely they could send a pack of moderate skill to chase down and kill the creature that had haunted Uktena nightmares for decades. When the first pack disappeared, they sent another to find it, then a third. By the time they had spent a large portion of their strength with absolutely nothing to show for it, the Fire Stoker came to them - sort of. It inflamed the anger among Natives and whites, and blood was spilled stupidly and pointlessly. Homid Kin died and were buried in the Dakota soil along with ordinary people, white and Indian.

This was when Travels the Distant Paths appeared, having come a long way to reach Fort Buford with his pack. Although he was tempted to find and bring the body of one of the missing Fenrir as proof of what he said, that the enemy did not itself fight but turned thinking creatures against each other, he knew that such a gesture would be interpreted as murder by the angry white werewolves and therefore did not. Instead, he brought the families of werewolves and humans who had disappeared or been murdered by the creature's twisting magic. After an extremely long and somewhat heated discussion the Fenrir chief, Gunter Bare-Fist-Breaks-The-Stone, who had lost a son and a niece to Fire Stoker, finally agreed that the Uktena was right. They could not fight the creature and they had to somehow bring about a major peacemaking in the presence of the Bane. Seeing as how the Lakota were fugitives in Canada and many whites would have been perfectly happy to murder them all, the werewolves decided to see what they could do to resolve that struggle without killing everyone.

In consultation with spirits and wise wolves, it was discovered that there had to be a peaceful memorial to those killed violently for the ritual to succeed. The Fenrir suggested the military graveyard on the grounds of Fort Buford - the Indians in those days had no memorials or gravesites worth mentioning, they were too busy trying to find food to build or maintain them. The Uktena agreed and, heartbreaking though it was, did what they could to bring the Lakota back to the United States. They swore pacts with Lakota leaders to protect their people as best they could and preserve as much of what made them Lakota as they could - in memories and songs, if nothing else. Dances On The Edge Of A Sword and Rainsinger, Fenrir and Uktena Theurges respectively, brought Fire Stoker with a simple incantation - and when it appeared, ready to raise chaos and cause the whites and the Indians to slaughter each other, the werewolves met it with a stone wall of silent confrontation. War-Ender had told Travels the Distant Paths that no one, man or werewolf, could show anger or excessive competitiveness in the spirit's presence, or it would be the end of him. Although the Fenrir had initially asked their two most violent warriors to be absent, they both steadfastly refused - even after Gunter Bare-Fist-Breaks-the-Stone promised to personally decapitate them with his bare hands if they somehow survived the spirit's magic. Alice Brings-Death-While-Laughing and Aelfric Banegutter folded their arms and stared down Fire Stoker while Travels the Distant Paths joined in with Rainsinger and Dances On The Edge Of A Sword to seal the ancient Bane in the ground. As Sitting Bull's son handed over his rifle, a silent psychic whip lashed every mind present, followed by a breath of fresh air and calm - Fire Stoker, which had killed an untold number of werewolves and men in its rampage over the plains, was quiet again.

In the years afterwards, there were occasional clashes between whites and Indians - whether Lakota, Hidatsa or anyone else. But there was never another recurrence of what had happened when Fire Stoker followed the people. The Get and the Uktena get along well enough these days - although tensions are high elsewhere, here at least they're civil to one another. As a part of the effort to ensure that Fire Stoker remains sealed in the Earth, both Fenrir and Uktena werewolves and Kin take care of the little cemetery at Fort Buford, which holds the bones of Fenrir Kin who died around the fort, usually killed in fights with Indians or murdered by other whites.

A short time before he died, Travels The Distant Paths went far to the north, looking for tales of Fire Stoker and how it came to be. Far away in the Yukon, he met an old Wendigo woman, Singer of Many Ancient Songs, who told him that it had come to the land now called North America thousands of years ago, and it had roamed the skies even then. Her ancestor Grinning Fox, also called Hits The Weak Places, had dealt Fire Stoker the crippling blow that had restricted its movement so much, but it had managed to sneak away before her ancestor could finish it off. Unfortunately, Travels The Distant Paths never got to hear what might have been able to destroy the Bane, because the old werewolf died of a stroke before finishing the story. He himself died shortly afterwards in a fight with Wyrmridden miners who had found the wrong cave during the Yukon Gold Rush. These days, if those secrets can still be found, someone will have to find the old Wendigo woman's spirit - but who knows her name or where she was found or died, other than the spirit of Travels The Distant Paths?