92 lines
No EOL
14 KiB
Markdown
92 lines
No EOL
14 KiB
Markdown
> [!infobox|right]
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> # Daughters of the Wolf
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> 
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> **Also Called**: Ōkami Musume, Wolf-Sisters, Night Women, The Fanged Wives
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> <table>
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> <tr><th colspan="2" align="center" style="background:#4a2c2c;color:white;">General Information</th></tr>
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> <tr><td>Formed By</td><td>Mountainfolk exiles, blood-mad warriors, spirit-guided women</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Regions</td><td>Shatar Mountains, northern Footlands ([[The Reaches]])</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Spirit Interaction</td><td>Communion, Channeling, Devotional Rites</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Associated Spirits</td><td>The Old Wolf (Furui Ōkami), Complex Predator Spirits</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Moral Perception</td><td>Feared and Respected (Tribes), Taboo (Lowlanders)</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Rite Cost</td><td>Blood, solitude, flesh, sanity, exile</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Membership</td><td>All-female; warriors, exiles, or Wolfborn</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Forbidden</td><td>Men, mercy in battle, unearned kinship</td></tr>
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> </table>
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## Overview
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The **Daughters of the Wolf** are a feral, matriarchal war-sisterhood drawn from the icy highlands of the [[Shatar Mountains]] and the taiga-covered [[Footlands]] of the **Reaches**. Neither tribe nor cult in the conventional sense, they exist as a nomadic, militant order of mystic huntresses bound together by pain, blood, and shared reverence for the [[Old Wolf]] - a composite, predatory spirit said to embody winter’s hunger and the brutal harmony of the pack.
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Formed from the exiled, the spirit-touched, and those who fall into ecstatic battle-trance, the Daughters reject the hierarchies of clan and city. They obey only the call of the **Pack**, communicated through rites, omens, and the whispered dreams of those attuned to the wolf’s voice. No banners fly in their wake - only claw-marks, scattered bones, and the frost-stung silence of a ravaged hearth.
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Each winter, under the swollen moon, the Daughters descend from their high shelters for what they call the _Red Maw Season_ - a time of ritual raids, sacrificial hunts, and spiritual communion through blood. To the cities and lowlanders, their arrival signals terror: men vanish, fires are extinguished for fear of attracting them, and folk pray to spirits both kind and cruel to be spared.
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They fight without words, often unclad beyond furs and bone-wrought armor, using moonlight, instinct, and the terrain to their advantage. Their battles are as much ceremonies as they are assaults, and it is said that to be slain by a Daughter is to have one’s soul judged - and perhaps devoured - by the [[Old Wolf]].
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## History
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The origins of the **Daughters of the Wolf** are rooted in blood and exile. In the long twilight following the **Warlord Period** - an era marked by ruin, spirit-corruption, and ceaseless feuding - the fractured clans of the [[Shatar Mountains]] began to enforce rigid hierarchies and codes of bloodline. Women who defied these codes, particularly those who led warbands, claimed spirits, or fought with too much fury, were cast out as threats to the patriarchal order.
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Rather than perish in the cold, these exiles followed visions of spectral wolves seen prowling through blizzards and moonlit groves. Guided by hunger and instinct, they made their way deeper into the mountains, vanishing into crevasses and ancient cairn-valleys known only to spirits and the dead. There, according to myth, they encountered the [[Old Wolf]] - or perhaps became part of it. In dreams and delirium, they learned the rites of the Pack: how to hunt as one, how to devour to survive, and how to kill in silence.
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![[7c738601-f47a-48f3-86c2-288e58ab1216.png|hmed left]]
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From these first sisters came the **Moonfang Circle**, the founding warband of what would become the Daughters. They wrote no laws but carved their oaths into bone and bark, and let the wind carry their howls. Their survival was their proof, their hunger their faith.
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At first, they were seen as feral horrors - raiders, cannibals, abominations. Tribes sought to destroy them, sending warriors into the mountains to purge what they called the _Blood-Widows._ Few returned. Over generations, the fear changed. Some began to offer tribute - food, tools, or daughters considered cursed. Others sent outcast women in secret, hoping they would be taken and transformed.
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By the time of the **Day of Descent**, when the mountainfolk re-emerged into the lowlands to reclaim ancestral land, the Daughters had become legend: a roaming sisterhood whose allegiance was to no tribe, only to the Pack and the Old Wolf. Stories spread of border forts emptied in a night, of men abducted by laughing women with crescent tattoos and teeth filed to points, of trails of bones left arranged in spiral runes pointing toward snow-choked passes.
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Now, in the third century since their founding, the Daughters are both myth and reality. Some tribes call them protectors, others monsters. The lowland cities call them raiders and worse, but even hardened mercenaries hesitate to speak their name on cold nights - lest the wind carry it to ears not meant to hear.
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## Structure
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The Daughters of the Wolf operate with a rigid yet primal hierarchy, modeled not after political chains of command, but after the **structure of a hunting pack**. Rank is earned through **ritual, ordeal, and vision**, and titles are spoken with reverence - even when soaked in blood.
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|Rank|Native Title|Role & Description|
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|**Matron-Kai**|_Kai-no-Mikazuki_ (Matron of the Crescent Moon)|Supreme war-mother and spiritual leader. She communes directly with the Old Wolf and governs all circles. Chosen through the **Trial of the Maw**, a duel of vision and violence. Only one may hold this title at a time.|
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|**Yoru-no-Onna**|_Night Women_|Captains of individual warbands or ritual circles, typically commanding 10–30 warriors. They lead raids, oversee rites, and act as judges in internal disputes. Often bonded lovers of their Matron.|
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|**Kiba-no-Hime**|_Fangborn_|Elite warriors who have spilled blood under a full moon and partaken in at least one Red Maw Feast. Their crescent tattoos mark them as full sisters of the Pack.|
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|**Yuki no Ko**|_Snow-Children_|Initiates and aspirants - often preadolescent Wolfborn or newly taken seekers. They train in survival, tracking, and trance-combat until they are deemed ready for the **Hunt of the Moon**. Many perish.|
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|**Uragami**|_Ghosts of the Pack_|Seers, bone-singers, and dream-walkers. Rare Daughters who do not fight with blades but guide the Pack through visions, storms, and whispers. They wear antlered veils and never speak outside of ritual.|
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## War Tactics
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The **Daughters of the Wolf** are not an army - they are a storm. Their warfare blends guerrilla precision, spirit-guided instincts, and ceremonial violence. They strike under cover of night or blizzard, move in silence, and vanish before the enemy understands what’s happened. Every engagement is both strategy and sacrament.
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To fight the Daughters is to fight shadow, snow, and the primal fear of being hunted.
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### Tactical Doctrine
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The Daughters of the Wolf do not wage war in the way armies do. Their tactics are not written in manuals or drilled in formations - they are etched into memory, honed in snowfields, and guided by visions whispered from the Old Wolf itself. To face them in battle is to face a force of nature: patient, coordinated, and merciless. They do not conquer; they cull.
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Their **tactical doctrine** is built around silence, instinct, and intimate knowledge of terrain. Communication within their warbands is wordless - hand signals, body language, and a shared rhythm drilled into them from the moment they first take up the fang. When the Daughters move, they move like a single organism: splitting into small units of three to five warriors - called _Fangs_ - that surround, flank, and isolate targets like wolves in a coordinated hunt. Each Fang is autonomous but attuned to the larger Pack's rhythm, and their leaders, the _Yoru-no-Onna_, guide these movements not from the front lines, but from the flanks - where they can strike hardest, and see the whole battlefield unfold.
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They prefer to strike under a full moon, when omens are clear and spirits draw near to the mortal world. These **moonlight offensives** are as much rites as they are raids. Storms and snowfall are not deterrents - they are blessings, sacred cover under which the Pack draws close unseen. To the Daughters, poor visibility is an ally, and the fear of the unseen is their greatest weapon. They are known to observe their prey for days before striking, letting unease bloom and spread. It is not uncommon for their targets to break and flee before a single blow is struck.
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### Typical Equipment
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**Weapons and equipment** are chosen not for strength, but for speed, silence, and symbolic power. Each Daughter bears a pair of crescent-shaped blades, forged to resemble wolf fangs - light, curved, and designed for slashing. Many also carry bone daggers carved from the remains of fallen enemies or kin, etched with runes that hum softly when drawn for ritual combat. Hooked spears are common among the more agile Fangs, used to pull enemies from horseback or dislodge those who seek shelter behind shields. They wear no armor in the traditional sense - only leather wrappings, wolfhide cloaks, and bone or antler masks carved with symbols from their dreams. These masks are not just protection - they are sacred personas assumed during war, often named and honored as separate spirits in their own right.
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### Ritual and Combat
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To the Daughters, combat is a sacred act. Every strike is a prayer; every kill a communion. In **ritualized combat**, especially before large battles or during key raids, a Daughter may invoke the **Trial of the Maw**, challenging an enemy leader to single combat. If she wins, she devours part of the foe's heart on the field before their comrades. The act is brutal, public, and spiritually charged - it is said to consume not just the flesh, but the enemy's courage and soul, offering it to the Old Wolf. After battles, those deemed spiritually worthy among the fallen are ritually prepared and partially consumed in what the Daughters call **Blood Feasting** - not out of savagery, but as a holy rite to honor the strength of the dead and weave their essence into the Pack. It is not uncommon for warriors to enter a trance during this feast, whispering names not their own as they consume the flesh.
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### Psychological Warfare
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![[bfaf1438-8317-4d80-96b6-9b1555b28684.png|hmed right]]
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But it is their use of **psychological warfare** that makes them truly terrifying. The Daughters understand fear as a weapon sharper than steel. They often stalk a target for days, leaving signs in the snow: paw-prints where no beast could have tread, spirals drawn in ash at the edge of campfires, bones arranged into runic warnings. At night, they howl from different directions - never close, never far - wearing down the resolve of those who wait. Sometimes, torches vanish one by one. Sometimes, the wind carries whispers. And sometimes, they simply appear inside the camp without sound or signal.
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When captives are taken, they are judged not by confession, but by presence. Weak men are dismissed with contempt or left to the snow. Those who show strength - through fury, defiance, or calm - are selected for **mating rites**, a different kind of trial. The rest return, if they return at all, as broken echoes of themselves - haunted by what they saw, or what they thought they understood.
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To the Daughters, war is not a disruption of peace - it is a vital ritual of balance. The weak must fall. The strong must feed the Pack. And fear is a tool the Old Wolf gave them to hunt not just flesh, but the soul.
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## Rites & Ceremonies
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For the Daughters of the Wolf, ritual is not mere ceremony - it is the crucible through which the Pack is forged. Every rite is a trial, a communion, or a transformation, designed to strip away weakness and bind the soul to the [[Old Wolf]]. These sacred acts blur the line between survival and worship, ensuring that only the strong, the cunning, and the spiritually attuned endure.
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Foremost among these is the **Hunt of the Moon**, a brutal rite of passage for every initiate. At the first full moon of winter, a _Snow-Child_ is cast into the wilds without fire, food, or company. She must survive alone, guided only by instinct and omen, and return with a trophy of worthy blood - a beast’s pelt, a spirit-marked bone, or the heart of an enemy. Many never return. Those who do are given names in dream-ritual and inked with their first fang tattoo.
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The **Red Maw Feast**, held during the coldest full moons, marks the height of the Daughters’ spiritual calendar. Warbands descend upon chosen targets in a blend of raid and ritual hunt. Captured men - deemed strong or spiritually resonant - are tested in ritual combat, sometimes mated with, and more often slain and consumed in trance-feasts. The act is not savage indulgence, but sacred assimilation: a way of binding strength to the Pack and honoring the hunger of the Old Wolf.
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After battle, the Daughters observe a sacred rite of **joining the hearts**. The hearts of fallen foes judged to be worthy - those who showed courage, ferocity, or spiritual weight - are ritually extracted and consumed by designated warriors. This act is believed to transfer strength, memory, and will to the Pack. The devouring is always done in silence, in the presence of the Uragami, and followed by a howl of mourning and unity.
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Disputes among Sisters are resolved in the **Trial by Moonfang**, a duel beneath the moon where steel and silence determine fate. Victory earns prestige, leadership, or blood-penance; defeat may mean death, but always brings clarity.
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Lastly, the **Communion of the Hunt**, led by the masked **Uragami**, draws Daughters into trance through chant, smoke, and shared breath. In this state, they walk the dream-hunt, receive visions, and commune with the Old Wolf itself - emerging changed, marked, or guided toward new prey.
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Through these rites, the Pack renews itself. And in each howl, feast, and trial, the bond to the Old Wolf deepens - savage, sacred, and unbroken. |