Teolu

Teolu was born into a small family originating from Skopun who believed in a massive array of gods, each with their own separate domain. His parents’ religion was rigid and complex, demanding total devotion to the gods it was built around in order to win their favor. Without that favor, Leta and Déjuti told Teolu, they would almost certainly die in their harsh homeland.

He was not one for questioning the rules and taking risks, so he simply bent his head and followed his parents’ example, declaring his devotion to Cionan - an owl goddess of stealth and the night that his parents believed had blessed him. Teolu prayed to her, painted his skin and adorned his face with an owl mask, and did everything he could to show his gratefulness for the gifts Cionan had given him: his dark pelt, patterned like Her feathers, and a gift for silence that rivaled even an owl’s.

Due to the harsh environment of their home, the Deadnettle pack was constantly on edge. They never stopped in one place for long, always meticulously rationed their food, and above all, prayed to their gods for their blessing. Their religion and the ways they showed devotion were one of the very few things they could control. But despite the unforgiving landscape of Teolu’s early years, he was genuinely happy.

It would not last long. When the siblings were a year old, a wound on Cysiné’s leg became horribly infected. The family slowed their travels in an attempt to let her rest, but it was the middle of winter — food was almost impossible to come by, and the only thing allowing the family to survive was their slow march onwards, following their prey. They could not stop without starving.

Teolu’s memories of this time are vivid. He watched Cysiné lean against his father as they kept marching onward, Déjuti telling her to just pray and Atlotr will save you. He watched the wound fester and rot despite Leta’s best efforts to heal it with their limited herb supplies. And when Cysiné collapsed one day and didn’t get up, he stayed by her unconscious body the longest, begging his parents to stay with her.

It’s no use, they told him, looking sadly down at her body. She will die of her infection anyway. If we stay here, we will starve.

Teolu stayed until the gnawing hunger in his belly forced him to follow his family. He regrets leaving to this day.

The family pressed onwards, barely scraping by in the desolate cold. They survived, and life returned to normal — but late that autumn, tragedy struck once more.

They didn’t notice the Naaeta stalking them until it was too late to evade them. Teolu didn’t know what they were at the time; he had never encountered them before, nor heard of them. When the overwhelming stench of mold washed over the pack, they each assumed it was a mutated plant… until the Naaeta pounced, digging sharp claws into Teolu’s side and sending him tumbling across the clearing, shattering his mask.

It all happened so quickly that he still struggles to make sense of it. Leta screamed at the siblings to flee with Teolu and make sure he was safe; in his injured state, he couldn’t protest at all. One moment he was watching his parents fend off the Naaeta, and the next, Keidar was pulling him up and shoving him into the undergrowth. The sounds of breaking bones and ripping flesh coming from behind them confirmed the siblings’ worst fears as they ran into the forest.

The Naaeta was occupied with their parents; it didn’t pursue the group at all. When the siblings finally stopped to breathe, everything was silent. Each of them refused to look at each other, still struggling to comprehend what happened. They didn’t speak for the rest of the day. It was like they were all on autopilot, staring into the forest like zombies. The few glimpses of the carnage that Teolu had seen kept replaying in his mind. He couldn’t stop thinking about them…

Exhausted from hours of running, the group finally sheltered in a cave for the night, but none of them could sleep. Teolu got up and simply walked into the forest, following the trail back to where the Naaeta had first appeared. No one made an effort to stop or follow him; they just watched him leave without comment.

The clearing was almost completely silent when he arrived. The Naaeta and the mold-stench it had brought with it were completely gone. For a second, Teolu wondered if the whole scene had just been a horrible dream, but then he saw the blood smeared thick across the earth and the murder of crows fighting for a place to eat at his parents’ corpses. A wave of dizziness threatened to knock him over as he approached their remains and saw how horribly the Naaeta had mutilated them. There was no way he’d be able to bury or even move them in this state… but Teolu pressed onwards, searching for the one thing that mattered: their masks.

He gathered up all the shards he could, wiping them in the dew-covered grass to get off the blood, and took them with him. When he found his old owl mask, shattered to pieces, he paused. Eventually, Teolu scooped them up as well and began the journey to the place where he would bury them; Vor — the highest point in Myrkur. The family had spent many nights there underneath the stars when their route crossed through Myrkur, and he knew his parents would have appreciated the gesture.

It was a long trek. Teolu was constantly on guard for the mold-smell to avoid it, worried that the monster he’d seen would appear again. There were faint tracks of it scattered almost everywhere - he would later learn these were left by Årelang canines, not the Naaeta. Whenever he smelled it, he took a massive detour away from the smell, constantly meandering farther and farther away from the path. The Myrkur hazards that a lone traveler such as himself had to face and the sheer distance to Vor only complicated things. But, much like he had in the clearing, Teolu pressed on. It took him several months to reach his destination; by the time the mountains began to loom over the horizon, it was the beginning of spring.

Much to Teolu’s dismay, the mold-stench that he would soon learn was left behind by Årelang had flooded the area. Although he didn’t know it yet, he had arrived just after the Starfall Celebration between the two packs. Something was strange here, though; little bits of bones from the food and smears of festival bodypaint that had been left behind littered the ground. These were signs of civilization, something Teolu also knew to avoid like the plague in fear of trespassing on another pack’s territory, but not something he would have associated with the monster he’d seen. His curiosity had been piqued, and now he knew he needed to investigate.

But first things first… he had made an oath to his parents. Teolu wandered a bit down the mountain, to a spot of rough terrain the party-goers had avoided in fear of losing their balance and falling. There were no trees there, and so the stars were clearly visible. Turning his focus to the ground, he began to dig. When the grave was completed, he placed his parents’ masks — and the remains of his own — into the earth and covered them. With how horribly the Naaeta had mutilated their corpses, it was the best he could do. The masks had ended up as their most recognizable feature in death anyways.

With that task completed, Teolu began to investigate the celebration site. It quickly became apparent that the mold-stench was mixed with that of many other canines, and that with how much they had faded, they wouldn’t be returning anytime soon.

A pack… Teolu’s months of traveling alone had successfully taught him just how useful it was to travel in numbers. He needed the protection a pack would offer. There was no way he’d survive on his own. With very little choice, he began to slowly trace Årelang’s tracks back to the Radaga.

It took a while for Teolu to finally join. For months, he watched them as carefully as he could from the forest, using his gift for stealth to stay hidden. After all, he would rather die alone in the forest than join a restrictive or controlling pack. But it all changed when one day, he spotted the last canine he would’ve expected to see — his sister, Cysiné.

That was the day Teolu made up his mind. He had to join, both to be with what might well be the last remnants of his family, and to figure out how in the hell she had gotten here. He ventured into Årelang territory immediately.