I am Paccanis ka Miccan, ward and protege of Riccanar ka Nex. For nearly ten years past my coming of age I pursued justice in the seething darkness of the northlands. What can I say of that time save this? Where atrocities are commonplace and the laws are idly pursued by easily bribed guards, true justice comes in the night, where neither lands nor gold hold sway.

But youth prevailed upon me, for of my kind only Riccanar is known to me, the rest hunted to extinction. I left the Brotherhood seeking ever southward, searching for a vera so my father's seed might live on. Perhaps so that our very race could survive.

I see the questions in your eyes, as if you would know of me anything. And if you know anything of me it will be more than those who call me friend in the southlands can claim. Ask, then, and perhaps you will learn of Pac the Silent.

Yet it is a tale which would take longer to answer in full than I have the patience for, though I know more of it than most. I have walked in the Mother's Garden and learned at the feet of the Truest, and have been to the Sanctuary of Wisdom and learned the official records of the northlands.

But I shall recount it briefly, since you asked and a rare mood is upon me. Perhaps with Erreta and our whelps safe I no longer feel so anxious of my past or future.

In the beginning of days before man turned away from the Mother Earth, walverns hunted in the night. There was no malice in our actions, for men were not then as they are now, and we were a race made to eat flesh. Slow and soft, men had no defense against us, and came to fear the dark.

But then the Creator of All returned to this world He had seeded and abandoned, and saw the plight of his children. He came down to a man called Irawn and taught him of fire and how to work metals, of language and how to record history, and most of all how to think. Then He turned away again, and none has seen Him since.

Irawn drew about him a vast throng, and with fire and death they hunted my people. To say that walverns were surprised would be to say that humans would be surprised, if deer should suddenly band together and begin hunting them in their cities. Walverns were not quick to respond to this attack, for though we are intelligent we have always instinctively followed the Mother's way of living with the simplicity of the beasts that roam this earth. By the time we thought to band our packs into armies it was far too late, the north was raised against us.

I could tell you more of the peace that finally settled, of the human tak'atun tribe that took pity on us and led us to Snaddavhel Island, where we lived in peace and learned and grew for nearly a millennia. I could tell you of the treachery the tak'atun finally worked upon us, and how once more the Church of the Creator led the fight in scouring us off the face of the Mother Earth.

Tell me about your hunger. Tell me about what you look like, for the night is dark and I can not see beyond the pages of a book. Could you pass for a human?

Do you prefer your humans cooked? If I was to step into this fire, would the smell drive you mad with hunger. Would you restrain yourself, and why on earth, or whatever planet this is, would you stop yourself? Do I not smell delicious? What consequence would there be if you ate me? Would your whelps be taken from you?

What does your kind taste like? Do the humans eat Walverns?

Tell me of this Riccanar, your master. Do you hate him? Do you wish him dead so you can take his place? I do not think you a monster, perhaps ka Nex deserves your hate. Does he beat you if you are not silent? What would happen to you if you were to scream for no reason? Do you fear for your life even within the brotherhood?

What I look like, first, for I had not known you had weak eyes. There is no disparity of height between male and vera, and in adulthood both reach around five feet five inches. And though we possess strength equal to or greater than that of all but the strongest humans, we tend towards sinew, rarely weighing more than one hundred and thirty pounds. In shape and feature walverns and humans are very similar, save that walverns possess fur which does not grow longer than a few inches even in winter. Not all over our bodies but covering our faces, so I am inclined to shave if I wish to pass for your kind, and in a mane down our spines, and in a thick belt about our waists. A lesser tuft covers the backs of our knees and elbows, following our arms and legs to the wrist and to the foot. In other places humans grow hair we do as well, generally thicker and covering more area.

Aside from that the only other distinguishing characteristic is that our eyes show pupils that are shaped like an arched doorway in the center of the iris, rather than a round pupil, so that for us the iris surrounds the eye on only the sides and the top. This lends us greater visual acuity, especially at night, and superior peripheral vision. Our hearing and sense of smell are also far more developed.

Do I eat humans, you ask? I sit here in a tavern of your kind, speaking to you. Am I gnawing on your arm as we speak? No, I do not eat humans, though in the madness that took me while I followed the Mother Earth I hunted them and at times tasted of their flesh when hunger took me.

But I have come to favor the logic of the Tyaonans, for it is obvious that both gods have betrayed me and I am alone now with only my vera and whelps to protect. To provide for them I hunt game, and with my bare hands and teeth bring it down and devour it raw. That is the way of my people.

As for what my kind tastes like, I could not tell you, nor would I easily find someone who could. Humans for the most part consider themselves too enlightened to eat the flesh of thinking creatures, and I feel the same. The True Sons may in the future, for they believe the Mother Earth's lies. But at present we are too few, and the Mother has protected us from being totally wiped out, and so the True Sons were forbidden to harm us in any away. If they hunt us now they will not find us easy prey, and we have little flesh on our bones to make us tempting.

Your questions concerning my late mentor show even deeper your ignorance, both for walverns and for the Brotherhood of Judiciars. I loved Riccanar as a father, for such he was to me. When the vera who whelped me died of her wounds shortly after, and my three litter-kin died of hunger one after the other, he found me in pitiful state and saved my very life. In the time of my childhood Snaddavhel had been destroyed for nearly a hundred years, yet he was still hunted, and only the Brotherhood protected him, for they serve Justice, and it is the height of injustice to slay the innocent, whatever their race.

I grew up believing firmly in the cause of the Judiciars, for all that no effort of theirs ever seemed to cleanse the blight of the northlands. And even when I turned to the Mother and Her madness and slew Riccanar, I grieved for him, as I grieved for the other Judiciars who fought and died against the True Sons.

But my fighting is over now. Though the True Sons and Newborns and Tyaonan and the gods-faithful may war for this world I wish only to see my whelps grow and produce whelps of their own. I have found a refuge deep in the mountains where cold will drive away all but the hardiest, and there is plenty of game to hunt. After this one last kindness I show to Dirival Tyrsen your kind will likely not see me again, though I live to be as old as Riccanar himself.

Ah, the Mother Earth. Do you listen to the wind, human? Do you kneel in the soil as the sun beats down and feel the vibrant life of the world decaying to dust? The wind is Her voice, and we have lived nurtured by Her since the beginning.

What a conundrum, that the goddess can love us so, and hate us as well! Or that she could bless us with one hand, while deep within her fiery womb nurture the dragons and Newborn that I fear will destroy us all.

But what of Her? She is the earth, of course. Her mind is as slow and vast as the rising of mountains, and though She chafes at the blight of humanity on Her surface and the way they scour other living things away or tame them to submission (even as the Creator tamed her), She pays them individually not much heed. Few remain on this earth who can mold Her will to perform what many call magic. Of those She favored best, including the Truest himself, most threw themselves into Her womb and allowed the fires to warp them into inhuman Newborn, scoured of all the Creator's taint.

For in the beginning She was wild and untamed, liquid passion boiling from her fiery insides and molten stone flowing where water now pools, ever changing beneath the obscuring veil of fume. Perhaps it was this wild beauty that drew the Creator of All's eye to Her. But for whatever reason the Creator worked upon her, forcing her fires to cool and the steam to drift from the air and pool into rivers and seas. And with her material and His own design he created life upon Her.

Rape, the True Sons name it, and perhaps they are right. But it is done now, and I wish for all our sakes that the absent Creator had taken a better hand at keeping the Mother Earth tamed.

But that was at the dawn of time, before humans turned to the Creator while walverns lived as pleased the Mother. Yet it seems now the Creator's designs are not finished, for they continue to be carried out in the hands of those such as Paladin and the more faithful Tyaonans. And perhaps that is just as well, or the Mother's wish to scour humanity and all vestiges of the Creator's touch from Her may soon succeed.

I care not. I've made clear my view of the gods, for all that I and all my kind are a product of the Creator's "enlightenment" and the Mother's millennia of careful molding into Her desired form and mien. Only the Newborns reflect her will better, and you should thank your god that you have not encountered them. If walverns are the natural perfection of hunters, Newborn are even more so. Unnaturally so.

Now? Now I don't know what to believe, save that moral dilemmas are easy if I am in the company of no one to cause them. Solitude is my only goal now.

As for the Newborns, there is little more to say of them than could be said of any other rabid man-hunting creature, save their origins. When the red star fell and opened up the Mother's Womb many True Sons threw themselves inside in pursuit of the Mother's goals. I have told you how they were burned in the molten stone of the Mother's heart until all supposed impurities were cleansed from them, and they became creatures the Mother could proudly call children.

They have intelligence, of a sort. It is the cunning of a walvern grown to adulthood with no learning save the hunt, the craftiness of the lowest and most tricksome human. Their strength is immense, and though many of them top nearly seven feet and weigh upwards of two hundred and fifty pounds they are nearly as swift as I myself can boast. Such attributes are unnatural, and I can only assume the Mother Herself imbues them with Her strength.

As well they can listen to the wind, and communicate to each other in rudimentary ways through it. Newborns hunting in tandem act almost as one being, and their stalk is terrifying.

You cannot hide from them anywhere on the Mother's surface where life is abundant, such as field or forest and least of all in river or lake or sea. The Mother knows all things on Her surface, and She tells the Newborn where to find their prey. Only the barren rocks and areas where all living things have been reduced to ash remain free of peril. That is why all lands where humans struggle to survive, save those areas held by the True Sons, are wastelands of blackened ruin.

What is more, they can move through the earth like worms but with greater speed, for the Mother embraces them within Her skin and speeds their way. You can walk in the midst of a wooded clearing as peaceful as springtime perfection and suddenly find yourself in the midst of a dozen Newborn ravening for your flesh.

And the greatest of the Newborn, the alphas and spawn matrons, can call upon the earth's power. They can make the wind form tempests and cyclones, can raise the earth in upheaval or soften it to quicksand beneath your feet. I myself could once call upon such powers, to some small extent, but no more. And I do not miss them.

It is only the Mother's interest that the Newborn be little more than unthinking beasts living in harmony with the world and hunting to live that has kept them from sweeping all other races from the face of the earth. But I fear if the Mother ever tires of humans, or walverns, that this is exactly what could happen, with Her children operating under her control as the True Sons did.