them inside and out. The peoples of this land had no reckoning of such plagues. When one fell ill, the family and the medicine men would hover near to provide support, and ended up infecting themselves. “The great cities emptied and disappeared, leaving fallow fields and the occasional mound that a few years later the Intruders attributed to ancient civilizations. With the collapse of their societies, survivors escaped to smaller villages or reverted to their old hunter-gatherer lifestyle. “The death began when the first Wyrmbringers set foot on our lands, but it did not end for hundreds of years. Most times the spreading of the contagion was accidental, although a Wendigo told me that once soldiers handed out smallpox-infected blanket to Indians, intending to cause sickness. “Whole nations died out. All their cultures, their songs, their beliefs, their memories.. . all lost. Nations mew too weak down. We searched far and wide for the caerns of our broth reopening them where we could, concealing those we were t few to protect. Some we knew of, others we di some were never found. More importantly, we ntruders. In despair many lost their faith of the Intruders. As the their peoples grew weaker, ymg on the reservations. secret places where the great Banes we over them. Most of th “Since then we minds, to convince them to let the other tribes help them. But once Middle Brother had chosen a path, he could not be turned from it any more than a mountain can be moved by the strongest wind. They did honor us, however, by letting our people in their midst join the battle. “In the spirit world we heard the sound like a distant thunderstorm, rushing and rumbling, and knew the monster had come. From caerns near and far, we called upon moon bridges to carry us to the lands of our brothers. But none came, for each of Middle Brother’s caerns were closed to us. By the time our warriors reached the coastal battleground, it was over. All were gone - Croatan, Uktena, Wendigo, Kinfolk and Wyrmbringers, body and spirit - and to this day no trace of the defenders has been seen in spirit homeland or as ancestor spirit. “Bitterly we mourned Middle Brother’s sacrifice. But now we had a new duty: to take up the burden the Croatan had laid hear us and return. Brother and Older Brother listened to him more t listened to each other. They drifted apart after that, his own concerns. Younger Brother blamed Older Brother for not saving Middle Brother (as younger brothers often do) and with no one to calm his anger, he let his Rage and hate bum stronger than the winter winds he favored. I think he secretly envied Middle Brother, too, and wished he could have died by his side. Older Brother understood his sibling’s pain, for he blamed himself (as older brothers often will) as wellfor not knowing where the evil would strike, and for not outthinking his brave-but-not-brilliant brother. And so he became lost in his search for secrets, for the knowledge he would need for future, as-yet-unimagined crises.” !72& D4q5Mflq ?a+ “The Intruders were few at first, and though they had guns and armor and horses, we could have driven them from our shores as we did hundreds of years before. But they had a weapon more terrible and more effective than anything the Wyrmbringers could make with steel or wood or black powder - a weapon we could not fight. It was disease. Tuberculosis, cholera, measles, influenza, typhoid - all these and more were spread by the filthy, corrupted Wyrmbringers, but the worst of all was smallpox. It swept through villages time and again until there was no one left to contract it. Those it did not kill, it corrupted, disfiguring L(k+hG I think the coming of the Europeans was almost a good thing. The people of our lands were growing too clever. They learned the secrets of growing corn rather than letting the Mother provide everything. They grew numerous and gathered into huge settlements. And certain men became powerful and were called chiefs and priests. They made up religions and made war on their neighbors for power instead of for food. The Wyrm loves such times, for it is easier to corrupt when there is great power to be had, and ten thousand men can do more harm than twenty alone. So they built great mounds and pyramids for their leaders and their gods, and they spilled each other’s blood in the names of lord and god, and the taint grew. And our ancestors could do little. Then the invaders came and brought down the kings of the stone temples. Their diseases and their guns emptied the great cities and sent the survivors back to the small villages or the nomadic ways of the old days. Once this happened, we should have fallen on the invaders with all our might and killed them all so that they would forget the Pure Lands again. But we did not, and in the end the small numbers were our peoples’ downfall.
Uktena · Werewolf