“Morning there,” I told the Exemplar Wolf, whose bloodshot golden eyes glared at me, but he showed confusion at the burning marilith getting sucked into my Tat, and my friendly tone and facial Tats. “I’m going to release you, but it’s going to take a minute or ten for the rusting compound to eat through this steel, as it’s been treated.” Yeah, it could resist acid, or rusting, but combined acidic rust? Alchemy ftw! “While I do that, I’m going to carve a Mark on your forehead, please suppress your healing factor long enough for it to take hold. It will up your Strength, and tie you into the telepathic link we have among us. We’re here to put down the Obelisk, kill the Hags, and I bet you’d like to help some?”

His eyes moved from crimson back towards yellow, clearly intrigued, and he was a more than good enough judge of character to know I meant what I said. He could only growl, but I was speaking fluent Wolf right now, so I understood him perfectly.

“This will hurt like pinpricks, nothing like that spear.” The middle of his forehead was visible through the spiked muzzle of the bindings keeping him down, so I stuck my hand out over him and began to etch the Mark into him. He growled again as it bit in, and actually hurt him. He wasn’t expecting a simple cutting implement to be able to do so.

Well, my hands were conducting the edges of Tremble, which had shifted in Bane of Legends just for this purpose, and Blooding to make sure his Fast Healing/10 wasn’t an issue. His hide, even enhanced, wasn’t an issue to the adamantine tip, and I scribed the Mark quickly and surely, given my thousands of practice sessions.

“Fill it with power.” He had to have shitloads of Karma lying around. As he did, I tossed some Warlord Karma at it, more coming in even now as the Brothers sang silently along and slaughtered away, and the Markdoor lit up in his mind.

The hard light of the full +4 bonus to Strength lit up on his forehead. True to my expectations, a Legendary-class Templated beast could break the Empowerment rules for such things.

His eyes widened at seeing The Map, and I waved at him from the other side of the Door. He mentally walked up to it, and slowly poked his head through.

The words and conversations of the Void Brothers, Briggs, and I in our own /chatroom flowed over him. He could look and measure all of us, saw the others notice him, acknowledge him, and then get back to what they were doing.

The Brothers were a deeper Green than this wolf was, and I could tell he recognized who and what they were.

Wayfair was placing the vials of acid-rust I’d whipped up; they’d be done shortly.

“Second thing I’m going to do.” My hair reached into my Masspack, swapped in my Chakra-opening Tool. “This is really going to hurt, but I’m going to poke some holes into your Soul, open up some very key Chakra points, and show you how to use them. You ready?”

Golden eyes in the emerald spirit before me narrowed, but he growled acceptance. He had a cursed Spear sticking out of his guts, what more this? He could smell the metal binding him start to hiss, to weaken ever so slightly, and knew I was doing what I said I was going to do.

“Okay, let me give you a quick rundown on Soul magic...”

--------

The Exemplar Template is hilariously dangerous. However, part of its power was based on the creature itself. It made the creature stronger at being what it was, but there was a limit.

A wolf was basically a 2-3 Hit Die creature, not that much more dangerous than a human. Indeed, we bred dogs bigger than wolves, unless you start up the magical size thing with Dire Animals. But this was a normal wolf, albeit a perfect member of the species.

That’s probably why he’d been targeted, and how they’d been able to capture him. While dangerous against single foes, and absolutely lethal for his Hit Dice, he was, in the end, a 3 HD creature with monstrous Stat boosts. He really had absolutely no way to effectively battle large numbers of enemies, and while his Stats were high, they weren’t insurmountable. A buffed Hag was likely stronger, for instance, so it only remained to overwhelm his gargantuan natural Luck and Insight bonuses... and since they were based on a 3 HD chassis, that wasn’t impossible, either.

So, beat him down with enough brute force, and if he kills a few hundred servants, so what? Enough magic to immobilize him, wrap him up in adamantine chains even he can’t break, and all he could do was sit there and be a source of blood.

I guessed that he’d been given to the shellycoat because she’d be the weakest of the three Great Hags, and he was also a test subject. They’d gone after a stronger Exemplar next.

But y’know, that was fine, because I was now giving this Wolf a crash course on Class Levels, alternate energy sources, possible advancement paths, and ways he would never, ever have to put up with this again. I brought in Elder Arg to chat with him, and even a Legendary-class Wolf was freaking impressed talking to an Epic Ape. Words were exchanged, trust established, and he agreed with my plans.

He realized he wasn’t nearly as powerful as he had once thought, that teamwork and sufficiently powerful beings could easily overpower him... and he also realized he couldn’t feel any luck or insight concerning me or the Void Brothers at all. While being an Exemplar gave him a precious +15 to all his Stats, his real bonuses were some truly monstrous Luck and Insight bonuses... none of which were useful against us at all.

Exemplars had triple normal speed, so he wouldn’t have any troubles keeping up with us. His problem right now was that his awesomeness was limited by his Hit Dice, so he had to get his Racial and Class Levels up. Given the instant bonuses he could get, Class should come first.

So, it was Character Creation time for an Exemplar Wolf who was stepping past his limits.

Bing!

Once a day retrain Feat from Skill Focus/Perception to Improved Natural Attack. D6 bite goes to d8!

Bing!

Take Monk Level/1!

Swap out Improved Unarmed Strike for Profound Natural Attack, since he was an animal. D8 bite goes to 2d6!

Establish Ki Pool, half Monk level + Wis. Fine, +8 ki.

Wis to AC. Oh, nice, that’s a +8 to AC.

Bonus Feat. Instead of Dodge, take Elusive Soul. +13 Exemplar Insight Bonus to his Soulcaster Level for Capacity Determination, effectively 15th. Can put Four Soul into it. Constitution modifier of 32, so 11 points Essence out the gate. Elusive Soul, +4 dodge bonus, bringing him up the whiff-whiff-whiff scale for a total of +12 AC. Nobody would be able to touch him.

Flurry of Blows useless, he only has the one set of jaws. Swap that out for Bonus Feat, Deflect Missiles, letting him avoid ranged attacks.

Stunning Fist useless, swap it out. Improved Trip is a wolf racial Feat, take that to save time later.

Gain all Good Saves for a level 1 Monk.

Exemplar: Gets Maximum Soak, plus 12 per Level. Monk HD of 8, +11 Con, +12, equals 31 Soak.

Already had Fast Healing, already had 62 Health and Fast Healing/10, with triple movement rate. Just have to pull that Spear out and he’d be fine in less than thirty seconds.

He tensed his muscles, and the metal did something it had not done in a very long time... it creaked.

His ears flattened, and he shifted subtly. The burning vivus hid the pungent smell of burning, rusting adamantine.

“Easy. We don’t want them to know you are out, and we don’t want them targeting you. The others are swinging back, they’ll be here in seconds.” He just growled and made ready, while I dug in my fingers and worked off one section of his bindings with some effort, aiming to flip it over and minimize his profile.

Nobody was coming up on the Obelisk; it was like sacred ground, and with the bodies burning around us, the Fiends definitely didn’t want to set foot here.

------

I counted down silently, while the sounds of some terrifying rock music and lights zoomed in closer, the troops that had surged in closer to the dead screamed and died in horrifically brutal fashion at impossible speed, and then they were sweeping past to cover us.

I surged up, he lifted with a 36 Strength and all the luck of the universe behind him. The metal creaked and bent, almost eaten through, and I rolled over it and yanked out the barbed Spear driven deep into him.

He yelped softly despite himself, bits of his guts attached to the cruel barbs of the point, which I dropped in vivus to burn away. I jumped to disappear into the blur of multiple Helices sweeping by, and the wolf lunged with breathtaking speed into the press as well.

-------

Quaver and Tremble came whirling back to my hands, and outgoing missile fire slowly picked up from my Tails. The formation spread out that little bit to give me room to slaughter, and we went at them again.

The Wolf had a 27 Wisdom, which meant that if he focused hard, he could track what we were doing through /Markchat. Also, my Warlord Bonus was singing around him, and his newly expanded awareness of ki and motion-flow from the Monk Level gave him an awareness beyond instinct of how and where to move to avoid interfering with us.

A wolf’s base move is 60, tripled to 180 for an Exemplar, meaning he had no problems loping around with us.

17 Intellect meant he was the equivalent of a human genius. His golden eyes were wide as he bounded along behind us, watching everything that was going on.

He saw the difference between a +10 Attack Bonus, and just being lucky to hit. He saw Techniques and Feats flowing into one another, ki and Soul Essence thrumming thickly in the air. He saw furless monkeys moving with precision and grace far beyond what he had ever witnessed any normal biped have, and he felt the soul-shuddering power of Weapons with ten Slots open and hungering for the blood of their enemies.

From very close range, he watched us kill as he could not, and any hauteur or arrogance he had as the apex of wolfdom, and any thought of distrust and treachery that might be arising in rage and freedom, were utterly and thoroughly quashed.

We didn’t need him. Releasing him was truly and only a courtesy; nothing more, nothing less.

I saw the Jug sitting on Haul behind Briggs, and smiled. Nobody had noticed the moat emptying out of blood so quickly, having so many other things to focus on... and the lads had knocked burning bodies directly into it on this run, cleaning up the scraps, so they’d just think the vivus had taken it, anyways.

The Wolf noticed the Disk and almost jumped up on top of it, before deciding that he wanted to run and run and enjoy his freedom after uncounted years. There was no problem on our end. Our job was to kill everything that came, so we would have room to take down the Obelisk. With no dragons or big ape to help, it ostensibly would be a mite trickier.

For now, it was simply an unreal, endless murderfest, executed with blows faster than a normal human’s eye could follow, ignoring the steel and hides that got in the way, shearing through supernaturally strong and tough opponents as we slaughtered thousands of them every few seconds, and left a burning trail of vivus behind us to let them know.

But, y’know, this was just going to take too damn long. There was something like half a million enemy combatants here, after all, more coming in from outside from stations outside the Walls. It was simply going to take an annoying amount of time to slaughter a major metropolis worth of troops.

But, hey, you know, we hadn’t carved into any of the werewolf troops yet. I wonder why that was?

The Wolf looked at me. -Hey, they’re your kids. Take charge, grandpa.-

Now he did jump on the Disk, raised his muzzle, and he Howled.

Hearing a Perfect Wolf howl is really, really something. Tremble and Quaver took furious notes, and all the magic Weapons blended in to accompany him with a thumping backbeat.

It was a call to war, and the one doing the calling wasn’t bound to, enslaved by, and having his blood leeched by the magic of the Obelisk anymore. He was Free and he was calling for his pack.

All those Lesser Exemplars and Werewolves literally froze in their tracks as their progenitor called to them. They were elites before they’d been transformed, Sevens through Tens, the bloodline a gift for the best of the best of the Hag Queen’s servants. But now, the luck and insight bonuses were thrumming inside them as Luck and Fate wagged their fingers and told them who their true progenitor was, and the raging instincts of the Pack thundered through them in a red tide.

He was calling for his Pack, and one failed Will save vs 30 or so later, they answered...