“They are somewhere in the wheat fields! Spread out and track them down! Give them no quarter, save for placing a collar on their necks!” bellowed a rather weighty but not morbidly obese Werean. This particular Werean was not large in stature because of his diet, but rather his girth was due instead to the fact that he was a Hippopotamus Werean.

There were some in the game who argued that making an ‘obese’ Werean sub-race was pandering to a certain crowd, especially since the weight was mostly extra muscle and a protective layer of fat behind thick skin. That said, Hippo Wereans made for excellent tanks, usually able to dish out nearly as much damage as they received and, for a sub-race supposedly designed to be purely tanky in function, were surprisingly fast in short bursts with decent water movement abilities.

This Werean, despite being a big, fat target, went out and waddled his way into the wheat field along with his fellows in the Militia. He may have had the unfortunate condition of crushing wheat wherever he walked, but damn if he wasn’t going to let that stop him from finding some Beastmen and bashing their heads in with his big stick. Sure, he and his weapon may damage the food they need to survive and pay their taxes, but what would be worse than him and his companions crushing a bit of food-grass is the Beastmen doing whatever evil thing the mindless animals were going to attempt!

So, as he waddled through the wheat, occasionally sniffing to try and pinpoint the position of his enemy, he unknowingly wandered directly into a trap. He did not notice that he had tripped said trap until a few more minutes of searching came up fruitless, when he began to feel very unwell. He stopped his search for a bit to sit down and try and let the sickness pass, only to notice that the bottoms of his feet and the exposed parts of his legs were covered in lacerations and festering with some kind of ailment.

“It’s a trap!” he yelled as his strength began to fail and he slowly rolled over onto his back, only to hear nothing in response save the sounds of wind rustling the grains around him and the cawing of crows and ravens circling overhead. As he began to slip into sleep, he could swear that he smelled the ominous stench of smoke coming from a fair bit ahead.

…

“The fields!” screamed a Chicken Werean as she ran around like her head was cut off. “The fields! The fields!”

“What is it? What’s going on with the fields?!” a rather annoyed member of the same race demanded.

“They are burning! The fields are burning!”

With that being said, a handful of Werean more suited to climbing scaled the single line of sharpened wood logs that made their town’s wall and beheld a horrible sight. Every single field that they had sown was alight with fire, and to make matters worse there were the silhouettes of the feral and savage Beastmen painted upon the flames that made their backdrop. This was very, very bad. The Militia had yet to return and, if they had truly moved into the grain fields as they said they would, were likely not to come back at all, alive or dead.

The Werean townsfolk quickly began to panic. Their defenders were gone, their stores of food were nearly empty due to the longer than usual winter of that year, and now they had to deal with a siege by the monster-men that still refused to submit to the wills of their genetic superiors!

How could things possibly get any worse?!

It was then that they heard the chanting from the monsters. It was a single two-syllable name shouted over and over again. It was a name they all had heard about and all knew the suffering and terror that went with it. Those few who were brave and perhaps stupid enough to peer over the walls from one vantage point or another saw the nightmare that was slowly plodding along through the gaps between the burning fields and felt their hearts sink into the depths of despair. The chanting only escalated in speed and volume until it drowned out the screams of panic of the townsfolk and roar of the flames that were all around.

“Dur’kor! Dur’kor! Dur’kor! Dur’kor! Dur’kor! Dur’kor! DUR’KOR! DUR’KOR! DUR’KOR!”

That name spelled doom for all who heard it, for in the wake of the Nightmare of the Karnarous Forest there was left naught but pain, sorrow and destruction. The one who fully intended to destroy their civilization and bring the savage law of the beasts back to their homeland had come to claim their lives, their homes, and quite possibly their souls for his twisted and malevolent pagan gods.

Only a miracle could save them from doom and despair, and such things were in very short supply.

…

The Beastmen were not just here, where Dur’kor and Blaer were. No, they had organized other, much smaller attacks and maneuvers in other places all along the outskirts of the Bestiral Kingdom, it was simply that this place was the primary target. Why, you ask, was a simple farming town the highest priority target among all others? The answer to that should be painfully obvious. Despite being a town and not a city or fortress, it was the farthest major settlement in the entire Bestiral Kingdom from the capital and the closest of such settlements to the ever-dangerous Karnarous Forest.

There was also one other reason that this settlement was chosen, and that was a more secretive one than all the others. For you see, wherever there was a large congregation of the Races, there inevitably were those with… degenerate tastes. This was the case with this place, for this ‘furthest bastion of civilization’ had a dark secret. It held a not so insubstantial number of ‘Beast Cultists’. Yes, that is right, there were Werean who worshipped the same gods that the Beastmen did, but to a lesser extent regarding fervor and devotion.

This meant two things. One; it meant that there were those who might very well be willingly self-conditioned towards viewing Vaile as their Lord and Savior, and two…

Well, the Beast-Gods did demand that their followers multiply via any means necessary, so maybe the cultists would be willing to do the dirty with what many of their kind considered to be mindless animals? Either way, the city was the main target of this first major offensive, and soon enough it would be filled with the howls and screams of both predator and prey alike. And, if a few Werean, male and female, were captured and forced to commit foul, debased acts and horribly evil deeds, well… despite what the Kingdom’s propaganda said, life tends to find a way.

Isn’t nature amazing?